JOHN
MICHAEL
HANNAN
A long-standing high end New Orleans photographer, John Michael Hannan had a better-than-average life. His passion for people and zest for his art had led him to become one of the most sought after photographers in the south. Internationally recognized by Kodak, Fuji, Professional Photgraphers of America, South West Professional Photgraphers of America, and Professional Phtographers of Louisiana, his award-winning images and albums were acclaimed and applauded everywhere. Yes, things were great for John Michael … until Katrina blew into town. Then his life changed drastically. And the story of how he dealt with the disaster that was, and still is, holds important lessons for us all.

 

JOHN MICHAEL:

“My home is in Metaire, a suburb of New Orleans, about 7 minutes outside of downtown. My studio is in my home, which is within 10 blocks of where the canal broke. I did get water in my home, about 6 inches worth, and I was lucky at that. Some of my neighbors had 24 inches. I like to refer to it as a good dusting and cleaning. Of course, 6 inches or 24 inches, it didn’t matter. Anything that water touched had to go. Carpet, flooring, baseboards, wallboard, furniture, equipment, the works. “

“After Katrina, there were no phone lines for five months. I tried to do business via my cell phone, but the real problem was no one was here. At the time, I had 15 weddings booked between September and December. All of them either relocated or rescheduled. The people that did get married scaled the event way back to simple, single location events. Most just put off the weddings. You have to understand, before Katrina, weddings were huge here. New Orleans was the number two destination spot for weddings. We would have 17,000 weddings a year in New Orleans. Katrina took that all away.”

“For a while, I just gave up photography. I rebuilt my house, and then with some photographer friends, we gutted and rebuilt four or five other houses. After a while, taking peoples’ possessions to the curbs to be thrown away … well, it got to me. It was too depressing. So, probably a year later, I went back to photography. I had really missed it.”

“Katrina didn’t just hurt me, she hurt everybody, and people just left. In New Orleans, everything’s done on relationships. After Katrina, all your relationships were gone. All the people I knew in the wedding business … my entire network … everybody was gone. I lost 25 years of contacts with Katrina, and to say it hurt my business is an understatement.”

“I felt so bad for the families that had lost their wedding albums to the storm, that I contact the labs and negotiated great prices of 50% off and more on replacement albums. But people had lost their homes, their jobs, everything, and the insurance companies weren’t giving them anywhere near the money they needed. Most couldn’t afford to replace their albums, even at 50% off. Most of them just settled for a picture, one picture. Man, it was sad.”

“So here I am, still in New Orleans. And I’m reinventing myself. I won’t say it isn’t hard – it’s very hard to start over, especially in the same place. The experts say New Orleans won’t be back to the way it was for another 15 or 20 years, that’s how huge the damage is from Katrina. Sixty percent of my clients came from an area called Lakeview. If you go to Lakeview today, it’s like Katrina was yesterday there. Everything is still decimated. When that kind of rot and ruin gets down into your soul, it’s hard to get it out .. but we are trying. Right now, we need the media to understand all the good things that have happened here in the last few years, all the beauty that’s still here in New Orleans. We need people to come back here.”

“Once you live through a catastrophe like Katrina, you realize how valuable peoples’ memories truly are. For example, Katrina has given me a different outlook on releasing archived files to my customers. I now feel a huge responsibility to properly preserve my images. I feel it’s a necessity to print out the images and put them in beautiful album, to back up my files off site, and to give clients a back up CD or DVD that they can keep in their safety deposit boxes. Not to take the place of the album, never that: but just as an added precaution, should the unthinkable occur again. No, albums are way too important to the business of photography to ever be replaced by CDs. They’re one sure way photographers can make more money. Digital has hurt the perceived value of photographers. Albums can counter that. We have to learn the new albums, selectively adopt them into our line, and introduce them to our customers with new services. For example, I sell a Kids Club program with Nouveau peel and stick albums. We do a shoot every few months and fill a page or two in the album. By the time the kids are five, we’ve filled two albums. Then I sell that same family on a 12 year program, with a single yearly session for ages 6 through 18. The album grows as the kids grow, and is an integral part of building a long term relationship and bringing them back into the studio.”

“Yes, Katrina changed things for me, but then, so did digital, for all of us. There are so many new photographers out there now, and honestly, they just don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know lighting, they don’t know posing, they don’t know composition. They have no depth to their work, and they seem to be afraid of studying and working hard to learn what they don’t know. They just point and shoot, and then spend hours and hours and hours trying to fix things in Photoshop. That’s not art to me. If you learn the rules, then break them knowingly, that’s art. Breaking the rules without even knowing them … well, that’s just sloppy. To me, it’s an honor to be invited to shoot a wedding, to be part of the most important day in a client’s life. I believe photographers have a responsibility to orchestrate and create the wedding, not just capture it. It may be the clients’ wedding, but it’s your story to tell. That’s what worked for me before Katrina, and that’s what’s working for me again.”
(story continued on page six )