Training: Day 3

Today was more exciting than yesterday (but still not that exciting in the grand scheme of things), so I feel that a play by play of what I did is not very interesting of a read. In short: we learned how to set up and take down a mobile studio (auto poles with clamps and expans that hold up the 12 foot long backdrop, and light boxes, cables, safety signs, etc. We took turns in pairs doing this (it looked harder when they were explaining it than it actually is, but still took about 15-20 minutes to set up). We also had a presentation about sales. Part of my job is working in the photo gallery, not only selling the photos to guests, but also frames, folios, digital cameras, disposable cameras, cases, chargers, batteries, memory cards, etc.). In pairs we had to present a scenario where we tried to sell a camera (plus add-ons) to a guest. We talked about which areas have the highest profit and most sales, and how me as photographers impact the sales before we even shoot a photo of a guest (being polite, friendly, enthusiastic, providing a positive experience, etc.).

We also talked about sales targets. For example, say there are 3000 guests on a 7 day cruise, if we take 1 picture of each guest each day that's 21,000 pictures. A target could be $2 from each guest each day (obviously nothing costs $2, it's an average of those who buy vs. those who buy nothing), which is $42,000 in sales in 7 days! For an event like shooting in the restaurant, in one sitting (there's usually 2 or more sittings) a group of photographers would be asked to take 3000 images (!!!!) and of those 3000 maybe only 25% will be sold. Obviously the more images you get (if the percentage stays the same) will result in an increase of revenue. Ah, math. not my best subject, but it all makes sense so far (still a bit shocked with the expected numbers of images they require from us)

They are throwing a lot of information at us in a small amount of time. I can't wait to get on the ship and actually start doing the things we are learning. It's one thing to pretend & create scenarios, but it is so unrealistic to the actual environment.