Target The Right Clients With Your Photography

jackolantern

Happy Halloween! This has always been one of my favorite holidays. It’s a great time of year with lots of color, and this year its still in the 70′s here in Denver! No snow tonight for trick or treating.

Every year our daughter gets excited to head out and gather candy. When she was little, we’d take her just to a few in our neighborhood. But as she got older, we started going over to some her friend’s houses. One year a few years back, we ended up in one of the top neighborhoods here in Denver. And it was amazing the [Read more...]

Smoke Photography Study – Photography Themes

Photography themes are wonderful to work with and the study of smoke will really get those creative juices flowing. Here are a few examples of some stunning studies on smoke:

Flame by Jay PH.

PhotographyImage by Jay PH

smoke in blue by Idle Type.

PhotographyImage by Idle Type

Fading Flower by Dude Crush.

PhotographyImage by Dude Crush

Smokey silhouette by ƒernando.

PhotographyImage by ƒernando

Kodak Shows Photographers Power Of Blogging

Want to know who’s been using social media – namely blogging – very actively and effectively lately? Its none other than the powerhouse Kodak.

Kodak uses two blogs to connect up with their users and customers. The first is A Thousand Words. Its all about the stories surrounding the photography industry. As employees are out connecting with photographers, they are invited to tell the story on A Thousand Words – and of course add photographs to go along with the stories.

kodak blog a thousand words

The second is PluggedIn, which shares stories about Kodak products and the people that use them.

kodak blog plugged in

Both are well written, and you can learn a lot about both taking photographs and about some of the new technology that’s available.

Lens Rental and Camera Rental – Where Can You Find It Online

Have you ever thought of renting camera equipment or a lens to help you on a shoot?

1. You’re heading out of town for a specific shoot and need just the right equipment.
2. You’re shooting a wedding and need backup equipment.
3. You’re photographing a portrait and want more variety in lenses.
4. You want to try out a few lenses before you buy.
5. You need a macro lens for one client.
6. You want to play for the weekend.
7. Your equipment is in the shop.

No matter what your reason, there is a rental service for you. Check out this list of places to rent good professional camera equipment

Borrowlenses.com
CameraLensRentals.com
Lensprotogo.com
Lensrentals.com
PhotoLensRental.com
ProPhotoRental.com
Rentglass.com
TryAndBuyLens.com
ZipLens.com

Did I leave off your favorite place? Let me know. I’d love to add it to the list.

HDR Photography – High Dynamic Range Technique

We’re heading out this weekend for a business retreat – and to have a change of scenery. The Rockies are beautiful anytime of the year, so we thought we’d head up to a few of our favorite places and try are hand at a new technique – HDR photography, or High Dynamic Range technique.

HDR creates amazing images – almost surreal – that gives you a sense of being in a different time and place.

HDR is created through tone mapping using bracketed exposures. To create one image, you end up taking a series of images – one at the correct exposure, a variety under and over exposed – and combine them into one dynamic image.  The highlights and shadows are all represented, giving it the surreal look.

HDR technique

photo source petervanallen

HDR technique 2

photo source joep r

HDR technique 3

photo source smashingmagazine – check out the other 35 shots

I pulled just a couple here to show you what other photographers have captured. If you’ve experimented with HDR, I’d love to see your work.

Linking Your Photography Website With Other Sites

Have you ever heard the term link strategy?

Link strategy simply means connecting your website up with other like-minded websites. Over the years, there have been many thoughts on this strategy. Link farms were built to add a ton of links to your site in a very quick time frame. Resource pages were added to sites to give reciprocal links. Trading links with community sites was used to boost up your rankings.

But today, links are used to connect you up with other sites that can drive your visibility within your own industry.

A wedding photographer should connect up with wedding coordinators, florists, reception halls, wedding directories, photography sites.

A commercial photographer should connect up with ad agencies, marketing departments, magazines and stock houses, photography sites.

The idea is to be in the places where your prospects and clients will find you.

Now that you know what it is, want two easy ways to connect to links that will ultimately help you?

photography directory

Have you added your contact information to our photographer directory? We receive hundreds of hits every day, and welcome the opportunity to list your studio for free.

blog comment

Have you added comments on blog posts? Most blogs have the ability to add a comment to a blog post of interest to you. Click to the post page, and the comment box will be at the end of the post. Put in your name and email, and the URL of your website or blog, add a comment, and you’ll have a link back to your site.

Social Networking for Photographers – A New Market Reach

This month I’ll be teaching six classes on social networking for small business owners. And the offers just keep coming in. With the current economy, I think people are really starting to understand that when you have more time than money, its important to do the best things to help grow your business.

According to a new study by Cone Business, sixty percent of Americans use social media. Of those, 1 inetworkingn 4 interacts more than once per week. And 56 percent feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in the social media.

All of this continues to motivate me to help you, the photographers, develop your business in the online world. If you’re not blogging and using social media, you’re missing THE most important marketing tool available to you today.

Want even more proof? I recently did a post on stats from the blogosphere. The wealthiest, most educated persons are online, and are using blogs and social media more than any other audience. If that is your market, what are you doing to reach out to them?

I love being online because I can reach out and communicate with prospects and customers 24/7. I don’t have to open my office on their time – I do it on mine. If I choose to work three hours in the middle of the night, and take the morning off – its my choice. And the best thing is everything I do online will remain online – and impact me for months and months to come.

Can you say the same about your strategy?

Want help with your own social networking strategy?

photo source clix

Senior Photographer International – No More

NOTE: We just received word Senior Photographer International is back up and running. We look forward to posting more on the new event when more is posted. ~Dec 12, 2008

We just received word that Senior Photographer International SPI is no longer in business. timeless photographyAndrew spoke at one of their events a few years back, and we have always heard great things about the training they provide photographers that choose to specialize in senior photography.

So what does that say about our industry if large events are having to close up shop?

Only the strong survive.

Businesses can and do survive every economy, good and bad. Those that survive the bad may end up even stronger and more successful because they understand what it means to market their business, and how to run a profitable business. Keys to surviving tough times:

1. Become more customer service oriented. Because most large, box chain places cut back on help, it becomes harder to find great customer service. Make yours shine, and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

2. Learn new things. If you have more time on your hands, why not learn something new? Take a class with a mentor. Or learn all about social networking. It will strengthen your business in the long run.

3. Market more than ever. When times are tough, most studios start chopping their expenses. But cutting out marketing won’t help you, it will actually destroy your business. Now is the time to give it all you can, and find creative ways of bringing people in.

photo source timeless photography

How Big Should Your Online Photography Portfolio Be?

I’m willing to bet over 80 percent of all photographers websites have less than 25 images on them.

Why?

Can a prospect truly make a determination of your photography based on 25 images?

We all know that seeing 25 images means you’re seeing the best of the best. Even an amateur can find 25 great images. But being a professional means you can pretty much take a great photograph every time. It means that at a sitting, you only have to delete a handful of images, not every other one.

So why aren’t you showing everything you do at your sittings?

Even in the 90′s, we had over 20,000 images online for people to browse through. Yep, that’s with dial up modems. And the people still came and spent hours going through each one. They loved it! So how do you think we compared to the photographer that put up 25?

A good way to put multiple images onto your site is to use composite images.

Use one as your background image and opaque it in Photoshop. Then lay the others over the top, giving them dimension with shadows and borders. It’s easy to put up 20 or 30 images, all with one jpg. And as long as you make it a small graphic, it’ll have no trouble loading.

Your customers come to you for photographs. Make sure they are seeing everything you have.

Photography Motion – Photography Theme

Photography is such a great medium to work in. Setting out to capture images with a theme can enhance your portfolio, knowledge and ability. Here are some images focused on one theme…motion:

Motion Blur Frozen by Mariano Kamp.

ocean motion by H o g n e.

London in Motion by althani_1986.

Study of Curves, Motion and Colors by flickrgao.

plastic motion by Grant MacDonald.

carnival in motion by candleshoe.

Take time to experiment, to have fun and to open your mind….