Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Young Guns


For opening night this year at WPPI they named 12 of us "Young Guns" and they joined together two ballrooms to fit 2500 people and then gave us each a few minutes to share some tips with the group.

Skip Cohen, who's in charge of WPPI, sat us all down and said that there is ONE reason we were invited to give this presentation. It wasn't because we were the best photographers, or the best business people, he said it was because we were unique, different and we didn't let ourselves blend in to the masses. Wow. It's a scary thing thinking about an industry like ours and how important it is to stand apart and to be different. It's easy to be the same but we need to fight that urge because in the long run it will really hurt us.

Everyone shared some great ideas and I talked about how important it is to have a unique website. Our websites are often the only interaction potential clients will ever have with us and I've seen too many photographers become commodities and have to lower their prices because they adopted a website that looked just like somebody elses.

Checkout this fun little video Paul put together from the night. I'll be posting the audio content from this as well as from my platform presentation on the Freedom Club.

CLICK HERE for the video!

Rock on!
DJ

Here are some more pics!





12 comments:

Jon said...

DJ! Looks like a great event! I wish it was closer to me!

Thanks for the message on FBook, catch you on your return!

Jon :)

amber said...

wish i was there...NEXT YEAR FOR SURE!

mac said...

looks great, I wish I could have seen it live...

Markus :-)

Family said...

DJ - I love the man purse! Beckett

Daniel J. Watkins said...

Do you know of any place where we could get great unique web-sites? (On a photographer's budget, too!)

Mike Larson said...

dude it was a blast and an honor being up there with you and everyone. See you tomorrow for an early lunch?

Rodolfo Arpia said...

Hey DJ, it was great spending a little time chatting with you and Allie while in line... thanks for the breakfast!

Jeanette said...

It was so nice to finally meet you!

Unknown said...

"I've seen too many photographers become commodities and have to lower their prices because they adopted a website that looked just like somebody elses."

So, name one ... show us a photographer who had to lower their prices, and show us how the website is to blame.

kennykimdotcom said...

DJ - I'll send you some photos soon - sorry I couldn't connect w/ you guys for dinner last night

rachel said...

I see Kenny Kim in that video!

Sara France Photography said...

I am so sad that I had to miss that! Looks like it was so much fun!