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Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis.
The closer you...
Kevin’s wedding and portrait images speak to the heart – filled with emotion, joy, intimacy, and impact. His photos have been featured on the covers and within the pages of many popular magazines and photography books. Kevin has been sponsored by Nikon and Adobe to present, and his work with the Nikon digital camera earned him a spot as a Nikon “Legend Behind the Lens”. American Photo Magazine named Kevin Kubota one of the “Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the world”. Kevin is also a PPA Photographic Craftsman. Kubota is an internationally recognized speaker, having presented for every major photographic convention in the USA. He created the popular Digital Photography Bootcamp workshop, which has been running successfully since 2002. He authored the book under the same name, now in its second edition, published by Amherst Media. Kubota Image Tools products have won multiple Hot One Awards as well as the Readers Choice Award. Kevin was personally awarded the 2009 Monte Zucker Memorial Humanitarian Award for social service through photography. Kevin’s images have also been featured in: Rangefinder, Studio Photography & Design, Professional Photographer, Shutterbug, Popular Photography, After Capture, American Photo, Best of Wedding Photojournalism (Amherst Media), Best of Portrait Photography (Amherst Media), Best of Adobe Photoshop (Amherst Media), Wedding Album Design and Sales (Amherst Media), Sculpting with Light (Amherst Media), and many others.
I had the pleasure of attending Kevin’s lecture at WPPI 2010 in Las Vegas, where he gave an engaging presentation on the importance of branding your photography business. From there, I further researched his work on multiple fronts, and then many months later invited him to do a phone interview for photo.net, to share some of valuable business lessons and insight with us. Thanks Kevin!
Kevin Kubota’s Branding Contest: We hosted a branding contest judged by Kevin Kubota. It ran from Tuesday, November 23, through Thursday, December 9, 2010. The winner received the Kubota Image Tools Studio Pak (value: $1200USD).
I did a presentation for a local business support group and they asked me to do a presentation on marketing and branding, not just for photographers.
It was all very relevant to any industry.
I started as a pro photographer about 20 years ago in LA. This was after my first career as a fashion designer, which I did for about one year after getting my degree. Several things lead me to starting a photography business, which had been a hobby of mine since I was a kid. It never occurred to me that you could actually do something you love to do and make a living at it. I never thought about doing photography professionally until I was pushed into it by having no job. A roommate wanted me to take photos of her for her boyfriend. I put together a little makeshift studio in my garage and that was the start. She showed the photos to someone else and they asked for pictures and it snowballed from there. Soon, I was shooting headshots for actors and models and shooting weddings. I got married 18 years ago and was really excited to meet my wedding photographer, George Carranza. We became good friends and he got me excited about shooting weddings. That was it, I was hooked. I love weddings, love the energy, I work really well under pressure. I seem to do best pulling things together at the last minute.
Kevin Kubota
I found my niche and built my business, which grew pretty steadily in LA. I wanted to move elsewhere, discovering it wasn’t really my thing after being there for about 10 years or so. My wife and I were looking for a quieter smaller town where we could raise kids and still grow the business. My priority was a better quality of life overall. We stumbled upon Bend, Oregon, and that’s where we’ve been now for about 16 years. When I moved to Bend, I kind of knew I was going to be struggling, because I was going from a city with millions of people to a town of 35,000 people. My assumption was that Bend was a back country hillbilly town with farmers and a few hippies here and there and nobody was going to pay very much for wedding photography. Of course, when you assume, you know what happens. I moved up to Bend anyway, and started to spread the word about my business. Interestingly enough it grew continuously. By the first year, I doubled the business of what I was doing in LA because of word of mouth traveling so quickly in a small town. It also forced me to really take a look at online sales and marketing. At the time, the digital world was not really in play yet. The idea of selling pictures online was really new and there was nobody doing it, no companies offering services. We had a web company design and shopping cart and a way for us to show and sell pictures online right at the very beginning. That was instrumental in keeping our business growing in such a remote area. It was pretty unique to be able to see a wedding online after the event. It helped us to grow and get more national clients outside of our little town.
Did you start adding a lot more travel to your itinerary?
I still was traveling back and forth to LA to shoot weddings from referrals from past clients, and building clientele in Bend, and also traveling outside of the state to shoot weddings. That helped me to get our name out outside of our little town. Probably about 10 years ago is when I started to speak to the local state associations such as the local Oregon chapter of the PPA (Professional Photographers of America). I did a few presentations for them. I also entered the Princeton print competition on a whim. On board were the old school judges and the newer judges. The old school judges thought my work was terrible and just didn’t get it. The younger judges loved it, thought it was really cool and different and they were the ones who really encouraged me to come and speak to the association and share about what I was doing. That’s really how I got started in teaching and speaking.
Kevin Kubota
A big turning point for me was maybe 8-9 years ago, with a thought that I had never sent my work in to any magazines, and didn’t have any published work. I was kind of shy about showing people what I did. I decided I was going to get out of my box, send my images into a magazine, and see what happens. I submitted some images to Studio Photography and Design, now defunct. I then stuck my head in the sand figuring that no one would call me back, but they ended up contacting me wanting to do a cover story about my wedding photography. Of course, I couldn’t believe that was happening. A few days later, they contacted me again, and said Nikon had seen the work and wes interested in talking with me about doing some ads and finding out what I was doing since I was using their first digital SLR, the Nikon D1. They hooked me up with Nikon, who put me on some of their ads, and asked me to speak at WPPI in 2002. Things snowballed from there with workshops.
Kevin Kubota
Are you one of the first photographers to sell actions?
I don’t know if I am. At the time I started to sell them, I wasn’t aware of anyone else selling actions. I was hesitant at first because no one else was doing it, thinking that noone wants these things. We took a chance and started and it worked.
I developed the post-processing actions for my studio and for my own use. I taught people in my workshops how to make these actions themselves. Most people didn’t want to learn how to do it themselves, they just wanted to purchase the actions from me. They convinced me to sell the actions, even though I didn’t believe that anyone would buy them. Most people just wanted a quick and simple solution rather than learn the geeky methods on how to create them themselves.
A lot of chance and lucky events that lead up to your success. What would you say was the underlying thread to all of this?
I believe that lucky is following your intuition. I don’t really believe in chance. There’s a quote, that a lucky person is someone who is prepared and open to opportunities. Until the point that I sent in my images to a magazine, I was closing myself off from a lot of opportunities by not putting myself out there and following my intuition. Something inside me said, “you need to take a chance and face your fears, and just send these images in.” When they were received so positively, my eyes were opened. In general, I’ve always been someone who followed my intuition. Same with our move to Bend. It was a total intuitive spontaneous decision on our part and it turned out to be the best thing we’ve ever done. Not a day goes by that I regret moving up here. I thank my lucky stars for moving here when we did. We know what’s the right thing for us to do, you just need to be open to it.
It started to make sense to me that if I followed these impulses in my brain, generally good things would happen. Pretty much all of the great things that have happened since then, and continue to happen are pretty much that way. I’ll meet someone, and get this gut feeling like I need to talk to them some more or I ask them this question and it turns into a lead for a great connection or a business opportunity.
Kevin Kubota
It seems to me that you generally believed in yourself. Did you have doubts that you would make it?
Yes, and no. I never really thought I wouldn’t make it. It just didn’t occur to me that much. This is what I love and want to do. I never thought about what if I don’t make it, or giving up. I’ve never even planned a backup strategy, which is probably not a good thing. I’ve always had this overly optimistic attitude my whole life that things will work out no matter what almost to a fault. My wife is a little more even keel and realistic sometimes to balance me out.
Your business is comprised of various aspects you’ve built gradually in different ways. How do you manage your success with all of these aspects?
I attribute it to having great people around me to help me, and trusting in them. The reason my business really started to grow was I started to solicit the help of others and to trust them, starting with bringing my wife Clare into the business and giving her a separate set of responsibilities. Tip: when working with anyone, especially a spouse, have clearly separate and defined responsibilities and trust them with that. You do your thing and stay out of their realm. When you overlap in responsibilities and tasks, it never works. You’re always butting heads, second-guessing each other. Clare really took on a whole part of the business with sales and customer relations and I was able to focus on the creative and the photography as much as possible. As our business grew, my sister moved to town and I hired her as my manager for all the workshops we’re doing. We’ve been very fortunate about the people we hire—very creative out-of-the-box thinkers, and they have the same vision as far as our company culture and values are aligned. Having a great team, now 24 employees, is instrumental in our success. I would never take all the credit for myself. Our team is spread among AsukaBook, Kubota Image Tools, and Red Boot Design, and the photography, with the greatest number of people working on AsukaBook and Kubota Image Tools.
Kevin Kubota
How much time are you spending behind the camera these days?
It’s now more personal projects, the things I wanted to do, like fine art stuff and personal experimentations, including underwater photography. I spent so much time as a photographer, about 20 years shooting jobs for other people. It’s nice to be at a point now to be able to shoot what I want to shoot and not to have to rely on what other people want. I still shoot weddings, family portraits, commercial work. I just did a book cover photo for a woman yesterday, an engagement shoot a couple days ago. I’ve cut it back though to interesting sounding jobs.
Business Basics
What do you consider to be the building blocks for establishing a successful photography business?
There is no one big secret to success. Every little thing you do, you do as though it were the one big thing. If you pay attention to all the little details and treat them as if they’re as important as anything else, that leads up to a whole package of success. I pay attention to the details. Customer service is at the foundation of everything. When I started my photography business, we were all about very tight and trusting relationships with our clients, making sure they had the utmost customer service. I learned a lot of this at Nordstroms. I sold shoes for 2-3 years in between jobs and it was actually a fantastic learning experience for me about customer service and maintaining high standards in your organzation. They really were a pioneer in that field long long ago. I just brought that over to my own business. Relationship, marketing and customer service are really the foundation for our success (for photography).
Kevin Kubota
Continued learning is also key. I was always going to workshops at WPPI and PPA when first starting out with my business. My friends are photographers and we’d hang out and talk about photography and did photo projects together. I was constantly pushing myself to learn and I think that was key as well. I knew a lot of other photographers who weren’t that interested in growing, learning, or doing anything different than they were, and were doing ok. They continue to do ok, but never stepped it up a bit. I saw that as a pretty direct result of their attitude towards learning.
Having a good head for business is also key. It was something I didn’t have initially and I had to learn the hard way. I wish now that had I known what I know now, I would have taken some basic business courses at a local college so I would understand the key things about photography. A lot of photographers don’t understand basic business practices in part because we’re creative people. We want to do the fun stuff and don’t want to have to think about it as a business but it really is. As much as we’re artists, we have to make a living. I went to a friend of mine who teaches workshops on sales and marketing. He has an amazing studio in Portland, OR, and the last time I spoke with him, he was doing 2.5 million a year just in portrait sales. He came from a sales background so he looked at his photography as a sales and marketing organization, and his product happened to be photography and turned his business into a very successful organization based on his sales and marketing knowledge.
When things are going well and the business is growing, you don’t realize what you don’t know. What if I had known more about business from the beginning, how much would my business have grown or what difference it would have made. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. I really do think I would have done better and grown faster, had I known more about business.
Kevin Kubota is a marketing genius with a keen and deadly-swift business sense. As for the photography, while it is nice, none of his work sparks for me. It is just average photography to my view. However, his business sense is top-notch. For someone to take photographic work as mediocre as his is and build it into a major company... it says a lot about his marketing, branding, and overall business sense.
If, perchance Mr. Kubota actually reads this, I apologize if I seem insulting, I don't mean it as such. Your photography just is not to my taste, and I am writing this entirely from MY view. You are a phenomenon with marketing and business, however, and I appreciate this interview. I shall put some of it into effect regarding my best friend's work, who is not only pro but quite successful, and my work.
Eva
There is some good advice in there about the business aspect of being a professional photographer. I agree that you have to take advantage of your opportunities and be more confident in putting your stuff out there when beneficial.
Kevin, your photos are good. Many businnes aspects are to be explained more comprehensively and thoroughly...
...Many critics, or faultfinders, as it very often happens not only here, have neither theirs photos uploaded (and submitted for rating), nor links - so we could estimate their own skills.
Great story! I am planning on starting a photography business, so any help I can get is great! I will have to figure out a good way to market and brand my new company. This was really helpful!
