Jan
6
Photographing For Inspiration, For Fun, and For Promotion
Filed Under Get Inspired Photography, Just For Fun | Leave a Comment
Many of you know I started a Photo 365 blog just a few days ago. I thought it would be fun to document the year through photographs. With my blog, I’ve chosen to see the world through snapshots – just quick photos of something that happened during my day.
Of course once you set up to accomplish something, you seem to find inspiration from all around you. Today I found Hamilton365, a photo blog dedicated to portraits of people in and around his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.
Some of his portraits are simply amazing. It’s definitely worth checking out for fun and inspiration.
Okay, now on to how you can promote yourself through a photo 365 blog. Imagine someone coming across a site like Hamilton365. After spending time looking through the photographs, you can easily get a feel for Larry’s style. And once you fall in love with his work, of course you have to find out more about him. And possibly hire him.
The key to all forms of marketing is to have fun with what you’re doing, show off your talents, and be just a bit different than the average photographer.
Something Larry is doing well.
Jan
5
Wedding Photographers Can Fill Up Their Calendars With Twitter
Filed Under Photography Marketing, Social Networking | 1 Comment
Are you using Twitter to book more weddings?
Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows you to communicate with your followers in 140 characters or less. 
When you visit Twitter, you can sign up for your free account. Then you can start following people you have an interest in, and others will follow you. You can write notes to communicate with your followers, and keep tabs on what they are saying. When you have something to share or wish to connect, you can reply or send a direct message. If you reply (for example, @LoriOsterberg would connect to me) I would be able to see your message, along with all my followers.
I must admit Twitter has become an addiction for me. I watch my feed and communicate with others on a regular basis. Yes, it did take some time to get used to Twitter and to use it effectively. But I can see the power of it, and will continue to grow with it.
You may be asking “Is Twitter worth my time?” and “How can I use Twitter to help my business?” Let me show you one way.
When you start your Twitter account, your profile is a bit different than other social sites. You don’t have the ability to create a profile with a ton of information. Instead, you want to use keywords in your bio; words that people will be using to search for people like you. In my bio, I use words that describe my expertise: photographer, author, trainer, online marketing strategist, coach. As people search for people with common interests, my specialties easily come up.
When you are creating your profile, put things in there that you want to be known for: wedding photographer, portrait photographer, maybe even list your city and state.
Jan
1
Photo 365 – Documenting 2009 in Photographs
Filed Under Just For Fun | 1 Comment
This year I’ve really fallen in love with blogging, and have made my blogs top priority for 2009. Throughout 2008, I learned of many sites that participate in photo 365 – taking one photo every day for a year.
Well, it sounded like an exciting experiment to me, so as of today, we’re off and running with our own photo 365.
I won’t be posting each of these posts directly to this blog. Instead, I’ve created a separate photo blog just for our images.
Virtual Photography Studio’s Photo 365 – Seeing The Year of 2009 Through Photographs
If you decided to start one yourself, let us know! I love looking through photographs – and I may just feature you here on my blog.
Happy New Year.
Dec
31
11 Things To Photograph Before You Die
Filed Under Just For Fun | 3 Comments
No matter what specialty you rely on for your income, a photographer always loves to try different things.
As we end 2008, I decided to create my own list of things to photograph before you die. I love the books behind this inspiration, and thought it was time to create my own list. So here we go.
1. A newborn baby sound asleep.
photo source The Portrait Place
2. A child being a child.
3. An amazing sunrise.
photo source PatrickSmithPhotography
4. A scene from deep beneath the sea.
Dec
29
Building Your Photography Business as an Amateur or a Professional
Filed Under Photography Business | Leave a Comment
One of the focuses of this blog is to help you build up a professional photography studio. For the most part, we focus on writing about the business and marketing side (with an occasional article on becoming a better photographer).
And through your comments on such posts as
The Pendulum Swing of Photography
Wedding Photography-It’s Not That Easy
Photography Studio – Going Out Of Business
The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals
I know you also agree there is a difference between the two. But how do you get the consumer to believe there is a difference? And more importantly, how do you get them to pay for the difference.
Dec
22
By adding an assignment to your work, you can open your eyes and really see a creative side. What if you had a project to do and the goal was to photograph just one thing. What would you do? Let’s take a look at one project…the color red. Color is everywhere and when you see some of the samples below, you will see on connection to each image and a large array of unique designs.
image by frazer4eos
image by NYC nikonian007
Dec
18
Imagine a bride heads to Google to start her search for her wedding. She types in wedding planning, and starts sifting through the sites that come up in the results.
Very quickly she’s going to find her favorites, and rely on them throughout the planning process.
That’s where directories can help you.
Everyone knows how to use a search engine – Google, Yahoo, MSN. Yet there are thousands of niche directories that make it easier to find things in select industries.
Let’s look at some directories that may be of benefit to you.
Dec
18
Online communities are a way to build relationships and trust. As photographers, we have an amazing tool for this arena at their disposal, images. Images are very powerful and can generate large amounts of interest. If your have a portfolio of images that share a theme or unique value, from creative talent to amazing viewpoints, share them online to start a following of your own branding.
We put together a list of image social sites where you can add images, socialize online, communicate within groups or just show off your images. To ensure that you generate interest toward your brand or style of images, modify your profile to include information about you and your website. Be sure and add your interaction by providing insight through comments on image postings. Connections are made, with a little interaction, you will see how establishing online relations will build a better following.
JPG shares with the visitor’s images and stories. Themed selections separate images into sorted groupings. JPG has a cool feature for working multiple shots and combining text that adds a story to your images.
Flickr is the king of image communities. Large amounts of digital images flow onto Flickr everyday. Flickr allows you to start your own themed group where you can specify what is allowed. Imagine if you had a group with only red squares. Make it unique and they will follow.
Photobucket - one of the most popular image hosting services around, favorite amongst MySpace users. Group albums, to let you collaborate together with friends and families in a single group album of photos and videos. Built-in searching to find the latest and best photos, images and videos to suit your mood, or entertain your friends in Photobucket’s huge online library.
SlideShare - SlideShare is a content sharing site where you can host and display presentations. SlideShare is the best way to share and find presentations. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar. Embed slideshows into your own blog or website and join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests
Dec
17
You can create a line drawing of your favorite digital image in under a minute using this simple technique.
We are using a stock image to show how easy this can be.
Here is our original image
Dec
16
A rising artistic trend in digital photography is HDR imaging. Taking a highly contrast digital file and converging the levels into a wonderful artistic image.
Wikipedia defines HDR as:
In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.
High dynamic range imaging was originally developed in the 1930s and 1940s by Charles Wyckoff. Wyckoff’s detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the mid 1940s. The process of tone mapping together with bracketed exposures of normal digital images, giving the end result a high, often exaggerated dynamic range, was first reported in 1993[1], and resulted in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995[2]. In 1997 this technique of combining several differently exposed images to produce a single HDR image was presented to the computer graphics community by Paul Debevec.
We have really found some incredible HDR images and wanted to share them.
images by fede0253
image by R | S Photography
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