My essential question is,
"What is the best way to run a profitable photography studio, whose focus is event and portrait photography?"
My answers are:
1. Employ Composition Techniques within your photos.
2. Having the behind the scenes knowledge of a DSLR camera in order to produce a properly exposed and focused image.
3. Create and implement an effective and efficient business plan in order to stabilize a clientele.
My best answer is, "Create and implement an effective and efficient business plan in order to stabilize a clientele" because although my first two answers are very important for photography, at the end of the day my topic is about creating a business and being able to sustain that business consistently. I also feel that a business plan would be able to help me kick-start a business of my own in the future, so I find it the most important of the three for this situation.
2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
Well I felt that it was smart to use my first two answers to explain fundamentals of photography considering the fact that most wouldn't necessarily be aware of the bag of tricks photography can have. My next goal was to consider many different factors of business. Factors like ways to run a business, the type of products a business will have, where the business will be located, how one would go about marketing their business, and so many other factors. With all of these overwhelming things to consider, I needed to develop a "starting point" of where all of these factors could meet all at once, and that's how I arrived at creating a business plan to organize my thoughts and to potentially sell my ideas to investors one day.
3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
Honestly the biggest problem is research. It is so difficult to find good research that actually pertains to my topic. So to resolve it, I continue to try to find any reliable and credible research that I can hopefully use whenever I find the time to do so. Another problem could be how I'll actually organize my senior presentation. I have a few ideas, but I still need to create a concrete plan.
4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
I feel that my most significant source has to be, "Entrepreneur's Guide for Successful Business Planning" by Bob Kazmierski. The reason being is that Mr. Kazmierski has more than 10 years of experience of community planning and economic development; and in his article, he created a very strong framework of what a business plan practically needs to look like if a person even thinks about joining a partnership with a well known firm or the investment of a venture capitalist. This article also has a strong influence on my third answer for the fact that all the factors I need to consider are within the article that Kazmierski has wrote.
My second most significant source is my mentor Jack Bohlka. Even though he has been there for me all of my senior experience, my goal however is to make sure my best answer can answer my essential question which is why Jack is my second most significant source. The plus side though is that I can ask him any business advice because he has all of the experience I seek to learn. So Jack is a great reference for both my photography and my future business goals. All in all, Jack is the best person I can go to for research or questions.
