2010 Teva Mountain Games

Last year on a whim and my own dollar, I attended and shot the 2009 Teva Mountain Games in June.  I knew it would be a great opportunity to build my portfolio and I had an idea of trying to capture and tell the story of the event and put it into a small book that I would then use for self promotion.  It turns out to be the best little thing I’ve done for business so far.  When I made that, I also made a general portfolio book, and have also use various other marketing pieces like promo cards.  But nothing has been as well received as this little book.  Even a month ago at Outdoor Retailer, I had some new promotional material, but some people still received the TMG book best, even though they had already seen it and the other material was new.  Why?  I’m not 100% sure.  But I’ve got some guesses as to why it was such a big hit, and I think they could be applied to future marketing attempts of mine or anyone elses in hopes of achieving the same success.

1.  The Teva Mountain Games are insanely cool, therefore, anything about them is also insanely cool by association. Where else can you spend 3 days shooting in one place and have the opportunity get images of climbing, whitewater kayaking, mountain biking, road biking, freestyle bmx’ing, parkour, people running through the mud, great live music, all the while in a beautiful location like Vail, CO?

2.  The images are connected and they tell a story.  I found that photo editors and neophytes alike preferred the TMG book over the general portfolio.  The bottom line is that most people would rather look at at set of images that work together to reveal a bigger than a series of single disenfranchised images.  The average non-photographic person seemed more able to connect with the TMG book, versus the general portfolio whose disconnected images eventually would lose their attention, regardless of quality.  And for photo and art directors, the book also shows the ability to effectively capture and tell a story.

3. All of the TMG images were captured within a 4 day period.  This is really only for people who may interested in me from a work related angle, but I think this might be the way that this book contrasted most from a standard portfolio.  Let’s face it, for anyone who shoots full-time or has been shooting for a long time, it shouldn’t be that hard to come up with 15 great images.  But people aren’t looking to hire you hoping that you’ll get another one of those magical shots or that you’ll get lucky again.  What they need is a photographer they can depend on, and it can be too easy to have a portfolio that displays a level of work that far exceeds your regular output.  The TMG book displays a collections of images that were all captured in a short period of time, and therefore better demonstrates what level of images are to be expected during the period of an assignment, and not just what you can produce if given enough time.

With all this talk about about my 2009 Teva Mountain Games promo book, you may be wondering why the post is titled 2010.  Well, this is a post about the success of the 2009 book as a marketing tool; and nothing would prove it to be more successful than the fact that because of it the Vail Valley Foundation (who puts on the Games) has hired me to be one of their headline shooters for the 2010 Teva Mountain Games!  That’s what I call a direct effect.  Most of the time you can get a general feel for if your marketing efforts are working or not, but it can be difficult to discern which are being most effective and which aren’t being fruitful.  It’s certainly encouraging to get the kind of direct feedback I’ve gotten from this book, and I will certainly be making another book of images from the 2010 Games.  For the upcoming games, I will have unfettered access to everything, have much more information and control in my hands, and even be a part of the of the planing related to photo coverage.  So, add that to the vast personal growth I’ve felt in the last year and a few new toys, and I can only imagine that the 2010 images will be even better than the 2009 ones were! So stay tuned for some action packed image from the 2010 Teva Mountain Games.  But don’t stay that tuned, because they’re not until June 2-6!

I have been thinking of a way to give away a copy of the book with this post, but haven’t thought of a terrific way to choose a winner. So here’s the deal. Anyone who wants to be in the running only needs to comment on the post and pick their top three photos from the set. Whoever is closest to my top three picks is the winner and will be a proud new owner of the 2009 TMG image book that you just read all about. Without further adieu, here is the slideshow of images from 2009, one of which appears on pg. 68 of the new Rock and Ice Photo Issue! Ready, set, win!