Bookings Booster: Using Multimedia To Attract Clients

Before he took up wedding photography, David Jay worked for a video production company in California, where his projects included video slide shows for several weddings. "They were 'Bride and Groom Growing Up' type of videos," he recalls, "and they were always a hit, people always loved them." So after several friends asked him to photograph their weddings, Jay got the idea to present a slide show of one wedding before the reception was over. He created a 30-image screen-saver- style sequence on a Mac laptop and set the computer up at the bar for everyone to see.

"I booked another wedding right there because of that [first] slide show," he says. Afterward, he made it a point to create on-site slide shows at every wedding he shot "and probably booked 15 weddings as a result" out of the 30 he shot his first year. Before long, Jay was creating multimedia wedding albums for the Web and selling software that has made it easier for other wedding photographers to do likewise.

With increasingly sophisticated production tools, a growing number of photographers are creating Web and DVD-based wedding stories set to music and, in some cases, accompanied by interviews and ambient sound. The immediacy and emotional impact of multimedia appeal to clients, so the slide shows make an attractive wedding package add-on and help drive print sales. But they also amplify word-of-mouth marketing, since DVDs and Web URLs are so easily passed around.



The Photo-J Effect

Several wedding photographers embracing multimedia have a journalism background. Rachel LaCour Niesen, who describes herself as a "refugee from the newspaper and magazine world," began shooting weddings about three years ago with her husband, Andrew Niesen. They formed a company called LaCour with Erin Reed Adams and Mark Adams, another couple they met while in journalism school at the University of Missouri.

"I have fond memories of watching National Geographic photographers present their photo stories to our class," LaCour Niesen recalls. "I was mesmerized by their slide shows and wanted to create a similar, emotional experience for brides and grooms."

While LaCour wedding packages still emphasize a traditional (printed) photo album, a multimedia slide show, delivered both on DVD and hosted on the company's server for viewing over the Web, is now part of the deal. (The base price for LaCour packages is $10,000, but some run as high as $50,000.) The slide shows typically include 100 to 150 images set to music. In creating the show, the LaCour group "weaves together pictures that set the scene, introduce the characters, cover the main event of the wedding, interpose transition shots between scenes and provide strong closing shots. We make sure the slide show has all those visual elements," LaCour Niesen explains.

The slide show is presented to the couple usually two to four weeks later (depending on the length of their honeymoon) at the LaCour studio, and also posted on the Web. As the print albums are put together by a company in New Zealand, "for the period of time they're waiting for the album, they can view the slide show and enjoy the photos with family and friends and not feel like we're holding the pictures hostage," LaCour Niesen says.

Another photojournalist offering multimedia slide shows to her wedding clients is Catherine Hall, who is based in New York and San Francisco. She recently learned multimedia techniques at the Eddie Adams Workshop. "It opened my eyes to this new way of telling stories," she says. Hall includes audio interviews and ambient sound in her productions, which are delivered in DVD format. "Putting pictures to music has been done for a long time, but it's limiting," she says. "I don't think you can have multimedia without interviews."

The day before the wedding, Hall uses a Roland Edirol R-09 MP3 recorder and an Electro-Voice 635A microphone to record interviews with the bride, the groom, and eight other people of their choice?usually including their parents, the best man and the maid of honor.

"It's conversational. I get to know my clients, and it helps make better pictures," she says, adding, "It works best for destination weddings, because everyone is there the day before." She winnows down three or four hours of interviews to about 10 minutes worth of audio. For ambient sound, she recruits willing guests to help her record the ceremony and other goings-on. "That's stressful, but it works out, and people like to be involved," she says. (She adds, however, that she'll soon have to hire an assistant.)

Hall's multimedia wedding DVDs aren't cheap. She charges $4,000 to $5,000 in addition to her base rate of $5,000 to $7,000 for shooting the wedding. (Since last fall, she has produced two wedding DVDs.) The main reasons for the high price tag, she explains, are that the audio interviews take a lot of time to gather and edit, and she hires producers to create the slide shows with Final Cut Pro, software that requires a lot of time and expertise to use.



Creating Basic Web-based Wedding Albums



For Web-based slide shows that include music but no interviews or ambient sound, there are less expensive production options. LaCour, for instance, now uses Showit Web, a Flash-based program gaining popularity among wedding photographers. (Previously, she used Soundslides, a program developed by photojournalist Joe Weiss for creating multimedia photo essays.) Showit, with features designed specifically for wedding multimedia (such as music transitions timed to the tempo of the music),was developed by David Jay.

Explaining how Showit evolved, Jay says, "I'd put a slide show up at the wedding, and it would generate a lot of buzz in the room. But if it was up on the Web, people could come home and send links to their friends and relatives, and we'd get word-of-mouth after, as well as during, the wedding."

So Jay asked a friend to create a slide show for his Web site. "He put it to music, timed it to the beat, and it had all these zooms and transitions, it was really impressive," says Jay. But that one slide show took a day to create and cost Jay $1,000. When other photographers started inquiring about it, Jay sat down with his friend to develop a simple program that would allow the user to create slide shows for the Web quickly, easily and, above all, cheaply.

The result was Showit, which has just shipped in version 2.0. The program has a simple interface with controls that allow the user to select photographs for the show, arrange them in order, time them, put in zooms for selected images, add a music soundtrack and upload the completed file to the Web or show the slide show on a computer, all in a matter of minutes. The program sells for $199, and is available for both Mac and Windows. Jay has also developed a suite of special effects add-ons that work with the main application.



Software for DVD Albums



Showit works in Flash, however, and is only suitable for creating slide shows that can be viewed on the Web. Creating shows suitable for burning onto DVD requires somewhat more heavy-duty software applications and a fair amount of digital know-how.

Chicago-based photographer Bob Davis, founder of la Storia foto and chief photographer for the wedding photo agency Bella Pictures, uses FotoMagico, a Mac-based software program that creates files suitable for export to DVD authoring programs such as Roxio Toast or Apple's iDVD. The program lists for $79 and is available for Mac only. Davis's slide shows are included in his wedding photo packages, which start at $6,500.

"I'll make the initial slide show in Showit Web," Davis says, "and my client can then view it on the Web, proof it and share the link with their friends and family. Then I'll recreate it in FotoMagico, and author the DVD through iDVD and make custom menus for the show. It's awesome. You can create these Hollywood-style menus, with music and images they can click on; it's very much like Hollywood-produced DVDs."

For clients with relatives who might not have computers, Davis provides images and slide shows for iPod download. "You can just hook it up to the TV," he says. "The pictures come up with a file number, so they can order by number."

Davis recommends authoring programs designed specifically for still images, as opposed to ones designed for movies, such as iMovie. "iMovie takes a jpeg and converts it to a video signal, so you can lose sharpness and crispness. It looks a little mushy, particularly on the large hi-definition flat screens that a lot of people have now. FotoMagico, on the other hand, is the missing link for me. It works with all Apple's other applications, but it's designed to work with still images. It's very quick and seamless and the results are very sharp."

Jefferson Todd, a Phoenix-based wedding photographer, uses Showit to create Web-based shows and Apple's iMovie and iDVD to create shows for viewing on a home TV. After creating the file in Showit, he resizes it down to iPod resolution, hosts the file on his server and lists it with iTunes. "You go to iTunes and search 'Jefferson Todd' and my logo will come up," he said. "Click on it, and it will list all the weddings and engagements available for download."

Todd's slide shows aren't part of any package, though. He charges an extra $250 for his DVD slide shows and $250 for slide shows formatted for iPods. That fee entitles clients to unlimited downloads at iTunes, however, "so all their family and friends can get a copy."

After all, friends and family are likely to include another bride-to-be in search of a wedding photographer. What better way to make an emotional appeal to a client and a prospective customer at the same time?



Slide shows by photographers mentioned in this story are available for viewing at: www.lacourphoto.com, www.jeffersontodd.com/slide shows, www.last oriafoto.net/sheila_nicola, www.davidjay.com



Setting It To Music



Music soundtracks enhance the emotional appeal of images, so they are always a prominent component of multimedia wedding albums. Rachel LaCour Niesen says the LaCour group makes an audio note (with a Canon EOS-1 digital camera) of a couple's first dance song and includes that song in the slide show.

"We'll also use music that we feel fits the mood that we want to set for the picture story we're telling," she says.

But most music is copyrighted and requires a license. So LaCour purchases "new media" licenses through ASCAP, SECAM and BMI that allow them to play music over the Internet with their slide shows. Said LaCour Niesen, "These licenses are fairly economical, the total cost for all three is about $750 per year and these three music licensing agencies combined have nearly every recorded song in their collective repertoire."

Royalty-free music is also widely available on the Web. Among sources mentioned by David Jay are Soundtrackarcade.com, Truetoneproductions.com, and TJHillmusic.com. Bob Davis notes that Broken Joey Records (brokenjoeyrecords.com) has been making a special effort to license music to photographers and filmmakers.