january 2007 - Professional Photographer Magazine

CONTACT SHEET
Building a Dream
Calvin McDaniel staked his success on a new studio and its ambitious renovation
BY CALVIN MCDANIEL
“Build it and they will come,” says Kevin Costner
in the movie Field of Dreams. Two years ago,
at age 40, I shouted that sentence so loudly
that I finally heard it myself. As they say in the
business world, perception is everything; C.
McDaniel & Co. needed to create a new one.
Located on a busy downtown street, our
studio in downtown Morgantown, W.V., measured
a whopping 700 square feet. The camera
room was all of 10 feet wide—imagine the
fun we had hanging a 9-foot paper background
in there. We had hit a ceiling in annual
sales, and saw little potential for growth.
Children’s portraiture is central to our business,
but we wanted to expand our photographic
range and move into a larger market.
First, we needed a larger space. My wife,
Autumn, and I discovered a 5-acre estate
with a four-bedroom house built in 1927.
Serene and beautiful, the place stole our hearts.
We invested our life savings of $60,000
toward purchasing the half-million dollar
property. That’s a lot of debt to assume, but
my formal education was in finance and I knew
the meaning of leverage. Besides, the vision
Autumn and I shared was worth the risk.
26 • www.ppmag.com
All images ©Calvin McDaniel
The place had character but needed a studio.
We wanted it to wow clients, yet complement
the vintage of the house, maybe something
like a carriage house, we told our architect.
In action, the concept took on a life of its own.
Bigger, I kept thinking. “Why so big?” Autumn
kept asking. “To accommodate growth,” I said.
How would we afford to build a 5,000
square foot studio? The construction
estimate came in at $800,000. There was
only one way. I would build it myself, lack of
experience be hanged. Autumn ran the
photography business while a capable friend
and I put in two years of hard work. Now we
have a spectacular two-story studio that
blends beautifully with our vintage home,
and at a third of the estimated cost.
Still, that’s a lot of money. But there’s no
better asset than real property, and real
property can be leveraged, especially in a
community growing as fast as ours. We had
our property reappraised before starting
construction, and the appreciation allowed
us to borrow against it. Of course, this has
nothing to do with repaying the debt. But
we have the studio of our dreams and have
significantly increased our net worth. And
when clients drive into the estate, their impression
of us is Wow! And you built it yourself!
After just nine months in our new facility,
our sales have tripled. This owes much to
what’s going on inside the new studio, naturally.
We’ve hired two graphic designers in the
next step toward our long-term goal of
expanding our market. We’re developing a
strategic marketing plan to reposition
C. McDaniel & Co. as an advertising and
marketing firm as well as studio of photography.
We’ll become a one-stop resource
for high quality photography, graphic
design, message development, writing,
printing and mailings.
Realizing our dream didn’t happen overnight.
Neither will creating a new brand for
ourselves. But based on what we’ve built in
the past couple of years, we’re pretty sure
they’re going to come.
C. McDaniel & Co., in Morgantown, W.V.,
photographs families and children, sports
events, weddings, seniors and pageants
(www.cmcdaniel.com).