I am so excited to introduce you all to photogra-momma extraordinaire Ariana Falerni! She is simply lovely! Her photography is so gorgeous, and she designs amazing wall displays that are fantastic for showcasing your portraits as art for your clients! I know you all will adore her as much as I do!
Hi Ariana! Welcome to MWC! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business? Hi, thanks for having me! My business is two-fold, I am a photographer (maternity, newborns, young children, families) and also a designer. Some of your readers may have heard of the Photographer’s Wall Display guides (I hope!) They started out as a whim basically, but have since almost taken over my creative life - I essentially shoot nowadays to keep my foot in the photography business so that I can keep getting ideas for new design products as well as keep the creative juices flowing!
I love your work! It’s so pretty and pure and clean. Can you tell us a little bit about your photography philosophy? What are you looking for when you shoot and how do you create that wonderful balance between great exposures and composition + fun, lighthearted posing? I’m looking for first and foremost beautiful light and the way that light can enhance the beauty of my subject. But also my goal is to have the child’s personality shine through, even if the mom is mortified that her kids aren’t listening or looking at the camera – I will capture them as they are. If you have wild children, do you really want an image of them standing still and looking at the camera? Does that speak to who they are at this moment in time? Photography is like a window into the past, so if I can capture the feeling in a moment, or the connection between a family I’ve done my job.
What’s in your camera bag? What’s your very favorite piece of equipment? In my lovely mustard yellow JoTote Rose bag is my Canon 5D Mark II and a variety of lenses. The ones I use most often are my 70-200 2.8 vII – (this is my go-to most favorite lens of all time) my 24-70 2.8 for indoors and my 50mm 1.4 for newborns. The rest just collect dust!
What product do you offer that your clients can’t live without? I have to say that my clients have very varied taste! Lately I’ve been selling a lot of albums and people always love the mini accordions.
Can you share with us your favorite marketing strategy? What have you done that’s different in building your business? This one is hard for me to answer because I’m very low volume due to the fact that so much of my time is spent on my design products and I want to keep it that way, so more often than not I actually turn people away! But, I would have to stress that I do not sell anything that doesn’t come with physical product. If you are selling digitals with no reference prints or anything but digital files you are missing a huge marketing opportunity. What if your client puts that disc in a drawer and never gets the canvas they said they would? Their friends will never see those images anywhere (Ok, after they share them on Facebook I mean!)
You offer a FANTASTIC product for photographers that help them in the sales end of their studios. Share with us about that, please! The Photographer’s Wall Display Guides is a sales tool first and foremost – it’s a series of templates with real room backgrounds that help their clients “picture their pictures” on the walls. The idea behind them is that you need to show it to sell it. It’s not rocket science – but if you don’t show your client how amazing xy&z image will look together in so-and-so arrangement how can you expect to get them on board to decorate their home with your images?
There are so many other creative uses for the templates – from illustrating your pricing guide with examples, to doing blog posts about the impact that size can make to advertising canvas sales – those are just a few of the ways that my customers use these guides in their businesses.
Probably the best way to get an idea of what these tempaltes are and how they are helping photographers sell more is to see my product trailer video!
What have you found to be most successful in your own sales? Switching to in-person ordering! I can’t even tell you how much this has increased my sales and cut down on the email back and forth.. it’s not even a comparison! Plus, (and this is probably stating the obvious) using my wall guides. I show 5-10 different wall ideas at the end of every client slideshow. I also will mock up birth announcements and holiday card ideas ahead of time.. People are visual. You have to give them something to want!
You have the most adorable little guy! Tell us about your family and what you do to work towards balance between work and family. Thank you so much, I can’t disagree with you there
So far our family is our three year-old son Jasper, my handsome and talented husband Jeff and our ancient blind/deaf shih-tzu Sammy. We are trying very hard to give Jasper a sibling, but we struggle with infertility, so I don’t know if it’s in the cards. We shall see! As far as work/life balance – I quite frankly am horrible at this! My husband complains that I’m always on the computer. There are no easy answers to this one I’m afraid!
Thank you so much Ariana for sharing with us! Can you tell our readers where they can find ya? Of course! You can find my photography website at www.arianafalerni.com, my wall guides at www.arianafalerni.com/design and my personal mommy blog (where I also blog about the business side of photography) at www.becoming-mom.net.
Here is some of Ariana’s amazing work!
And here are a couple of images from the newest sets of The Photographers Wall Display Guides!
Thank you so much Ariana for taking the time to share with us!!!
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*** Don’t forget mommas, I want to give you all an invitation to my class at WPPI 2012! I am teaching a Master Class and there are only 50 spots available. For those of you who know you’d love to learn how to run a profitable home-based studio, please sign up asap so you’re sure to get in. This class is going to be crammed full of valuable information that will give you the tools to make big, exciting changes in your business, so be sure to bring a brand-new notebook! I can’t wait to meet you all there! ***
by Emily
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