We recently connected with Brad Reed and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Brad thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
In January of 2012 my dad and I decided to challenge ourselves to a year long photographic project on the great state of Michigan. We agreed to only shoot on Tuesdays, but to shoot from sunrise to sunset (and sometimes in the middle of the night) on the 52 Tuesdays of 2012. If it wasn’t on a Tuesday, it couldn’t go in the book. We also decided to shoot and create movies each week that we would release every Friday on social media. The movies included the still we chose from that week, along with video and live narrations from the shoots. This project gained a huge social media following throughout the year and exploded our business. In May of 2013 we released a massive hard cover book with all 1278 images, and two dvd’s with the movies. The book won several gold medals for book of the year, cover of the year, interior design of the years, just to name a few. The book sold out in just over one year. The official name of the book and project was “Tuesdays with Todd and Brad Reed: A Michigan Tribute”.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My dad and I own and operate an outdoor photography gallery in downtown Ludington, Michigan. We feature our work, along with the photography of our manger Rachel Gaudette. We are proud to have one of the largest photography only galleries in the MidWest. We are know for our Lake Michigan storm photographs and our sunset photographs. We also love photographing wildlife, farm animals and farm life, trees and flowers, and the night sky. My dad has been photographing Michigan for 54 years and is one of the best selling outdoor photographers in the United States. Our moto is that our gallery in not a “store”, it is an “experience for the entire family”. We did shoot 35mm slide film with Nikon cameras up until 2004. Then we switched to 35mm digital slr camera systems. My dad, Rachel, and I all shoot with Nikon D850’s now with a mix of Nikkor and Sigma lenses. We do books on our area, along with Michigan wide books. In 2023 we released our first children’s book. Team Reed also stays busy teaching outdoor photography workshops all year long.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Know early on the value of your work and your time. Doctors and lawyers make a lot of money because they have spent years learning their craft. Same as most artists. However, most artists struggle to make good money. The difference is that doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc., formed national organizations early on and they all basically agreed on cost fixing their services as an industry standard. They worked together to raise the bar for all of them in their field. Artists have really struggled to do this. More artists need to think like business professionals.
When Facebook started to first become popular with the masses, I created a fan page for our business along with a personal page. I spent a lot of time on the platform and studies what worked and didn’t work. In those early years, the algorithms were a lot different and it was much easier to get seen or noticed. I decided to try and get as many friends as possible on my personal page. Within a year I had hit the max at 5,000 friends. I then almost daily on my personal page would post one of our outdoor Michigan photographs along with the caption and the meta data. We found that people loved the meta data and we prided ourselves on not keeping any photographic secrets. I would then recommend to my friends to go follow our business page and I would be assertive and ask people to share our posts. Within a few years our fan page grew to over 20,000 followers. As time has gone on, Facebook is now a pay to play game and you have to be very carefully what on how you write your posts on any page if you want it to be seen. We do believe that Facebook is still our number one way to reach our customers and to reach new customers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ToddandBradReed.com
- Instagram: @ToddandBradReed
- Facebook: @ToddandBradReed
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/toddandbradreed
Image Credits
Brad Reed
Todd Reed
Rachel Gaudette