Do You Really Want The Help or Are You Just Making Excuses?

I had to laugh in an ironic sort of way.

Why is it that the people that need the most help often are the same ones with the most closed minds?

Let me paint you a story.

A photographer runs a business, yet can’t seem to understand why she’s struggling to survive. It’s not her fault after all. It’s the economy. It’s the industry. It’s everybody else. And occasionally she needs to confirm it in her mind that it isn’t her – it’s everything else. The odds are stacked against her and she’ll just have to wait it out until things return to “normal”.

So every once in awhile she does a little investigating to prove she isn’t at fault. She orders my Pricing Your Photography and skims it. Not reads and applies it. Skims it. Nothing new, AND SHE”S REALLY SHORT ON MONEY, so she returns it for her money back.

That’s perfectly fine with me. You see I’ve had hundreds of people buy my Pricing Your Photography, with only a handful returned (from people just like her). And the comments have always been overwhelmingly positive –

“I can’t believe how low I was pricing before. I’ve almost doubled my rates, and now I know why.”

“Now I know my business will be successful.”

“I’ve never looked at my prices like this before. You made something I used to guess at into a science.”

Yet I’m always intrigued when I hear the “nothing new after skimming it” that comes with a return. So I did a little investigating to determine how this photographer really is priced. And what I found didn’t surprise me – its definitely what I expected. [Read more…]

How To Change Direction With Your Business When You Absolutely Hate What You Do

It doesn’t matter what you do; at some point you will reach your absolute limit, and have the desire to start all over again. It happens to everyone.

For some people, they let a little piece of them die, and keep plodding along doing the same thing over and over again. They don’t change out of fear. And so the fear stifles their creativity, and holds them back from what could have been.

For others, they embrace the need for change. If you take notice of your desire to change and actually do something to put the change in place, that’s where the true results can happen.

Have you ever read Dr Seuss’ Oh! The Places You’ll Go! It’s one of my favorite books. In it is a great message: [Read more…]

Do You Need To Be A Storage Facility Instead Of A Printer?

One of my favorite parts of blogging is research. I love seeing what other people are doing, what they are thinking, and how they are setting businesses up for the future.

Today I ran across a great article on H&H Color Lab – Towards a Brave New World in Photography. And it reminded me of an article I wrote months ago – Photographers – The History Killers.

Digital is here to stay. And whether we like it or not, photography is changing. Twenty-five years from now, our homes won’t be set up the way they are today. Instead of a paper printed photographs hanging on the wall, we’ll probably have a screen displaying a series of images that we have pre-selected. We won’t use photo albums; we’ll use devices that allow us to store mega amounts of data in a variety of formats. We’ll be able to carry all of our memories within one small unit.

It’s coming whether we want it to or not. You can’t change it. It’s like standing at the base of a volcano and trying to hold back a flow of lava. No matter what you do, it will flow around you and just keep going. You can’t hold back the progress.

But it also makes me question once again:

Is this the generation that will end up with zero memories in 20 years?

I too have met people that treat flash cards like film. They keep shooting and buying flash drives because they don’t know how to get the images off the card. So the cards stack up on the desk alongside the computer.

Others rely on CD/DVDs, and expect them to be there 10 years from now when they decide to look at them again. They throw them into a box with all the other CD/DVDs – which ultimately has very little value, and very little significance.

Still others load their images on a computer, and store them in a file “personal photos”. They add new images every chance they get, and the file continues to grow.

I’m willing to bet less than one percent of today’s consumers backup their computer on a regular basis, if at all. I hear the horror stories all the time: house fire, theft, computer failure. It happens in the blink of an eye, and all of your data, all of your memories are gone in an instant. [Read more…]

Photoshop Action – Curling Page

Create an action that will add a curled edge to any image.

Create an image with a curled corner

With this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a curled effect to an image in just a few easy steps. This tutorial use the Warp filter added on CS2 and newer Photoshop editions

Let’s open a photo to start with for applying the effect to. For this tutorial, I’ve selected a stock photo

Curling Photo Sample

To start, we need to rename the background layer. I have renamed mine to “Curled Page”

Rename Background

Now we need to use the Marquee tool (Keyboard Shortcut – M) and select a small area

Curling Page Sample

Next we need to add a gradient to our selection. Start at the inside corner and drag to the outside corner of the image

Curled Page

Now deselect (Select->Deselect) or (Ctr+D)

Curling Page

Next go to Edit->Transform->Warp.

Curled Page

Drag the bottom right point towards the center. Press enter when you are happy with your results.

Curled Page

Add a drop shadow to your image

Curled Page

Add an additional layer for a color background

Curled Page

Finished Image.

Create an image with a curled corner

You can download the action here Page Curling Action
To install it just unzip the contents of the .zip file in your Photoshop actions folder.