Camera-wielding moms are seeing business opportunities

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Sunday, Apr 15, 2007, Page 12

Two-year-old Maya Tatemann is entertained by her mother, April, as Laura Brophy, right, photographs the scene on March 17 in Rochester, New York. PHOTO: NYT PHOTOS

After Natasha Cuevas' daughter, Dakotah, was born in 2003, she wanted to capture every moment of her babyhood on film. A year and thousands of prints later, Cuevas decided that it was time to invest in the new high-end digital camera she had been coveting.

The pictures were luminous -- so detailed that she could count Dakotah's long eyelashes in them. Soon, women in her moms group in Fort Myers, Florida, were asking if she could take pictures of their children.

"I realized that I could actually get paid doing what I loved -- photographing babies and newborns," she said. So when her daughter was 18-months old, Natasha Cuevas Photography was born.

As digital single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras have become more affordable, more people -- overwhelmingly women, according to the Professional Photographers of America -- are starting photography businesses. They often begin as part-time ventures, sometimes on top of full-time employment elsewhere.

Sales of digital cameras, especially the higher-end SLRs, have skyrocketed. High-resolution cameras with more than six megapixels are the fastest-growing segment of the camera industry, jumping to 36 percent of the market last year from 21 percent in 2005, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Almost all the buyers already own digital cameras, but the new SLRs, with their quick auto focus, lighter weight and cheaper than last year prices, prove too tempting.

And buyers can use the moneymaking potential of their new businesses to justify their purchases. Acquiring a name for the business seems simple; many women just tack the word "photography" after their own names. Many have no need for a studio, because most of the pictures are shot in natural light outside, or at the client's home.

Marketing is often by word of mouth. When Jodie Otte (of J. Otte Photography) started her full-time business two years ago, she printed business cards after every photo session, knowing that her clients would pass them along if the cards featured pictures of their own children.

Other women have engineered portrait parties, where several families get together and the budding photographer snaps portraits of the children at play. If the parents like the results, they tell their friends and playgroups, and the photographer's phone starts ringing.

The rise of photography start-ups is helping other businesses as well. BluDomain, a company that designs Web site templates specifically for photographers, introduces about 100 new sites for clients each month. For US$800, a new photographer can have her portfolio designed as a flash-driven, fully editable site with proofing galleries and video.

Laura Brophy (of Laura Brophy Photography) started her part-time business last year in Canandaigua, New York State, with a Canon EOS 20D and a Web site from BigBlackBag.com, which cost her US$25 a month. Now, with brisk business in high school senior portraits, thanks mostly to friends of her teenage children spreading the word on MySpace.com, she is upgrading to a BluDomain site this month.

Although there are no figures tracking start-up photography businesses, Dana Groves, director of marketing and communications at the Professional Photographers of America, says the industry has expanded rapidly in recent years.

Because the overhead can be minimal -- some business cards and a lot of chatting on playgrounds -- and because many new photographers have either a full-time job or a husband with one, they can afford to charge less than professional photographers. The professionals, who assert that they offer better quality because of their experience and studio equipment, may charge from US$50 to several hundred dollars for an 20cm-by-25cm print.

Some large studios and old-guard photographers are feeling undercut; the backlash is apparent on many photography message boards, where "MWAC" means Mom With a Camera.

"It's the established portrait studio guy who is scared that moms are taking cool photographs and selling them for US$10 for an 8-by-10 [inches]," said Kirk Voclain, a portrait studio photographer in Louisiana who owns Pro4uM, a professional photographers message board that has been host for some battles between the old guard and moms new to the business.

"Lots of mom-with-a-camera businesses fail because they try to do it around the edges," said Brophy, who has a preschool-age daughter and two teenagers and works as director of external relations at the Warner School of the University of Rochester in addition to running her weekend photography business. "Plus, women face a business dilemma when they have to ask their husbands if they can buy a new camera."

Unlike some women who have a casual relationship with the business side of photography, Brophy has a marketing plan and has reinvested all her earnings in lenses, lights, backdrops for her home studio, brochures and her new BluDomain Web site. She also has her eye on a new Canon.

As new digital cameras come to market, with lower prices and more features than last year's models, new photographers cannot help yearning for the latest versions.

Still, many are quick to say that the photographer's eye matters much more than the camera, and that the ability to use technology and respond to light is what makes an image come to life.

That is why they smile when some owners of fancy SLRs put their camera on automatic settings and then complain that their pictures look like ordinary snapshots, albeit with very high resolution.

"Good photography is more about the photographer than the camera," said Dawson, who has just started her business in Boston. "It's about making people comfortable and finding the emotion in their faces. The camera is just a tool."