Today's Guest: Wayne St.John of Wayne St. John Photography in Pineville, North Carolina
Today's Host: Damien Allen
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Wayne St. John Photography
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Wayne St. John Expert PageANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight is brought to you by morephotos.com helping professional photographers with all their internet needs. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight.
DAMIEN: Good afternoon and welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. My name is Damien Allen, and today we have with us via phone we have Pineville, North Carolina, photographer, Wayne St. John. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight, Wayne.
WAYNE: Thank you very much.
DAMIEN: We understand you have a thriving photography business down there in Pineville, North Carolina. Care to tell the listeners a little bit about it?
WAYNE: Yes, we've been in business about 5 years, and we really took off quickly 5 years ago, because we started doing something in the school market that nobody was doing. We take black and white candids of the kids running around and playing on the playground, and I think for the last forty years, school pictures have just been horrible. They sit the kids in front of some blue back ground with some fake lighting and they tell the kids to say cheese and I think half the parents purchase the school pictures just as a record of where their kid was that year or sort of obligation, but people surely don't love them, the kids don't love having them taken. So we came along about 5 years ago and started doing something different and we just took off.
DAMIEN: So you do black and white candids of the school kids. Do you do any other kind of photo services for for the schools?
WAYNE: We do. A lot of the schools where we take pictures, we do black and white candids in the spring and we come back in the fall and do the color formal pictures. But even our color formal pictures are a lot different than what people are used to seeing for school pictures, because we do them outdoors with the natural foliage, the trees, the flowers. To me they sort of look like senior portraits for preschool kids and grade school kids, regular kids. Why should seniors be the only ones who have these great beautiful portraits taken of them. We do great pictures of all ages. So I think the black and white candids are our most popular offering, and when a school comes to us and loves to start out who's never used us before, I think they always have in mind the black and white candids, and that's what they want to start out with.
DAMIEN: No besides these black and white candids and the color semi-formals which as you said are like senior photos for preschoolers, are you doing class pictures as well?
WAYNE: Of course, and we usually do those in the fall with the color pictures. So we do the class pictures then.
DAMIEN: What other photo services do you offer besides school pictures?
WAYNE: You know, it's sort of worked out really, really well for us when we started doing schools. The quality of the pictures that we were offering were so good that we got calls for other things. The families at the schools called us up to do weddings, called us up to do their family portraits, other siblings that didn't go to the schools there. We even got a lot of large commercial enterprises calling us up to do photographs. One of the largest that we do commercial photography for now is Little Tykes, Play Power I think is the parent company. They also own Merico Recreation and some water slide companies, Aquarec, but they saw that we were taking these fantastic pictures of kids playing on the playgrounds, and they said for their catalogs what do they need. They need kids playing on their playground equipment that they manufacture. So they called us up and for the last four years, we've been doing a fantastic job going all over the country and doing what we do best which is pictures of kids running around on their playground equipment.
DAMIEN: Well there you go, you take a school and a family photography business and seguay it into a family commercial business at the same time. That's a great deal.
WAYNE: Yes, exactly.
DAMIEN: Now besides the families and the commercial work, are there any other kinds of photo shoots that you do?
WAYNE: We just dabble in a lot of different things. We also do weddings. We do a large amount of bar mitzvah's and bat mitzvah's here in Charlotte. I think that we're known for being really good with kids. With kids it's hard I think to evoke natural smiles. It's easy to get a kid to look cutesy, or to get a good kid to give you a phone smile, a fakey smile, or a cheesy smile, but getting the kids to really be natural and to laugh and to show who that kid is from the inside out, that is what is really difficult and that's what we really do best. We do that on the school market, and we do it in all photography that we do. So when people hire us to do a wedding, they know that part of what they're going to get they're going to get beautiful pictures of the bride and groom and the family and everything, but all the kids and all the younger people at the wedding are going to shine through, and we're going to get fantastic pictures of them.
DAMIEN: And that's a thing that a lot of people don't like to have their picture taken. What do you do to make a child or a family or just a regular client feel comfortable so that you can get that natural reaction?
WAYNE: Well, I think with kids, I mean, I can tell you what we do with all ages, but with kids specifically, they don't want to sit still and be formal and do something that they don't like doing. So when you take a kid to a studio they'll cry and they'll fidget, and they won't do exactly what they're supposed to do. Most of our pictures are taken on location. We either go to a family's house, or we go to a park, and we actually play with the kids, let them run around, let them have fun, do what they normally do. We're interacting with them very heavily so we can them to do exactly what we want, but we're doing it in the midst of play and the midst of having fun. I think that's why the photos look the way they do is because the kids aren't sitting on a stool and having to stare into a big umbrella or into a big light staring them in the face. So that's part of the way we do it. With older kids and with adults, again, what we're looking for in the final product is a casual natural, beautiful pose, not something that's stiff. So we have ways to put adults at ease and teens at ease. Just again by joking around with them, having a good time with them. We're not playing with the adults, but the demeanor that all of our photographers have is very relaxed and very casual, and I think immediately from the first moment that the family meets the photographer, the family knows this is going to be an easy shoot; it's going to be great, and it's not going to be stiff and formal, and we're not going to have kids crying, because they're doing something they don't want to do.
DAMIEN: Now you just mentioned that a lot of the shots that you do are on location. Do you have a studio that you use?
WAYNE: Yes, I partner with another photographer here in Charlotte, and we share studio space. So if I need that studio look, a white background or a model background, or a black background, we can get that and for some head shots I do it, but I think the entire photography business is tending away from the studio. Actually tending towards more natural environments. Many of the corporate head shots I do, and we do a lot of corporate head shots, but many of the corporate head shots I do are on location, and people want the picture to be about them, but the background even though it's not really noticeable is going to convey something and it's either going to be high tech so you're going to have glass and chrome disappearing into the distance, or it's going to say comfortable, natural and you're going to have a natural setting, the woods, someone's home, if it's a home-based business. So some people want to be on top of a building over looking the entire city, and that's what's behind them. Again, the portrait would be about them, but the background is going to say something besides white with lights on it or black with lights on it. So I think that's the way the entire industry is going is people want family portraits on location. They want corporate head shots on location. It's really tending out of the studio I think.
DAMIEN: Now the businesses located in the Pineville, Charlotte area, what are some of the other communities in the area that you service?
WAYNE: Our school photography has turned out to be so phenomenal that we have schools in other cities that actually want us to come and take pictures. We just started that actually this fall season. We hired two photographers in the Dallas, Texas, area, and we actually are shooting twenty schools there in Dallas, and so far I think we've shot about 6 of them so far of the twenty. It's been going fantastic. The photographers are great, they've been trained well, and the schools are really loving what we're doing there. We're thinking after this season if the Dallas, Texas, model works out, we're going to branch out to a lot of other cities.
DAMIEN: That's a rather large stretch from North Carolina to Texas.
WAYNE: Why did we pick Texas to go to first? And it's just we had the opportunity, we had twenty schools there that wanted us so that's where we went. And there are a number of other cities where schools are waiting if this works out. I think the next city we are going to go to is Las Vegas, and we have Seattle and Virginia after that.
DAMIEN: Have camera, will travel.
WAYNE: There you go.
DAMIEN: Before we go into the commercial break, could I get you to give your website and contact information, Wayne.
WAYNE: There's a lot of information on our website, and that's usually where people go before they call our office to book an appointment. It's www.stjohnphotography.com. You also wanted me to give you my address?
DAMIEN: The contact phone number.
WAYNE: Oh, I'm sorry. You can call our office at (704) 889-7800.
DAMIEN: We are in the studio today with Pineville, North Carolina, photographer, Wayne St. John, of St. John Photography, and you are listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. We're going to take a short break for these commercial messages; we'll be right back.
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ANNOUNCER: We now return you to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen.
DAMIEN: Welcome back to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. I'm your host, Damien Allen. Today we are in the studio speaking with Wayne St. John, Pineville-Charlotte, North Carolina, photographer. Owner of St. John Photography. Welcome back to the program, Wayne.
WAYNE: Thank you.
DAMIEN: Now we've been talking about your business down there in Pineville, and you do a lot of school pictures. You do weddings and mitzvah's and family photography of all types, but I noticed on your website during the break when we went to take a look, that you have a site or a link on your website called "Family Fantasy". Could you tell us a little bit about that?
WAYNE: I think the "Family Fantasy" pictures are one of our most popular offerings. If we take pictures of 100s and 100s of families each that are just traditional where the families just sitting there, looking at the camera, they're happy, it's good, but when a family has done a number of those, sometimes they're ready for something a little different. Family Fantasy pictures we do are just off the chart crazy. You have to go to the website to look at them. Again, it's just www.stjohnphotography.com and look at "Family Fantasy", but we have had families for the last five years come to us every year to have one of these crazy pictures done. Let me give you some examples. One family last year, they all rented jumpsuits to jump out of an airplane and backpacks, and we brought a fan onto the shoot so we could make their hair blow and we shot a picture that makes it look like the entire family has just jumped out of an airplane and is sky diving, and there are two and three year olds in the picture. So in the background way in the sky in the back you can see a little plane trailing away. People see this photo and they actually think the family went skydiving. It looks so real. Mostly what they use them for is to send them out for holiday cards, and what's been happening is if the family sends out 200 of these crazy Christmas cards or holiday cards, they will get 200 phone calls. Everyone who gets the card calls them and says, oh my gosh I saw your Christmas card. How did you do that? And so they sort of get addicted, and they come back every year to have another one of these crazy pictures done. We did one of my favorites from last year was an entire family riding their dog. We blew their dog up to the size of a large horse, and we had the hole family riding the dog. Real crazy, and I think the hallmark is that they look real. It's not just sort of a cut and paste sort of job. The photos actually look real which is part of the appeal.
DAMIEN: So you do all your editing in house then?
WAYNE: Yes, we have about 6 full time Photoshop people that do Photoshop on pictures all day long. It's a lot of work. The Family Fantasy pictures...I think we put about 8 - 10 hours of editing into each photo. That's how detailed they are.
DAMIEN: Wow! What made you decide to become a photographer, Wayne?
WAYNE: I am 45 years old now, and I've been taking pictures since I was 14. So it's sort of my passion. I don't know why I never thought to do it as a business. So five years ago it was really my wife who got the idea, and she said Wayne, you love kids, you're good with kids, you love photography, why don't you try taking some pictures of kids and try selling them. So that's what happened five years ago, and it just took off from there.
DAMIEN: So when you came into this business did you start off with the current digital format, or were you shooting film?
WAYNE: No, we started with film five years ago believe it or not, and I would take so many pictures a day. I would start out with 30 rolls of empty film in pocket and at the end of the morning I'd end up with 30 rolls of exposed film in my second pocket. I'm so glad to be away from film. Some people haven't made that mental transition that digital is better than film now and that it's there, and for me, the film used to get scratched. It was dusty. I would take it to the lab occasionally and the pictures wouldn't turn out, because the lab would process it wrong. It was sort of a nightmare and then what most photographers that I knew started to do is they would take pictures on film and then put it over onto a digital format so they could edit it. Well just cut out the middle man. Let's shoot straight to digital. So when we started to do that about 3 or 4 years ago, we brought Canon cameras, Olympus Cameras, Nikon Cameras out into the field, test shot for a solid week to say is this going to be better than film, and what format is going to be the best. We decided at that time on Canon, and have been using Canon ever since, and our pictures...people can't tell them apart from film, and I think they're actually better than film. But on my staff I do have a lot of people who shoot Nikon, and I have one person who shoots Olympus. So we've got the whole run there, and I think digital is perfect. I think it's great.
DAMIEN: Alright, besides the holiday cards, is there any other merchandise that you offer to your clients?
WAYNE: When we take a photo, there's many things we can do with it. I think the most popular are turning a photo into art. We do large and larger, but we also turn photos into water colors. We put them on canvas. People love the colorizing where it's a black and white photo, but parts of it are color. We also do large photos on Foamcore. When you walk into somebody's house, and you see a photo that's 4 feet or 5 feet across, it's just stunning. And a lot of people don't want to buy a frame that big, so we'll mount those on Foamcore. But of course for the schools mainly, we have a lot of gift items. People put photos on mugs, we have mouse pads, we have charm bracelets, we have note cubes, tons of things like that.
DAMIEN: And I noticed from the website you also do custom framing as well.
WAYNE: Yes, we do. We have a great framer in Charlotte, Kaponia Fine Moulding, who has been doing our framing for a number of years, and they're fantastic. We can do simple black frames with white matte, or we do incredibly ornate frames with four or five different photos in the same frame and gold fillets around each picture so we do a lot of fun stuff with framing.
DAMIEN: We've have been speaking today with Wayne St. John, Pineville, North Carolina, photographer, and owner of St. John Photography. They specialize in school pictures, family shoots, weddings, mitzvah's, commercial work, corporate head shots, and the commercial work you've done now, you said for Little Tykes. Are there any other big contracts coming up commercially?
WAYNE: Yeah, we do a lot of different commercial events, but I love to just say one word of why we do such a good job commercially. We have embraced the digital. You were just asking about digital versus film. A lot of the products that we go out and shoot are large playgrounds or waterslides or big buildings, and I think what used to happen 10 years ago is photographers would send a crew out to the structure a day ahead of time to have it cleaned and the grass mowed, and everything manicured. Then they would show up with a hole crew to light the structure, and they'd wait around all day for the sky to be perfect and the weather to be perfect, and then they would hire models to pose around the building or on the structure. It was expensive. It was laborious, time consuming, crazy. We go in now, and we'll take a picture of a structure, and clean it up on Photoshop. If there's graffiti on the side of the building, we take it off on the computer. We erase the cloudy sky, and we put in a bright blue sky with light clouds, and we even import the people in. Usually we like to have some real people around the structure, and then we can clone those people, change the color of their clothing, putting green grass. We can go in relatively quickly and for low cost to the client and make that structure look like it was brand new on the day it was built, and the pictures we produce are flawless. We show people before and afters, and their jaw hits the floor, and they say wow, you know, because it doesn't look digital and it doesn't look retouched. It looks like it was really taken that way.
DAMIEN: And that's the beauty of technology today and it's just growing in leaps and bounds and what does the future hold for St. John Photography?
WAYNE: I hope to make a presence on a national level, and I think we've got the product to do that. Our school pictures are unlike any school pictures around the country, and whenever we take pictures at a school, the parents respond with large orders. School pictures, I think, people will traditionally spend $25 - $35 on a package. We get orders regularly in the $300 - $500 - $600, but people are spending on school pictures. Our largest order last season was $2,000...one woman...if you can believe it spent $2,000 on school pictures last year. So this is something I do believe we can take nationally and be successful at it.
DAMIEN: Well I'd like to thank you very much for your time today, Wayne.
WAYNE: Alright.
DAMIEN: We have been speaking to Wayne St. John, owner of St. John Photography in Pineville, North Carolina. Before I let you go could you please give us your website and contact information one more time.
WAYNE: Sure it's www.stjohnphotography.com and our phone number is (704) 889-7800.
DAMIEN: Well thank you very much for your time and speaking with us today about your business, Wayne.
WAYNE: Thank you very much.
DAMIEN: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. I'm Damien Allen. Have a great afternoon.
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