Coastline Portraits - a new aspect of TriCoast Photography LLC

[MyKey]

Well over the years I have (and still do) love this forum. While not my first forum it was my first "Home" for the internet. As one of the earlier members of this now amazing family of photographers of all kinds, it is wonderful to hang out here and watch people grow.

I myself have gone from CSI work and part time wedding photographer to - International known wedding photographer, World Wide awards for our work, Teacher, Student and a ton of other amazing steps in growth all leading towards being a full time photographer in this amazing business.

Now several years later doing this gig full time - I have noticed several things in this amazing art!

1) You guys here on TPF are getting GOOD and it sure if fun to watch the growth

2) Some people are just haters and no matter how long or how short you have been in this business you will always have people hating you. In many ways that means your doing something right and they are failing in their own business (sadly)

3) Becoming "Satisfied" in your business means overall stop in growth which means death in the long run.



So with those (and other) factors involved, several years ago in an effort to separate us from the mass photographers coming into the business, instead of yelling about it we wanted to recreate ourselves. Our answer...TriCoast Seniors. High end quality High School Senior portraits, as well as a nice mix of babies and other studio based portraits. This allowed us to stay home more, spend time with our family and friends, sleep in our own beds and enjoy local business a little. With a "home studio" we slowly grew a little bit at a time and got our name out there.

However with any business growth is the key and always finding ways to be in this business where simply no one or very few can compete with you in the process of that growth. With that idea or theory in mind.......Coastline Portraits was born.

Strictly for Event Photography (ie: School Portraits, Cheerleaders, Football, Band, Dance, etc) this sort of work is surely not much art behind it but much more business behind it. Having studied under some "heavy hitters" in the business today it opened up my eyes that event portraits is truly the most money per second or per click in this business.

Now a year later Coastline Portraits, a Division of TriCoast Photography LLC is happy to say we have landed several school portraits, including a large high school. Cheerleading, Dance, Band, Choir, and other events and honestly I am surprised just how fun it is.

Of course with this "event photography" came a lot of planning and a lot of money to spend on gear. (This is just a small sample of what we purchased for this new aspect of TriCoast)

A 4 light studio set up with the background light barebulb. (Times 6 sets)

SOFTBOXES / UMBRELLAS
6 Larson - 3x4' for main
6 48" umbrella's for fill
6 Larson - 9x24" strips for hair

LIGHT STANDS
6 - 13' Heavy Light Stands for Main Light Support
6 - 13' Heavy Light Stands for Background holding and Hair Light
6 - 10' General Purpose Light Stand
6 - 2' background stands

LIGHTS
18 - Alien Bee 800 (Main, Fill, Hair)
6 - Alien Bee 400 (Background)

BACKDROPS
6 - Denny Mfg. Gray TwistFlex - (for underclassmen)
6 - Denny Mfg. Blue TwistFlex - (for Seniors)

TRIGGERING DEVICE
6 - RadioPopper JRX Transmitter Units
24 - RadioPopper JRX Receiver Units

CAMERA GEAR
6 - Canon 5DmkII
6 - Canon 50mm lens (various f/stops)

TRIPODS
6 - Medium weight Tripods

MISC ITEMS
Barcoding system
Various Laptops
8 Gig Memory Compact Flash Cards
6 sets of Small, Medium, Large and X-Large Professional Quality Photographic Gowns in various colors.

We also wrote software which will actually read the barcode of the photo we take of the barcode (in case the scanners go down) then separates the photos into different folders then uploads it into the software through our lab - Miller's.

So starting next week we will begin our 3400 student shooting spree using our six complete studio set ups with photographers coming in from all over the country (and one from outside the country).

Why am I writing all of this simple...

1) To say THANK YOU to Texas Photo Forum for all the help, advice, inspiration, and friends I have made over the years since the early start of this forum. Without all of you I simply would not be where I am today.

2) If your a newbie or young photographer or if you are an older more experience photographer or even if you are somewhere in between those two....... NEVER BECOME SATISFIED with your work and your business always look for ways to improve yourself and separate yourself from others.





Remember Competition is not the other photographers - Competition is only with yourself.

[janetg]

congrats to you!

[billseye]

Fantastic!!!
This is a very inspiring post!
Thanks for sharing (this and in the past) and congratulations!

[kylebatts]

You, my friend, are an inspiration to us all. Thanks...

[dracula02]

I thank you, Suzy, and Cody for being such great mentors. I'm aspiring to be where you guys are at. Hopefully sooner than later.

[CaptainTom]

I hate you.

[w9ctm]

Intersting little review of where you have been and where you are going. It also is always informative to share you equipment line up. This always lets others get an idea of how you are accomplishing the work.
Good luck with the 3400 students. Sounds like a lot of fun, and quite a challenge. I'll be curious to hear how it went, and what you learned to fix for the next time.

[porschelvr]

Ouch would hate to pay the business personal property taxes on that! LOL!

Good luck with your new offspring company!

[JohnT]

Congratulations! And you are right: Never grow satisfied with the state of your business or else it will fade away and die. I wish you well in this new season of business.

By the way, just checked your site. Shouldn't the tag line read "Brazoria County's Premier Event Artists" instead of "Brazoria Counties Premier Event Artists"?

[MyKey]

Thanks JohnT I always sucked at writing and grammar - seriously I am horrible at it!

Taxes - yeah that will be raised quite a bit this coming year thats for sure, but it comes with the business if your going to grow in business your tax rate will grow as well. I just purchased many of the items so the third quarter will be quite a jump.

Chuck I choose to go with Alien Bee's for several reasons:
They are cheap light sources which preform decent, so if I drop one I am not out a $1000 per light just a few hundred dollars and RadioPopper JrX units can control the light wireless which will speed up set up time.

Pros and Cons to every light but that was my thinking process.

Captain Stick and Stones will break my bones............I still love you though ;)


Thank you everyone else for the nice words, while not perfect we try and help out where we can, my greatest inspiration is watching other grow as artists finding their way in this amazing art form.

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by MyKey

Thanks JohnT I always sucked at writing and grammar - seriously I am horrible at it!

You're welcome. It's just one of those things that I seem to be good at.

[toverman]

Awesome!

I kind of like fellow photographers who are grammatically obstructed. Makes me think about launching a side business to write/edit Web and marketing copy for them. :-)

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by toverman

Awesome!

I kind of like fellow photographers who are grammatically obstructed. Makes me think about launching a side business to write/edit Web and marketing copy for them. :-)

I've had similar thoughts.