Kelly Hosey of Garces High will not encounter any Black Fridays during her varsity career. Her mom has booked her portfolios for the next two years!
Shooting Star has three bad days every year. We call them Black Fridays. It's the day when parents, sometimes more than a dozen at a time, call us frantically trying to hire us to photograph their athlete on the last day of the season. Almost always, their athlete is a senior playing his or her last game. And we have to turn them all away, because we just are not an "on demand" business. When we meet prospective clients, we beg them - no make that we plead with them - that if they want our services they have to book us before the season begins or at worst, very early in the season. We painstakingly explain the incredible juggling act we must do with the schedules of as many as two dozen athletes competing in different leagues. We explain how the earlier they get us, the more opportunities we will have to photograph their athlete. We explain that we set our schedule months in advance, and once we schedule our clients, it's pretty much locked in granite. We stress it over and over. Yet on three Fridays every year, the last days of the fall, winter and spring seasons, the calls pour in. It's really sad.
Blake Campbell is also "Black Friday-proof" as his entire high school sports career has been booked four years in advance.
Tomorrow is Black Friday. The first call will come in around 7 am and continue throughout the day. We'll be at Garces High photographing our clients Blake and Grant Campbell and Nick Sakowski. The Campbells book us four years in advance, no Black Fridays for them! And the Sakowskis booked very early in the season. The moral of this little story is we don't sit around waiting for clients. You are in a competition for our services just as your athlete is in competition against his or her opponent. You have to book us early or we just can't help you. So please, please, please - see, we're pleading again - books us early or we're just not going to be able to shoot for you.
Click photos for larger versions
No comments:
Post a Comment