Victoria & Ed have helped many photography business start-ups AND second shooters throughout the last 5-6 years. 

Victoria has given second shooting work & also advice, from product advice, branding, marketing, promotions, website & portfolio curation, lead generation, customer journey advice, work critique & introductions to suppliers/ industry members.

Ed has also given second shooting work and advice to second shooters and photographers about technical knowledge, camera and lighting skills, customer interaction, work critique & introductions to suppliers/ industry members, workshops and groups, always being inclusive in our industry.

Victoria has helped many of the second shooters who have freelanced for us with gifting them referrals to help get their businesses to a stage where they can become full time or just elevate their businesses to another level, e.g. with over £15,000-£20,000 worth of work to just one individual Warwickshire Wedding Photography company in one year.

In just 2017 Victoria gifted over 170 referrals to other wedding photography companies through referral groups, mainly one of her own groups at the time.

Victoria and Ed have been in the photography industry for 30 years combined & both strive to help to make it a positive environment to work within. 

Victoria & Ed have ran several online photography groups which did not benefit them directly but hopefully the industry as a whole & were used as a sharing community to benefit many photography companies and their future.

As a business Victoria and Ed had always felt that giving back to the industry without monitory gain was always something that had been hugely important to their business ethics. 

Victoria and Ed helped many many companies establish their businesses through giving advice, help, encouragement and industry knowledge and gifting referral work to help them along their way.

From Edgy Leicestershire Wedding Photographers, Nuneaton Wedding Photographers, Creative Midlands Wedding Photographers, Warwickshire Wedding Photographers, Documentary Royal Leamington Spa Wedding Photographers, Warwick Wedding Photographers, Northamptonshire Wedding Photographers, Staffordshire Wedding Photographers, Alternative Birmingham Wedding Photographers, Rutland Wedding Photographers, Derbyshire, Kettering, Coventry, Melton Mowbray, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Yorkshire Wedding Photographers, and Documentary London Wedding Photographers.

Everyone needs some help and encouragement when they’re starting out and Victoria and Ed have always remembered the people who had helped them when when they first started in the industry with the greatest of thanks and goodwill. 

Due to the vast increase in enquiries and business Victoria and Ed are no longer able to offer these services and their time unfortunately.

Please find a lovely testimonial from a professional documentary alternative wedding photographer that we have mentored, advised and helped over the last year.

OAKHAM, MELTON MOWBRAY & RUTLAND WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

PHOTOGRAPHERS MENTORING, ADVICE AND HELP WITH BUSINESS & PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS.

INCLUDING BRANDING, CONSISTENCY OF IMAGE LOOK, DESIGN, WEBSITE DESIGN, MARKETING, PROMOTIONS, ENGAGING WITH CLIENTS, LEAD GENERATION, REFERRALS, PRICING, WORKFLOW, CUSTOMER LIASON, PRESETS, TECHNICAL KNOW HOW AND GENERAL ONGOING HELP & ADVICE ON HOW TO GET THE BEST FROM YOUR BUSINESS.

Victoria and Ed have extensively mentored, helped and advised my business over the past year on an ongoing basis, sometimes a few times a month, sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a week or more often with customer leads.

I had freelance second shot for their company Ed Brown Photography for a few years now and picked up lots of knowledge along the way, but the last year Victoria has really got involved to advise with her ideas and they have both helped to elevate my business to another level.

Victoria has advised on several levels:

Branding & creating consistency in my brand and imagery by making sure my images look consistent and representative of the style that I want to be known for and also to portray myself to my enquiries/clients to fit my style and brand.

Promotional

Victoria has filled my head with different ideas of how to promote my business and avenues to explore with self-promotion and 3rd party promotion. Using techniques discussed with Victoria has allowed me to gain new clients via new promotional material and promotional ideas. 

Victoria has a background in promotional work, working face to face engaging with clients/customers at ‘The Clothes Show’, ‘The National Wedding Show” & working all over the UK for brands and photographic companies.

Marketing

Similar to promotional, marketing my business has now completely changed - I'm currently relying on methods away from magazines and Facebook and concentrating on where the clients are actively looking who I want to be attracting. 

Lead generation 

Victoria is insanely good a getting new leads for their business Ed Brown Photography through her SEO work on their website which she has explained which methods she is currently using.  

Now using the new marketing and promotional methods I have discussed with her has allowed me to increase my inquiry rate and generate leads, so I have now broken my target for this year which is fantastic!

Customer Leads

Victoria came up with a fantastic idea to create a referral group. When a member is not available for a date, they can put that enquiry into the group, and help others fill their diary. With everyone having the same ethos in the group it is great to see that everyone is adding a referral in when they can and help each other out, creating a sharing community group. Victoria and Ed run this group together helping many others to fill their diaries.

Victoria has regularly highly recommended me in 2017 to many of their referrals which has allowed me to have at least £10,000 savings in my bank account.

Pricing ideas

Victoria advised how pricing can be interpreted by a client and not undervalue my skills and business.

After having a detailed conversation with Victoria about the importance of albums and their true value. Pricing the albums at a cost that was so undervalued at their importance Victoria made me realise the true value and potential cost the album could be. 

Pre-selling/up-selling, Everybody these days has a USB from me, and now I can upsell an album to about 70% of my clients - sales ideas and key phrases are now what clinches that album sale and generate repeat business. Moving forward - I have a further seven items that I am looking to sell as pre-sales and up sales, increasing my value per client.

Advice

Victoria has always been around via Facebook, telephone or in person to offer advice as and when it's needed. Such times include running new ideas past while travelling from one wedding to another and also if I am looking to launch a new product/service.

Workshops

Ed has been a source of valuable sharing knowledge and always been inclusive in the past helping and telling me about workshops that would benefit me and help me open my eyes to what is happening in the industry. 

Victoria has created a fantastic sharing Facebook group about workshops and industry knowledge which they both co-run which is an excellent source of knowledge to professional photographers called ‘POSITIVE VIBES’.

Ed has given me so much advice on technical know-how. Too much technical knowledge is available from Ed, a master of computers and storage. Ed managed to help me go from my existing workflow using three computers to one and have enough memory to save data and back up as needed. Programs wise Ed is immensely competent with all editing suites and is aware of some very valuable sources to save hard drive space and crisper up the images

Presets

Ed has given me hundreds of presets to work from which he has purchased and built a very lovely preset of his own which is simply beautiful. Developing presets and finishing tools is really Ed's forte, making sure that everything is corrected and clean to be coherent with Ed and Victoria's brand style. 

Working and liaising with clients

Although I have only seen Ed with a client on the day of the wedding, he always appears in the same style and his brand and also is very polite and professional. 

This has been able to let me see how the clients work alongside Ed and interact with him and his style so that they remain comfortable and calm while we work together creating stunning images. 

Victoria liaises with the clients with the client workflow forms that she created which Ed chats through on his final consultation with the client. All these forms have helped me develop my business and use similar forms with my clients.

Engaging with couples

While on weddings photographing with Ed during couples shots, Ed is very clear and coherent about the ideas he has in his mind and is very clear when communicating this with the couples. This inevitably allows them to relax into the session so Ed can get the image he wanted. As a second shooter, I was always shooting the opposite angle but still listening and taking in the details.

Ed has gained all this experience through hundreds of wedding commissions, thousands of shoots while working for portrait studios and thousands of shoots in event photography.

Wedding show exhibitions

Having assisting Ed & Victoria at a wedding a tipi wedding show, I was able to see the alternative presentation efforts that make the difference for the Ed Brown Photography business and the dedication that Ed & Victoria put in with the client from that first initial meeting. I felt comfortable after a while helping out and representing Ed and Victoria's brand and selling their service to clients.