Jessica was one of my first brides to book for 2010 and one of my last weddings to cover this year. Back almost a year ago we hit it off immediately on the phone and she wanted to book me on the spot. I love when I can connect with a couple over art and photography. It didn’t hurt that she was so excited about my photos and that she was taking art and photography classes at Emily Carr.

Jessica’s family is, to put it simply, awesome. They’re the owners of the classic Waldorf Hotel on Hastings Street in Vancouver… (more about that later!)

Our day started very early with Jess and her girls getting ready at the Ice Salon on Burrard. The stylist did such a spectacular job on her hair; she looked straight out of 1920′s Hollywood:

They continued getting ready at the Fairmont:

This is the first time Jessica’s dad saw her in the dress…

The ceremony was held at the beautiful St. Francis of Assisi where the weather continued to improve for us by the minute. By the end, sun was shining bright and gave us the rest of the day without any rain. Thanks to my second shooter, Geno DellaMattia, for this excellent shot:

I love this image; it has a glowing bride, a proud father, and family in the background so happy they’re almost crying.

We took a few moments for bridal portraits outside… GORGEOUS! Isn’t she the most beautiful bride?

The reception was held at her family’s hotel, the Waldorf on Hastings Street. It is such a spectacular place, almost frozen in time — and that time is 1950′s Luau style!

Jessica and her dad have such a special connection. This is a quick location portrait of them in the Waldorf kitchen where she worked as a teenager:

Thanks for letting me be a part of your day, Jessica & Dave!

Mom Jozi’s friends arranged for me to be present at this most amazing event. Jozi is also a photographer in Vancouver so I am especially honoured to provide the photos of her second son’s birth. We started on Friday night a few hours after the induction in St. Paul’s Hospital’s maternity ward. Jozi was surrounded by family and friends the entire time.

I returned the next day when the action picked up…

Tara and Richard were awesome to work with; so easy-going and photogenic!

I asked them how they met and they replied they were “set up” in 11th grade — nine years ago! These two, so obviously in love, will be married in the Summer of 2011, after ten years of being together.

And they said they couldn’t make it as models! Check out this Blue Steel…

What an amazing setting for Heather & Ewan to get married…

My second photographer, Geno DellaMatia was hanging with Ewan and captured these images:

Meanwhile, Heather and the ladies were getting ready nearby.

Two adorable little flower girls were raring to go before the ceremony!

But only one made it down the aisle…

And the other didn’t quite make it all the way down once she saw mom on the side!

The ceremony was scheduled to be an outdoor event on one of Furry Creek’s many scenic overlooks; unfortunately the weather drove us indoors but there was still a lot of beautiful natural light in the room and and equal amount of love.

We headed out in some insanely-powered golf carts to tour the sights and the beaches nearby.

I love this one; thanks to Geno for making the image while having to carry gear and umbrellas!

Big thanks to the fashion photographer who saw us getting wet and offered to leave his temporary shelter on the beach for us to use when he was done! This one gave us a nice break from the constant rain.

Now I’ve seen a fair number of wedding cakes done by friends and family and I’ve seen some really high-quality ones lately, too, but this one takes the cake. (Wow, that was bad, wasn’t it?) The uncle who made this happens to be a culinary instructor so you certainly can see the professionalism here and attention to detail.

The catering and deserts provided by the Furry Creek Country Club were quite easily the best I’ve seen (and tasted) all year.

The first dance…

Earlier in the day, these two were surrounded by a wealth of family and friends on the top deck of the Queen of Diamonds as they said their vows overlooking False Creek.

Even better than the ‘first kiss’ shot, for me, is the ‘first hug’ — so much love!

Here is Orest, just two days old, skin-to-skin with dad…

We checked out of the hospital and went over to Nelson Park for a few images in the grass.

And here is Orest with mum.

“$59 for a one-hour location photo session including a disc of low-res images and five 8×10 prints”

Photographers, or those wanting to be photographers, post offers like this everyday on every city’s Craigslist. What happens when a professional photography studio makes an offer like this and scales it up to a site with the viral selling power of Groupon.com? Is there a gold mine of sales and referrals waiting for photographers on Groupon or is it a quick path to making your photography a commodity?

Read on to find out how one local photography studio made over $65,000 in sales in two days.

If you’re not familiar with Groupon, it is a social shopping site where local businesses offer heavily discounted products or services to Groupon’s web readers in exchange for a guaranteed minimum number of clients. Say you’re a restaurant and you want to bring in a load of new customers; Groupon allows you to offer a $40 gift card for $20 but only if a certain number of people buy in. You’re guaranteed a steady stream of new faces which may or may not turn into repeat business. Groupon already has millions of unique visitors per month and their daily deals spread virally as people alert family and friends to get them to buy in so that the deal reaches “the tipping point” and becomes active. Here is the Groupon FAQ if you’d like more information on how it works.

Can social shopping like this translate into effective marketing for an artistic business like a photography studio? Could a single studio even handle the buying power of Groupon? I don’t have any inside information on the deal used as an example here, but I’m going to do my best to piece together a breakdown of how Groupon might work for a photographer based on a recent offer in my own city.

$59 for a one-hour location session including prints was not a joke. That was the Groupon deal of the day for Vancouver on July 30th, 2010. Take a moment to look at that page and digest the statistics. Then remember the limitations of running a small photography business — this one in particular consists of two photographers — and the Groupon offers are generally good for one year from the date of purchase. Right now, the deal has sold over 1,200 units and still has 12 hours left to go. Let’s round the total sold down to 1,100 to accommodate those that want refunds or simply don’t book.

Is it possible for a small studio to even do 1,100 sessions in a year? Considering the facts, I find it tough to believe it can happen. We live in Vancouver where it rains consistently for six months of the year and the studio bills itself as doing on-location shoots with natural light. That alone has limited you to, including weekends, maybe 180 days to do the sessions. If you don’t like days off, that is. This studio also shoots weddings; during our season when the weather is nice you cannot schedule portrait sessions on those same Saturdays, making your available time even less.

In the Groupon discussion for this deal, it was noted that the year long deadline might be extended. Say it is 18 or 24 months; that may make it easier to accomplish but are people really going to be excited to book a session two years after they paid for it? Is the photographer still going to be producing thoughtful, original work after completing 1,000 of those sessions?

Now let’s consider the expense in producing the deal. From TechCrunch, it is reported that Groupon takes 30 to 50% of the deal immediately off of the top before you see anything. Groupon provides the web traffic and they also run a value-added service as they only want to offer quality merchants on their site. They work closely with the business both before and during the offer to make sure that the business is up to their standards and that their customer’s questions get answered quickly.

Not sounding so hot now, is it? Consider that this may take 18+ months to complete, takes two photographers to book, shoot, and process, and leaves little time for anything else. And there are still more expenses; assuming a very low cost for the products included in the package ($1 per print and $1.50 per CD with postage):

How many shutters and hard drives will you go through doing 1,100 sessions? Even assuming a low total of 200 frames per session, that will require at least one new shutter and likely a trip or two in for maintenance for your camera and lenses. You’ll need another external drive or two to store them on. Here’s hoping you don’t need to replace a body due to additional wear.

Now as this studio works on location, they’ll need gas to get there as the deal was offered for “Metro Vancouver”. Assuming you can book a few shoots in the same location on the same day (which may be tough), let’s have a low estimate of $3 per session for travel.

Take away taxes and consider that this a heck of a lot of work to do for that money, any way you slice it. Being optimistic and saying that each hour long session might take three hours in total including booking, driving, shooting, editing, and fulfilment and you’re making $8.33 per hour. Of course there can be a huge upside. After-shoot sales of more prints or the high-resolution files can be very profitable if the shoots are successful. They can be easy if you automate it with an online gallery like SmugMug that allows your customers to purchase hi-res downloads and prints without your intervention. But consider that you’re targeting bargain hunters that may or may not want to spend more money after getting such a good deal. I also think that five 8x10s and low-res files for Facebook and email are enough to satisfy a good majority of the customers.

After product sales, you have the substantial upside of improved name recognition and possible referrals. If the photographer is able to create the Facebook galleries on their own and have the subjects tagged, they gain the advantage of having each of those person’s friends see immediately who took the photos. Word-of-mouth referrals would also be substantial if the photographers can keep up the quality of their work.

You could also consider this as a springboard to expanding a studio. After all, you’re probably going to want an office manager to coordinate all of the phone calls and session arrangements… or maybe a third photographer to make the workload manageable.

Typical Groupon businesses.

When compared to the other businesses that typically offer Groupons — restaurants, tour groups, exercise studios — it is hard to imagine someone producing art should try the same marketing tactics. If you’re a restaurant or a tour provider, you take reservations and expect to be busy doing the same thing day in and day out. I don’t know of any small photography business doing location shoots that can handle the type of volume that Groupon shoves at you.

So what do you think? Is Groupon a viable marketing option for photographers?

Update: interesting statistics from this blog just posted this morning.