There is a new girl in town. She's friendly, cute, and nimble. She jumps from cities to cities, and tactfully befriends the locals. She's technologically advanced, it's very easy to connect with her. She's a pure millennial.
Should I go on? This new girl stole everyone's heart in an instance, which is okay. But what made us cringe is that she stole our jobs, too. And even worse, she also stole our friends' job. But that's not as bad as the fact that she had been stealing our parents' entire time and attention for the past couple of years. We were jealous but unfortunately we can't talk trash about her because technically, she's our little sister.
Did you get the catch? For those who haven't gotten it yet, I'll give you a little clue. I don’t want to mention names but her initial is an 'S'. And some other letters are 'weet Escape'. To protect her privacy, let’s just call her SE.
Two years ago, our parent, who basically is our founding father, blew life into SE and sent her to holiday photography wilderness. There, SE established herself as a disruptive innovation, comfortably positioning herself among the concept of Uber, and Airbnb.
So there’s no getting around the fact that SE takes the industry to a whole new level. She's using the latest digital media platform as a bridge between travel enthusiasts and local photographers everywhere on earth. As a result, she's capable of blasting over 400 photo sessions a month from 300 cities in all continents. Those photo sessions include family and friends snapshots, beauty portraits, and also those which are in our plate: the pre-wedding photo shoots.
What we have here, then, is SE's global network of photographers that covers highly diversified market, which, at a stroke, has made the traditional photography companies like us, look conservative, and old fashioned.
To keep up with this race, we have to be as relevant as SE. Meaning we have to rev up our engines to work harder, tweak our services here and there, and compromise our price tags to keep hold of our market.
Or do we have to?
Mind if I tell you, we don’t need to be fast and hype to stay on top of the game. It’s okay to be slow and steady, classic and timeless, as long as we keep enjoying perfecting what we know best. Comprehending love and its shapes within personalities. Rolling with surprises. Subtly slipping magic into people''s sleeves. I guess this is actually the right time to refine our market, leaving those who'd fall for anything instant, and focus more on those who understand perfection and value in-depth process.
These much beloved photos from Reginald & Debrina pre-wedding session were not finalised over a day or two of Whatsapp chats. We spent weeks arranging and finalising the concept. Our team carefully listened to what Reginald & Debrina were trying to express, and meticulously developed pretty mood boards out of it, avoiding cookie-cutter works. That’s the thing about Axioo's pre-wedding sessions. Concept, styling, itinerary, props, customisations, personalisations, pretty much everything can be adjusted to suit your individual unique taste. And even better, we can enhance it. Not just the output but most importantly, the experience.
Reginald is a remarkably well-organized person, Debrina is shy and reserved, while I, I'm the kind of man who relies my life on luck and has a tendency to bully people. However, the three of us spent enough time to connect and build trust with one another. And that trust becomes the runway of our magic. We had infinite laughter. I took time learning how to keep those beautiful glow in their faces. This is all because we are not a photography team that merely show up and walk away whenever the timer rings.
This is fun. Having SE introduced to the competition is a bit like implementing green energy to Dodge, or remixing any Rammstein song into Moonlight Sonata. We love our little sister SE and we need our little sister SE. Because why? Because ease is a greater threat than hardship.
Sweetly,
Adi.
