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PORTRAITS WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Combined record and portrait studio produces hits
by Mark L. McWilliams & Kahni Starr
Our studio is unique. It contains both a photography and music recording studio under the same roof. This concept evolved from two people combing their interests and energies to develop a successful business.
The recording side of the business began earning its bread-and-butter income by generating demo tapes for local music bands yearning to gain attention from talent agencies. However, it soon evolved into much more.
When a number of area nightclubs switched from live musicians to disc jockeys for entertainment, the bulk of our studio clients seeking demos for a professional music career decreased. However, the number of amateur singers interested in creating music demos to give as gifts to relatives dramatically increased.
These individuals generally book studio time to record several songs and purchase additional copies for friends. Because a great deal of time and effort is involved in producing these tapes, we wanted a way to proudly present the finished products. This desire motivated us to design an audiotape album featuring photography, which has become an excellent marketing device.
The Photo/Cassette gift album cover resembles a hard-cover book with a polished simulated leather covering on the front, spine, and back. It opens and closes like a book and stands upright by itself on any flat surface when opened.
The standard design holds two cassette tapes on the inside front cover and a cropped 5x7-inch photo of the performer, secured in a velvet suede matt on the opposite side. The outside cover is burgundy, the inside is black, and the photo matt features maroon with gold edging.
This product enabled us to significantly increase our personal demo recording sales. In fact, one of the studio's most popular packages includes up to 3 hours of recording time to produce the audiotapes, and a 45-to-90-minute glamour make-over photography session to create the album portrait. In addition, clients generally order reprints of other images created during the session.
Although our studio "marries" photography with music, other photography studios can offer a similar product by working in conjunction with local recording companies.
The Photo/Cassette gift album is a great promotional vehicle. In fact, since these albums proved to be so popular at Star Shots Studio, we are making them available to other studios or album distributors who might benefit. We've even received inquiries from gift shops selling recordings by music celebrities.
These albums can be custom-ordered in different colors and materials with formats designed for compact discs, single-cassette, and triple-cassette sets. Imprinting is also available.
Another excellent marketing device is our "Luv-Serts", which are Victorian-style glamour/boudoir photo albums featuring excerpts of great love poems.
We commissioned a local college student to locate and extract portions of great love poetry by Shakespearean-era poets, and brought these excerpts to a local printer. The poems were printed on 4x8-inch, 80-pound parchment paper. These cards feature a variety of typestyles to make each poetry insert appear unique, as well as line-art figures and other embellishments.
About 80 percent of our photography business is glamour/boudoir. And although most of these portraits are created as a gift for a client's romantic partner, the images are often viewed by the client's friends and relatives for a variety of reasons. Therefore we decided that it was important to present the concept to customers in an artistic manner, encouraging buyers to view the portraits as classical art masterpieces.
Although the inserts were designed for the Art Leather Futura line of folios and albums, they can be trimmed to fit inside almost any matt opening. One or two poems are generally inserted with folios, making space available for a maximum number of photos. And when laying out albums, a number of poetry inserts are featured with 5x5-inch portraits as well as several 8x10- or 10x10-inch photographs.
By marketing boudoir portraits as Victorian keepsake "Luv-Serts", we provide clients with a classy and elegant frame for their personal images. "Luv-Serts" are also available to photographers interested in this fresh approach for presenting glamour and boudoir portraits.
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Professional Photographer / January 1994 / p. 52 / Mark McWilliams / Photo-Cassette Gift Album