A Travel Agent’s Guide To Using

Page 1

Using Your Photography To Sell More Travel

Steve Crowhurst, CTC

Page 2

Using Your Photography To Sell More Travel - Copyright © 2014 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co. All rightsreserved. Printed in Canada. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwisewhatsoever without written permission or authorization through payment of a Permission to Copy fee (except in thecase of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews) . For information please contact SMP Training Co.steve@smptraining.com or call 250-738-0064.

Protected by the Canadian Copyright Act.

For general information on SMP publications and services please email: steve@smptraining.com

Illustrations by Steve Crowhurst unless otherwise sourced and credited.

Limit of liability/disclaimer of warranty: SMP Training Co., publisher and the author make no representations orwarranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim allwarranties, including without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be createdor extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable forevery situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author is not engaged in renderinglegal or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professionalperson should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from. The factthat an organisation or website is referred to in this work as a citation and / or potential source of further informationdoes not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information, the organisation or website may provideor recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work mayhave changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

Page 3

CONTENTS PAGE

1. Extraordinary Traveller & Photographer 5

2. Sister Industries 7

3. Get A Logo – Get A Website 8

4. Selling Travel In A Digital World 9

5. Take Your Best Shot 10

6. Creating The Storyline 13

7. The Travel Colour Palette 15

8. Ordinary To Extreme 17

9. Get In The Picture – The Selfie and MORE! 18

10. Where and How to Use Your Photography to Sell More Travel 19

11. An Image is Worth 21

12. Emailing Images The Professional Way 24

13. Recap 25

14. Photo Editing Software 25

15. Adding Text To Your Image 26

16. The Photo Book 27

17. Selling Your Photographs 28

18. The Photographer’s Life 29

19. Your Own Photography Tours 30

20. Photographic Graphics 31

21. Women Only Tours 32

22. iPhoneography 33

23. I to Eye Travel Photography Social Sites 34

24. Time to Plan 35

25. About The Author 36

Page 4

Introduction and Welcome

As you know, everyone is or can be a photographer today. So many gadgets and devices can snapa photo and record that special moment in an instant. But then there are not too manyphotographers who are travel agents that can access the world as you can - and as many timesas you can either, and at a cost other photographers can only dream about.

What’s all this is leading to you ask? Here’s the scoop: you have every opportunity to be out inthe world, travelling and recording your experiences in both still images and video to bring homeand use those images as eye-candy. Enticing your clients and prospects to contact you for help inarranging a trip to that place featured in your glorious photographs. That’s the goal. Selling moretravel by using your photography as the lure.

As you will read in a moment, your photography can also lead you to publishing eBooks, soft andhardcover books too. Once published your books will lead you on another path and that could beas a speaker, presenter and yet another path could be to lead a group tour made up of casualphotographers. Keep moving along this same path and you could arrange tours for professionalphotographers. You don’t have to match their expertise of course. Just maintain that interest andbasic knowledge, but exude confidence in planning your tours to suit your client’s generic andcustomized needs.

At the lowest level, your average traveller will ooh and ah after your photography and that is allyou need to happen. It will nudge them to book that package, that flight, that cruise and whenyou say “I took that shot…” the sale is usually closed. The been-there-took-that close works.

Using your own photography to sell more travel is an exciting concept and one you will enjoy toomuch! Keep your camera focused on selling travel and all things will work as they are intended.

Shoot and sell more travel!

Steve Crowhurst

THE TRAVEL AGENT’S STORE COACHING PROGRAM

To help you get the maximum benefit from your purchase The Travel Agent’s Storeoffers a free coaching session with the author of the e-Guide. The coaching sessionslast for up to one-hour and are conducted via Skype. Once you have read through andstudied this e-Guide jot down any questions, challenges you have, then email tosteve@thetravelagentsstore.com to arrange a coaching date and time.

Be sure to take advantage of this offer!

Page 5

If Thomas Cook is the father of the retail travel tradewe know and love today, then Burton Holmes is thefather of travel photography both still and video. Youowe it to yourself to read about both men and othertravel photography pioneers too, but I have to saythat Mr. Holmes was a click apart during his timebehind the camera.

The book shown here is in my library and it could be inyours too. Most large bookstores sell it and of courseyou can find it online. What a treat it is.

Burton Holmes invented the word Travelogue and it came torepresent what we would call today, a consumer night or eventwhere you stand up front of your invited audience and talkabout your recent travels, supported by still images and suppliervideos. When Burton Holmes put on a consumer event (he wasnot selling travel, he was selling his travel books) he filledCarnegie hall with a black tie crowd. Although he "retired" fromthe stage in 1949, he continued to present shows until healthproblems forced him to stop, aged 81. By this point he haddelivered more than 8000 travelogues! Imagine that.

He looked the part and he was eloquent in his description of theplaces he visited. His story is one to read and admire and apply.He pulled off a number of firsts. He mixed with royalty. Hefilmed where no man or woman had filmed until he pressed theshutter.

Start here and read about this man.Explore the rest of the Burton Holmes website here: http://www.burtonholmes.org/

The Burton Holmes Lectures,based on the slides and hisnarrations for them, werereorganized into a series ofbooks, originally published in1901 in ten volumes. Infollowing years he addedmore volumes, and theyremained in print under thename The Burton HolmesTravelogues. More than40,000 copies of these setswere sold.

Imagine selling that many!

Page 9

What a great time to be selling travel. So much technology and most of it can help you projectyour travel expertise through so many channels featuring photographs. The sequence below istypical. Shoot, post and email. Then there’s shoot and upload to your social photo platform suchas a Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram and many others. The skill comes in choosing the right channelfor your style of travel image. You do not want your work to get lost in the shuffle.

Eventually it will be your photography that will attract existing and new customers to buy theirtravel from you. For this to happen the best location for your travel photography is your website.Then it really is ALL ABOUT YOU… and that’s the focus you want. No need to do battle with themillions of images on Flickr for instance. But worthwhile being on that site eventually.

Titles and NotesTry to include a title, a slogan or a note on each image orjust below it if your software allows this. In this way thevisitor to your website is not guessing where the imagewas taken. Even if you have text around the image –always title it and always add your name to the image.

Sell the sizzle: use exciting words and phrases asdescriptors. Sell the feeling of standing on the edge,entering the building, touching that cold, stone floor.

Be careful where you add your title. Try not toobscure your image. Perhaps add the titleoutside of the image in the white band or justbelow it.

It’s not always pthe story or mesdeliver. When ya tough order, hplan what youdestination orthose images shyou can always tmessage.

The image belowinto a watercoElements. To dofancy. The eagleimage with enou

The eagle is lookbird will launch i

Page 13

ossible but when it is, think aboutsage you want your photograph to

ou are shooting quickly this may beowever when you can, you shouldintend to photograph around thetour you intend to promote. Forot from the hip as they happenedhink about them later to create the

is one of mine and it’s been turnedlour, using a filter in Photoshopthat is as simple as a click. Nothingresides in the left two-thirds of thegh space on the right to tell a story.

ing at something in the water, its eyes are fixed. Any minute now this magnificentnto space and soar high before it swoops down to grab its dinner from the ocean.

The red arrows indicate the energy andflow of the subject and image. This is veryimportant to consider as you manipulatethe image to show off a pathway, a churchspire, a glorious view from a mountaintopor your tour group joining in on a festiveevent. Anyone looking at this image of theeagle will wonder, “What’s he lookingat?” and that there is the story unfoldingand that’s where you would pick up thestoryline, tell and sell what you witnessed,and mention your next tour.

One of the most important tips to rememberis NOT to center the subject – dead center.Best to crop accordingly so that the subject(building, person, wave, tree…) is seeming tobe involved in something going on around it.

Page 15

You have a lot to work with. Every colour and colour combination can be found in nature. Youmay not see it or witness it, but it is there. The pigments used in the painting of art from cavedrawings to Monet… all come from our planet and the natural world. What does all this meanto you? It means you can change your imagery to suit the mood and destination or tour youare trying to sell. Where black and white delivers the mood you want… make the change. Goingfor old style adventure trips – change to a Sepia tone. Your world, your colour.

The colour landscape shown here can bechanged to suit the mood as mentioned andbelow it is rendered in Gray Scale and notquite black and white.

The options are endless as are the Hues andSaturation levels. The main thing here is to getto grips with image colouring.

You can also get fancy dancyby using the filters in yourphoto editing program. Bycombining black & white andcolour within the same imageyou would see this result…

This works wonderfully wellfor let’s say when you wantto have a certain building stand out in your e-flyer. You can remove the colour from the entireimage except that building, or that flag, or that person. Very dramatic and just a few clicks willdo it.

Page 19

Where and How ToUse Your Photography

to Sell More Travel

Are you ready? Do you have your Selfie shots ready? Your sunsets,sunrises, landscapes, people shots? Okay this is good.

Now let’s go sell some travel using your images.

Page 25

RECAPOkay, let’s review where YOU are and what needs to be done:

Read and learn about past and present travel photographers

Realize that travel and photography go hand in hand

Create a good looking functional website

Design a new logo that includes YOU and one of your images and a camera

Study how best to use your images throughout the world of social networks

Take your best shot and plan what to do with it

Study the Travel Colour Palette and match text colours to your images

Keep your images “light” in terms of content – consumers like happy not sad.

Use colour, B&W and sepia for the appropriate promotion.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS GIMP

Elements is relatively easy to use especially with itsAUTO buttons. Just click and it’s done. If you wantto go deeper than the one-click edit then you havemore than enough tools to use.

Turn your image into a canvas, a watercolour, asketch and move this and that, blur it, reduce thesize and so on.

For the price – ranging from $70 on sale to $99 –it’s worth every penny.

GIMP is the best-known free photo-editingsoftware. Designed to work like Photoshop, GIMP isa very powerful tool... and might feel complicated ifyou're looking for simplicity. But, on the other hand,it's free and prides itself on ease of use.

Picasa has been around for quitesome time now and does a goodjob. Like everything else you mustpractice.

PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE

Page 27

Here’s one more idea that will keep you focused and could even generate fame and fortune asyou chase down those travel bookings. Talking about YOU putting together a book thatfeatures your best of best travel photographs. This idea is not new. Done so many times as youwell know. BUT… we’re talking an eBook, not a physical huge coffee table book. Unless that isyou have thousands of dollars to invest. Joking aside, if you do, then you could most certainlyself-publish your best travel images.

You have more than enough competition here, however most of these travel book authors aretrying to sell their books. You are selling travel. Your book is a means to an end. Mind you, youcould have a dual revenue generator if your book sells more travel AND it sells itself too.

Make a few notes here: If you did publish your own travel photo book –what would it be about, focus on, show, tell, explain?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Page 30

YOUR OWN PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS

Work with your preferredsuppliers, your adventureniche suppliers and in fact anyof your supplier’s groupdepartments who can build aphotography tour to yourspecifications.

Next: if you wish you cansell such products asNational Geographic’sphotography tours –they pay travel agentsbetween 8-10%.

Then again you can focus onyour own niche and develop aphotography tour around it,ask a photographic instructorto come along – building his /her fees into your tour costs -and promote a series ofexcellent off the beaten tracktours.

Page 35

TIME TO PLANOkay. We’re done. Make your notes below as you review this eGuide and try to capture thosefleeting “what-if” thoughts and ideas. If you have any questions on anything at all related tothe topic of his Guide don’t forget to use your one hour coaching time with me.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SHOOT AND SELL MORE TRAVEL. ENJOY!

Page 36

Click here to join The Travel Agent’s Store member list.

About The Author

Steve CrowhurstTravel trade keynote speaker, trainer, author &publisher.

Steve entered the retail travel industry in 1965 and hasworked from the front line to the executive floor, ownedand operated his own travel agencies, travel tradetraining and consulting firms and has worked from a homeoffice for over 20 years.

In 2010 he published his 412 page book 273 “No Fluff - NoTheory” Marketing Ideas for Travel Agents; in June 2011he published the first digital issue of Selling Travelmagazine, this was followed by Travel Agency Managerand Travel Trade Supplier magazines in early 2013. InOctober 2013 Steve published the first issue of IC TravelAgent a digital magazine targeting the home-based travelagent, ICs and OSRs.

Steve is now turning all of his workshops and webinarsinto easy to read, street savvy eGuides. Check back oftenat www.thetravelagentsstore.com for new titles.

If you would like Steve to speak at your conference orconvention, deliver management level webinars or workwith your executive team please email him directly:steve@smptraining.com

A complete bio can be read here.

JOIN THE STORE MAILING LIST, BE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUTNEW TITLES AND ENJOY A STORE MEMBER DISCOUNT TOO.

Page 37

PUBLISHED BY