Timaru photography tips prove international seller

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 21

Timaru photography tips prove international seller

By

DAVE WILSON

The global expansion of home video recorders has, in the space of eight years, spawned a worldwide industry in producing instructional videotapes covering subjects as diverse as improving your golf swing to replacing the spouting on a house. It is an extremely competitive and lucrative industry. Home fitness videotapes can and have generated sales worth millions of dollars. Television companies are scouring their vaults, dusting off cookery instruction programmes and duplicating them on to cassettes for a new market. Ron Bisset, a Timaru professional photographer in the midst of developing a video business, studied the instructional videotape phenomenon — and believed he had found a niche, as yet not catered for. He set out to produce a series of videotapes on how to take good photographs, a series aimed at the serious amateur and the professional photographer. A year and a half later the first tape in the series has been launched on the international market and within a short time had notched up 10,000 sales on the New Zealand, Australian, United States and Canadian '< markets. Already Mr Bisset has been told he can budget on likely sales of between 16,000 and 20,000 copies of each tape. He is particularly pleased because the series is a Timaru and South Canterbury production — filmed entirely in the region using only local residents as photographic models. “There are other photography instructional videos on the market but they jazz the whole thing up, make it very entertaining and high tech — but they don’t teach the finer points of what makes a good photograph, they miss the nuances.” He decided to target the serious photographer, rather than someone demanding an "enter-

taining” instructional tape. “The tape we have produced is down to earth, without frills but intended to educate viewers and enhance their photographic skills. The success to date of the first tape suggests there is a big market wanting exactly this type of instructional video.” Mr Bisset, a professional photographer with 25 years experience, called on one of New Zealand’s top photographers to

host the first edition of “Pro Photo Techniques.” Joy Henry, of Auckland, the only woman Fellow of the New Zealand Professional Photographers Association and an acknowledged expert on portrait photography, acted as instructor. Mr Bisset said the instructional tape series was the beginning of what he hoped would, be a new photographic industry within South Canterbury.

No limit had been set on the number of photo-instructional videotapes to be 1 made in the area, and future spin off ideas included week-end seminars for professional photographers coupled with photo safaris around the Aorangi regional scenery. “Given the number of professional photographers and serious amateurs world-wide, and the exposure for South Canterbury in

the videos, there is a definite tourism spin-off for the district.” His company, employing four staff members and a further 10 people during the filming of each tape, is a potential million dollarearner on tape sales alone. The prospect of international success on the video scene is particularly satisfying to Mr Bisset, because it is success made on his home ground. In the last quarter century his career, while never straying from photography, has included spells as a journalist and public relations officer. Even when the growth of his video business suggested that a shift to Christchurch would be an easier option, he preferred to stay in Timaru. “My home and family is here. We like living here.” He said the idea for the photoinstructional videos was conceived early in 1987. “Like most photographers I’m always eager to learn more and have read hundreds of books and attended dozens of seminars. “But I’ve always had trouble remembering everything I see and hear at seminars. “During a visit to America I purchased several photographic instructional videos. They were not cheap, they ranged from SUSB9 to SUS3SO and only ran for 20 to 60 minutes. “While the presentation was slick, the tapes were also very disappointing. At the end of the tape you hadn’t really learned anything at all. “On one tape the photographer had eight assistants and they were working like a set like something out of a Hollywood movie. I didn’t know any photographers who could afford that kind of set-up.” The idea formed, to make a tape series with hints that any enthusiast photographer could reproduce. He wanted a “how to do it” tape that when dealing with baby photography, for example, con-

tained tips for a sparkling photograph that any parent could learn. “One of the important aspects is that the models are not professional, they are amateurs — all

South Canterbury people — and what we are saying is that you don’t have to have professional models to compose a great portrait.” While South Canterbury has

suffered its share of hurt in the rural economic downturn Mr Bisset believes enterprises such as his video magazines offer a small but significant pointer to future growth in the district.