October Newsletter

Hello Everyone!


Welcome to Fall, and our October Newsletter! This month we are excited to sit down with Rick Robbins, of Simple Design Works, and talk about ways to incorporate photography into admissions campaign design.

With over 25 years experience in the design field and numerous Gold and Silver Awards from Admissions Marketing Awards, Rick knows the art of admissions inside and out. He's worked with hundreds of schools, from initial planning to focus groups, from press checks to final presentations. Name an aspect of educational marketing and Rick has hands-on experience. So we were very grateful that he could take some time from his latest projects to talk about integrating photography and design, and his idea of the perfect photo shoot.

PSP: How closely do you work with the photographer on any given admissions shoot?
Rick: When creating a shot list, I like to run it by the photographer as early as possible to get feedback. If there's something from the creative presentation that could be thematic, it's nice to talk through that as well.

PSP: Ideally, how early do you like to bring a photographer in on a project?
Rick: As early as possible.

PSP: What is the best thing the team for an admissions project can do to make your job easier?
Rick: Some of my wish-list items: Good feedback from the intial shoot list (both from the client and the photographer). A person on campus that can react quickly to any issues that pop up, and has the authority to make decisions on the fly.

PSP: Have you seen a lot of changes in the last year (in terms of time devoted to a project) as a result of the economy? Are schools more or less concerned with marketing to new students?
Rick: Budgets have been reduced, that's true, but there will always be a need for institutions to recruit students by way of marketing. And there's no better tool than great, authentic, real people and places images.

PSP: Are schools being more conservative in their marketing efforts, so as not to risk alienating potential students, or taking more risks to stand out from the crowd?
Rick: I think schools are being more aggressive in terms of new avenues to attract students: be it social media, enhanced web site experiences, and so forth.

PSP: What is your single favorite thing about an admissions shoot experience?
Rick: Let's see... well it is always rewarding to go with a pretty shoot list for x number of images and then to be blown away by additional shots - great photos at that. But the really rewarding thing is when the client is so appreciative of the dedication to getting the best visual stories during a campus shoot. That's priceless!

Thanks for the interview, Rick!

Thanks again for all of the suggestions and feedback that we are getting for the newsletter. If you have a suggestion, please send it along to: traceybrower@comcast.net

We'll see you next month, when we hope to take you "behind the scenes" on some of our latest shoots. In the meantime, check us out at www.phillipspears.com

And for you cutting-edge folks, you can now follow us on twitter: @pspearsphoto. And if you can't read the email version of the newsletter (or just want to see back issues) they are available at www.phillipspears.blogspot.com

Catch up with you soon,
Tracey

September Newsletter

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the monthly newsletter from Phillip Spears Photography! We are excited about the new fall semester, and have already gotten to see a few of you on campus. Everyone is a little overwhelmed with school starting up, so we are going to do a quick newsletter this month, on building a photo library.

As many of you have told us, there are more uses for photography in school communications and recruiting than ever before. Last month we even talked about some of the ways social media can use photography to help connect with students. Nothing connects a student to your campus like the visual image - it can translate your school's mission into an immediate, tangible form.

The problem, of course, is where are we going to get all these images? In a perfect world, Phillip would be able to visit every one of our campuses over and over again, every time you need new pictures. Sadly this not possible, but there ARE ways to both maximize your admissions shoots and supplement the pictures you get from it.

As always, our first suggestion is lots of students for your photos. The more the better! In this way we can switch people around, feature both a male and a female student, and make one setup serve multiple purposes. We also highly recommend
taking a large group outside, in great afternoon light, and shooting lots of happy faces and interaction. Phillip always sets up a shot like this and has found it provides enormous opportunities for the time invested. The pictures are always authentic, and the student's enjoyment of their environment always shines through.

(You can see some examples at www.phillipspears.com - click "education")

But what about the times you can't have a photographer handy? The obvious source is your local media, since newspapers often send photographers to cover sporting events and will usually give reprint permission upon request (sometimes for a small fee). But the most creative source we have seen lately is student-supplied images. Since many of the uses for your photo library - facebook and the web, small publication needs - do not need to be large data files or "professional" quality, why not encourage your students to share their informal photos with you? The photos are often surprising and fresh, and couldn't be any more authentic - after all, they are shooting what most interests them! We recently shot at a college that was even experimenting with a flickr.com photo stream, that students could submit pictures of Greek events, sport meets, and other activities to. (We would recommend some sort of a screening mechanism for a compilation such as this; you don't want the photos to be TO surprising).

While neither news photography or student images can take the place of your admissions photo shoot, it can help fill out your image library, and give you more to work with. We are always amazed at how many uses there are for campus photos, and with cross-cultural and overseas recruiting on the rise, we think it will only increase in the future. Nothing communicates like the visual image. We say it all the time, because we hear it again and again: "I saw the pictures of the campus and the students, and I knew it was where I belonged. I saw myself."

Which is really what we are all always trying to say.

Thanks again, and we will see you soon!

Tracey
traceybrower@comcast.net

PS Don't forget to visit us on the web: www.phillipspears.com - and keep an eye out for Phillip's article in Higher Education Marketing Report - the November Issue!

August Newsletter!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to August, and our monthly newsletter! It's summer's last gasp - some schools go back to class as early as August 15th - so try to stay cool as you grab that last long weekend or trip to the beach!

We are already starting to plan our fall photography sessions, and we hope to see many of you on the road this semester. While talking to various clients about admissions shoots, we have noticed a new direction for image requests, and are making it the theme for this month's newsletter.

As many of you know, Phillip has been shooting on campus for nearly twenty years, and in the past few seasons we have seen an explosion in the need for imagery for non-traditional usage. Once upon a time we shot pictures for viewbooks, admissions fair graphics, and direct mail campaigns. Then people started to mention this crazy interwebs thing, and website imagery was added to our bag of tricks. Today the sky seems to be the limit! With the enormous influence of social media and direct message, our clients are looking for images that will catch a potential student's notice in even more places.

In our last few "semesters" we have watched the rise and fall of Myspace.com, and its successor, Facebook.com. For both of these social media outlets there are excellent onboard photo-linking programs, but did you know you can also link your Flickr.com or Snapfish.com accounts to it as well? This is great if you have a special event to cover and want to post multiple photos in a stream for viewing.

Then there is the new kid on the block, Twitter. We first began experimenting with Twitter about a year ago, but it's only in the last six months that we've seen the number of users jump to a point where it is really useful. Its short, telegram style messages are great for broadcasting events, campus days, and school news, and their url-compression software automatically makes long web addresses short enough to fit the famous 140-word limit. Heather Mansfield, of DIOSA Communications, put it succinctly on the CASE listserve this summer: "I think as soon as teens and twenty-somethings realize how perfect twitter is for mobile, they will jump on Twitter in droves." Twitter, like Facebook and Myspace, has several applications that allow readers to click on a link and view photos. Twitpic is the most popular, but there is also Yfrog.com, and the brilliant Flick.to.Twit, which allows you to post a photo to Flickr.com and automatically announces it to your Twitter readers. (We are seriously convinced that that app may not be coding, but is actually Harry Potter-style magic.)

So many uses for your "admissions" photos! We fully expect this to be the year that we are asked to provide content that is designed strictly to be sent to cell phones. We can't wait to see what comes next, and we look forward to providing imagery for all of it.

Enjoy your final weeks of summer! We will see you in the fall.

Don't forget to visit us on the web: www.phillipspears.com

If you received this as a forward, please drop us a line and we will add you to our mailing list: traceybrower@comcast.net

And don't forget to keep an eye out for Higher Education Marketing Report, which will have an article by Phillip on admissions photography (hopefully the September issue): www.hmrpublicationsgroup.com/Higher_Ed_Marketing_Report/index.html

Catch up with you soon,
Tracey