My name is Larry Raynard. I'm Owner / Manager of Focus 91 Photography. I've been in business for about twenty years now and in the last twelve years I've mainly been doing portrait work. I would say probably ten percent of my time is taken up by actual photography. The rest of it is organizing things, getting things to the lab, dealing with banks and Accountants and all of that kind of stuff.

[Job Description:]

I spend a lot of time on the phone talking to people about what we're going to do and just taking care of business - which is a big surprise when you go through photography school. You learn all these wonderful things about photography and how to handle cameras and everything, but they don't teach you about how to get along with people and how to run a business. They do one little module in your class schedule about business and it just isn't enough. A lot of what your job really turns out to be is Administrative, so you can keep on doing the photography. Many photographers have sort of come and gone and part of their problem wasn't that they weren't good photographers, it’s that they didn't run their business properly and that prevented them from doing their photography. When most people get out of school, they probably want to get a job with somebody and that's really good because you find out how things work and the systems you need to run a business properly.

My wife Joanna works with me and I find that invaluable because you're thinking about the next shot and if you have a second set of eyes to look after that, that really helps. You have to establish some sort of leadership as well as quality levels that are up there. If something's coming in that's not good enough, we send it back to the lab. We do some extra retouching, to make it a certain quality level that we feel is the minimum standard to have, for our clients. I think that's what our clients are looking for. They want something better. They could get a cheaper portrait at Wal-Mart or somewhere like that. They're looking for more service and a different quality of product when they come to us.

[Personal Characteristics & Attitude:]

I'm always a Photographer first. If everything fell apart from what it is right now, I would still be going out and finding images. If I didn't have a camera I would probably be using some kind of charcoal on birch bark or something. But, you know, that was my first love.

If you're going to do portrait, you have to be very into people. That's what it's all about. If you don't like people, get out of it. We're creating family heirlooms and this is a really nice thing to get into and enjoy making it sort of an artistic kind of interpretation of the family. I think this is the best job in the world.

[Most Satisfying Aspect:]

The satisfaction that you get out of producing something. I can see what I've produced and can enjoy it. I can give it away to somebody else and they can enjoy it. You're juggling a lot of things and if you can keep them all in the air at the same time, it's really a satisfying feeling - to give somebody a product that they're going to enjoy for a lot of years. It's not like shuffling paper around or any number of other jobs that you could do. I've got control that way. Even when things seem pretty shaky, I am in control. I must have made some right decisions along there because I'm still in business. I think that's the whole thing, being able to direct things and decide which way you're heading with your business and any number of ways that you could go. But you find the right way.

[Change In This Particular Occupation:]

I think in this time frame you want to get certain skills, so you have to go to a school. At this time, we don't know how much longer people will be using film but we do know that people are still going to want family portraits. So this may take on a whole different aspect. We might be shooting with some kind of a digital camera.

[Attitude & Positive Behaviour:]

I wouldn't be in business if I didn't have a good attitude because there are times when you first start out when things are really slow - you're just sitting there and there's no clients coming in and the bank is knocking on the door and that kind of thing. If you don't think positive, you just close it all down and quit.