Less And More - Tampa Photography Blog - An inside look at the Tampa photography services industry from top Tampa photographer C. A. Passinault.

Your inside look at the photography services industry by Tampa photographer C. A. Passinault

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Thursday, March 24, 2011 - Tampa Photography Blog Post by photographer C. A. Passinault

It’s been an interesting week.
Other than writing this post for the Tampa Photography Blog and (still) finishing up content for the quick reference guide on Tampa Bay Modeling, I’ve been busy finalizing details on the new Mosaic Class photography and design marketing and support sites for my company, Aurora PhotoArts Tampa Photography and Design. The work is going well, but the new site design has added two weeks to my work schedule; it takes a lot of time to finalize details before a site design is mass produced, as everything must be set up right before you start making copies. It will be worth it.
I bought six more domain names, to be used for more photography and support operating web sites. I’m at 15 Mosaic Class sites (and soon it will be 16) scheduled for fabrication now, and this is expected to take a good 8 weeks of work, with at least 8 more weeks to add more content and bring the sites to full operational capability. Although the sites will all share the same general format and design, they are all individual, stand-alone sites, each with their own content. As a result, when used to augment each other, and with all sites used together as a meta site, they are legal as far as the search engines go. I’m sure that there will be complaints and allegations made, but they will be baseless. The reason that I’m even writing about this, and sharing a bit about what I’m planning and what I am working on, is that most photographers are not in the position to do anything about it.
What? Are they going to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars building web sites and writing content, and/ or paying others to do it? If so, what are they going to write about? You can’t fake knowledge and experience. You have to write what you know. Of course, if you’re unethical, you could always steal it, but that could get you into legal trouble, as well as have it backfire and ruin your credibility.
The bottom line is that I’m going to be spending months, and about $100,000.00 worth of web work, building an array of legitimate web sites, and those web sites will give me the advantage in online marketing efforts for the Tampa Bay market. That’s also not even factoring in the enhanced positioning which my talent resource, business, and support sites give me; sites which have picked up the slack while my photography and design marketing efforts were half done. It’s as it should be. It’s what I’ve earned over the years, and it’s what I deserve. People whom are looking for the best value in photography and design services in the Tampa Bay market will easily find the best choice, and they will get both what they want and what they need. This should make everyone happy.
That’s not to say that I’ll be shutting out the competition, however. Far from it. If someone earns my trust, and they are a professional (or, they have a professional mindset and are learning the business), I don’t have any problem helping them. I share with those who deserve it.
The Tampa Photography Society professional photography association should be ready to begin operations later this year. After I get my business to where I want it, I will be investing time into the photography association. Not only will it help the integrity of the Tampa photography services market, providing much-needed competition where limited options existed before, but it will enable a variety of professional photographers, through collaborative competition, to operate effective photography businesses, market their services, and to make a living doing the work that they love. The most profitable, and ethical, slice of the Tampa photography services market will be one which we enable, and those who are on the outside will literally spend years trying to catch up and get to the level where we are at, both in the quality of the photography work that we do, as well as the business.
In 2003, as some of you can recall, I encountered a con artist photographer who set up a photography association which he used to scam other photographers. He eliminated some of his competition by stealing from them. This unethical, unprofessional man named the photography association a name which was close to that of an already-established photography association, which implied an affiliation where none existed (and which should have served as a warning to the photographers, as the con artist was demonstrating that he did not respect the rights of others, and would lie, cheat, and still to get ahead). This photographer did very poor work at the time, and his claims of being a “combat photographer” and a “published photographer” did not back up the work that he did. Amazingly enough, he was a slick talker, however, and was able to sell his poor quality work to others by convincing them that he was who he claimed to be, and that his work was good.
I was smart enough to walk away before he could scam me (although he did steal my meta tags off of my photography marketing site, as well as my composite card marketing plans from my site; the latter which he used to bait a photographer from out of state into working with him. They formed an entire company around my comp card formulas, and he then ripped off the other photographer). I defeated him and his plans. Of course, he continued on, determined, and lied and cheated to get ahead. He learned from other photographers, putting some of them out of business in the process by ripping them off as he learned. In 2005, I was fighting with this photographer and some photographers who he had manipulated into fighting with me. I defeated the photographer again, and after talking to the other photographers, those photographers and I made peace; I certainly did not want to give the con artist photographer the satisfaction of knowing that he was able to get photographers and I fighting, and that he tricked them into doing his dirty work for them.
Today, the con artist photographer actually does good work, but this hardly makes him ethical. Happily, I believe that he became dependent upon others for work, and when the economy crashed in late 2008, his business went with it. He was unable to adapt. I believe that his business is dormant right now, and that he is working another career (It does look like he could be out of business altogether, but sadly, I don’t believe that it the case).
What I find to be most amusing about this photographer is that he promotes worthy causes in an effort to make himself look like a good person. He only does this to take down the guard of others so that he can exploit them, in my opinion, and in my experience. To put the self-promoted efforts of others to “do good” in perspective, I offer this to gauge them by. A measure of a man, and a professional, is by what they do, and time tells all. Anyone can be a saint when they feel that they are doing well. It’s when a person is down and out, and they feel that their back is against the wall that their true nature emerges. Remember that. In my opinion, this photographer is an evil, sociopathic man, and I learned just how bad and petty the photography services market could get by having known him.
Of course, when he see’s what my photographers and I will be doing in the market in the next year, and in the coming years, I’m sure that he will be back. I’m sure that he will be trying to figure out what we do, and will try to copy us; despite lacking true creativity and originality, he makes up for it in determination. I’ll be there, too, ready to take his business away from him, and to make sure that, if he isn’t completely put out of business by our efforts, that his market share, and his ability to take advantage of people, is minimized.
This is the only photographer whom I wish to put out of business. As for everyone else, well, it’s an open book. If you are a professional, and you are ethical, you can consider me to be a friend. To those whom have earned my trust, and my respect, I will prove to be your greatest ally.
The reason that I am writing about this rather ugly episode in my photography career is to let you know that, while I have experienced the worst and recognize it, that I still have the faith to hope for the best. I am sure that most photographers out there are good people, and that the ethical professionals outnumber the bad ones. In fact, I’m counting on it.
The only good idea that the photographer had was a professional photography association. If he had been honest about the association, and he would have been ethical about it, it’s possible that it could have worked as advertised. I’ve learned from his con game, though, and have set up my photography association with checks and balances so that no photographer can take advantage of another. Also, this advanced photography association business model will also be used for my Tampa indie film community, and I will be testing the concepts for the Tampa film community with the Tampa Photography Society before I roll that out. There are even concepts planned for the Tampa Film Conference which will be used with the Tampa Photography Society, where professionals can freely exchange ideas and support each other in mutually profitable, beneficial collaborative competition. This will bring integrity, and a new era, to the Tampa photography services industry, just like those concepts will do the same with the Tampa indie film scene.
I will also be using the photography association as a test bed of sorts, and this will prove to be critical for my overall business agenda; all photographers whom are involved will benefit.
Of course, we will have fun, too. We will have organized shoot outs with models, and other projects such as photography competitions. We could have these as frequently as once a month, along with meetings every month.
Right now, there is only one serious photography association in the Tampa Bay market, as well as a few informal clubs. There needs to be more than one professional Tampa photography association, and we will be working hard to make ours the best.
Enough of that for now, though, as that is months off. For now, I’m working on the project at hand, which is addressing the SEO 2008 and the Domaingate 2009 issues. I’ll be doing it by building and deploying 16 photography and design marketing and support web site, and one of those will be for the Tampa Photography Society. You can call this Resolution 2011, as I’m now ready to resolve these issues. Did anyone notice all of the work going into these sites in the last few weeks, as well as all of the domain names recently purchased? It’s happening, although some of the results are not obvious, yet, because most of the work has been going into support preparations and infrastructure. Once the sites start going up, they will go up quickly, and routinely, until they are all in place early this summer. That’s when regular updates will start happening to the sites.
I did an SEO check of my current photography marketing web sites the other day, and while the sites, most of which are placeholders, are doing well, a lot of work remains to be done. Of the sites which are completely up, there are mistakes. Some of these sites are half-done, too, and nowhere near completely up. Take these blogs for example. Both the Tampa Photography Blog and the Tampa Photographer Blog were not set up correctly. While they do have a lot of content, it is not organized well at all. They are crippled so badly by a lack of organization, that instead of all of that content being a boost, there are now issues with the search engine results for these blogs. In contrast, a year ago they were ranking quite high in results. I suppose that it is possible to have too much content on one web page. One of the blogs, the Tampa Photographer Blog, isn’t even showing up in Yahoo, as far as I can see. The other, this one, is also blocked as an adult site by Net Nanny-type software used by libraries (I know this because I test my web sites on every computer which I come across), and although the content on this site is completely family-friendly, it has been blocked; I suppose that the software isn’t perfect. So, I have a lot to clean up on these sites, and a lot to add in the supporting sections.
I was going to simply add the new Mosaic Class templates to the blogs and automatically upgrade them, but it will not be enough. I will have to set up Mosaic Class site specifically for the blogs, with the appropriate directory structure ad organization, and transplant all of the content (this will not be a problem, as I have the same amount of time scheduled for each site which will be used to create the other sites from scratch). While I am at it, I will also employ a new format for the blogs. To further help, I will be launching a third blog, the Tampa Designer Blog, which will be integrated with these two blogs. The Tampa Designer Blog will be set up and organized right to begin with, and it will cover graphic design, web design, and fashion design. It will not only interconnect with the two photography blogs and my array of other Aurora PhotoArts sites, but it will serve as a link between the photography sites, my advertising agency site, and other business interests. The Tampa Designer Blog will also directly interconnect with my advertising agency site, once I get it online.
There is another thing that I am working on, too. Currently, I am using my domain name, Tampa-Headshots.Com, for headshot marketing. This is going to change. The existing Huey Class site will remain online under that domain name (possibly as a museum piece), and I will be building a brand new Mosaic Class headshot photography and headshot services web sites under a brand new domain name. The Tampa-Headshots.Com domain name will be phased out over time, and once the new web site has acceptable rankings in the search engines, I will begin decompiling the old site. It will take a year to delist the old site after I take it offline, and then I will discard that domain name; I promised another photographer that they could have it when I get rid of it.
At any rate, I am now buttoning up work on Tampa Bay Modeling, and will be concentrating on the Mosaic Class sites starting today. I’ll be completing the graphics sets tonight, and will put together the first one tomorrow night. Once I start rolling them out, they should roll out at about two to three a week. The first three should be online late next week.
As of now, here is the tentative schedule of the development and deployment of the new Mosaic Class sites.

(TampaLooks.Com and AuroraPhotoArts.Com, which are marketing domain names, currently forward to the main site, TampaPhotographyDesign.Com, an operating domain name with the dual capability to be used as an marketing domain name, if needed. Both of these domain names were adjusted a few days ago to prepare for what is coming.)

01. 03/28/11 - TampaPhotographyDesign.Com (the main Aurora PhotoArts web site)
02. 03/30/11 - TampaCompositeCards.Com
03. 04/02/11 - TampaModelTesting.Com
04. 04/05/11 - TampaDesignerBlog.Com
05. 04/07/11 - TampaPhotographerBlog.Com
06. 04/09/11 - TampaPhotographyBlog.Com
07. 04/12/11 - TampaModelingPortfolios.Com
08. 04/14/11 - TampaModelingPhotography.Com
09. 04/16/11 - TampaModelSearch.Com
10. 04/19/11 - TampaPortraitPhotography
11. 04/21/11 - TampaSwimsuitPhotography.Com
12. 04/23/11 - Tampa-Wedding-Photography.Com
13. 04/26/11 - TampaCommercialPhotography.Com
14. 04/28/11 - Tampa Headshots (New domain)
15. 04/30/11 - TampaFashionPhotography.Com
16. 05/03/11 - TampaPhotographySociety.Com

As you can see, all of the sites will be online, and will be at Initial Operational Capability (I.O.C.) by early May 2011. A lot of content will be added to all of these sites during May and June.
By fall 2011, the SEO 2008 issue will be solved as a benefit of all of this work, although it should be noted that resolving this issues is not the primary goal of this record-setting web development work.
PLEASE NOTE: Although all of these sites will be interconnected, and will share the Mosaic Class design for continuity purposes, EACH of these sites is an INDIVIDUAL site with UNIQUE, ORIGINAL content specifically written for the site. These are not template web sites, doorway sites, or copies of each other, and they are not attempts at black hat SEO. This is legitimate; if I wanted to cheat and use them to spam search engines, I could have them all up in less than a week.
Anyway, pulling out, here is the overall tentative web development schedule of Eos MediaArts, so that you can see where this all fits in. This will also give you a glimpse into my overall plan of business.

Array of 16 Aurora PhotoArts marketing and support sites - 03/11 to 06/11
Independent Modeling and modeling resource sites - 07/11 to 09/11
Independent Acting and acting resource sites - 09/11 to 10/11
Independent Talent Resource and Tampa Bay Talent - 10/11
Tampa Bay Film sites - 11/11
Tampa Bay Photographers and Tampa Bay Dancer - 12/11 to 01/12
Eventi Events and Eventi Stage sites - 02/12 to 05/12
Dream Nine Studios site - 06/12 to 07/12
Passinault.Com site 08/12

Keep in mind, though, that I’ll be able to keep up with all of these, as well as run my photography business full time, AND get my event planning and stage production companies up and running next year WHILE working my photography business. There is more, too. I will also be making independent films, doing special photography projects, running the Model Dominion, keeping up with my talent resource sites, and doing film festivals.
Oh, and that Tampa Bay Photographers resource site also fits in with the photography association. I Just wanted to add that.
You could say that I’ll be working 7 days a week for a long time to come, and I’ll leave you with that thought.