Today's Guest: Tom and Patricia Burtchaell of Burtchaell Photography. in Billings, Montana
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Tom & Patricia Burtchaell 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 with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight we have Billings, Montana, photographers, Tom & Patricia Burtchaell, of Burtchaell Photography. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight today, Tom and Patricia.
TOM: Good to be here.
JOHN: Now you guys have a thriving photography business going on there in Montana. Tom, can you give us a little over view of what you've got going on there.
TOM: Well, we've got a photography studio. It's in a small service, mom and pop owned photography studio in downtown Billings. We're in the center of Montana's largest city. We have a storefront property close to just about everything; the banks, hospitals, etc., in downtown Billings. We do a variety of different photography from families to weddings, commercial portraiture, to pets, to children, to proms, you name it. Essentially we even do passport and visa photos.
JOHN: So Tom, what do you think is the main thrust of your business, maybe at this time, right now?
TOM: This time of the year, spring is usually a quiet time for us before the wedding season starts. Wedding season hits for us usually in May and continues keeping us busy on the weekends, all the way through September.
JOHN: Now, let's bring Patricia into the conversation. I'm sure that weddings present their own types of situations and problems, how do you approach a wedding, Patricia?
PATRICIA: We typically start when we initially meet with our clients educating them on how wedding photography impacts their event. So we talk about how we proceed throughout the event to photograph their wedding. What we're hoping to achieve, and we meet with them a couple of times prior to their wedding so that they totally understand what our plan is when we arrive, how we can do the best job possible for them. We find the more communication we have with our clients, the more we are able to educate them as to what the process is. The smoother things go. We certainly do not want to become a spectacle at their wedding and become too bossy, but all the same we feel that tons of communications of their plans and educating them as to how the process proceeds benefits both of us.
JOHN: Now it seems that today's modern wedding photography is pretty much taking a journalistic approach, still doing some of the formal photos, but is that what you see in your business?
TOM: We have kind of a unique approach to weddings in that we are in a very conservative market in Montana, and if we go to a wedding and photograph just journalistic style photographs, the bride's mom is going to come back and kill us. They want family portraits. So our approach to it is quite unique in that we split the coverage into two sections; the formal section where essentially we are posing people and getting group photographs and then once that is done then we do the journalistic approach to where we just photograph what's happening in front of us. A journalistic approach is that rarely is all the family in the same place looking at the same direction spontaneously. Whereas when we do it, with the formals we always get those formal photographs as well as getting the fun, more casual photographs.
JOHN: Now I would imagine that once the summer season, wedding season is over, you get into a lot of senior portraits for the schools in the area in the fall?
TOM: Yes, the summer is the time we photograph a lot of high school seniors. We do a lot of families in the fall. We like to work outside in fall colors. We find that we that we've got some excellent, excellent locations in the Billings area to photograph those types of family groups, and really enjoy doing that. The senior portrait sections, we usually start doing those in June and those usually continue through September as well. With the high school seniors' yearbook photographs are due by a deadline of usually around October 1st so we encourage our seniors to get their photographs taken as early as possible in the summer.
JOHN: Now you have a studio there in Billings so I would imagine you get a lot of seniors and family portraits, even pet photography in your studio. Do you also take those things outside too?
PATRICIA: Absolutely. Generally our high school seniors request a split session where we photograph both indoors and outdoors with several clothing changes. Typically we spend approximately two hours working with a high school student both inside and outside and sometimes they bring their pets, their musical instruments. A lot of times they chose the outdoor location, depending on weather as well.
JOHN:
We are in the studio with Billings, Montana, photographers, Tom &
Patricia Burtchaell, of Burtchaell Photography. right back after these important messages.
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ANNOUNCER: We are back with VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. We
are speaking with Billings, Montana, photographers, Tom
& Patricia Burtchaell, of Burtchaell Photography. They are the largest
wholesaler of professional photography supplies and I'm your host, John Bentley,
and we're talking about photo albums. Welcome
back
to
the program you two.
PATRICIA: Thank you.
TOM: Thank
you.
JOHN: Now we've been talking about the different kinds of
Photography that you do. I do want to touch on a couple of things before
we move on. One is your commercial photography. Do you have a lot of
commercial photography that you do down there.
TOM: We don't do a
lot
of it. We do a steady amount of it every year, and we're very proud of our
commercial photography. We have actually won commercial awards in Montana
pretty much every year that we've entered commercial prints into
competition. We really enjoy the challenge of commercial
photography. It's just something very different that we enjoy and
do. Not a lot of, but what we do I think we do very well.
JOHN:
Now you also do photo restoration don't you, Tom?
TOM:
Yes.
JOHN: Let's talk a little bit about that.
TOM: Well
most of the world has treasured photographs of parents and grand parents and
maybe great grand parents that are family heirlooms, and a lot of these family
heirlooms have not always aged as well as we might want them to. One of
the things we do for our clients we can take those photographs and completely
restore them back to original condition, print them on our fiber materials so
they're essentially as good as the day that they were made 80 - 100 years
ago.
JOHN: That's a great service, I know, I've got some old photos
I'd like to have that done myself. Patricia, let's get you back into the
conversation. Let's talk about cities and communities around the
surrounding area that you guys work out of.
PATRICIA: Well we have
photographed two years in a row in a very small community in central Montana
called Stanford, Montana. We work a lot in a community just south of
Billings, about an hour south of Billings called Red Lodge, Montana. Harlowton,
we did the prom in Harlowton this year. We did the prom in Shepard,
Montana this year. Two years in a row, we have photographed weddings in
Sheridan, Wyoming. We have worked in Cody, Wyoming, and just depending on
where folks need us.
JOHN: Tom let's talk about some of the facilities
in the area that you guys actually work out of.
TOM: Some of the
facilities...there are some great facilities in Billings for weddings. We
work at the Perfect Place out on Briarwood quite a bit. We work at
Yellowstone Country Club, Highlands Country Club, The Depot in downtown
Billings, the Crown Plaza Hotel, Billings Hotel and Convention Center, Holiday
Inn. There's some really nice facilities in Billings that we work in very
regularly.
JOHN: Now how long have you two been in
business?
TOM: We were in business 20 years this year. 1988 we
started.
JOHN: Congratulations.
TOM: Thank you.
JOHN:
And why did you decide to become a photographer, Tom?
TOM: Well, I
got a camera when I was 8 years old, and I was just kind of hooked. I
thought this would be a great way to make a living, and it turned out to be a
very exciting, very fun way to make a living, and we get to meet all sorts of
different people. People invite us to be part of the happiest days of
their lives, and we really enjoy the challenge of the work.
JOHN: Now,
Patricia, what do you think makes your photography business unique and what
separates you from the competition?
PATRICIA: I think we have a marvelous
level of customer service. We have actually had clients come to us this
year and say, we were impressed by the work that you did on a friends wedding
last year; we really haven't shopped around, we were certain that we want you to
do our wedding for us this year. We've had clients come to us and
say, I participated in a wedding that you were the photographer at last
year, and I really like the way you conducted yourself and did the photography
again stating that they weren't shopping around that they really wanted to just
hire because their experience with us with one of their friends in the
past.
TOM: Some of our clients from when we very first started, we
still do family portraits for.
JOHN: It's nice when you can do the
generations after once you start with someone.
TOM:
Exactly.
JOHN: Yeah, wonderful. Hey, I want to thank you two for
joining us on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight today.
PATRICIA: Thank
you.
TOM: Thank you.
JOHN: Before I let you go, Tom,
why don't you give us your contact information website address for our
listening audience.
TOM:
Ok, my name is Tom Burtchaell; our business is Burtchaell Photography and that's
spelled B-U-R-T-C-H-A-E-L-L, and our website is www.burtchaell.com.
JOHN:
And what about a phone number?
TOM: They can call
us toll free (888) 245-6604. If you're in the Billings, Montana, calling
area that's (406) 245-6604.
JOHN: Thanks again for joining us on
VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight, Patricia and Tom
Burtchaell.
PATRICIA: Thank you.
TOM: Thank
you.
JOHN: We have been
talking to Tom & Patricia Burtchaell,
of Burtchaell Photography, of Billings, Montana, and you've been listening
to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Thanks for tuning in. Have a
great afternoon.
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