SchoolPhotographers.net

Photographer Survey

Help us on our mission to change school photography by sharing your thoughts and business experience. Golden Gate University marketing department is working with Mugshots on a marketing survey that is focused on how we can best help community photographers enter into the school market. We got a late start and would love to have at least 100 partcipates so feel free to spread the word to your photographer friends who might be interested in photographing in the schools for fun and profit. :0) Here's the link, it won't take longer than a few minutes.
Thanks!
http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB225U4AR9VTA

Grateful Moment

Well, we are just catching our breath from photographing some 6000 smiling faces and it is time to start thinking about next year. Wait! Stop the press, it is actually time to sit for a moment. To settle into the sense of satisfaction in a job well done, a bank account filling up and an enormous number of very pleased customers.

Wow, that is a gratifying feeling. A pleasure.

Next week, we will catch the wave of success and send out marketing materials to the schools that are still plagued with unhappy parents and frustrated kids who still don't know there is a better way to make school portraits. It will be great! But for this moment I will just sit here grinning, remembering all those smiling faces that peered in my lens.

Welcome Professional Photographer Magazine Readers

We are delighted you have stopped by to check us out. Please sign up or email us so we can network together to change school photography into the product it deserves to be. We are currently working on a number of ideas for helping other photographers see the level of success that Mugshots has reached. This year's Fall ordering season is showing a strong increase in order averages as well as a huge surge in online ordering. It feels like a "tipping point" is looming here in the Bay Area and we really want to see our vision of school photography spread to others.

In the next week we will have a link to a Golden Gate University marketing class's online survey where photographers can share with us what they need and want in the way of support. You can also check back here for more information regarding "Mugsy U" workshop/summit in the beautiful Napa Valley. We will be are hoping to entice 20 of you to join us in learning, networking and crafting a new vision school photography company in your area! We will be sharing EVERYTHING we know, 20 years of innovation and experience. Join Us! Make money and beautiful portraits so parents can stop you in the grocery store and tell you what I hear all the time..."you took the most beautiful photo of my child at school." Over the tomatoes they have to pull it out of their wallet and share it with me. You know why? Because "school is a great place to photograph kids." Cross my heart.

Revolution Redux

Seminal School-Portrait Photographer Dies At 92

So Mugshots School Photography isn't the first revolution in this industry. It turns out the blue background was revolutionary for it's time. The more things change, the more they stay the same....click on the link above to find out more about the Godfather of the current school portrait.

Scrim Jim

This year we have incorporated the Westcott Scrim Jim into our photo days and life is grand. Using this wonderful scrim we are able to manage sunlight all day long and have almost eliminated fill flash entirely which is giving us much nicer images. Running a successful photo day is challenging enough without having to chase the shade around and worry about spectral spit on gums and teeth. Digital certainly has it's advantages over film but not when it comes to flash. We have also found ways to control eyeglass reflections though we are still working on the "transition lense" sunglass condition.

The above image is an example of how we are now able to create shade where there is none. The reflector to the right is bouncing just a touch of side lighting and the white fabric on the ground bounces a hint into the eye shadows and helps with any "green" glow.

Fall Season Up and Growing

Well, my daughter is now installed in a college dorm room and the dog has filled the vaccuum . Funny how that works (not that I am equating my dog with my daughter-it's an energy space thing). It is like losing a large contract and thinking the world has ended and we are all going to starve and the next day the phone rings with an even better gig. Years of business and parenting have taught me this and still I forget.

Parenting and running your own business can so often be at odds. I can remember every first day of school since preschool. I would monitor the calendar, just waiting for that early fall day to arrive, anxious to get my children out from underfoot. Then I would cry all the way home after watching them nervously entering an another grade. First days and last days of school are so melancoly, I would long for the serenity of 6 hours of focused time and while nursing the hole in my heart that they filled with their laughter and unrelenting energy during the summer.

This year the drive home was longer and the hole a whole lot larger. I couldn't wait to clean her bathroom and remove the Red Stripe beer bottles from her bedroom window-(there, not because she participates in underage drinking, but because she loves all things Jamaica-right..).
My satisfaction in raising the curtains for the first time in 4 years was as transitory as a new, clean lunchbox. While my job as a parent is not complete, my role as her daily manager is finished. Whether I did a good job as a parent will be up to some therapist's assessment I suppose, but that I loved my children and did the best I knew how is a banner I can raise proudly. As I hugged my sweet girl in her room surrounded by her personal creature comforts I remembered another girl, the one that still haunts my now more womanly frame. The young woman who had dreams that were not woven with child-rearing and I suppose it is their time once again.

Besides, 2 days later I started photographing all those smiling school children and going to bed at 9:30 pm with no rap music in the room downstairs was not all that bad.

Local News Paper Coverage of Mugshots

San Rafael photography studio specializes in school pictures
Carla Bova-Marin Independent Journal

Most people remember school picture day - standing in a long line with classmates, sitting in front of a bland screen where a stranger shoots a frame or two and promptly moves on to the next student.
The result, many recall, was often an awkward photo capturing a crooked smile and tousled bangs with no second chance to get it right or at least better.

Photographer Linda Russell of San Rafael says it is time for a change.

She founded Mugshots School Photography hoping to bring local photographers into schools to take high-quality pictures.

A tough task in a $1.5 billion industry traditionally dominated by large companies, according to Russell.

"It is a price-based commodity in dire need of being revolutionized," Russell said. "Why is the decision made on price-point instead of quality? I am out to change that by empowering qualified community-based photographers to get into schools and be a part of that market. That is what is making the product better."

"I like the idea of giving a better all-around experience and product by making it part of the community instead it being a once a year, money-making service item of a national commodity."

Russell, 51, started Mugshots in 1993, shooting 200 students a year at Marin Waldorf School and earning $10,000 in gross sales.

Today Mugshots shoots close to 5,000 students a year at 25 to 30 public and private schools in Marin, Sonoma and San Francisco counties, from preschool to high school, and logs more than $195,000 in gross sales.

Russell takes students out of the classroom, away from the screen. Kids have several chances to get the perfect shot and parents get a choice.

"She takes groups of children outdoors in a very natural setting with a natural background, not the typical background," said Kathy Newman, program director of San Anselmo Preschool Center which has used Mugshots for at least 10 years. "Linda takes multiple pictures of all the children in our program in multiple poses. É She really captures children."

This year will be the fourth year that Marin School of Arts & Technology in Novato uses Mugshots.

"She took them outside in natural light and took a lot of time determining what the best place on campus was for the best view, the best light for kids and the results were very natural," said Angela Knudsen, office manager of the charter school. "We really like the pictures and they suited us because we wanted pictures that are not cookie cutter pictures of kids. ÉThe kids look like themselves - young, lovely and in the perfect light."

Knudsen said Mugshots' online component is handy and saves time.

"We get pictures in a file and can use it for ID cards. For a small business, that is quite nice," Knudsen said. "She wants to take some burden off the school office, and I am particularly fond of her for that."

Traditionally, large companies have a prepaid program requiring parents to pay for photos before seeing them.

Russell boasts a preview program where parents can look at photos before purchasing, select from several options and buy online.

"No one has to order if they do not want to," Russell said. "They look before they purchase and if we do a good job, then they spend money."

Mugshots packages range in price from $18 for 16 half-wallet sized pictures to $50 for two 8x10s, two 5x7s, eight wallet size and 16 half-wallet size.

"We are more expensive because we take multiple images. We allow you to look at the pictures before you purchase, and you are getting a better quality photograph," Russell said. "I am not price competing with the school photography companies É because we are not the same product."

Russell said it is difficult for local photographers to get into the industry because schools have dealt with well-known, long-established companies versus independent contractors.

"The school photography market is dominated by one company, a national privately held company called Lifetouch, that has something like 89 percent of the marketplace and the local photographer is closed out," Russell said.

"The school contract becomes the barrier to entry for the local photographer."

Mugshots has created a model to help get local photographers into the mix and give schools the assurance they are going to get a qualified photographer.

"Mugshots' growth plan provides photographers who are interested in photographing schools in their community and gives them all the marketing materials, all the back-end print fulfillment and all the training necessary to do it," Russell said. "And the schools get what they want which is security and contract support that they need."

Knudsen of the Novato charter high school is at ease working with Mugshots, saying Russell takes care to work with her clients and meet their goals.

"I am pleased to work with a small and newer business," Knudsen said. "She tries to do it like a photographer in business rather than a businesswoman who is doing photos. It really is the difference. Her approach is from a photographer's point of view and it shows in the pictures."

Russell cut down on shooting weddings to focus on growing Mugshots and its model.

She got a vote of confidence recently when she was selected as one of 20 women entrepreneurs to win the Make Mine a Million Business Program award, which seeks to help one million women-owned businesses reach $1 million in annual revenue by 2010.

Recipients get one year of mentoring and professional coaching as well as marketing support. They are eligible for a line of credit from OPEN from American Express, the company's small business division, and for a loan of up to $45,000 from Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence, a national nonprofit lender based in New York.

"Photographers are lone rangers so part of the excitement was embracing the idea of community and networking," Russell said. "It brought me out of isolation to a whole world of businesswomen who share resources and support one another."

Russell began working in photography in the early 1980s when she was in her early 20s in Sausalito, taking pictures of people in Western clothes.

"It was one of those places where you dress up like a cowboy or a saloon girl," Russell said. "You put them on this set, then we would shoot it, develop the film in this little room and they would pick it up. It was fun."

Then she moved on to the Sears Portrait Studio in the Sears in the Mall at Northgate.

"There was no decision-making but that is really the root system of school photography," Russell said. "At Sears I learned to work really fast and to sell my work. É I liked photographing kids and I had a knack for kids."

By 1982, when Russell was 28, she started selling photography equipment at what was then-called Northgate Photo.

"I wanted to learn more about gear," she said. "I had an ability to sell and I got a discount on equipment. I got to learn what was available and how it worked while getting paid."

With the birth of her first child, son Jarreau, the next year, Russell became a stay-at-home mom.

"I now had my own living, breathing subject and I started to photograph, develop film, process and print in the darkroom during nap time," Russell said. "I started to see photography more as an art and less as commerce at that point."

Photography changed again with the 1988 birth of her daughter, Jesse.

"Where my son was really easy to photograph, my daughter had a mind of her own so she pushed me to a different level in photography," Russell said. "I started photographing the process of parenting, the tantrums and what it felt like."

By 1990, Russell was a single parent and started selling her first pictures, did first her exhibit and shot weddings and portraits.

Operating from her San Rafael home, Russell started Mugshots in 1993 after a client asked if she was interested in taking the school pictures for the Marin Waldorf School.

"I would say yes to anything," Russell said. "I had two kids to support and I was a kid photographer."

"When I photographed that first school, the big huge moment was to see that it was really easy to get beautiful headshots of kids at school," Russell said. "If you can get good pictures at school, why do the (traditional) pictures look so terrible? É That is what is so different about the vision of Mugshots."

Mugshots School Photography

Owner: Linda Russell

Phone: 459-2178

Web: www.mugshotsphotography.com