PMA News: Capturing new customers with a regional photo exhibition

Alan Small from Taree Camera House has been running an exhibition for a month at the Manning Regional Art Gallery. 

This is Alan’s third exhibition in the last four years and it has been the most successful event by far.

So much so that the gallery owner had to rush out on opening night and buy more food for the guests.

According to the gallery, there were record numbers in attendance on the opening night and there has been a strong flow-though of visitors ever since.

Word-of-mouth has brought in visitors from all over the state which really demonstrates the power images have on people.

Alan has found the awareness of his store has increased since the exhibition started. An interesting note is that it was the gallery staff who took care of all the invitations to their clients, thereby exposing Alan’s store to customers who may not have been in the store for a while or who were not aware of its location.

Customer education is a very important aspect of running these exhibitions and Alan ensured that all attendees were made aware that this quality of imagery is within any dedicated person’s reach.

It is not the dollar value of the equipment they own but the effort they put in to learning the skills of photography that will have the biggest impact. The majority of the 45 images on display were taken with an amateur level DSLR kit and this fact alone gave a lot of the visitors a greater understanding of what is possible with modern digital cameras once they have learned some basic skills.

Alan’s own words say it best: ‘A camera is capable of more – so much more than the book tells you.’