Posted on January 11, 2011 under At Night, Customer Stories, Fine Art, Landscape, News, Objects, Photography | 102 Views
When I created my Top 10 Favorite Images and 2010 in numbers posts, essentialy taking stock of 2010 one thing struck me. I realised I had never shared any customer stories, or even customer testamonials. Thinking about it as a potential customer I realised I offered little assurances for potential buyers of my artwork. So in 2011 I plan to change that. Starting from last December I have begun to ask my customers and clients to share their thoughts and experiances with me. I don’t intend to fill my blog with these types of posts but will share some stories from time to time. And to kick things off here’s one from December…
Very low angle sepia image of the Wooden Bridge of Clontarf in Dublin. Click on the Image to see a larger version, and to purchase/license.
A client contacted through my contact me page at the beginning of December with a request. She had the idea of a Christmas gift for her husband, an image of Clontarf. You see her husband, in fact her husbands entire family has grown up in an area in Dublin called Clontarf and have a real affinity for the area. She had seen my work and felt I could deliver against her brief.
I met with her in early December on location and she showed me around some of the area’s that she felt would most resonate with her husband. We discussed the brief and it proved both open and simplistic in aim, “to capture the essense of clontarf but not in the obvious postcard fashion”. The Client wanted Clontarf but in a subtle way. We discussed budget and agreed that the best approach would for me to shoot non-exclusie images. What does this mean? I was confident that within her breif I could capture images that would both fill her needs and suit my own portfolio for public sale. In this way we were able to managed costs to meet her budget in a way we could never achieve with exclusive licensing.
A nighttime view of Clontaf Promenade showing both the city lights and the street lamps. Click on the Image to see a larger version, and to purchase/license.
I must admit I was not overly familar with the Clontarf area. I chose to travel to the area during the day and visited the locations I was shown by the client. I begun to consider my options and draw up a plan of what I thought would prove succesful images to fit the breif. I returned then twice more, once again during a clear day and once at night. I then privately published the images on my website for the Clients access only, for her review. She immediatey loved the Wood Bridge image (top) and felt it was both subtle yet instantly recognisable for anyone with a knowledge of the area. While the brief was for a single image (plus an image of her parents-in-laws house as a gift for them) she also loved the image of the Promanade by Night (left). We discussed sizes and finishes and I suggested the Wooden Bridge would look well as a Canvas, something the client had not thought about. Working within her budget we agreed on a 24×12 Canvas plus the two other images as framed 12″x8″
To finsih I thought I would leae you with a note I receied last week from the client herself;
| “I was looking for some scenes of Clontarf with a difference for my Husband. When I came across John Dunne’s website I could see that he had not only a great photographers eye but an eye for more artistic work. John came and inspected the area and after seeing what I was looking for came back with some great pictures. He captured the essence of Clontarf without going for the obvious. We are delighted with the images”. |
I hope this has been informatie and of interest. As mentioned in the begining of this post I do plan to share some more of these throughout the year.
© 
Pingback: Tweets that mention A Customer Story | John Dunne Photography -- Topsy.com