Cass Imaging - First Shoot of 2013
It's hard to believe that as we enter into 2013, it hasn't been a full year yet, and actually only 8 months since officially starting Cass Imaging. Last week Sandi and I signed up for a three month course called "A Photography Business Makeover", and the first course was this past Friday. It's geared towards helping photography businesses restart for the new year, mostly for those needing a change to help get out of a slump. We haven't been in business long enough to hit a slump yet and business hasn't slowed down, but I wanted to use this course as a way to pick up some new ideas and different ways of doing things. It was pretty cool to see the struggles that other businesses have hit, after years of being in business, and how they got through them. Struggles that I could easily see us hitting, and some that I wouldn't have even thought of.
One of the topics was about branding. Branding is something that has taken me some time to fully grasp, and a subject that I'm glad was covered. I honestly didn't have any idea what the Cass Imaging brand was or what I wanted it to be up until recently. It took some time to really figure out what I wanted Cass Imaging to be. I knew that I didn't want it to be a cookie cutter portrait company. I wanted to be unique. I wanted to take a chance and rather than try to do what other portrait or wedding photographers were doing and do it my way. I wanted to show my personality through my work.
I feel like 2012 ended at a good point with the business, and a good time to start the new year. We spent the first 8 months building the Cass Imaging "brand", figuring out what it was that we truly wanted to be in the first place. Now moving forward I want to focus on staying true to that brand. We want to work with clients that love what we do. We want clients that want to show off our work to their friends and family, and post our work on Facebook and Pinterest to help us advertise. So moving forward that's what we're going to do...work with those clients, and only those clients that love what we do and how we do it. The Cass Imaging brand may not be for everyone, and 2013 is about working with those that it is. With our foundation built, our plan is to have our clients help us build the rest, and the more they love our work the bigger its going be.
The Cass Imaging brand for 2013 is going to be CREATIVE, NATURAL and EDITORIAL...making it as fun as we can. Now that we have the foundation built my focus is going to be building straight up, which means staying true to our brand. For the first shoot of 2013...that's what we did.
All of these were shot with the new Sigma 35mm F1.4 with my D800E. Im still really enjoying shooting this lens, especially for portrait work. Enjoy!