122: Adam Lowndes – The Importance Of Planning Ahead in Business & How To Price Competitively

Adam is based in the county of Staffordshire in the United Kingdom where he operates his down-to-earth wedding photography business. Adam has lofty dreams of where he wants to take his business, but unlike most, they don’t involve working too far from his hometown. He values connections with everyone he meets and even more so with his friends and family, hence the local focus of his brand/business. With the help of his vast array of Insta360 cameras and his super likable personality, Adam has become widely known as “Mr. Behind the Scenes.” A business niche that was nurtured by his love for organic growth within his Instagram and now TikTok.

Yeah, so for those who don’t know what we’re talking about, if you check out my socials or know photography, you’ll probably find out. Basically, I use a 360 camera in my hot shoe to film a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff at weddings. Because it’s a 360 camera, I can also show myself, which a lot of photographers don’t want to do, but I absolutely love doing it, even though I hate listening to myself talk, which some might not believe.

I think my name sort of got catapulted at that time. When I started using TikTok, it was a bit of an experiment. Everyone was writing this platform off, questioning if it deserved to be written off. I thought, if I used it, then…

The way I saw it, the first people who started using Instagram, who now have 10,000 to 20,000 or more followers, got there naturally by adopting the platform early. I figured the same could apply to TikTok. So, I thought if I jumped on the train early, at least I’d be on it before everyone else. If everyone else gets on it, that is. It was a bit of a gamble, but considering how things were going, and when I started using the app just for entertainment, I thought, yeah, I can see where this could go and how it fits my style.

In December, I was at a wedding just attending, and I said to Sarah, we should try to do a silly TikTok of me peering through the curtains at what the photographer is doing outside, because I can’t sit still at a wedding. I’m always wondering what the photographers are doing. Then the photographer came up to me and said, “You’re a wedding photographer, aren’t you?” I was like, damn, I’ve been rumbled. So, yeah, I was caught out at that wedding, and when random people start knowing who you are, that’s when it hits. My face is so present in the videos, which I think helps with name association

So basically, the thing is in the industry, everyone seems to charge the same price, whether they’re up in Scotland, down in London, or right on their doorstep. I don’t really understand why that is, but I only came to that realization last year. I have a couple of venues that refer me quite often, and their turnover of weddings is just incredible.

I usually found that these venues came with lower budgets. Now that I’m charging 2k plus, I didn’t want to leave those weddings behind because they are literally 10 to 20 minutes from my house. I also wanted to maintain a connection to more typical weddings so that when I do education, I wouldn’t be disconnected from everyone. I didn’t want to be just doing high-end weddings and then talking to someone shooting at a local hotel as if all weddings are the same.

I wanted to keep it local while still attracting those couples, but at a higher price. I realized that some of these weddings aren’t the same. At these venues, couples generally get married from 1:30 onwards, and I usually work two hours before the ceremony and an hour after the first dance. That could mean working from 11:30 AM to 9:00 PM, which is very different from a couple getting married at a church two hours away at noon.

Towards the end of last year, I started introducing individual venue pricing sheets. It became a bit of an admin nightmare because every time I wanted to adjust my prices, I had to change about 15 sheets. Now, I’ve simplified it to just three different prices. These are hidden pages on my website, and the couples who receive a pricing sheet don’t know the others exist. It’s not about deceiving anyone; it’s more about avoiding the paradox of choice. I find it really hard to make decisions when there’s too much choice in the moment.

You can tell by my face, I’m like, ooh, yeah, a good question. I think you’ve just got to look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite every time. If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll just blend into the sea of everyone else. You’ll have to charge what they charge, do their kind of marketing, and so on. Instead, you should think, how can I do something different?

I’m well-connected in the industry, and some of the older guard, as well as some of the newer folks, have opinions on trends like the whole blurry photo thing. Some people dislike blurry wedding photos, but others are doing it and succeeding. This proves that what people want can be so diverse that there’s no set pathway. If someone tells you there’s only one way to do things, that’s completely ridiculous. You can do whatever you want and make it good as long as it’s unique and individual.

Grabbing that idea and running with it does get attention. When I started doing the 360 stuff, one of the main reasons I continued was because it grabbed attention like nothing I’d ever done before.