Member Monday: Kévin Bonnin of Diamond Portraits

Q: Where are you located?
A: My home studio is located in the south of France in a small village of fewer than 2000 people called Beaupuy.

Q: Can you tell us about your journey?
A: When I first started to be passionate about portrait photography I was living in Japan with my pregnant wife. I discovered Sue at that time and my skills greatly improved.

At that time I had to keep my full-time job to maintain my Visa, so I didn’t consider photography as a career. I did try to establish it as a side business, but never past the portfolio building stage. Since I was following Sue and the group for so long, I got too used to see mesmerizing imagery from everyone. Meanwhile, I could still really feel my skill gap.

Fast forward to today, I’m back in France and I still have a full-time job working remotely as a web developer. I am now more determined than ever to make it work.   My wife is now also on board and we have decided to open a studio as a couple, which is very exciting. She wants to specialize in newborns and children, and I want to focus on adult portraits.

Learning the relationship between business, value and self-value have enabled me to be where I am now. I have a very well paid job that I can do from home and I can take the time to work on my business. My goal is to become a full-time portrait photographer.

Q: Have you had a transformative shoot that inspired you?
A: When we first got back to France, my wife invited her childhood best friend to our house. She’s a beautiful girl but she lost her mom at a pretty young age and then gained a lot of weight. Because of this she hated every single photo of herself and disliked being photographed.

I managed to convince her to give it a try. My wife did her makeup and styled her hair a bit, then we took a few shots and she began to feel more comfortable in front of the camera. We couldn’t tell if she really enjoyed the experience at the time, but when we did the reveal she showed her portrait to all of her friends.

This is exactly why I want to be a portrait photographer. Sue’s message has resonated with me so much—it’s all about the transformation, but to me, transformation is not really about getting all dressed up and having a makeover. It’s about that moment when you see that light shift inside a person and they start to shine and open up, and we get the honor to capture it forever.

Q: What are your lighting preferences? 
A: I love natural light, particularly natural backlight. Actually, I didn’t watch Sue’s strobe videos until very recently. I own one manual speedlight with a medium square softbox. I didn’t feel it would be good enough to take beautiful pictures.

Due to seeing that everyone in the FB group was enjoying Felix Kunze’s The Lighting Series, I purchased it. It changed my mind big time! I am now binge watching lighting videos both on SBE. As a result, I am now really enjoying playing with artificial lights.

Q.What is your average sale now?
A: Zero. As of now, I have only done portfolio building shoots. I did my last one a few weeks ago and don’t plan on doing any more. My portfolio is strong and I love and feel comfortable using it to start selling.

Q: What is your average sale going to be in a year?
A: 1800€ which is my middle package.

Q. How’s your business developing?
A: My price list is done and follows Sue’s teachings to the letter. My sitting fee is 180€. I offer three collections, the lower end collection is 960€ for 6 images and a folio box. The top collection is 2800€ for 25 images, the box, and one 16×24 enlargement. I also offer a la carte images starting at 180€.

Currently, I use Graphistudio to get boxes, mats, and prints. I am considering having my images printed at my local printer because he is very passionate about his job and does beautiful work. I’ll also have him print all my marketing materials.

For clients buying my middle or top collections, I will gift an 11×14 contact sheet of all their images printed on fine art textured paper. My logo will be on top and there will be a beautiful authenticity seal and signature on the back.

Also, I will get Emily London Miller’s templates as soon as possible because I find them amazing! They represent everything that I want my brand and packaging to be.

Q: What’s your marketing strategy?
Right now we rely on word of mouth and real-life referrals. Although I am a tech guy, I have a very hard time with social media marketing, because I just cannot get my head around it and how to make it work. Even looking at other photographers on social media sites, it seems like most of their followers are actually other photographers. It looks to me like a lot of effort directed towards the wrong demographic.

Another marketing topic is networking. It’s also something that does not come naturally to me. Fortunately, my wife is great at this. She’s the one doing the work on this end and getting to know other business owners in our area to connect with.

Q: What’s challenging right now?
I know there is a market full of people who will value my work enough to pay me what it’s worth. I am terrified of not finding them or be found by them. Time. I have so many things I want to do and so little time to get it done. In September both of my daughters will be in school 4 days a week. This will open up a lot of time for my wife and me to actually work on getting bums in seats and start selling. So we want to be ready by then. We want to offer the best photography experience and service in our whole region.

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently at the start of your career?
I would have done a lot less portfolio building and not tried to make everything as perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done, right? It took me a long time to understand that, even though I heard Sue say it a million times. I’m finally learning how to stop getting in my own way.

Q: Do you see yourself doing this in five years time?
A: In five years time, portrait photography will be my only source of income and I will have an incredibly beautiful studio space.

Q: What inspires you most?
A: Transformation. I genuinely want people to appreciate the way they see themselves and think about themselves.

Q: What have been your favorite lessons from Sue?
A: The Self Value workshop if my all time favorite. This is the one really opened my eyes and helped me get where I am today.

Another topic I love learning about is posing, which is something I really struggle with. I find myself watching and rewatching repeatedly and I learn something new every time.

Q: Have you taken any of the courses from The Portrait Masters?
A: I own The Lighting Series and The Retouching Series. Both helped me tremendously.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to say about SBE that could be helpful to new members?
A: I have been a member for long enough to witness an incredible amount of success stories and transformations. Above all, what you will find in SBE will not only change your photography and your business, it will change you. Sue’s work is resonating with me because she’s all about transformation, that’s her word, and she’s as true to it with her education as she is with her photography.