Hi there…   me again.    Thanks for coming back for Part 2 of my “Update from the Road”   Spring 2016 edition.   When we left off earlier this week I was recounting the various shoot projects from our stay here in Park City from the last couple months,  but that is just part of the story.      For those of you scratching your heads wondering “how the heck is this guy able to do this?”  I thought I’d share a little insight on what it takes to make it happen…   No I didn’t hit the lottery,   nor was I born with a silver spoon in my mouth.    Just good old hard work and careful planning & budgeting…

So what does it take keep this journey successful and profitable?   It is no different than if I were in my office back home in Florida.  Well it is different in that my view outside my office window is always different.   🙂

Day after day in between shoots and when we are not traveling,  I put in the long hours that feed the machine and do the things that make it all happen.  Like any small business owner I wear many hats….  The producer hat-   This entails countless days on the computer and the phone planning and producing our next project.    The retoucher hat-   There is a ton of post work from shoots past….  processing of images that need to be retouched, color graded and finished.    The marketer hat –   Once the images are finished comes the job of pushing these images out to the various portals such as online portfolios, websites, stock agencies,  social media,  getting new work to the reps and working on creating new marketing materials.   I’ve doubled down on my advertising budgets and am going heavy with my media buys this year.  We have just finished sending out our next three spreads in The Workbook for the book that comes out this fall.  Also we are going to be advertising in Communication Arts for the Photo Annual that comes out this summer.    I’m also very excited about the direct mail piece we are mailing now….  It is a 28 page 6.5 x 8 inch printed booklet of images from my American Worker Project  that is hot off the press at the printers and is mailing this week out to 3000 creatives and other clients across the country.    Click the image below to thumb through the booklet.

I also printed 5 hard cover books of images which are a Volume 1 of the American Worker Project…  That will serve as a supplement to my printed portfolios for in person showings.

It Takes A Team:      Last but certainly not least are the people who support me…  All that I mention above is just part of what it takes run the biz…   I am fortunate to have a great team behind me and there is no way I could do all this without them.  My reps Blake and Glen at VISU are busy making the rounds with portfolio showings at advertising agencies all across the country from NY to Detroit,  Chicago and on to Minneapolis this month and they will show in the west from Dallas, on to LA,  San Francisco and Seattle later in the year.

I’ve also been working hard with my my marketing partners at Wonderful Machine getting some great press and establishing a ton of new contacts.   Working closely with Alex (pictured left and center below) we have implemented a whole new marketing plan….     She has been busy creating new,  targeted lists and then promoting to those people by sending out emails and working the phones,  getting people to look at the work and setting up meetings for me to show the work when we get to various cities around the country.

Meanwhile I’ve been working closely with my publicist Jessica  (also from WM – pictured on right below) to put together a press release announcing the work we are doing with my American Worker Project.    She then sent them out to a targeted list of about 40 photography trade publications and we have had a fantastic response from them.  To date we have had about 8 interviews and articles written about the project.    You can read some of them here.       Future plans are to broaden our reach to include various photo blogs and podcasts and outward to the advertising trades, consumer magazines and newspapers as well.

The proof is in the pudding:    Judging from the analytics that report activity on my website and blog, we are doing something right…  People seem to be liking what they are seeing.    Traffic on my website and blog over the last month has spiked as much as 15 times my normal daily traffic after some of the articles hit and my overall average has just about tripled on a day to day basis in since the articles ran.

The results of all this hard work:    It is very rewarding to see that all this work is leading to positive results….   The calls are coming in for bunches of cool projects.     Most of which I can’t give you the details of as we are under NDA’s.    But what I can tell you is  that we are up for a shoot with global reach for a beverage company shooting with an international sports star shooting in late June in Orlando.   I also had a call this morning for a job for AirBnB.

Jobs that have been awarded….  We have also had the good fortune to land a few really great gigs that are happening over the next two months…      One of these jobs is an awesome sports lifestyle oriented shoot with a large Pharmaceutical company that will have us shooting in the mountains of North Carolina early next month.

I am also extremely excited to be working on a project with a legend in the advertising industry, on some really exciting work for a Whiskey distiller.     This is an ongoing project that I will be shooting at various points in the upcoming month as we travel across the west from here in Park City on down through Monument Valley,   the Grand Canyon,  back through Sedona and then westward to California.    Should be some killer stuff that hopefully will catch the attention of the awards shows when finished.

Next week we are heading down to Jamaica for a quick job for Vista Print.   Should be cool,  it’s been a few years since I’ve shot in Jamaica.   Will be great to get back.

And last but not least,   getting back to what I mentioned earlier in Part 1,   I’ve just returned from Florida where we shot a tandem Print and TV shoot with Huffy Bikes alongside the talented director Ernie Mosteller of Fried Okra Entertainment.   Fun Stuff!!!

Wrapping this up….     So that’s it for now.  Thanks for following along,  if you don’t already follow me on Instagram,  please do… my Instagram handle is @petebarrettphoto and is chock full of interesting shots from our adventures.

Don’t forget to check back in!!!  –  Stay tuned for more great adventures from the road in the coming months as we press on up the coast of California and north up the Pacific Coast Highway up through Big Sur,  Yosemite National Park,  through big sequoia country and northward through Oregon, Washington and hopefully British Columbia!