A Camera, A Hustle, And Forty Years Of Reinvention with Kirk Voclain

Ever wonder how a “boring” photo of a metal part could move a seven-figure sale? Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society sits down with veteran photographer Kirk Voclain to unpack four decades of pivots, from a cereal‑box Instamatic to seniors that paid the bills, then into commercial, industrial, and real estate work that sells outcomes, not megapixels. Voclain’s story is part grit, part curiosity, and entirely practical: market directly when gatekeepers want kickbacks, promise ROI to businesses who must buy, and turn every shoot into downstream print revenue with albums, cards, and smart lab integrations.

He also digs into the moments that changed his trajectory: a teenage wedding that proved passion can pay, a decision to bypass school-volume politics, and a 2016 read of the curve when senior orders softened. Voclain lays out how he reframed photography as a business asset—product images that drive revenue, corporate visuals that recruit, listings that convert—and how he kept margins healthy by bundling design, using pro labs for direct fulfillment, and charging real money for files. His guide for the next generation is refreshingly blunt: avoid debt, make gear pay for itself, and price for the value you actually deliver.

You’ll also hear how he bridged film and digital by testing, showing clients one perfected digital image per session, and letting demand justify the switch. And because creativity doesn’t stop at the studio door, Voclain shar

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Chapters

• 0:00 Origins And First Camera Obsession
• 4:55 Teen Wedding Gig And Early Hustle
• 10:55 Choosing Seniors Over Volume Contracts
• 14:27 [Ad] PodMatch
• 15:06 (Cont.) Choosing Seniors Over Volume Contracts
• 18:33 Pivot To Commercial And Real Estate Work
• 27:33 Turning Real Estate Shoots Into Print Sales
• 34:03 From Film To Digital And Workflow Breakthroughs

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:52

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society Podcast, the photoimaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Media clip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 1:08

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by Kirk Voclain of, oddly enough, Kirk Voclain Photography. And he's coming up from Homa, Louisiana. And he's been a photographer for 40 years. And we're going to be talking about how the photography business has changed and how you react to opportunities. So hey Kirk, how are you today? How are you, Gary? Thanks for having me on the show. So you are kind of an old school photographer in the sense. You started with senior portraits, right?

Kirk Voclain: 1:43

Absolutely, man. I remember film. Remember film pull up where it starts with that.

Gary Pageau: 1:47

Hey, it's coming back. It's coming back.

Kirk Voclain: 1:49

Film's coming back. I think that would be fantastic.

Gary Pageau: 1:53

So tell me a little bit about um what drew you to the business in the first place? What made you decide I want to dedicate myself to long hours and low wages?

Kirk Voclain: 2:03

Yes. Well, if you want the the the long story, which I'll make it short. No. I was eight years old, no kidding, reading the back of a Kellogg's cornflakes cereal box. And it said, save up your box tops and get a camera. Wait, I still I have this camera. I have it. Yeah. Anyway, and so I did, and I got it. There it is.

Gary Pageau: 2:26

Oh, it's a Kodak Instematic.

Kirk Voclain: 2:28

Instematic 126 cartridge film. Remember those? Oh, yeah. So I got it. I take pictures and I start adding up the cost of you know developing and buying film and all that stuff. And I was like, man, this is entirely too expensive. I gotta figure a way how I can pay for all this stuff. You know, I asked mom and dad for money, and that didn't work. Anyway so fast forward, and I always look here. You you can tell this is the thing, this is it, this is the moment. You see this? Yeah. All right. This is the lens you look through. Right. See this? This is the lens that takes the picture. Well, that as a little eight-year-old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old, um, I that bugged me. I didn't know about parallax correction and all that fun stuff.

Gary Pageau: 3:12

Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 3:13

I just said, you know, we can put a man on the moon, but we cannot make a camera that you look through the same hole that takes the picture.

Gary Pageau: 3:20

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 3:20

Anyway, fast forward a few years, I'm going past uh this guy's truck that's doing a job with my dad. He was a painter, and there sits a camera. Wait, I happen to have that too. Sits this camera right there on his thing. I don't have the lens anymore, but there's this camera, and I'm like, dude, where's the hole that that you look through? Right. So I go ask him about that, and he says, Oh no, this is an SLR.

Gary Pageau: 3:46

And I said, What does that mean?

Kirk Voclain: 3:48

SLR. He said, single lens reflex. And I'm like, what does that mean?

Gary Pageau: 3:54

The whole world is opened up to you, right?

Kirk Voclain: 3:56

Yes, the hole that you look through is the same hole that takes the picture, dude. The angels were singing in heaven at this point, you know. The clouds parted, and I'm like, I have to have this. So again, tried asking mom and dad for money. That didn't work, right? So I got a paper out, I worked six months, saved up $200, blow your mind, went to JC Penny's, right? This is it. Okay, I slept with this camera that night. Okay, and a buddy of mine sees this camera and he says, Hey, I'm getting married. Okay, would you take pictures of my wedding? Now you would think I would have instantly gone, yes, but I was I was a thinker, you know. I was young, but I was a thinker, and I was like, Man, I gotta be in front of people, and you know, I don't know what to charge, you know. So I said, no, dude, would not leave me alone, okay? Would not, and he was like, please take pictures, take pictures.

Gary Pageau: 5:01

So, how old were you when this happened?

Kirk Voclain: 5:03

I this has happened, and I'm about 14, 15 years old. 14.

Gary Pageau: 5:06

So, how old was your friend getting married?

Kirk Voclain: 5:09

Um, I think he was 17, 18.

Gary Pageau: 5:12

Okay, so then so he was on a budget, is what we're saying.

Kirk Voclain: 5:15

Welcome to the South, okay? Right. I think my mom got married at 16, but whatever. It's another story. So, anyway, so finally I say to him, No, and he will not take no. So, in my pea little 14, 15-year-old brain, I think to myself, how in the world can I tell this guy no? And he gets it. And so I thought, I know, I'll give him a price, I'll say yes, he'll ask how much, and then I'll give him a price that's so high, so astronomical, that there's no way he'll accept. So he said, Would you do it? I said, Yes. He said, How much? And I said, $100. And he said, Okay. And so I I remember it definitively being at the reception, eating a meatball, thinking to myself, I just made a hundred bucks doing what I love the most.

Gary Pageau: 6:10

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 6:11

It took me six months to save up 200 throwing papers, right? And I actively started, you know, I had business cards made, you know, I started going after it.

Gary Pageau: 6:22

How'd those pictures turn out?

Kirk Voclain: 6:23

I mean, that I mean not bad, not horrible, you know. More impressive than the fact that I did a wedding at 15 years old. More impressive is the fact that some idiot hired a 15-year-old to do their wedding.

Gary Pageau: 6:37

Right. Okay. And you actually did the gig. I mean, honestly, if you look at what's happening in the market now, you get people who are hiring people to do weddings. They're not even either showing up or they're showing up and they're not doing the job very well. I mean, that's a whole nother story, right? Yeah, yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 6:52

So anyway, that is how I got into the business. I was about 17. I was still in high school, and I thought to myself, man, if I could get into the local camera store, I could, you know, be around all this stuff. I went to the local camera store at 17 years old, and I literally told the guy, listen, I'll mop your kitchen, I'll clean your bathrooms, I'll wash your windows. I just want to work here.

Gary Pageau: 7:19

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 7:19

And the guy said, When can you start?

Gary Pageau: 7:21

Well, I worked there right exactly.

Kirk Voclain: 7:23

I worked there nine years. I was eventually the manager. When that business went away, I'm like, I got all this camera gear, right? I got all this stuff, I might as well be a photographer. Right. And the rest is history.

Gary Pageau: 7:37

The rest is history. So talk a little bit about why you chose to pick senior photographer, right? I mean, because I mean you weren't really big into you know weddings and things like that, even though you got your start, you're kind of known for being a senior photographer. So what was what was the choice on that?

Kirk Voclain: 7:53

Okay, I did my fair share of of weddings. I did, you know, but I was more known as the high school senior guy.

Gary Pageau: 8:01

Yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 8:01

And anyway, short story long with that, I I tried to be one of these volume guys. I thought to myself, right, that this is this is the path. Right. And so, you know, I went to the school. The school says, Oh, again, welcome to South Louisiana. Oh, you have to speak to the school board. Right. So I called up the school board. They said, Oh, you have to speak to Mr. Smith. Oh, so I called up Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith said, Oh no, you have to speak to Mr. Jones. I said, Oh no, Mr. Jones says you got to speak to April. April said you got to see peak to Jan, who then said, You got to speak to Mr. Smith, who I said I already talked to. And that's when I I put it all together, that they all had their handout. And they were waiting without any padding.

Gary Pageau: 8:49

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 8:50

Nothing was gonna happen. Right. So I said, okay, fine. Y'all want to play that way? I will buy bypass your system, I will market straight to the high school senior and get them to come to me, and I will take their pictures. Well, dude, it didn't take but a second, and I'm run, I'm averaging two thousand dollars per senior running through this place, and I'm like, this is awesome, right? You know, they they don't have to be here, they want to be here, right? You know, and it was just it was a no-brainer, and I did that for a gazillion years, so that's how that came to be.

Gary Pageau: 9:30

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things the volume business wrestles with, of course, is the uh you know, pay-to-play and all that. People are there's still there's a lot of efforts in the industry to try to get rid of that, but like you said, there's certain areas where it's just entrenched and it's very hard for new people to get in.

Kirk Voclain: 9:45

Sure. I mean, and I I should have known it, I should have known better, honestly, because this town runs on the oil field. If oil is up, this town is loaded. If oil is down, everybody's poor, right? And and the oil field runs on well, what can you do for me? I mean, that's what makes it run, right? And so I should have known that because that was the mentality here, right? I didn't, and I was young, man.

Gary Pageau: 10:13

I was, you know, I was well, and then I mean, I mean, you know, and your dad was a painter, right? So he had a little different approach. It's like it's like worse.

Kirk Voclain: 10:20

He he moved mobile homes for a living. Oh, geez, he had hired this painter to fix something that you know they messed up, so yeah.

Gary Pageau: 10:28

Okay, all right, okay. So that was, but I'm saying that's a job where maybe you had to actually do real work, right?

Kirk Voclain: 10:33

My dad, yes, this is one of the reasons why I'm a photographer. He he wanted to pay me a buck a day to crawl under trailers and deal with sewage, and I'm like, I ain't doing that, you know. I'm gonna be a photographer, yeah.

Gary Pageau: 10:45

At least I'll at least you'll be upright, right?

Kirk Voclain: 10:48

That's right.

Gary Pageau: 10:49

That's right. So, so when you're looking at like opportunities, right? You you've branched out into different kinds of photography, right? You know, I mean, you do real estate and some other things. Was that more out of necessity because you saw where the industry was going, or what was part of your thought process on that?

Kirk Voclain: 11:09

Sure. I asked myself this simple question because I noticed the senior portrait world kind of tipping. People, it was harder to get them in the door. When they showed up, they ordered a little bit less than they were ordering. You know, this is how this bar chart, this curve started to bend. And I was like, okay, something's got to give here.

Gary Pageau: 11:29

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 11:30

So I gotta start taking note. And this is roughly 2016, by the way, in my world. And so I started asking myself this simple question what is it? You know, like for example, eating. You know, if you're in the eating industry, you have a lot of customers.

Gary Pageau: 11:48

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 11:48

Okay, because I mean, I don't know, I've tried to stop. It's hard, right? You know, everyone eats, everyone eats, everyone sleeps, you know, everyone wears clothes. So there's certain industries where they gotta have you. But let's be frank about photography. You don't eat pictures, okay? And so I've always said that what we do is a luxury, right? When when it stops where it's not as luxurious, where you know, you're not gonna make as much money. Right. And so I thought, uh oh, is this happening now? Is this what it is? And so I reasoned to myself, what is it that I could do as a photographer that would be like like eating, like sleeping, like wearing clothes? You gotta have it. And I thought to myself, that would be commercial, that would be business. If I could go into a business, now what business would say no to this? I walk in and I say, Look, if you spend a hundred bucks with me, I guarantee you that hundred bucks and let me photograph your product, you're gonna sell more and you're gonna make a thousand bucks. Now, who's gonna say no to that? Nobody. It's easy to get commercial jobs, you know. I started doing a little food photography, uh, and then oil field photography, what does that mean?

Gary Pageau: 13:12

I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean here's the I mean here's the thing, you know. I'm up north, yeah. You know, we have uh we don't really have oil fields up here, but it's almost like it's not like they're you need to make them look fashionable.

Kirk Voclain: 13:25

No, it ain't about fashion. They they use they use the pictures to get attract new business, they use the pictures to attract employees, okay. Okay, they they gotta put out the same corporate reports and all this other good stuff that all these other companies have to do. They got to do all the same stuff, it's just a lot colder and stuff like that. I photographed a piece of metal the other day. It was the most boring, horribly ugly piece of metal you have ever seen. In the process of taking the picture, I said to the dude who, you know, was managing me and walking me around the building because you know you got to be all PPE'd up. And he's like, I said, Hey, what does this thing do? And he starts telling me all the valves and the pressures and all. I said, Well, if I wanted to buy one, well, what'd it cost? That piece of what I looked like to me, it looked like junk was over a million dollars. It was like $1.2 million. I'm like, Well, why who's buying this? He goes, anybody who wants to regulate the pressure on the this and the that. And he starts telling me this whole story. They just needed a great image of it so that they could show people, look, we sell these right at $1.2 million a pie.

Gary Pageau: 15:10

And you're probably thinking in the back of your mind, now I wish I would have bid higher on this job.

Kirk Voclain: 15:14

You're doggone right, I thought we through my mind. I was like, dude, this is you're getting it for cheap, you know. Exactly.

Gary Pageau: 15:21

Well, you know, but it's a different value proposition, right? Because it could be because obviously, whatever this piece of metal does, it's very specific and it hopefully does it very well. Yes, so you really gotta plan for, you know, yeah, it may not be super complex, but it suits its need very closely, right? So what you kind of had to do is pivot into that world, right? Find photography that's gonna suit the needs for those customers.

Kirk Voclain: 15:47

Yes. And then, of course, real estate to me that was like a no-brainer because I went to Zillow.com and I looked home of Louisiana and I started looking at these houses that were half a million, 750,000, 350,000, 1.2 million, and and the toilet seats were up, right? You know, you could see the real estate agent in the mirror, and it was horrible photography.

Gary Pageau: 16:12

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 16:12

This is ripe for the picking. So I I literally put it out on Facebook. This is how it started. I said, if you've got a house you're having a trouble selling, give me a call, text me, email me, DM me, whatever, and I'll help you sell it. Catch 22 is you have to have cell phone pictures of it, and you have to have the ability to give me those cell phone pictures for marketing. Well, someone contacted me. When I walked up, I was like, hey, here's the deal. I'll shoot it for free, but you uh sell this house, you owe me 250 bucks. And they were like, Okay. Well, she sold it in in like less than a week after the two pictures went up.

Gary Pageau: 16:52

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 16:52

She wrote me a check and she's been hiring me ever since. Right. You know, so it's just fascinating to me that if you really set your mind to it, you can find stuff out there. Now, you told me earlier that a lot of your listeners are lab owners.

Gary Pageau: 17:06

Sure.

Kirk Voclain: 17:07

Okay, so how is this making any money for labs? It ain't and it hurts me to my core. Right. It does. It hurts me to my core that that use these images and they post them on the internet and they sell the house and they love me, right? However, there are things that I do that makes labs happy. Like, for example, uh I try to appeal, and I got several clients that have me do stuff like this. The people that are selling the house, this thing that I'm taking pictures of very sentimental to them. What if you gave them a nice album with all the pictures in it? And this is yeah, this after it sells, you say, Oh boo, thank you so much. Can you imagine what that would do for you? And she's and most of them are like, Oh, that's a killer idea, Kirk. And they they buy an album, okay, and it's just a simple, simple album that all the labs offer, right? And boom, they give them an album of the pictures. Another crazy thing that that they do is the new owner that most of the time they're selling a house because that person's buying another house. Right. Well, they will have me go do porch portraits, and it looks like that they handed them a $250 gift for me to show up and take their pictures. Reality, they pay nothing for this, okay? Because it's a little plastic card that the lab makes for me. It's got a cool picture of the couple and their baby on the on the front porch, right? And it's got, you know, how much what you're getting and all this other good stuff. And the real estate agent hands that to the their client and said, Look, let me show you what I've got for you. So that turns a real estate job into a portrait job, and that is good for labs because those people want prints, right?

Gary Pageau: 19:04

Yeah, and then that's one of the things is I think on the lab side, they've got to they've got to really start thinking about, you know, that the printing is not an automatic process anymore, right? So you've got to do find ways to monetize, which I'm sure in the senior business, you're seeing all that too, with you know cards and uh graduation announcements and all those people repurposing your images for that. Are you involved on that side of it, or do you just hope that once you give them the package that they're also printing, like like I said, senior uh graduation invites and stuff like that?

Kirk Voclain: 19:38

Yeah, like with high school seniors, yeah. Let me let me find one. I got one handy. It's a yeah, I do like cards, and almost every senior does buy that. Here you go. Here's one, you know, just like a little card. Yeah. And it's got you know all their pitches inside.

Gary Pageau: 19:55

But but but I guess you handle that though.

Kirk Voclain: 19:58

I do. I put this all together. Yeah, there's a fee for the card, and I explain to him, and this is justifies it. So if anybody's listening, you're looking for a way to get into the card business, this is important. You say they're three dollars, whatever you want to sell it for, three dollars a piece times the number you want that comes with envelopes. Oh, value, see? So the envelopes come with it, and that price covers the design charges. So it's like, oh, I'm not just paying three dollars a piece for a card I can get from VistaPrint for a hundred for a buck.

Gary Pageau: 20:28

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 20:28

You see, now I'm actually paying for Kirk to design this card.

Gary Pageau: 20:32

Well, I think that's part of the challenge, right? Is you gotta A add value and B make it easy and be and not leave it up to them to do it. Because I still think there's a lot of like, you know, I'm gonna say budget senior photographers who are like, hey, we'll just give you a gallery and we hope you buy something.

Kirk Voclain: 20:48

Yeah, there's a ton of them that just you take pictures and they hand them like the images on a thumb drive.

Gary Pageau: 20:53

Yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 20:53

And then and hope. I don't know. To me, that's silly. I mean, yeah, I have a thumb drive price too. You want to buy a thumb from me, it makes it worth my while. And I if you buy it, you know, it's like a hundred bucks an image. That's how I do it. Simple. But and a lot of them buy that. Okay, great. That that benefits me. And a lot of them, okay, blow this will blow your mind. Here's what a lot of people will do they will buy the images. From me, and then they'll go have them printed at Walgreens or somewhere like that. Don't like the images because, oh, by the way, every senior I photograph gets a nice book mailed to them with all their cool pictures in it. All right. So now they know what pick good quality images look like.

Gary Pageau: 21:36

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 21:37

Their thumb and they they thumb drive and they go walking into Walgreens and it don't look good, they will call me on the phone and say, um, how do I get like two eight by tens from you? And what I use is I use H H Color Lab and they have InView, uh, which is like an online ordering system. All of the lab, everybody has that now. And so I will tell them I'll put you, I don't call it H H and I don't call it InView. I tell them it's my lab. Okay, I own this. And my lab will set up an account for you to where you can send off your pictures, and I'll send you a link, and then you just order whatever you want, and my lab will mail the pictures straight to you, and that's what I did, and it works great.

Gary Pageau: 22:21

Yeah, and plus you're not, I mean, you're dealing probably with a little higher margin, obviously, on that on that, in that on that kind of order.

Kirk Voclain: 22:27

Absolutely.

Gary Pageau: 22:28

So when you made the switch from analog to digital, right? Because I'm sure I am assuming you're not still shooting with that 126 camera, right? What were some of the things you were considering? Because you know, I've you know, you hear people who like wanted to stay with a certain brand or they wanted to have certain features and things like that. Doesn't sound to me like that was a big consideration for you, per se. You wanted like a workhorse, yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 22:53

And I wanted something that that wasn't gonna break the bank, Lord. I remember when that first digital started rolling out, what were they 20 grand, yeah? $40,000 for a camera. I was like, nah, that's ridiculous. Now I know a lot of photographers jumped in and did it, and God bless them, but I just couldn't justify that. There was no way, so I waited and I waited. I remember Fuji came out, I don't even remember the model number, but it was a little, little tiny, it was like a little point-and-shoot looking camera, you know? And it was affordable, it seemed like it was $1,500 or something like that. And I remember I took that camera, and I'm I've always been super proficient at Photoshop. So I took the camera and Fuji wanted me to do a class at the PPA convention. So I said, okay, how about this? I can't remember DS300 or whatever the DNA or whatever the number was, I can't remember. So I said, okay, how about this? I will show everybody how to because this was unheard of.

Gary Pageau: 23:49

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 23:50

I will show everybody in that class how to make a 30 by 40 from your camera, 30 by 40 image. Right. And they'd be like, dude, can you do it in 15 minutes? Because we have like 15-minute classes. I'm like, yeah, I can do it.

Gary Pageau: 24:03

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 24:04

So what I did is I had a super beautiful model posed all perfect, and it was a comfortable pose that where she could hold it. And I literally, I literally took that camera and went click, click, click, click, click across her head, click, click, click, click, click, click across her shoulders, a click, click, click across her waist, click, click, legs, all the way to the floor, all the way to her feet. And I pieced all of that back together in Photoshop and made one huge file that I then ordered a 30 by 40 from and had it on display. This picture was done with that camera. Now, you want to learn how to do it, I'll tell you how to do it.

Gary Pageau: 24:43

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 24:43

And it blew people's minds because it opened up your mind to the possibilities that you know, just because it's a little tiny chip and a little small file, how do we get around these things? That's you know, and then you asked about the conversion. What I did is it was the Canon D something 30, maybe. Was there a D30? I don't remember. Anyway, it was the first affordable SLR type camera that Canon came out with. And so I I bought one, but I was still film, I was hassleblad and clickety-click and making a living, and everything was wonderful. But what I did was I shot my normal session, and then I told the senior, I was like, or family, or whoever, whatever it was, I was like, hey, there's this crazy new technology out now where you do like digital. I just want to do one image of you. You want to do it, and I'll show you the picture right away. Oh, yeah. So I would go click one image, I would then bring them in front of the computer and show it to them and do a little Photoshop magic, something to it, fix their eyes, something. Oh, and then I would include that in the album. Well, that year that I did that, people ordered more from that image because it was perfect, you know, it was perfect in every way. Everything was enhanced, everything was perfect. People ordered more from that image than they did from the film images. So the next year I said, That's it. We're we're jumping in with both feet and it shot everything digital. That's that's how I made the switch.

Gary Pageau: 26:15

But you still got your Hasselblad, I'm sure.

Kirk Voclain: 26:17

Nope, sold all that.

Gary Pageau: 26:18

Oh, really? Okay, because I mean I I mean you pulled down the uh the Minota SRT, so I'm just wondering if you still had that one.

Kirk Voclain: 26:24

This just goes back so far, you know. I didn't keep any of the Hasselblad stuff.

Gary Pageau: 26:28

Oh my goodness. So, what do you think? You know, if you were going to be talking to a youngster, your young gun today about getting in the business. I mean, I'm sure you probably you probably I don't know if you still attended conventions or not, but if you if you were to be talking to somebody coming in, uh, what would you be telling them?

Kirk Voclain: 26:46

Okay, do not get into debt, right? Okay, that is the number one thing. Do not, and it's like, oh, sure, Kirk, you done made your millions how in the world. I'm like, no, no, I never ever got myself into debt, ever, not once. And it's like, well, didn't you say you sold your studio? Yeah, I did. Well, didn't you have to buy that on time and all from the bank? Yeah, I did all that, but this the note, the studio had to pay its own note, right?

Gary Pageau: 27:22

You know, yeah, I know, right?

Kirk Voclain: 27:24

The business had to pay for itself, it had to, or else it wasn't gonna be done. I remember way back in the day there was a wide-angle lens for the hassleblad that I wanted. Dear Lord, this goes back so many years. I was doing weddings, I'm needing this lens, and I'm like, golly, but it's $2,500, uh, $3,000, who knows? And I remember I bought it.

Gary Pageau: 27:43

That was probably just for the for the for the case, was probably $3,000.

Kirk Voclain: 27:46

It might have been. It might have been five grand. It was a lot that for back whenever it was. I just I just just couldn't stomach it. But I put it on a credit card, and what I did is I calculated that it would take this much to pay back that credit card in six months if I paid this much every month, and that lens had to make that much money every month, and and as a result, you know, people would all if that wasn't happening, I was gonna sell the lens. And so it did, and I paid off the credit card bill. So that's what I mean about you have to be logical about those types of things when it comes to business and do not get yourself in debt because I know so many photographers who are not photographers to this day anymore because they got themselves in so much debt that when things kind of got a little slow, they couldn't live through it.

Gary Pageau: 28:42

So, one of the other challenges that photographers have is kind of you know, the the the rampant competition, you know, not only from you know moms with cameras and you know that kind of thing, but also just from people, you know, hey, I can take a good senior portrait of the iPhone because I got 17 lenses on it. Oh, yeah, that that's a whole another competitive environment that is relatively new.

Kirk Voclain: 29:09

I fight that because also oh so many high school seniors have the brand new iPhone, and if you listen to Apple, that iPhone does better than what my Canon does, which is not true, but they like to make people believe that, right? And so people buy into that, and I have tons of seniors who photograph each other with their iPhone and brace yourself, everybody knows the words, and you hate it. It's good enough, right?

Gary Pageau: 29:38

Yeah, yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 29:39

I'm like, it's not good enough, it should be special, it should be wonderful, and that's what I try to portray now. That's what I try to help people understand. Yeah, is that what I can do for you? If you gave me your cell phone and let me take the pictures of you with your cell phone, it's gonna be better than if your buddy who goes to school and takes pictures of you with your cell phone. Right. Because I know what I'm looking at.

Gary Pageau: 30:06

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 30:06

And you know, stock like I did I dabble a little bit in stock photography and it just fascinates me every time one of my stock images sells and I make 39 cents and it was done with a cell phone, it still cracks me up, you know?

Gary Pageau: 30:22

Right, yeah, yeah.

Kirk Voclain: 30:24

But yeah, it's a constant fight. It is a constant fight to try to help people realize that good enough is not acceptable.

Gary Pageau: 30:33

Well, especially when there are still talented people out there, right? I mean, you know, the challenge is, of course, when you talk about your PPAs and people like that, is you know, as an industry on that side of the fence, selling that expertise uh as value in the marketplace, right? It used to be, you know, your PPA credentials carried you. Yes, you know, and now you hardly don't people don't even use them anymore when they're you know, except for maybe somebody over 60. But you know, not to knock it. I'm just saying those credentials don't mean as much in the marketplace anymore.

Kirk Voclain: 31:06

No, I remember when I became a PPA master. I mean, people highly respected that. They thought, wow, that's the coolest thing, right? But nowadays, people do not care, man. They do not, you're right, they don't care.

Gary Pageau: 31:20

Yeah, which which is kind of too bad because, like you said, when you're trying to differentiate between, you know, the average run-of-the-mill Joe or Jill with their camera and someone like yourself who's highly trained, been in the business for a long time, and knows what how to compose a good picture, regardless of the camera, right? That's the difference, right? You're not relying so heavily on the artificial intelligence that's in an iPhone to do the job that you've learned over 40 years.

Kirk Voclain: 31:44

Yeah, absolutely.

Gary Pageau: 31:45

So, for goodness sake, as if you don't have enough going on, you also wrote a book.

Kirk Voclain: 31:51

Yeah, it's funny because that has been in my head for 40 years, man.

Gary Pageau: 32:00

Right, right. So, but it's not a unlike most photographers, it's not a photography book per se, and that you're giving people tips and tricks on how to run a photography business, or you're not trying to sell workshops, or you're not trying to sell some online course, it's actually a thriller, it's a novel, yeah. With a photographer as the protagonist. So tell us about double exposure.

Kirk Voclain: 32:25

Okay, so if you to understand this, you gotta. I mean, so many photographers are gonna relate to what I'm about to tell you because it's so true. So, all the photographers out there, you're gonna love this, but you know that with a camera around your neck and a bit of confidence, you can go anywhere.

Gary Pageau: 32:43

Right?

Kirk Voclain: 32:44

It happened to me, in fact, it literally happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. I was at like a pickleball tournament with my son-in-law, and you know, we were waiting in line because Drew Brees and and and Andre Agassi were gonna play each other, and so we wait in line, and then all of a sudden, here comes a dude, got a camera around his neck, walks up to the security guard, the security guard says, Excuse me, and the guy says, I'm the photographer. Oh, he says, Come on in, right? Right, and I was like, I should have done that. Yeah, I should have put a camera on my back, I'd be on the front row. Right, and so anyway, you know that this has happened to you over and over and over again at events. You can go places, you can hide. I mean, they you almost become invisible if you got a camera around your neck. Right. So he told me one day, what if a spy did that? What if a spy used professional photography as a cover? Anyway, that was 40 years ago. And I have written and rewritten this in my head for 40 years as to, you know, I I I places like I was playing golf one time at this golf course in Cabo. All right. And the way the cool thing about this golf course is that you play three holes, and then there's a comfort station where, and it's all included, you know, you you get a tequila and you get a margarita and you get a taco, and then okay, great, that was fun. And then you play three more holes and they bring you right back to the comfort station. Same one, and so, and then you play three holes and they bring you to the comfort station. Anyway, I thought to myself, you know, this would be a great meetup for a clandestine meeting of a bunch of spies because you'd be sitting at the table having your meeting. People think you're playing golf for four hours, but in reality, you're just sitting there for four hours. Well, that's in the book.

Gary Pageau: 34:41

Okay.

Kirk Voclain: 34:42

That I had to put that in the book.

Gary Pageau: 34:44

So, were you really a spy, though? Is the question.

Kirk Voclain: 34:46

Am I a spy? Well, probably not. I'm not gonna deny because there's so many things in this book, totally are things that have happened to me. The prologue, the very beginning, it says it talks about sneaking a prohibited item onto an airplane. Now, I will tell you, I've never snuck a prohibited item onto an airplane, right? But 40 years ago, I was going to some photography event, had my camera bag full of stuff, including a tripod. And what do we call that thing on top of our tripod that the camera fits sits on?

Gary Pageau: 35:21

It's a pistol grip.

Kirk Voclain: 35:22

Pistol grip, exactly. And why do we call it a pistol grip? Because it looks like a gun. Well, that the security, I'm going through security, my bag's rolling through, all of a sudden, two big dudes are on my shoulder. You know, the dude is freaking out, the machine's beeping, and he's like, I have to look at this bag. And he pulls the bag and he's looking, he's pulling. I'm like, go ahead, dude. I got nothing to hide. And he pulls out the pistol grip, and that's when it hit me. I was like, Oh man, that looks like a gun. He says, Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And I was like, I'm like, dude, keep digging. It's a photography gear, okay. Anyway, short story long, no problem. I'm allowed, I go through. Well, then I start thinking to myself, what if I wanted to do it? What if that was all a ruse? What if I was really trying to sneak something?

Gary Pageau: 36:14

Right.

Kirk Voclain: 36:16

This would be the perfect way of doing it.

Gary Pageau: 36:18

So that of course that's part of the thing, too. So so the book is just coming out right now, right?

Kirk Voclain: 36:24

Yes. I it literally, you know, hit the shelves last month.

Gary Pageau: 36:27

Okay, great. So, where can people go for more information about the book and about Kirk Vauclane photography in general? I want to hear about pitch the book and hear about your business after that.

Kirk Voclain: 36:37

If you go on Amazon and search my name, Kirk Vauclane, K-I-R-K, V-O-C-L-A-I-N, you'll find the book. If you go to KirkVoclane.com, that is my author's website. You can read all about me and the book and how this whole crazy story got started. If you want to see my images, that would be kvphoto.com. That's the photography website, you know. And oh, why not since I'm pitching? I also own a website for professional photographers where we exchange ideas and and you know keep each other abreast of things. It's P-R-O the number four um.com. Proforum.com. All right. Okay, good. That's the book, dude. That's in the book because I was like, Pro forum could be how the spies communicate with each other on this forum, right?

Gary Pageau: 37:30

Sounds awesome. Sounds awesome. That's great. Well, I can't wait to, I'm gonna check the book out. I've already looked on Goodreads. There's a giveaway. I'm gonna try it out. I'm gonna I'm gonna check it out.

Kirk Voclain: 37:40

There is a giveaway right now till what, December 5th on Goodreads.

Gary Pageau: 37:44

Anyway, best wishes for you and first you success. I hope I run into you in person when we're doing clandestine secret things.

Kirk Voclain: 37:50

That's right, that's right.

Erin Manning: 37:52

We're spying on the industry. There you go. Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.theadpixels society.com.