A few years ago, photography sites were often built in Flash and were complicated to update. Now, thanks to technology (and WordPress), you can create an awesome website without being a ‘techy’ person. That also means you can update your blog by yourself, without having to pay a designer and wait for them to do the job. But creating content means understanding how to create blog posts that appeal to your ideal client. Why blog, anyway? Your blog keeps you in continual conversation with past clients, future clients and professional partners. It showcases your latest work and your unique style. Blog visitors want to see the latest, newest, freshest thing. If they get hooked, they may check past blog posts to find a specific location
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4 Tips to Finding Your Photography Style
Finding your photography style can be difficult, especially when you’re just starting. It takes time, but once you begin working on finding your style, it actually gets easier. Here are 4 tips for finding your photography style: 1. Study other images. Determine why you truly like a photo. Is it the light, the angle at which the photograph was taken, the subject’s expression, the bokeh, the layering of compositional elements? The list of why you like a photo could be really long or very simple – maybe you just like the way the subject is backlit. Once you start to realize what you like about other photos, you can start to hone your style by emulating those elements. 2. Start studying your photographs. What are
A Wedding Photographer Reviews the Leica Monochrom
“Be quick, but don’t hurry.” – John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach I love this quote and I think it fits perfectly with photography. I started out with Rangefinders in wedding photography. Partly because those are the tools I had but also because I loved the intimacy I could achieve with a Leica due to it’s small size. I’ll probably get some flack for this from film lovers (hey, I’m one too) but with their new Monochrom – black and white 18mp digital Rangefinder, Leica has put the “Tri-X” back into digital photography. Perhaps they’ve even put the tried-and-true love of black-and-white back into wedding photography. I think there’s a different thought process with black-and-white photography versus color photography. With the Monochrom, I don’t have
The Pro Photographer’s Guide to WPPI
Headed to WPPI this week and next? Like 15,000 wedding and portrait photographers, you are headed to one of the biggest gatherings of people from our industry, that you’re ever likely to encounter. Whether you’ve been a dozen times, or are headed out for your first time, the entire experience can be a bit overwhelming (to say the least). Between the platform classes, master classes, impromptu classes, shooting experiences, mentoring, and of course – the parties – there’s a lot happening. Want to come back in one piece? Here are my WPPI Survival Tips: 1. Don’t try to do everything. You’ll hear this a lot from many people who have been there, but seriously – DON’T try to see everything. You can’t. It’s too big,
Monitor Calibration: Are Your Prints Too Dark?
Are Your Prints Too Dark? If your answer is yes, then improper monitor calibration is probably the reason. Have you ever wondered why when you get your WYSIWG (what you see is what you get) prints back from the lab they look darker than they do on your monitor? As professional photographers, we have a responsibility to make sure our monitor’s profile “matches” or is in “sync” with our primary print lab provider. Your computer, monitor and printer are all connected by cables tethering them to each other. This allows your printer to recognize your monitor profile. It should print accurately because of this. But what happens when a lab prints images for you, and the lab is thousands of miles away? In many cases
6 Ways to Affect SEO: Part 1
Photo by Flickr User SuperBoreen For many of us, getting viewers to our site from a search engine is one of the best ways of finding new clients. Here are six ways that you can affect the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site in order to get a little bit closer to that coveted first page on a Google search. But before we start, let me make a note about keywords. There is much talk about keywording, but in simple terms, this is all you need to know: what searches do you want to be at the top of? In other words, what will people be looking for when your site shows up at the top? For example, Amber and I want to be
What’s NEW with ShootQ for Photographers?
What’s new with ShootQ? That’s right – there’s a new a batch of updates to ShootQ that will help you streamline your photography business. This release is the second part of a two-phaser. The first phase was especially popular with portrait photographers. Here’s what’s new with ShootQ in this second release… 1. Product Options Visible to Clients – This feature lets your clients choose product options from the “share pricing” pages and proposals. While this has been an awesome internal tool for photographers to keep their product options organized, it is now also available for clients to view and choose options. With this release, the feature now works for ShootQ accounts…and our January Nimbus release will update this feature there as well! Read More Here >>> 2.
Harnessing The Power of Mobile Marketing With StickyAlbums
Ask yourself how many of your clients have smartphones, iPads or both? Our answer was – A LOT! We’ve seen a steady increase in website traffic from mobile devices over the last two years and when I checked again today, it’s staggering that almost 20% of all our visitors were from mobile devices. That’s A LOT of people visiting us from mobile devices! Over 70% of them were on iPhones and iPads. So, that got my brain thinking about how our clients see and share their images digitally via mobile devices. As you’ll see in a personal story coming up, mobile albums improve word-of-mouth marketing like nothing else! Both of these experiences led me to seek out a company that specializes in mobile client albums – StickyAlbums.
Coordinating a Team of Filmmakers
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.” – John Ruskin Whenever I hear of a filmmaker or wedding videographer documenting a wedding or special event alone, I scratch my head. Maybe I am worse at my job than most, but I can’t fathom being responsible for all the big, tiny, and fleeting moments that happen thousands of times at a wedding…by myself. Weddings are filled with “one-chance” events. Miss the first kiss and you are screwed. What if you miss the mother of the bride’s tearful reaction to the vows while you are busy filming the vows themselves? Won’t be the end of the world, but WHAT A GIFT to have that moment to give to the family! People’s memories are worth so
Backup Strategies: Cover Your Ass!
A few weeks back, Amazon’s web services had a major outage in their Virginia data center that took down some of the web’s heavyweights like Netflix and Instagram. People took to social media with pitchforks in hand immediately denouncing The Cloud and its ability to keep your data safe. One such pitchfork welding photographer stated how he has never trusted the cloud and he only backs up his data on site, but that was not the kicker. The kicker was one particular comment where someone stated that handing off your critical data to a cloud service for safe keeping was a kin to asking a complete stranger to watch your home and family for the weekend. I actually screamed at the computer when I read