A friend invited us to join her at a time share in Sedona. It was July 2012. Architectural photography was dead, and yelp wasn't yet a thing.
I thought I was a pretty good salesman generally, but I was just not getting it to work in the Phoenix valley. We had some pretty decent clients in San Diego still, but trying to expand to include Phoenix was a killer. We could stay with Che's dad, he wasn't too mobile, with the broken neck and all (!), but I wasn't getting us any contracts. We had no idea that we were in the bottom of the housing bust, I mean, half the firms were bankrupt, that we knew. But its impossible to know the valley when all you can see is trees.
In Sedona, we tried to pitch to every business we found. We went around at night and shot what we could (albeit unlit and unstaged), then Che went back to Phoenix, processed a couple, we loaded them on dropbox and tried to email them to the different managers around town.
These people responded like we had something they actually could use. At the time their website was a disaster, turned out the owner was on site and I was talking to her daughter.
Before 2008 in San Diego, single photographs would fetch $425. Maybe part of our problem was that we didn't drop our price early enough, I don't know. I remember trying to contact one architect somewhere. While dialing I checked his blog and it said, "About to head out to a meeting about a bike shop renovation!" dated six months prior. By the time I finished reading I realized his number was disconnected. Maybe being able to laugh together will heal any marriage or business problems. It sure helped then, I recall. We still laugh about that.
We agreed to do location photography and food photography on the red rocks. We futzed around for too long probably and didn't get that much chance to shoot before the sun set behind the mountain. We tried it indoors but we didn't own a studio then (we do now, maybe that should be next) and we didn't bring our strobes. The timeshare was ending and so we tried indoors. Kinda sucks because incandescent. Besides, we knew we had the money shot with the three strawberries anyway.
I remember when we were setting up the outside photoshoot, there was one corner of the rock that was flat and protrusive. The obvious place to set up, Marta--clearly trying to help--suddenly had a broom and swept all the rock dust away. I didn't realize until it was too late, and also, I didn't say anything. Glad I didn't, because it probably would have ruined the relationship. I can pull those stunts with family, strangers never call back.
She had great hands. Great hand models are so hard to find. For a long time I would watch for good looking hands where ever we were working, but because yelp, restaurant photography is permanently dead and never coming back. So now I don't bother.
We showed up when they opened and had our guns blazing.
The only shot of the owner we actually got. She has literally been making fudge in that building for 50 years. It was the only time she couldn't duck away.
In the early stages of working together, its amazing how many of the photographs purchased were Cheryl's and not mine. I thought I was a kind of big deal going in, I had been the editor of photography for the college newspaper and hired by the college for two years to do all their marketing photography. And yet they'd always just pick her's. And I couldn't seem to sell it either. Those were some pretty hard times for my ego. I'm still not entirely convinced I needed to go through all that.
They ended up looking at the images on a private side of our ftp site, we agreed on 9 images for $600, they mailed a check, and we uploaded their images. About a year later they called and asked for a new link. We had no idea what 9 they had ordered, so we just sent them the whole folder. They were such wonderful people, they gave us all those products, and the fudge dipped cheesecake will never be forgotten.
If in Sedona, its a must stop. Other imposters have started fudge companies in Sedona to get in on their game, but really, these are the original gangsters.
