River Imaging photo co-op
It‘s Wednesday already, a day when we usually talk business. A couple weeks ago I mentioned possibly “downsizing“ my photo studio, Daylight Photo. Since then I‘ve received some wonderful input on the subject. Faithful readers Jan Klier and Juan Bonilla have suggested the benefits of possibly renting out part of Daylight Photo to other photographers, either full-time or on a “time share” basis in order to cut expenses. This kind of system is working well for Jan, he is currently part of such an arrangement. Juan (another Cincinnati photographer) pointed to how a local photo studio has just recently revamped and rebranded themselves as River Imaging.
River Imaging is a photo co-op consisting of three commercial photographers and a professional post-production provider. They’ve assembled a great deal of talent under one roof and have a beautiful, large (very large) studio space to offer clients. There are two primary goals of the co-op:
1. To cut expenses for the individual photographers. As they point out in this article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, local clients are actively cutting advertising budgets so reducing overhead only makes sense. They’re going about it by splitting up expenses among several photographers.
2. Forming a team of this sort will give them the ability to handle larger jobs than they could land individually, creating new marketing possibilities.
I was just down at River Imaging last week (it’s only five minutes from my house) talking to Randy Hoover, the food specialist, about the new venture. Randy is really excited about their potential and this concept appears to be a great fit for him (he explains the benefits in the aforementioned Enquirer article). He was getting ready for their grand opening party to be held the following night (the same night I’d be hosting 35 of my fellow area ASMP photographers at Daylight Photo for our every other month Pints ‘n’ Pixels get-together…great turnout, sorry you missed it, Ryan!).
The whole venture has been pulled together by Al Lang, a well-established, well-respected Cincinnati photographer and all around nice guy. My business partner, Bob, and I met with Al over a year ago regarding the concept but didn’t feel it was quite the right fit for us. Our overhead at Daylight Photo is already low enough that it wouldn’t be a huge financial savings by partnering and we’re tending toward simplification. Much of our business is based on being nimble and reacting quickly so we weren’t sure how it would work scheduling around additional photographers. While it can be exciting to grow a business, our recent experiences have us tending toward becoming “leaner and meaner”.
There’s a lot to be said for the potential benefits of partnering with other photographers and creating a larger entity. I wish them the best and would love to see this become a successful business model. Most photographers are downsizing so they may be on to something by providing services above and beyond what most studios are capable of. One of the keys is finding the right combination of photographers and it appears they’ve accomplished that. Now it’s up to the marketplace to decide if it’s the path to photo business success.
Sometimes it’s nice to just “change gears“. So many of the great photographers have distinctive stages to their careers…Richard Avedon, Annie Liebovitz and Gordon Parks. Just as River Imaging has chosen growth as the path to their collective success, I’m getting more and more excited about the thought of reinventing. More than anything I’d like to get back to my first love of photography and begin exploring more documentary and editorial work. Editorial photography doesn’t go very far toward paying the overhead of a studio so we only accept a few such jobs a year, eschewing it for work that goes toward paying the bills. Without the commitment to a large studio I’d be free to go after much more of that type of work.
A large part of that appeal has been inspired by you, the readers of prophotolife. I’m seeing so much wonderful photography that you’ve created just for the love of photography, not because you‘re getting paid to do it. It’s inspiring me to really dig down to rediscover my photo roots.
Shoot, now we‘re right back to “the grass is always greener“! Regardless of what I’m shooting 3-6 months from now, I hope to have you all still along for the ride, learning together as we go. 
I guess it’s a right direction. Two or three photographers can cut expenses quite well, one studio space but three different approaches give more variety in your offer. Not forgetting that outdoor assignments will get totally different dimension as you can provide professional product but with different perspectives.
Cutting costs is really important nowadays and if you can organize your time well shooting in one studio you should be successful. One question that comes to my mind is if the market is big enough to provide enough work for such group but if you’re thinking ’bout it, you’ve probably already done research
Cheers and good luck on future projects!
Marcin, that is a big question…will the market provide that kind of “big work”? And what is more profitable, one big job or a few smaller jobs? The economy is wavering at the moment and it’s hard to tell.
It sounds like an interesting concept. I’d imagine it would work best for those who have already started their business out of their house, but find they need a permanent space yet can’t afford it themselves.
I’ve just found out about a local art’s venture that is similar in someways, http://hub-bub.com/, they also extend into community artistic events and music. Seems that this might be one way that creative professions may be banding together as it were.
I’m a bit curious to know what happens when there’s some overlap in services provided by the photographers in a co-op such as River Imaging. Do they enter into some kind of contract agreement where there’s no competition within, or do they just go about their business and hope there are no hard feelings? It would certainly be interesting to see how they’d be able to expand their capabilities with multiple sources of talent.
I’d wonder if the barrier to entry would be lowered in a co-op like that as well. If the overhead is split between multiple photographers, it may make it easier to get started. Then there’s the problems that arise working with other people… It’s undeniable that relationships of all kinds are difficult and require work to maintain.
Good luck on your endeavors Jim. I hope you’ll be able to return to doing what you really love doing and in a way that it’s profitable for you.
And as long as you’re putting up valuable content on your Pro Photo Life blog, I’ll be here to read and comment!
I think the River Imaging folks have done a good job of finding photographers with different areas of specialty so that’s a good start toward controlling the competition factor. We actually share Daylight Photo with another photographer who rarely (if ever) shoots in the studio, he does all location work and really just maintains an office here. We have known each other for 20 years and help each other out on jobs so it’s a good relationship.
I like the idea of bringing in young, hip photographers looking for their first studio space, helping them along for the benefit of all. It takes a lot of energy to teach someone the business, though. Teaming with established photographers alleviates that work but then you’re dealing with people used to having things “a certain way”. As you’ve said, John, it all results in maintaining more relationships in addition to getting the usual daily work done…and relationships require time and energy to maintain.
Craig, I like what’s being done at Hub-Bub, thanks for the link. I’ve never seen that particular setup where artists are able to “live free and create” for a time period. I’m going to share that one with all my friends!
I just found out about Hub-Bub last week myself and it has been in town now for a bit. They have been hosting a jam session downtown since May. We went to it this past Saturday and had a lot of fun; took photographs of it of course
. I plan on going down to their shop/gallery to see what they have there.
There is something else interesting along those lines that I thought about as I logged in this afternoon. In Greenville, SC some of the new developments downtown near a riverside park have “artist row” set-ups. The developer sets aside fronting retail space fronting the park’s walk area which is then leased in sub-units to several artists. So, they share that space with a common entry, but have their own gallery/shop areas. The leader of our photowalk for Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk had his gallery/shop in such a set-up. He had about 100 square-feet I’d guess, but said he gets a lot of traffic due to being right on the park / riverside.
So, there seems to be several of these “artistic co-op / sharing” initiatives popping up all around.
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