About Rick Billings
This is My Story...
It was 1970 in Omaha, Nebraska and at the age of 11, my father gave me my first professional camera. He was a photographer in the United States Air Force, for 34 years. Those pre-teen years were very informative for the development of my career. He taught me a lot about my craft, business, and life and he didn’t even know it. I can remember one of my first money making ventures was taking photos of horses and returning with finished black and white 8×10’s to sell the same day. By the time I graduated from high school in 1978, I was photographing weddings and working for my second photography mentor, one of the top award-winning photographers in the Midwest, Les Hassel. Little did I know at the time…but my father was my first mentor.
Rick & April Billings when they purchased their first traditional business in October of 1985...David Lee Studio in Omaha, Nebraska. A few years later we changed the name to Rick Billings Photography.
Rick & April Billings when they purchased their first business in October of 1985. The David Lee Studio in Omaha, Nebraska. Rick & April Billings when they purchased their first business in October of 1985. The David Lee Studio in Omaha, Nebraska.It was 1985, and the hardest business decision to date was upon me as I had been working for my mentor Les Hassel for 7-years and we had become the best of friends. His kids were my age and so he was like a second father to me. I had become one of the top ten photographers in the state of Nebraska for 5 of those 7 years. One day a West Omaha photographer asks me if I would be interested in buying his studio and if so stop by sometime and we could talk about it. WOW, I was 24 at the time and he had one of the top 3 successful studios in Omaha. Just recently married, I decided to buy this beautiful home photography studio in Omaha. It took me months to put it together and after convincing a banker, I went in debt $267,000, in October 1985.
In 1989, I get a knock on the door, expecting a client, I was surprised by a gentleman from the State of Nebraska wanting to purchase my home (and Studio) to widen the intersection. Father Flanagan’s Boys Town was across the street and the property was an easy target for the land they needed. To make a long story short, I acquired an acre of land 50 feet behind the old studio in the condemnation. I had the property rezone commercial and as the result the price of the land quadrupled. I used that for a down payment and borrowed $500,000 to build an 8,000 square foot state-of-the-art photography studio on the corner of 132nd & West Dodge Road in Omaha.
8,000 sq ft Home Studio Rick designed and built in 1992 in Omaha, NE
Later in the summer of 1995, after a year of studying the latest digital photography technology, I started the transition of my professional portrait studio in to the new world of digital technology. Little did I know at the time that I would be a pioneer and be one of the first photographers in the country to use digital capture technology in their portrait photography business. It started when Kodak developed a camera for NASA with a CCD (charged couple device) that in my opinion met the quality of film. The biggest hurdle was the cost, at $29,950 for just the camera body with the CCD. But I had a vision and my peers thought I was crazy.
After gaining the interest of Kodak, I started lecturing on digital photography and spent the next 8-years traveling to over 40 States sharing what I’ve learned to help others. I coached people on how to successfully transition their film studio in to the age of digital technology. From 1995 to 2003, I was a member of a select group of professional photographers who serve on Kodak’s Digital Professional Photography Mentor Team.
In May, of 1997 I opened the first digital training center in the United States called “getDigital Training Center".
One of my top three goals in business was, to develop a business that could continue without me. I achieved that in March 1998, when I merged my business with aPittsburgh based company called PhotoWave. I relocated my family to Pittsburgh in June of that year and remotely operated the studio until April of 2003 when we finally decided to the studio to Tim & Jinnie McCormick and I’m proud to say Billings Photography in Omaha is still experiencing great success.
So, it was 1999 and my partner and I decided to launch a sports photography business online. Youth sports was a growing market at the time and we wanted to offer action photos along with the traditional team and individual photos that were taken every year. At the time my partner and I built and launched ASPN.com (American Sports Photo Network). With 5-million dollars invested as partners in April of 2000 there was a dot com crash. Thus, our path to an IPO was halted and we began to reorganize the business infrastructure.
My highly regarded position in the field of digital photography was evident in the fall of 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit. I was asked by Kodak to digitally photograph 189 heads of state of UN member countries including President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister, Tony Blair. A digital image was transmitted electronically within minutes later to news organizations throughout the world. The group photo appeared in full color on the front page of the New York Times the next morning.
Rick Billings Digitally Photographs 189 Heads of State at the United Nations The Millennium Summit – September 2000 – New York City Hosted by President Bill Clinton
In 2001, Kodak had stated “Rick Billings is one of the photographic industry’s foremost authorities on digital imaging.”
In 2003, Canon selected 11 photographers throughout the United States to be featured on a CD about “Digital Workflow” and I was selected as one of those featured photographers. Canon has distributed a quarter million of these digital workflow CD’s in our professional industry. January 2003, we relocated our ASPN.com business to Orlando, Florida as we continue to reorganize.
In my photography business for over 30-years I traded my time for dollars, working 12 hours a day. Yes, I made a nice six-figure income but I was always working. That got old! Then a couple years after my merger with PhotoWave, my world started to change financially. I knew I needed to make a change, so as a visionary I soon began looking for a business that would give me the ability to build it as large as I wanted, help others, and achieve the financial freedom in a shorter time frame then I had in the past.
Being online since 1994, I loved the power of the Internet, so I knew that had to be a major component. I have been using WordPress since 2006 and have mastered it very well. Today, I’m a Professional Network Marketer. I help people build multiple streams of residual income and achieve financial freedom. The freedom to be with your family and do the things you want to do, when you want to do them.
You Can Learn Anything in Life… If You Have the Passion & Desire Too!
So don’t fear the wonderful world of online marketing because if you want it, you can achieve it