Business lights up for photo workshops

Necessity isn't the only mother of invention.

Boredom works, too.

Faced a couple of years ago with the slowdown that bedevils all commercial photographers during the Christmas season, Reno's Ira Gostin filled his idle hours sketching out a series of workshops for the next summer.

This year, the workshops will be something more than an idle pastime to fill a slow day.

Gostin expects about 200 people will pay anywhere from $300 to $600 to attend one of 10 sessions sponsored by Gostin Photo Workshops.

The first of the workshops is unfolding this week in Elko, where Gostin and a group of workshop participants will travel throughout northeast Nevada, photographing cowboys, ranchers and Western life.

They will have plenty of cowboys to photograph.

This, after all, is the week in which the 19th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering draws big crowds to Elko.

As the summer unfolds, other workshops will range from a four-day session on photography for travel magazines to creation of portraits on the playa of the Black Rock Desert.

It's a big expansion of business for Gostin, a former photographer for the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.

His work these days includes lots of shooting for corporate accounts annual reports and the like and about half his assignments are shot in locations far from Reno.

At the same time that he's shooting commercial jobs, however, Gostin also is teaching a photo class or two at the University of Nevada at Reno occasionally leaving his gear at a distant location under the supervision of the assistant while he scurries back to teach.

"I love to teach," he said the other day, and his experience in the classroom was one of the factors that led to the creation of Gostin Photo Workshops.

While Gostin himself leads a handful of the workshops, most will be taught by a cadre of his friends.

Tellingly, he refers to himself as "ring leader" in the group's organizational structure.

Among those friends are Kim Komenich of the San Francisco Chronicle, whose workshops will include one targeted toward advanced professionals.

Another of Gostin's friends, Brenda Tharp, will teach amateurs how to shoot for the travel magazines.

"It just sort of fell together," Gostin said.

"These all are workshops that I'd like to attend." Sponsors Fujifilm Professional Bogen Photo, Nikon USA, Nevada Magazine,Well Fargo, shootSmarter.com and Reno Color Lab signed on.

But marketing the seminars has proven more challenging.

The target market isn't huge.

Some of the classes will be capped at 15 participants, and the total enrollment of about 200 for this year's workshop series is only a tiny percentage of the pool of advanced amateur and professional photographers who would be interested in the seminars.

But that small group isn't easily reached.

Participants at last year's series of Gostin Photo Workshops came from across the nation.

That would seem to require a wide and expensive net across most of the country to catch just a handful of prospects.

But the second challenge comes from Gostin's need to keep the marketing costs low.

"I have plenty of time, but I don't want to put a lot of money into it," he said.

So far, direct mail and marketing through a Web site have done the trick, although Gostin also is considering a modest advertising program in magazines targeted toward active retirees.

The skills taught during the workshops aren't the only focus of Gostin's marketing effort.

He wants participants to experience the Nevada he loves.

Many of the workshops, for instance, are based at the Truckee River Lodge just down the street from the offices of Gostin Photography.

Most of the participants won't pack for home until they've had an authentic Basque dinner their last night in Reno.

"We're trying to be uniquely Nevada," Gostin said.