Three Easy Steps for Marketing Your Photography Online
As a serious amateur or aspiring professional photographer, you’re probably aware of the many ways you can make money with your photos. You can sell your photos to magazines, newspapers, and other publications. You can market your fine art photography through a gallery, or even through coffee shops, libraries, and other spaces. You might explore fairs and markets — this is particularly effective at tourist spots if your photos capture the beauty and feel of the local scene. You can offer your photography services for hire, covering weddings, bar mitzvahs, company parties, and other events. And that’s just the beginning.
You also know that the biggest key to success with any of these ventures is creating publicity, name recognition, and demand for your work.
The web is a great place to do that. Here’s your basic guide for creating publicity and marketing your photographic work online.
1. Set up a website.
You need a well-organized, visually attractive website where you can host your best photos, share your story, and establish a presence. Your website should be easy to navigate and easy on the eyes, with a professional approach. It should contain pieces from your portfolio, a short biography that highlights your experience and past work, and easily-found contact information.
Of course, now that you have a website, you’ll want to send traffic there! The next two steps will help you achieve this goal.
2. Write articles on the subject of photography.
Position yourself as an expert on the subject by writing interesting, informative, and engaging articles for others to learn from and enjoy. There are a number of sites on the web where you can publish your articles, both more general sites and photography-specific sites. Most will be happy to publish your article with a short byline and link leading back to your site.
3. Share & publicize your work through stock photography sites.
As a photographer, the most effective way for you to communicate with your audience is through the language of images. With photos, you can directly demonstrate your interests, talents, and abilities as a photographer. Be creative.
There are many sites online which allow you to share and publicize your work. Some royalty-free sites allow you to sell copies of your photos directly to designers and publishers, making a small commission each time your photo is downloaded. Other sites provide the means for you to market your work to the public, using your photography as an advertisement. If you use your photography as an advertisement, you’ll want to make sure there is a way for viewers to contact you; a hyperlinked byline or credit is ideal. To find out more, explore sites such as Shutterstock.com, Fotolia.com, iStockPhoto.com, PhotoBox.co.uk, and Plinkme.com.
Salim Jordan is an entrepreneur and web developer. His newest project is Plinkme.com, a new type of stock photography site that helps photographers attract attention for their work. Visit http://www.plinkme.com to discover how you can share photos and gain dozens of free links back to your website.
Photographers Need Great People Skills, Too!
Being a photographer is about more than just being able to push the shutter down. A photographer has to be able to make his clients feel comfortable while still doing his job. People skills are important and they need to be appropriate with the situation of the shoot.
Being a photographer requires the skill and talent to take beautiful, exciting, attention grabbing pictures. It is an art and a business all in one. However, if your people skills are lacking, so will your business. If you do not know how to make your clients feel comfortable and relaxed with you your photography business will not succeed. You need those people skills to make sure your clients are relaxed and comfortable. If they feel this way taking pictures with you, they will come back and possibly become long-term return clients. If they feel uncomfortable in any way, you could lose their business for life.
4 Steps to Great People Skills for Photographers:
1. Maintain Eye Contact: When you are using a tripod to take someone’s picture line up the shot, and then step away from your camera to make eye contact with your client. You can then keep your eye contact by instructing them on their position, mood and angle. This will help make your client feel more comfortable than if you were to talk to them while looking through your camera. This can make them feel alone and uncomfortable. By making eye contact, speaking in a relaxed and conversational tone you can make your client feel more comfortable. If your client has to talk to a camera for the entire session, they may not feel very comfortable or much like returning to your place of business.
2. Don’t Let it Run Dry: Keep the interaction going with your client throughout the entire session. Make conversation, give them compliments, instruct them in their position, and just make them feel like they are talking to their best friend that they have known for a long time. You must earn their trust through conversation, body language, and your tone of voice, your words, and your gestures. This can prove to be difficult if you are a really shy person. However, you can learn how to be a more open person with your clients. You can practice with family and friends, or even just alone with a camera timer taking your own pictures. Imagine yourself as the client, and imagine how they would feel.
3. Let Them Be: This goes especially if you are taking pictures of children. It can be difficult to take a picture of a fidgety or playful child. Let them feel more comfortable during the shoot by just letting them be themselves. You can capture some wonderful and beautiful pictures of a child dancing, playing with a stuffed animal, dressing up in play clothes, and more. Having these props available will make your little clients feel more comfortable and want to come back to take more pictures. Do the same with your adult clients as well. Adults are more used to getting into a particular position and being still for their pictures, but you can remind them that they do not have to do that, especially if you sense that a client is a little fidgety. It can make them feel a lot more comfortable by allowing them to just be. Ask them what their favorite hobbies are. If they love to write, let them write or draw on a pad of paper. You could catch some beautiful expressions this way and possibly win a client for life.
4. Keep it Honest: Your client might want a picture of himself or herself with a smile, but they might look more natural with a frown. Keeping your pictures and clients honest will result in some great pictures. When someone has to force a smile, or position himself or herself in an uncomfortable way it will show through in the picture. Keeping it honest and natural will result in better pictures for you and your client.
So, remember that having good people skills as a photographer can really make a difference in your photography business. Keep good eye contact, keep a good conversation going, allow your clients to be themselves, and keep it honest and natural.
Get great Commercial & Advertising Photography done by http://www.mandarichphotography.com/
Digital GEM: Going Against The Film Grain
Reducing the grain that is found in photographic film has been a problem since the creation of film as we know it.
What is film grain you ask? To be technical, film grain is caused by the silver halide crystals in light-sensitive photographic emulsions. The faster the film, the larger the grain size. The larger the grain size the more evident the film grain becomes. Larger grains, or silver halide crystals, give film a greater sensitivity to light. That is why faster films have more grain.
Digital GEM is a technology that was developed by a company called Applied Science Fiction. The GEM acronym actually stands for Grain Equalization & Management. What DIGITAL GEM does is that it analyzes a film’s grain pattern, extracts all data that is related to image quality, color and sharpness, and removes the grain from the scanned image. This results in dramatically improved images. This is essentially the equivalent of noise reduction in digital images.
So, who should use this technology? It is my opinion that this technology should always be used when any type of film image is to be scanned into a digital format. When applied, this technology can greatly improve the overall quality of an image by reducing or, in some cases, removing the unwanted grain altogether. Using this technology in conjunction with other technologies and photo correction techniques your photographs can have the wow factor that you have always dreamed about.
Even in the world of digital photography these days, most photographers are using some sort of noise reduction technology to clean up there digital images. As part of my regular workflow I use Noise Ninja which is an excellent product that can be used as a Photoshop plugin. It can be run in automatic, which is great for running batch files, or in manual mode.
As part of my regular workflow when scanning in my personal images I always use Digital ICE and Digital GEM with a setting of 3 or 4 out of 5. These settings appear to give the optimum results for reducing film grain on images.
Unlike Digital ICE, Digital GEM appears to work very well on Black and White film as well as Kodachrome films. Digital ICE cannot be used on Black and White film, unless it was developed in color, and has reduced impact on Kodachrome films.
Digital GEM is considered to be part of the Digital ICE4 group of technologies. Also included in this group are Digital ICE, which is used to remove surface defects, Digital ROC, which is used to restore and correct color, and Digital SHO, which is used to optimize exposure and contrast. There are several scanners on the market today that use this technology today. These would include the Nikon Coolscan 5000 and 9000 series film scanners that we use as well as the Epson 4990 flatbed scanner that we use for scanning photographs and large format positives and negatives.
Stephen Cornfield is a photographer who has several years experience photographing weddings, sporting and informal events. His company, Photo Field Imaging, http://www.photofieldimaging.com, also provides photo editing, restoration and scanning services for all types of photographs, film and slides.
Printing Digital Photos At Photo Labs Tips
Digital cameras have become very popular with people everywhere nowadays. The prices of digital cameras have dropped a lot with the technological advances. Now do that means that the printing cost have gone down? That is assuming that you would like to have your photos developed as well.
Once you pay for the camera and memory cards, your costs are virtually none. That is true until you actually have a picture you want to print. You can take 40 pictures and if only two good shots came out of that, then you only pay for those two.
So where should you print those two photos? Printing from your own photo quality printer is definitely faster. There are even people who take a small printer with them and make prints for other guests on the spot.
Wal-Mart, Blacks, Business Depot, and many other big chains have decided to offer printing services. With all this competition comes low pricing. A typical 4×6 print from a big chain is cheaper than the retail cost of the do-it-yourself paper that the same chain sells in their photography center. Do not forget that at home you still have to pay for the ink.
Here are some things to consider when getting a photo lab to print your digital pictures.
- Almost all the major players have priced their 4×6 size very competitively. The larger sizes though, like 5×7 or 8×10, are usually higher in cost than what you can do it for at home.
- Can you conveniently upload your digital pictures to them via the internet or do you have to deliver them on a floppy or CD?
- Does your photo lab let you pick them up in the store, or do you have to wait for the delivery? Picking them up at the store should no cost you anything. If you can pick them up, is the location easy to get in and out of?
- How fast can they have your photos developed? One photo lab has a reputation of having most orders ready in one business day. Another is a bit cheaper, but takes a week.
- You may have to talk to relatives, friends and even the internet forums about the quality. Find others who have already tried various printers. One photo lab’s web site states that they will not print a picture with too low a resolution. This can be inconvenient, but assures you of a good quality print out.
Memory cards for digital cameras is so cheap now, so go ahead and take lots of pictures, and print out the ones that turn out well. Happy shooting.
To find out more information on the Digital Online Photo Printing Services and digital cameras buying guide, visit The Digital Camera Guide at http://azdigitalcamera.net
Shoot At Different Angles
When we shoot a photo, we have a tendency to shoot the subject horizontally or vertically. This is because we are conditioned by what we usually see. Newspapers, magazines and posters will usually show photos where the subject is in horizontal or vertical position.
But if you were to spend some time looking through artistic photography works, you would find that the subject might not be always in the normal horizontal or vertical position. In fact, there are top-level view, slant view, bird eye view and many others. Some of special views are achieved using special lens to capture the subject while others are achieved by varying the angles that the subject is taken.
As most compact digital cameras do not allow the usage of external lens, you can only try to shoot the subject at different angles to achieve special views or effects.
The best way to appreciate the art of shooting at different angles is by conducting an experiment. Get a piece of black cloth and put it on a table. Find a crystal, stone or anything that is small enough to put on the top of the black cloth. The important thing is that the thing you selected is not black in color. The purpose of using a black cloth is to provide a non-distracting background for the subject. Now that the subject is small, you can basically play around and shoot the subject from all possible angles. One thing to note is that you will most probably need to use a close-up mode to shoot the subject. You can shoot from the side, the back, the top or any weird position. You can shoot the subject as near as you want or as far as you want.
After shooting at various possible angles, you should go through the photos to see the difference between them. For example, a top view of the subject will be different from a side view of the subject. A left side view will be different from a right side view. A near view of the subject will be different from a far view of the subject. At certain angles, the photos will appear to be brilliant. At certain angles, the photos will appear to be dull.
Why? This is because the composition of the photo changes as you vary the angles to shoot at the subject. This experiment also tells us another thing. A subject may look normal at certain angles and appear brilliant at other angles. In other words, there is more than one way of taking a good photo for any particular subject. Do not be restricted by your conditioning.
In short, the simple idea that I will like to share with you is:
Be creative and playful by shooting at different angles.
Max Ng shares about his struggle for success at http://www.yourgreatestgift.com. He learns from successful people via online video seminars at http://www.secrets4me.com. His photography tips can be found at http://www.addictivephoto.com.
All The Secrets Behind The Best Digital Photography Courses
What exactly is a digital photography course and how can I get involved in one? With the newly popular hobby of digital photography, people are always looking for ways to improve their overall skills in taking photos. One of the best ways to do this is to take purchase an online DIY digital photography course. Alternatively you could enroll in an offline course and spend a lot more money.
So where can I find these digital photography Courses?
The best place to find a digital photography course is to go to any search engine and search for ‘digital photography’. Alternatively you can narrow down your search a little by searching for ‘digital photography courses’. This should bring up some good results. The first thing someone should do before they decide to buy one of these courses is to check up on them to find out which one is the best to buy.
This means that you will have to go to an independent site which reviews all the top photography courses and get their point of view. But don’t just get one opinion, go to a few sites and check to see if they also agree on the best course for you.
So what’s involved in a digital photography course?
Most digital photography courses will teach you firstly the basics of becoming a great photographer and secondly some advanced tips that can help you to create expert photos just by changing the lighting or some other changes that are necessary. The point is, if you are new to digital photography then you are going to have to learn a few things first before you start taking great photos.
Are there any free digital photography courses?
Most course you have to pay for, however there are some out there that are free. These are usually independent courses that don’t really offer a great deal of helpful information, however if you are just starting out, it’s a good idea to subscribe to one of these courses.
How do these free courses work?
Basically there are many photography sites on the internet that offer free courses, where they get you to sign up for email course. You will usually get an email with a helpful hint every couple of days. There are lots out there and many of them don’t offer very useful information, however they are free so you’ve got no reason not to join! Basically you can find them just by searching on the search engines.
If you want to know more about photography including free information, reviews and much more, or you want to join up for our free newsletter then please visit http://www.photographyinspector.com or for more free articles about photography visit http://photographyinspector.com/photography
Why Digital Cameras Are Environmentally Friendly?
As digital cameras are becoming more popular nowadays, it seems that everyone has one. You may have already purchased a new digital camera instead of a traditional film camera. The environmental activist may be thanking you for doing that.
The digital camera can reduce the destructive impact on the environment compared to film cameras. How is it possible? You may think that your film camera does not do any harm to the environment. It was not your traditional film camera that harmed the environment. Your film processing did indeed do the harm because film photo processing centers uses chemicals.
Any time you take your pictures to a photo processing center, the film is run through batches of chemicals. These chemicals are environmentally hazardous. Once they have been used to process film, the chemicals must be immediately discarded. These chemicals are the developer solutions and the fixer solutions.
When the chemicals are used, they have to be discarded in an environmentally sound way according to the environmental protection law of the country. Because it is expensive to do so, many film processing companies just pour the chemicals down the drain.
While many bigger and better known companies probably adhere to the environmental laws, many of the smaller companies probably do not follow the law. And this means these chemicals enter the water supply and go downstream. And we consume the water ultimately.
In international waters, cruise ships do not have to adhere to the environmental protection laws. Cruise ships dump raw sewage into the open ocean on a regular basis and that includes the film developing chemicals into the open ocean. This is done routinely and it is happening all over the world.
They develop your film for all the pictures you took while on holiday and then dump the polluting chemicals to the ocean water. And we are still wondering why our oceans are dying and our coral reefs are dying at a fast rate.
With digital photography, we do not need to use all of those chemical solutions for developing photographs. Most digital cameras nowadays use rechargeable batteries. These batteries do not end up being thrown away at our landfills everyday. This is good as we do not want too much alkaline batteries pollution.
The rising digital camera popularity perhaps has a net positive effect for the environment. With the advances in our technology, the manufacturing process of digital cameras may become more environmentally friendly too. Lets hope our engineers may devise ways to do so. Until then, enjoy your photo shooting and ply a part in reducing environmental waste.
To find out more information on the Digital Camera Prints Review and digital cameras buying guide, visit The Digital Camera Guide at http://azdigitalcamera.net
Projecting Motion Into A Photo
There is this new toy known as the flying kite. It can be flown using a remote control. The flying kite is decorated with a lot of colored lights. It looks especially stunning and beautiful when you fly it against the dark sky.
Maybe you are wondering why I am talking about the flying kite. Well, the flying kite accidentally ended in one of my photos taken during a particular night shoot. Yes, I was angry because it had spoilt my photo. I was snapping the fireworks display when this flying kite appeared out of nowhere and flowed into the scene that was being captured.
After my anger was gone, I examined the photo again. I found that there is a ‘trailing blurred effect’ of the flying kite. This effect gives an impression that the flying kite is in flying motion.
You can conduct a simple experiment to see the effect for yourself. Firstly, find a road where there is a lot of traffic during the night. Secondly, set up your camera on a tripod at the side of road to capture the vehicles that are passing by the road. Thirdly, snap a number of photos on the vehicles that are passing by the road. Please ensure you are at a safe location while doing the experiment. You may also conduct the experiment during day instead of the night. But the ‘trailing blurred effect’ is more apparent during the night shoot.
Examine the photos taken from the experiment. You will notice that there is a ‘trailing blurred effect’ for the vehicles that have passed by that road. The reason behind the ‘trailing blurred effect’ is because the camera takes a while to capture a photo. Let say the camera takes about 1 second to capture the photo. At 0.1th second, the vehicle is at point A. At 0.2th second, the vehicle has moved from point A to point B. At 0.3th second, the vehicle has moved from point B to point C and so on. As a result, the camera ends up capturing multiple images of the moving vehicle creating the ‘trailing blurred effect’.
Thus, if you want to project that a subject is in motion, you will have to create the ‘trailing blurred effect’. This can be done even if the subject is stationary! For example, when the subject is moving forward, the camera is stationary. This is equivalent to a case where the subject is stationary and the camera is moving backward. In other words, you can create the ‘trailing blurred effect’ by moving the camera in the required direction.
In short, the simple idea that I will like to share with you is:
Project motion into a photo by creating the ‘trailing blurred effect’ of the subject!
Max Ng shares about his struggle for success at http://www.yourgreatestgift.com. He learns from successful people via online video seminars at http://www.secrets4me.com. His photography tips can be found at http://www.addictivephoto.com.
Familiarize Yourself With The Camera
I still remember a funny incident where I was asked to take a photo for a friend using her camera. For a short moment, I was blurred and confused on how to use her camera. Apparently, I am so used to my own camera that I find it a little difficult to operate another camera. Thus, it was impossible for me to advise her on how to make the best use of her camera.
If I was given a very powerful camera then, I still could not make good use of it. I could do very little to use the powerful features of the camera to capture good photos. This is because I am not familiar with the camera at all. At such a time, I would wish that I had the user manual to refer to so that I could make full use of the camera.
You can conduct a simple experiment for yourself. Exchange your handphone with your friend and see if you know how to use it well? After playing with it for a short while, maybe you will know how to use the basic function to make a call. But when you try to use other features of the handphone, you will find difficulty in trying to use them. At that time, you will either wish that someone show you how to use it or there is a user manual to refer to.
Have you ever read the user manual completely at one go? I confessed that I did not. What I have done instead is to break down the exploration of the camera features in parts. For example, I am interested to know more about shooting portrait using the camera. I will read the pages of the user manual that talks about taking portraits. After reading it, I will practice with my camera immediately. Then, I will plan and go for shooting practice with real situations. In this way, I get myself familiarize with my camera slowly but consistently.
Once I have acquired familiarization with my camera, I can be creative on how to use my camera to capture a subject. For example, my camera has a ’sunset’ scene mode. That does not mean that I should only capture sunset using the ’sunset’ scene mode. I can use the same scene mode to capture sunrise or any subject where the effect of the light source is almost like sunset or sunrise. But if I do not know that the ’sunset’ scene mode exists in my camera, I will not have used it at all. This will decrease my chances for taking a good photo of the subject.
In short, the simple idea that I will like to share with you is:
Familiarize yourself with the camera so that you can be more creative in using it.
Max Ng shares about his struggle for success at http://www.yourgreatestgift.com. He learns from successful people via online video seminars at http://www.secrets4me.com. His photography tips can be found at http://www.addictivephoto.com.
Make Water Lively!
When the waves splash on the beach, I can see droplets of water flying in the air. When the waves crash against the walls of the coastline, you see droplets of water flying in air. I have tried to take the photos of waves before and this is what I have found out. If I took a photo of the waves without the droplets of water flying all around as it crashed against the wall of the coastline, the picture failed to bring out the liveliness of the water. Similarly, if I took photo of the waves before they reach the beach, they do not appear that lively. How did I know that? This is because I took a number of shots at the waves. And the only one that stands out is when the front wave hits the beach with splashing effects.
You can conduct a simple experiment to see for yourself. Go to a swimming pool. Watch as people jump into the pool. When a person jumps into a pool, droplets of water splash around the surrounding. This is like making the water alive. When a person is swimming especially in butterfly style, you will notice that the droplets of water fly into the air and splash all around the swimmer. These flying droplets of water make it appears lively and full of energy.
Basically, you can make water lively in a photo by creating the splashing effects. However, this may not be appropriate in a case of a pond. Since there are no waves in ponds, it is not natural to have splashing effect. Throw a stone into a pond and observe. If you are trying to capture the impact of the stone when it hits the pond, then the splashing effect is applicable. But if you just want to capture the stillness of the pond, then you need what I termed as the ripple effect. You can see ripple of water created by the impact of the stone into the water. This is only possible because of the stillness of the pond.
Well, how to create the splashing effect or ripple effect artificially? Well, you can do so by creating disturbance to the water surface. Maybe you can throw a stone into a pond. Maybe you can throw a basin of water into the swimming pool or the sea.
In short, the simple idea that I will like to share with you is:
Make water lively by creating the splashing or ripple effects.
Max Ng shares about his struggle for success at http://www.yourgreatestgift.com. He learns from successful people via online video seminars at http://www.secrets4me.com. His photography tips can be found at http://www.addictivephoto.com.
