Reasons why you need to have video as part of your business marketing

Video today has become a bigger and bigger part of life on social media and if you are not leveraging that as part of your business marketing then you can be loosing out. Here are some of the reasons why you should be using video.

Video Increases Sales

Studies have shown that adding a product video or an explainer video on your page can increase the likelihood of a sale by 80%. Over 60% of businesses have started using video as a part of their marketing strategy and over 80% of those feel that having video has become an important part of their marketing strategy.

Mobile Users Love Video

Almost 90% of mobile users will watch video on their phone. People are more likely to stop and watch a video then stop to read an ad. Plus the number of smartphone users keeps growing every year.

Video is More Personable

When users watch a video they get to see your personality and passion for what you do. Sure you can read all about a product or service, but to have it explained by you will get you a lot more engagement.

Video can help your ranking on Google

Google now owns YouTube so having an embedded video on your website will increase your chances of showing up on the first page of Google search.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the reasons why video is so important for business and brands these days. While hiring a video production company to make these videos for you may not be the cheapest option your return on your investment will be well worth it. David Spector media has all of the proper tools to help you produce, shoot and edit a video that will help your business grow. If you are interested in having a free consultation to discuss options to help your business with video please visit the contact me page and fill out the form and I will get back to you to schedule an appointment.

New name, Same business

Hi everyone happy Sunday and I wanted to share with you some exciting news. Since my business is expanding into video I decided that I wanted that change to be reflected in my business name. I gave this a lot of thought on what to change it to and I finally decided on David Spector Media.

I was thinking about David Spector Productions or multi-Media but after talking to a few friends of mine and they all said the same thing "Keep it Simple" I decided to go with David Spector Media.

I kept the same logo design and just made the changes to the text. This will keep some consistency as returning visitors to my website will see basically the same logo. I want to play around with some of the themes that Squarespace has and see if there is anything I like better.

Now the next steps are to change the name on all my social media sites and order new business cards. I will continue to keep www.DavidSpectorPhotography.com linked to the site for a while to let everyone get used to the change and update their bookmarks. 

So that's going to wrap it up for this weeks blog post. I want to get back to work on the site and other changes I need to make. I will see you all next week.

Investing in my video business

Hello everyone in this weeks post I want to talk about a very exciting purchase I made on Friday evening that I hope will take the video side of my business to the next level. Since I have been doing video more and more I decided that I want to invest in a proper video camera. My Sony A7ii is a wonder camera for video and I love it but it has it's limitations. For me having a 30 minute recording limit is the biggest limitation. When I am shooting an event or wedding and I know that after 30 minutes I will have to stop and restart the recording and potentially lose an important moment or have to wait for a pause in the action to stop and restart the recording can be very stressing. The 2nd biggest factor in purchasing a true dedicated video camera is audio. While my A7ii has a mic input and i have a shotgun mic on the top of the camera I also have to use an external recorder to try to capture cleaner audio as I cant always be right on top of the action and depend on the mic to capture good audio. 

4K video is another option that I wanted to have. My A7ii can only shoot in 1080HD and since 4K is getting more mainstream these days I wanted to have that ability so shoot 4K video.

So what did I decide on you may ask? Well after doing lots of research  I decided on the Sony PXW-FS5 camera. For my run and gun shooting style this seemed to be the perfect fit for me. It's a lightweight, modular 4K cinema camera. It shoots full 4K video in 8 bit format but I have an option to upgrade to full 4K raw output to an external recorder at 12bit. 1080 HD video up to 240FPS in 10 bit 4:2:2 which is what I will be doing most of my recording at gives me a lot of flexibility.  As far as audio it has 2 XLR inputs with separate audio control for each input and will allow me a lot more flexibility. 

The camera also has a ton more features that I wont go into detail about now but I know this camera will allow me to do so much more and can open up a lot more jobs for me. 

I hope to get the camera in my hands this week and start playing around with it. Once I get is in my hands I will do some videos on it and upload it to my YouTube channel as well. 

This was an expensive purchase for me as the camera comes in at $6500 with the options that I choose but I hope to make it all back within the year or less. I will do another post on this once I have it in my hands and I can do a full review on it. until then have a great week and I will see you next Sunday.

Sorry that I missed a week. Dealing with some things

Hey everyone I apologize for missing a blog post last week. I have been so focused on getting the client edits done and I realized on Monday that I forgot to blog and I just said to wait until this week to blog again.

So I have had a hard time thinking about what I was going to blog about this week. I have been going through some things that I am not going to talk about at this time and I needed the time to absorb them and move forward. On a good not my new medication that I am on for my Hiatal hernia has been working like a charm and I have not felt sick for a month now. I have even gone back to eating food that my other Dr told me not to eat anymore. 

So with everything going on I have had a lot of things on my plate and I have decided that I need to take some time off for me and hit the reset switch. So sometime this week I will figure out when I can take a week off from work and have some time for myself. I will hopefully go down to Atlanta for a coupe of days and visit my sister and her family in their new house as they just move there from Ohio. I might also take a day trip to the beach and most definitely break my camera out and do some shooting for myself. This year I have really not shot for myself except one time and that needs to change. While I am happy that I have a lot of client work along with my regular full time job something needs to change so I can do some personal work and get the creative juices flowing again. 

That's going to wrap it up for this week again I am sorry for missing last week and having such a short post for this week but please bear with me and I should be back to normal soon. I will see you next Sunday. 

Is video taking over my photography?

HI everyone in this weeks blog I wanted to talk about how doing video is starting to take over the photography side of my business. Last year I got the opportunity to do the behind the scenes photography on two short films and I completely fell in love with the filmmaking process. I had been doing video for my YouTube channel up to that point but working on the set of those films really ignited a fire in me for filmmaking.

Fast forward to the last few months and I was put in charge of creating a YouTube channel for the camera store I work at Peace Camera and I put out a video every single week. So each week I need to come up with a topic to talk about then plan, shoot, edit and then publish that video which takes a lot of work but for me it's quite a lot of fun and I decided to add videography as part of my business plan.

My friend Steve recommended me to do the videography at a wedding that he was doing the photography for and the client hired me over the phone and I am currently in process of editing that video. I also will be shooting a EPK (electronic press kit) for another photographer friend of mine in a couple of weeks. A EPK is a commercial to promote yourself for those who were wondering and in today's age of social media I think this is a fantastic way of doing this.

While I still love still photography and it will always be my first love expanding into video is the right move for me. So if you think you would be interested in hiring me for any photography or videography work please feel free to contact me though the contact me page on my site or send me an e-mail at David@DavidSpectorPhotography.com

This is going to do it for this weeks blog. I am sorry it came out so late and that it is so short but I need to get back to work editing this wedding video. I will share the highlight video once it is done.

Running a YouTube channel for work

In today's blog post I wanted to write about a big new project that I am working on. A while back when I started working for Peace Camera I pitched the idea of doing a YouTube channel for the store to build up our social media presence and use it to showcase certain items in the store. Once we had finished the move to the new store location I was given the go ahead by the owner to start doing these videos.

For the first video I decided to do an unboxing video as those videos are some of the most popular videos on YouTube. We had just received one of the brand new Sigma 85mm F1.4 Art lenses and I decided to choose this for the first video. I tried to film it while the store was open and even if we were slow enough for me to film there was just too many distractions so I decided to film when the store was closed. 

i spent a few hours editing and making some lower thirds animations and I published the first video to the new channel. 

in the first day we gained 5 subscribers to the channel and a few comments that contained good feedback. The owner loved it as asked me to start doing more videos for the store. We decided that I would film and produce a video once a week to the channel. Now the next big thing to figure out is the content that I want to produce for the store. 

For my next video I decided to talk all about our used gear section as we are always buying and selling used gear. 

I am having a lot of fun filming and editing these videos. It not only forces me to push out a new video every week it also is helping me learn a lot more about video editing and also motion graphics. This week I filmed our latest video which was all about our huge supply of seamless background paper.

Next weeks video I think will be all about our wide selection of film developing supplies as every one of us at the store loves to shoot with film and it is certainly not dead in our eyes.

Now that I am producing these videos on a regular basis I need to start doing more videos for my personal YouTube channel. If you would like to subscribe to either the Peace Camera channel or my channel I will put links to both of them down below. 

Thanks for reading and I will see you in next weeks blog.

Peace Camera's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwLiuDE0QbHVdhksLgayQuw 

My Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdeTbKXbLpcEeRacp2l5J5g 

Saying goodbye to an old friend

In today's blog post I want to talk about saying goodbye to an old friend. (well sort of) When I first got into photography many years ago I went to Peace Camera on Peace St. in downtown Raleigh and I purchased my first DSLR a used Nikon D60 with an 18-70mm lens. This purchase ignited the fire in me and I found my passion and love for photography. 

I shopped there for many years. I have traded in my gear to upgrade to better gear and also have made good friendships with most of the people that worked there. I have also taken classes there and I have learned a lot from the staff members. 

A few months ago as my career path was changing I was given an opportunity to work there part time. I loved this idea as I would get to talk photography all day and pass along my knowledge of photography that I have learned over the years to customers who came into the store. Right after I started working there we were told that we would have to move. our location along with all of the other stores in the two to three block radius was going to have to do the same. A new project was going to rebuild the offramp from Capitol Blvd and then bulldoze all the buildings and build a high rise condo complex with a Publix supermarket on the ground floor. 

We had a few months to find a new place and move the shop. As the search for a new place began we knew that we had way too much stuff to move. When you are in a location for over 20 years you accumulate quite a bit of stuff. Every Saturday we would move our clearance items outside and have a moving sale. We sold quite a bit over those weekends and really thinned out what we had. 

We had also found a new location in north Raleigh in the Quail Corners shopping center. The store was much smaller then what we currently had by appx. 1800 square feet but we felt that it would be a good location for us. Plenty of parking and lots of food choices would help draw in a lot of new customers. 

Moving day had come and we had our last moving sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and when we closed up that evening we all stayed and started packing the store. Sunday morning we all gathered and loaded the store into the back of a U-Haul and what we could fit into our cars and started the moving process. It was quite a long day as we had to load and unload two full trips with the U-Haul and many other trips with our cars but we got it done. 

We spent the first few days getting it all set up and we had our grand reopening on black Friday. There were quite a few more trips made to the old store over the next few weeks to bring over as much as we could to the new location and I have to say I am really happy with how the new store turned out. 

Friday the 20th of January was the last day that we had the opportunity to get anything at the old location and have the keys so I decided that I wanted to go down there and take some pictures and video. 

I had mentioned to the others that in my previous stops over the last couple of weeks to the old store that it really looked like one of the old abandoned buildings that I love to explore and that I was going to photograph the store in that style. 

Looking towards the new equipment counter and the book section.

Behind the used equipment counter 

Lot's of old manuals for old camera's

obsolete camera parts

I also shot some video as well and I will leave that below for your enjoyment. While I say goodbye to the old store I say hello to the new one and hope to enjoy it for many years to come. If you would like to come see the new store we are located at 5039 Falls of Neuse Rd in Raleigh. until next week.

A Little Throwback

So for this weeks blog post I was trying to figure out what to write about. I haven't shot anything this week but I will be going out shooting tonight so I will have something cool for next week but I had nothing to share for this week. My wonderful and amazing girlfriend suggested to me that I do a throwback to some of my older work. So because she is so smart I decided to take her up on her idea and do a throwback blog post today.

So what to write about? I decided to write about one of the many abandoned locations that I love to visit and photograph. One of my recent favorites is an abandoned school that my friend Sterling told me about and we decided to visit it on one of the coldest days of the year.

The lone Red chair

It was 18 degrees that day and for me I love the cold weather but even I was freezing as we explored the school. The first place I went was the auditorium and I found this scene. I loved how the red chair was sitting there all along facing the rest of the chairs. I also found a piano and organ in there and got a shot of that.

My next stop was one of the classrooms and I saw all of the chairs stacked up and I thought it would make a great black and white image.

Nowhere to Sit

Then I wandered down to the library and when I saw this scene I was in awe. I always am amazed when places are abandoned why they leave everything behind. This library was full of books and a red leather couch. This was my favorite image of the day.

Overdue

Finally I decided to check out the upstairs which required walking up a very narrow staircase and the top floor of the school was a little dangerous to walk around as the floor was a little weak but I was able to get this image of one of the classrooms.

We got out of there after that to avoid being noticed by the neighbors. I did also shoot a video of the school and I will have the video below for you to watch and enjoy. I promise to have some new content for you next week.