Brett Odgers is one of Sydney’s top photographers. Brett began his career in advertising and over the last twenty years has expanded his business to include a well-balanced mix of photographic offerings. Brett is married, has 3 children and is clearly very busy — so thanks, Brett for taking the time for this blog post.
How do you approach your photography business?
I have a reasonable mix of advertising, wedding, portraits, public speaking and workshops. I’ve been shooting for advertising clients for about 20 years and focusing on building the wedding and portrait side of my business over the last 8 years. With the current global economic downturn, it has proven to be a very good strategy. As the advertising opportunities dropped the wedding opportunities picked up. My current mix of photography gives me so many more options and the flexibility to better manage both my business and the constant fluctuations.
Over the course of your career, who has influenced your vision?
The influences are broad and wide from old school painters to modern photographic masters. I love the craft of photography — creating an image in the camera and using beautiful light and composition to enhance the image. To put a finer point on those who have influenced me, here’s a brief list. Impressionists for their fleeting glimpses of scenes, Vincent Van Gogh for his passion and vision, Rembrandt for his lighting and touch with the common people, and Annie Leibovitz for her beautiful, elegant portraits. My advertising work heavily influences my portrait work — a clean, simple, single-minded message in each image. I am a hopeless romantic, so I am influenced by the wedding couples who only have eyes for each other — that kind of love, passion and intimacy influences my vision for their wedding day. I could go on and on. I find inspiration everywhere and love talking to other photographers about how they go about what they do. In my opinion, it’s all nourishment for the soul.
How has PhotoOne Software assisted you with daily studio management?
PhotoOne has given me a solid foundation for organizing my business. With so much daily information coming into my studio (and me), I find it difficult to keep up with every aspect of every client. PhotoOne is the brain centre of my studio — everyone who works here can use it and I can extract the right information I need at any time. Whether that’s a client appointment, purchasing information or a marketing campaign. For me the equity in my business is all here in this program — clients, systems, purchasing history, marketing campaigns and their success rate.
What other software apps do you use?
My other software programs are Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, ProSelect with the production module (this is the single greatest piece of software for a portrait photographer), Gary Fong’s software, Photojunction, MYOB as well as the general lifelines of email/web programs.
Tell us about one or two of your more memorable photo shoots.
I recently shot a celebrity wedding and that was quite a spectacle. There were famous faces, security guards shielding the paparazzi and an anxious magazine editor who had paid a lot of money for the exclusive. Oh!, and I had a bride and groom who wanted beautiful, natural, intimate images of their special wedding day — as if it was just a normal wedding day.
I’ll always remember the Seiko watch catalogue that required images of their watches on skydivers and whitewater rafters. I hired a skydiving school for the day and did a few tandem jumps while directing and shooting the ads. That was followed by whitewater rafting (in a very cold river in the middle of winter), and getting great shots of watches on wrists as we were going over the falls backwards. I ended up with a very happy client, a successful campaign and a really fun “day at the office.”
Here are some images provided by Brett.
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