Market research into studio training

Garry Edwards

Garry Edwards

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Garry Edwards
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I’d appreciate your help with some market research into my training courses…

Basically, as some of you may know, my business is mainly advertising & commercial photography. I’m very much a lighting guy.

Lighting seems to be a difficult subject for a lot of people – they don’t know what they need, they don’t understand the principles of good lighting and often although they know that lighting is by far the most important ingredient of photography, they don’t know how to learn.

So I also run 1-day training courses on various types of (mainly) studio photography. The courses are run on an individual basis and because of that, are tailored to the exact needs of the person attending, i.e. I teach them exactly what they want to learn and I tailor the teaching to suit their own space and equipment as well as to their existing level of knowledge and skill.

So far so good, but these courses are expensive at £470 and I can’t make them any less because I make far more money doing actual photography for my commercial clients.

One way of making them (far) cheaper would be to offer an option of group training sessions, as a lot of other people do – say up to 10 people sharing the day, model provided.
I’ve always kept away from group training because it can’t work as well – people obviously learn far more on an individual basis – but a lot of other people run them so there must be a demand…

What do you think? If you were in the market for a training course yourself, would you rather pay for individual training on a date to suit you or would you rather pay a lot less to take part in a less specialised group training day?

And if you prefer group training, how many people do you think should be on each Course (there’s plenty of space, this question is about how many people you think is a good number) and how much do you think would be a fair price?

Thanks for any answers.
 
I think if I was in the market for an advanced course I would prefer the 1 on 1 option even with the £470 + model fees.

However as I am new to studio photography I would definately want to pay less for a first course probably maximum of £150 (just gut feel of what I would be happy to pay for a day of hobby based training). Before selecting I would search about to find the best value course clearly with the number of other students being high on my list (lower the better). However, the trainer reputation and experience option would also be high up too.

I've not looked into training myself yet but being a business man I presume you know already what the competition are offering interms of costs and class sizes.

I know I might be more interested in paying less to assist you in a commercial shoot with the option of taking a couple of photos of my own during the shoot so that I could actually learn about Lighting that way and leaning from watching. Clearly this would mean you getting paid twice for the same work :). Although I understand you might feel this would mean you might be distracted from the work that pays your main income and that it might impact your relations with your commercial clients, but perhaps the incentive of extra time free (effectively your time is paid by the assistant) might make them more interested. Plus I would imagine there is less competition for this.
 
DiddyDave said:
You're not allowed to tout for business on here Garry unless registered as a Trader

Mods may well be along soon!

DD
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Good thing I'm not touting for business then - I should have thought this was obvious as this is my only post other than answering other people's questions.

Simon,
Fair point about people paying to assist me but I wouldn't do that - if I need an assistant then I pay one, I don't think it would be fair to have a trainee present, it would distract me and in any event I wouldn't have either the time or the mindset to do anything other than light and photogaph the job.

As for numbers attending, the problem as I see it is that although numbers would have to be capped, I don't see anyway of knowing what the optimum number would actually be - I don't think it's safe to assume that (for example) just because A.N. Other has a max of 10 that 10 wouldn't be too many.
 
We must have a different view on touting for business then as I can't see this post any other way

Register as a trader, change a few words and it's an advert

Anyway, I wasn't complaining, just warning you as others before have been slapped on the wrists for less (or what looks less to me)

Your, and the mods' call

Cheers

DD
 
These questions are ones that only you can answer properly m8, only you know how many people you would be comfortable dealing with at one time knowing how difficult it can be to get the message across sometimes. As a rough guesstimate I'd say no more than six but better with perhaps four to give a better chance for everyone to have a go at the setups and get their questions answered. Cost has to be determinied by the number of people on the course.

As for Trader status, I'd think it would be to your advantage as well as ours :)
 
DiddyDave said:
We must have a different view on touting for business then as I can't see this post any other way

Register as a trader, change a few words and it's an advert

Anyway, I wasn't complaining, just warning you as others before have been slapped on the wrists for less (or what looks less to me)

Your, and the mods' call

Cheers

DD
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I've asked 'Contact us' whether the post is acceptable
 
I've done one with a group of about 10 and to be honest that really is about the maximum you would want to manage Garry. That was £120 last year to give you an idea.
Hope that helps.
 
As I am interested in setting up a studio (Lancashire not Yorkshire ;) ) I would be more interested in a 1 to 1 course at your rates as stated as above.

To whether I'd do a group session, I'd probably prefer 1 tutor to 5 with a model! Just so there was more time for questions and setup!

Hope this helps,
Carl.
 
Hi

Just a quick note to say that as a result of a discussion between the admin and Garry, and a resulting private agreement, this thread has been allowed to stay.

:)
 
Not that I have any real experience of these things, but as a complete newbie that actually is looking for a course at the moment.

I would be on the look out for something around the 100 pound mark, even 150 seems a little steep for a hobbyist. From that I would hope to be able to spend at least a full hour maybe even a couple of hours with the tutor on a semi personal basis. there would be little point I think in cramming 10 people in a room each standing in line to hit the shutter a few times at a bemused model.

Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt you would spend more than six hours in the actual studio snapping away, probably less with people shuffling around and discussing things. So for 10 people you would be looking at maybe 1/2 hour each.

This cannot be good for any potential student. Also I'm assuming the sort of people looking for this sort of course will be inexperienced and so will take more time at what they are doing and need more instruction. I am tempted to suggest then that a group of no larger than 5 people be included on any course. Or perhaps 1 person for every hour of actual studio time plus say 30 mins for discussion. This would give five students 7 1/2 hours between them.. (or a full working day if your with the council!)

I could of course just be asking the world for a cheap price :)
 
Personally I wouldn't go on a course with 10 students to 1 model. The amount of time you'd spend standing around waiting for everyone else to have their turn wouldn't be acceptable to me regardless of cost.

As has been mentioned I think 1 model to 4/5 would be better at around £150 would be right for me. But given the current economic climate even £150 might be hard to find. What about running 1/2 day courses giving you time to do bread and butter stuff in the morning and teaching in the afternoon. This may not be practicle, just a suggestion.

You're up against companies like the peak photography centre so why not ask for a brochure and see what they're charging.

Best of luck,
Kev
 
Admin said:
Hi

Just a quick note to say that as a result of a discussion between the admin and Garry, and a resulting private agreement, this thread has been allowed to stay.

:)
Click to expand...

Glad that's sorted

From my experience then...

As Club Sec of Barnsley's largest camera club we do have a variety of 'Bring your camera' nights where a studio set-up is employed for such as modelling or still-life, and it is very much a case of people lining-up to take the same shot

Usually, we have around 10 snappers on a night wanting to have a go, and in the 2 hour sessions we run, it's clearly not long enough for each to really learn anything

Because there's 9 people at any time not shooting, and often not fully able to see what's going on, there's a tendency for them to mill around chatting. From the tutor's point of view this mean we repeat the same lines about why it's lit like this, exposure, etc. several times on each night and it's frankly a pain in t'arse

Perhaps paying customers would be more attentive, but you really need to be assertive and tell them to shut-up at times

I'd suggest no more than 5 attendees so each has a good hour of shooting throughout the day, changes of lighting, etc.

When I do training sessions on child photography I also cover in depth the digital workflow for speeding up post-processing too, as in the early days one kiddie shoot would take over 5 hours in PP, now I've got it down to less than 1 hour - so a section on how best to PP the images they'll be shooting with you would be very useful I feel

I've had a look at your site Garry, and while the video clips are pretty good as an insight, I really think you need to post a good 60+ Gallery section on the resulting images your students should be expecting to achieve; and showing the variety you'll be instructing upon on the day

All the best

DD
 
I agree with the maximum of 4/5. There can be benefits to group sessions as often one person will think of a question or come up against a problem that the others would not have thought about until later.

It also depends on whether you can, or like, teaching groups. I found when I was teaching people how to train their dogs I really enjoyed the one to one sessions but not teaching a group.
 
When you have 10 and above to teach your problem is always going to be time to implement ideas. (I've taught training courses for medical equipment and we keep those to a maximum of four)

On the seminar I went on there was a lecture about the setup we were about to use and examples of how it worked and then a short period for us all to try to put it into practice.
Personally I still got a lot out of it because I was starting from scratch so the "lecture" bits were, for me, highly informative. The danger is that with a small group, you can easily get in to too much depth for the ability level. (I count myself in that group) So keeping it simple and then a quick practice was ideal for me at the time.

I think it all depends on the course content too Garry, there is so much that you could teach, how long have you got? lol.
 
Thanks for your replies so far, very helpful.

The feeling I'm getting is that most people agree that my present format, 1 to 1 training, is the ideal but that it's too expensive for hobbyists. It definately isn't too much for a lot of people, most people who come here are from the midlands/north but they come from all over including Ireland, a couple from The States and even 1 from S. Africa, so their travel and accommodations costs have made it expensive for them.

'Second best' seems to be a group of not more than say 5, at a cost of perhaps £100 or so per person. That seems sensible but with group tuition I'd have to pay for a model, say £200, so the cost, with a 5 person group fully sold, would need to be around £135, which I'm guessing is still a bit too much for people who aren't totally commited to learning studio work.

A pity because I'd like to make my courses available to more people - but it seems to me that group sessions of less than 10 won't be financially viable and I don't feel that I'm personally capable of doing a good job with a group of 10 or so. Maybe other people are.

Any more posts will be very welcome
 
I've read the responses (quickly admittedly) and people seem to be thinking about taking turns to take a picture - but the initial post is about instruction on lighting equipment. You don't need 1 on 1 to be told what to look for when choosing lighting and how to arrange what you have for best effect.

The model and taking a picture are just proof that it works - so I would have thought a group class should work fine.
 
After spending a group session in a studio recently, I came to the assumption that 8-10 is just too many.

My advice, Work on a set of prices around the £500 for the day mark.

2 students = £250 each, 4 students £125 each etc. That way you'll make a little more money and have a set of figures to work on.

Steve
 
RobertP said:
I've read the responses (quickly admittedly) and people seem to be thinking about taking turns to take a picture - but the initial post is about instruction on lighting equipment. You don't need 1 on 1 to be told what to look for when choosing lighting and how to arrange what you have for best effect.

The model and taking a picture are just proof that it works - so I would have thought a group class should work fine.
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Robert, you're right. It's about instruction, not queuing up to take turns and certainly not elbowing other people out of the way as some so-called glamour shoots seem to operate.

My feeling though is that there is a potential problem in getting enough of a waiting list to be able to organise groups of similar experience levels, I feel that this may be difficult but if it isn't done half the people will waste their time being taught things they already know and the other half will be taught things that are beyond them. Any views on this would be appreciated...
 
I think you would have to aim your courses at more than one level Garry. Beginner- to include those who have not shot in a studio before, need to know- camera settings, one light setups, metering, butterfly, etc.

More advanced, high key, low key, more than one light, ratios, effects, etc.

Even more advanced, creative and location lighting.

I don't think you could cover everything in one go Garry, More like three bites of the cherry. And that requires people to be honest about their ability/experience levels.

Good luck!
 
AliB said:
And that requires people to be honest about their ability/experience levels.

Good luck!
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Thanks for that, but the problem is that a lot of people aren't realistic about their level of existing knowledge - I even had someone who described himself as 'very experienced' because he knew how to use his hotshoe flash in P mode:LOL:
 
I personally think 6 is an acceptable number. 1-2-1 is fine but I find its good to bounce off other people - others tend to ask things you may forget so it can be a very beneficial exercise all round. I am on a fashion exercise in London this weekend with 13 others. The number doesn't scare me as I'm sure we'll all learn new things. We were asked what our knowledge was prior to booking. For this we have each paid £75.
 
I would want to 'give it a try' with a small class or 4/5, costing around £150 to start, then maybe do a one on one later for more money. It ought to be easy to set out what would be taught in say a beginners course, or an experienced course, then it is up to the punter to choose what level he or she is at !
Hope it all works out !
 
Having been on a training course with over a dozen on it, I wouldn't recommend it.


If I were you, I'd charge £150 for 1:3 training for a full day. That's a decent amount and with only two others there you can get enough as a student out of it. I'm in Harrogate and if I were flush I'd be interested.
 
Why do you have to use a model?

OK Its always nice to have some nubile young lady draped around the furniture, but if you are wanting to learn about lighting why couldn't you use other (cheaper) props instead?
That would also let you deal with lighting complex shapes, materials with different reflective properties etc.
depending on the size of the space available you might have two or three sets and let two people spend an hour or two on each set. Do a short intro. Give them a task - let them go start setting up the lights, then you go between the groups. break at half time, bit more discussion, swap sets. then a final debrief.

Or am I (in my total ignorance of lighting) being too simplistic?
 
I have done a few courses one with a group of about 30 people and tbh although i had a good time i didn't think i gained a lot out of it in terms of knowledge. I did one course very early on when i had had my camera for about an month and that was 1 -2 the other person being my mate which i got much more out of.

i have a course booked for a weeks time there are 5 of us and a photographer but it is over 3 days so pleanty of time for us all to ask questions etc.

As for cost i wouldn't be looking to pay more than £100 for a day. I just can't afford to spend tat much on my hobby.
 
Why do you have to use a model?
Models are only needed if the student wants to learn how to photograph people. Although still life subjects are ideal for experimenting with lighting and learning how to light, skin doesn't handle light in the same way as any manufactured surface so substitutes simply won't do.
And anyway, people need to learn about camera height and posing, can't do that without a model.
As for hiring models, I prefer it if people bring a friend/partner because I can teach more easily with a 'real' person than if the model has perfect features - part of the teaching process is showing people how to deal with weight, skin problems and the like, which are easily dealt by lighting and posing correctly.

Why about £200 for a model? There are plenty of girls out there who are wanting to break into the modelling career and would devote their time for prints, or CD.
Because at least 50% of the wannabes are timewasters who don't even turn up. If people pay for a course they need a model who will turn up. And anyway, I wouldn't ask a wannabe to contribute their time unless they were be photographed by someone who knew their stuff.
 
Iv been looking at courses, i found a guy on net model that charged the same as you. i thought it a lot of money for just one day!! i know you say you can earn a lot more woking on your projects but surely if you were THAT busy you wouldnt mind the extra pocket money from teaching a bit..

The other thing is, if you dont get a good grasp on it the first time and need to go back then it WILL get VERY expensive!! £1000 and still no guarentee of perfecting it..

I used to help out with Lock picking courses in the Army, some of the people offering courses in civvy street were doing a weekend for £500 and a job at the end of it!! now THATS a bargain!!

Now, id do a course for £400 on lighting if at the end of it you could guarentee me to be at a level where i could work for cash.. that could mean that i just come back as many times as i need, Capped to 3 or 4 if you like.. and help with getting a bit of work too.. marketing techniques if you like..

Just my thoughts.. (y)
 
Fraggle,

The job of a teacher is to teach, it's the job of the student to learn. In other words, there can be no guarantee about how much any individual will actually learn, so there could never be a guarantee that someone who attends one of my courses (or any one else's course for that matter) will be of the standard they need to be at to charge for their photography - in fact I can guarantee that that won't, the only thing I can promise is that I will have taught them everything they need to know, and they will also have my full set of written tutorials to refer to - but they will need to practice and gain experience before they can produce consistent, quality results.

I've never done a lockpicking course but I imagine that it's a lot less subjective than photography and I can see that it's probably the type of subject that people CAN learn fairly well in a single weekend. Photography isn't like that.

So no, I'm not going to offer free follow on days, I don't need to do that to get people, and the people who come to my studio don't need it either.

Going back a bit to my previous post on models, with my present (individual) courses people are encouraged to bring their own model if possible but if I were to run group sessions then I suppose the cost could be kept down by asking members to take turns at being the model - in fact there would be obvious advantages in doing this, because we'd get a range of face shapes, different skin textures, different colours of skin etc.
 
The thing about models is that if you get a good one they know how to pose and where to look given the lighting set up. The last you want when you're learning about lighting is having to learn about directing a model at the same time.
 
NorthernNikon said:
The thing about models is that if you get a good one they know how to pose and where to look given the lighting set up. The last you want when you're learning about lighting is having to learn about directing a model at the same time.
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In fact, it's difficult to learn about lighting when the photographer isn't in control of (and responsible for) the pose.

Although good models do make life easier, they don't make the learning process better.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Why about £200 for a model? There are plenty of girls out there who are wanting to break into the modelling career and would devote their time for prints, or CD.
Because at least 50% of the wannabes are timewasters who don't even turn up. If people pay for a course they need a model who will turn up. And anyway, I wouldn't ask a wannabe to contribute their time unless they were be photographed by someone who knew their stuff.
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Garry now obviously you've had instances in the past when you have used amatuer models. I'm not talking "wanabees" here, I'm talking amatuers. Its like saying X person isnt an amatuer photographer, they're a wanabee.
How about actually taking time to find someone, rather than paying upto £200 - thats all I was saying. There are plenty of sites dedicated to amatuer models, and plenty of young girls, who love having their photograph taken, even if they dont want to do modelling.
The latter bit sounds a bit snobberish actually. I certainly, if I was an amatuer model, and it was explained to me that I would get the shots for helping out from all abilities, be bothered whether or not they knew they're stuff. But thats just me. Everyone has to start somewhere....it just seems that you wont even give other amatuers a chance.
 
How about breaking 'lighting' down a bit?

Lighting seems incredibly complex to me and its something that I'm doing a fair bit of reading about. In one day, with 5 or 6 students, what can you actually cover? I'm of the view that unless you are specifically looking at lighting nudes or something then the direction of a model is going to be a distraction from the lighting.

But then I dont know what you actually cover in the day. I'm interested to hear though (not that I can afford £450 - my hobby budget went buying the camera)
 
dellipher said:
Garry now obviously you've had instances in the past when you have used amatuer models. I'm not talking "wanabees" here, I'm talking amatuers. Its like saying X person isnt an amatuer photographer, they're a wanabee.
How about actually taking time to find someone, rather than paying upto £200 - thats all I was saying. There are plenty of sites dedicated to amatuer models, and plenty of young girls, who love having their photograph taken, even if they dont want to do modelling.
The latter bit sounds a bit snobberish actually. I certainly, if I was an amatuer model, and it was explained to me that I would get the shots for helping out from all abilities, be bothered whether or not they knew they're stuff. But thats just me. Everyone has to start somewhere....it just seems that you wont even give other amatuers a chance.
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Been there, done that - and the model doesn't show, and doesn't even bother to let me know that they've changed their mind. It's happened many times and I simply don't need it. That's at a personal level.

When people have actually paid to come to my studio to learn I need to be absolutely sure that the model is serious and will be there - and that means hiring a professional (not necessarily a full time one but someone who will earn money by turning up and lose reputation by not turning up). I have a database of reliable models and I also book models via agencies because, in the unlikely event of a no-show I'll simply ring the agency and they'll get a replacement along straight away.
 
who? said:
How about breaking 'lighting' down a bit?

Lighting seems incredibly complex to me and its something that I'm doing a fair bit of reading about. In one day, with 5 or 6 students, what can you actually cover? I'm of the view that unless you are specifically looking at lighting nudes or something then the direction of a model is going to be a distraction from the lighting.

But then I dont know what you actually cover in the day. I'm interested to hear though (not that I can afford £450 - my hobby budget went buying the camera)
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Lighting is photography - it's by far the most important part and I sympathise with you, trying to learn it from books, many of which seem to give more mis-information than real info.

What I actually cover on my one-2-one training workshops depends on what the person wants to learn and on the standard that they've reached to date. That's the whole point of individual training, but here are the basics.

First, I point out that the studio is just the outdoors brought indoors.
outdoors, you can get overhead sunlight in the middle of the day, you can get low sun at dawn or sunset, you can get hazy sunshine on a cloudy day, and you can get very flat lighting on an overcast day. And, when the light is directional, it can come from any direction at all.
The studio allows us to get all of these effects (and more) in doors, and to control them. I explain that the quality of light depends on the relative size/relative distance of the light, for example a large softbox close to the subject emulates an overcast day and a standard reflector at a distance emulates the sun in a cloudless sky.

We then create these various different types of light with different types of modifer, at different distances and different heights.

Then we take our model, decide which parts of the face we want to enhance and work out the type of lighting that will suit it best, the height at which the light will work best, the poses that work with that person, the camera heights that work and don't work and so on.

Then we add a reflector.

Then we may add a hairlight - there are lots of different ways of doing that.

Then there are backgrounds, there are so many different lighting effects possible with a plain background that we could spend all our time just on that - and also cover, briefly, lighting gels, absorbers, flags, fill lighting etc.

The idea is to get people to understand the principles of lighting. It takes practice as well, but they can do that on their own.

Basically I believe in the KISS principle - keep it simple stupid - and always use the minimum possible number of lights needed, which is often just one. That's just a quick run through on how I approach lighting a single person. Lighting still life subjects is often far more complex. Take a look at my gallery here, there are a few examples of the very different effects easily achieved with very simple lighting.
 
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