Business

When dealing with a client’s project I will bend over backwards, even do summersaults and cartwheels if they ask. I will give 100% before, during and after the photo shoot to take their ideas or concepts and do what I can to knock it out of the park for a client. Sometimes the photographs end up in the portfolio, other times the photographs do not make the cut.

There are projects that you create for clients and there are others that you create for yourself.

A website is one of the most important tools for any professional photographer. A website allows your work to be found through searches, can be used as a great digital portfolio in a pinch, and is an excellent way to interact with your potential clients and fans of your work. However, when I look through others photographers websites, I find a long list of ‘No-No’s’ on a design level. So here are five tips to help improve your website's presence on the internet.

I've been out of college for just 8 years now and in my mind I am far from being "successful." I'm not going to pretend that I know what it takes to become successful, obviously I'm still trying to figure that out, but I've made enough mistakes to know what not to do. This is my list of the top 5 ways to never become successful.

Have you ever be interested seeing just how much information Facebook has on you? What if there was a tool that could take that information and turn it into an easy to read visual display? How about finding out what words you use most in your posts? (Mine happened to be "one" "shoot" and "wedding") Find out who you share the most friends with? And lots more data that is quite intriguing. All this can be discovered through a new tool offered by Wolfram|Alpha.

If you've seen the promotional videos for Lee and Patrick's new DVD, How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer, several different wedding photographers are interviewed about how they run their wedding business. Being able to have insight into their workflow, their way of thinking when they're shooting is such an amazing opportunity. For the next two days, our friends over at creativeLIVE are offering just that.

The commitment to do anything every day for a whole year is a difficult one. So difficult in fact that the very concept of a New Year's resolution is a joke to most. It's no surprise then that for a photographer to commit to a 365 project takes some serious dedication. Doing so means that you will create and publish something new, every single day. The question is: Is forcing yourself to be newly creative every day really worth it?

One thing that I believe is so important for the creative health of a photographer is listening to what other photographers have to say about their craft. I just got word that David Alan Harvey is going to be teaching at Gulf Photo Plus, and somehow David had not yet crossed my radar. As I began investigating this National Geographic photojournalist, it became increasingly apparent how much passion David has for his work. One quote that really stood out in the video above is "Take the photo first, and focus later,"

When I need to send a contract out to a bride or other photography client I never have a stamp. Which makes the document sit on my desk till I finally force myself to swing by the post office (which is never a happy place). Well now there is a website that can help you bypass the mail and hopefully speed up the contract signing process.

If you are like me, the acronym SEO brings a shudder to your bones. If you are a photographer with a website, you have no doubt received countless emails from sites offering to optimize your site for a fee. In this post, I will tell you the things I did for free or next to nothing that helped push my photography website to page one of organic Google searches. The one thing that I already had working to my advantage is that my website is a non-flash site that was launched almost seven years ago.

One of my favorite books is Love Is A Killer App by Tim Sanders. In it we read that business love is “the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles (knowledge, network, and compassion) with your bizpartners.” One person who exemplifies this concept perfectly is Jasmine Star and her series of videos called Shooting Star. The videos are full of great advise for new as well as experienced wedding photographers ready to learn new tips that will help them grow their business.

PhotoShelter released their results from a 2012 survey that was sent out to over 5,000 professional and aspiring photographers worldwide. The survey asked photographers about the various ways in which they were planning on marketing their photography business in 2013 and the results they were hoping to achieve from their efforts.

Stock photography has always seemed to go one of two ways. Either you make a great living, or you memorize McDonald's value menu; however, no matter if stock income is your main source, or a small residual you need to know about Getty's current partnership with Google. On December 6th of 2012 Google Drive (a free service) announced on their blog that “5,000 new photos of nature, weather, animals, sports, food, education, technology, music and 8 other categories are now available for your use

Websites such as Twitter and Facebook can be extremely powerful tools for our businesses however most of us are using them all wrong. Over the years we have continued to pile on layer after layer of distractions that in the end leave us feeling guilty of even trying to use social media. We walk away feeling like we wasted our time. It's time to regain control of these tools and use them for good to connect, be inspired and market ourselves. Read on to learn some valuable tips that have been real game changers for me.

When smart phones first started gaining in popularity I was one of those who insisted I didn't need one. I was quite satisfied with my flip phone and the ability I had to send a text message every once in awhile even if it took three presses of the number 7 to get the letter "S." When I finally made the leap to the smart phone a couple years ago I realized it was probably the single most valuable tool in my life for productivity, business, learning and entertainment. I wanted to share with our readers the 48 android apps I use most often and hear about your favorites in the comments below.

A few weeks ago I got a Facebook message from someone saying I should check out a particular website. The message simply said "I think this guy is stealing your pictures." We'll call "this guy" "John," and yes, John was using my pictures as well as other photographers' images and claiming that they were his own.

At a press conference a few days ago Facebook announced their new Graph Search which will provide a brand new search experience for it's over one billion users when it eventually rolls out to everyone. As business owners it is in our best interest to learn about how the tool works, how we can optimize our own pages to show up in the results and how we can even use it to mine new business in the future.

Earlier this week Mass. Attorney General, Martha Coakley, filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against a Millbury, Massachusetts videography studio for allegedly scamming several newlyweds out nearly $75,000 worth of wedding videography services and precious memories. The company, Sure Shot Videography is accused of taking newlyweds' deposits and either not showing up to the wedding or for never delivering the final product videos.

Starting tomorrow January 12 at 9am creativeLIVE will host Adobe certified expert, Jason Hoppe as he teaches everything you need to know to make an interactive PDF. In this 2-day workshop, Jason will show you how to create forms, use calculations and JavaScript, distribute PDFs, create hyperlinks and bookmarks, and how to embed files in your PDF. As a photographer, this is a very helpful tool to have in your back pocket and you'll impress your clients at the same time.

If you keep up with the photography community in the slightest, you have probably heard about Gulf Photo Plus. GPP is the largest international gathering of professional photographers in one of the most interesting cities in the world: Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This year will be the first year Fstoppers will be attending and Lee and I are beyond excited. Continue reading to see how you

Starting tomorrow January 9th, wedding photographer, Jasmine Star will be doing a different type of workshop. Hosted by our friends over at creativeLIVE, Jasmine is doing a 3 part series over 3 months on how to completely start your photography business from scratch. Be sure to tune in on January 9, February 13, and March 6 to learn how to rebrand and recreate your photography business.

My Facebook news feed is being littered with photographers today announcing from their soap box that they won the 2012 Bride’s Choice Award thereby putting them in the Top 5% of their industry. Some may call it an award, I call it a deceptive marketing scheme.

UPDATE: CONTEST ENDS TOMORROW! After 2 full years, it is finally done! Our digital download, How To Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer "DVD" tutorial is ready to be released. Lee and I have spent countless hours in filming, editing, and producing this 14+ hour tutorial, and we want to give three lucky Fstoppers readers a free, pre-release copy in its entirety. And to top it off, we are giving each of those 3 winners one of our secret light modifiers currently in preproduction.

I’m driving a beautiful triple-black Aston Martin DB9 V12 down a florida highway. Its nose so long that the sun striking it practically blinds me. AC/DC is blasting on the radio and the car’s 12 cylinders roar at the slightest touch to the throttle. One client has loaned me his beautiful British exotic so I could drive 90 minutes away to briefly meet another private client about photographing his multi-million dollar Bugatti supercar collection. Surreal, right? This sort of experience has become sort of commonplace for me recently, but it never becomes any less mind-blowing. Sometimes I just sit and wonder: how did I even get here? This is just crazy.

Let's be honest, writing for a photography website, you notice that a lot of us photographers like to gripe at each other. Hey, you're more than welcome to express yourself as you wish since this is the internet and all. Although, I wanted to do a short positive post about how and why we should be a little nicer to each other. Sometimes it equals more resources and more money. Reason enough for you?

I did this post for my personal photography blog, but I figured this is an important subject that I hope the Fstoppers community will benefit from. By all means add to this list in the comments below if you have any suggestions!

I get this email all the time: "I’m a new/aspiring/struggling/young photographer and I want to know what advice you have for me?" I literally get this email or tweet or facebook message daily.

Sometimes if opportunity doesn't come knocking you just have to build the door yourself, or in Judson Collier's case an epic website as an intern proposal letter. The website/fancy letter was written to famed photographer Jeremy Cowart. I was blown away at the sheer creativity, not to mention ballsy approach to asking someone for a job. Judson goes into great detail on why he would like to intern, his strengths and why he believes he would be great at the job, including making a mean cup of coffee.

Instragram just updated their new terms of service today, and the fine print, while not shocking, certainly is concerning especially if you use the service to show off your work. Instagram has stated that starting on Jan. 16 the service will be able to use and sell your images for advertising without your knowledge and without offering compensation leaving users with the short end of the stick.

As I said in a previous article, I believe successful people are "do'ers." As creatives, sometimes getting things accomplished can seem like an impossible task, especially when we have so many things that need to get done. As a world class procrastinator myself, I found this quick, 3 minute video to be packed full of useful tips on productivity.

How do you turn the mobile email inbox into a to-do list, but in a non-obtrusive way? Cloud to-do list company Orchestra today announced Mailbox, an email client for the iPhone it's been building for the last year which will launch soon — a beautifully designed messaging client meshed with a swipe-able productivity app. "Most everyone uses email on their phones, and most everyone hates it," Orchestra CEO Gentry Underwood says. "We feel like that's a big opportunity to make a small improvement in a lot of people's lives."

Today (make sure you watch this CreateNow event that you could register for last week) Adobe is unveiling a host of changes to Photoshop and the Creative Cloud. There is a good amount of new stuff, but I'm going to highlight the things I think you guys will find most useful and stuff that I found to be the most interesting as far as a a lot of power and flexibility in a program. As much as I might say, if you have the time I really suggest taking part in their live stream, as they will go into more detail than I will.

This past November while on a trip to Colorado, I had the chance to meet up with Celin Serbo, an outdoor lifestyle photographer whose client list includes the likes of Nikon, Backpacker Magazine, Nat Geo Adventure, and First Ascent, among many others. We spoke about the challenges of capturing images in the field, the importance of being business-savvy, and the obstacles of incorporating filmmaking into the services he offers.

According to Bloomberg, famous tech rivals Apple and Google have teamed up to offer $500 million for Kodak's roughly 1,100 photo-related patents. While the partnership may seem odd, given infamous battles between Apple and some companies with close relationships with Google (most notably, Samsung), the partnership enables both companies to expand into new and different areas of photographic technology at a relatively low cost...

If you suffer from self-diagnosed A.D.D like most creative professionals, then you need to tune into this free workshop with Jared Platt. From the moment you book the job to the final delivery of the images, Jared will show you efficient techniques that will help improve your workflow. This 3-day workshop starts tomorrow December 6th - December 8th at 9AM. As with all creativeLIVE workshops, the LIVE event is FREE.

If you've always wanted to get into wedding cinematography then this is your jump start. Starting at 9AM tomorrow, Monday December 3 creativeLIVE will be hosting a FREE Wedding Cinematography workshop With Vanessa & Rob. Together, they've got a career's worth of film-making knowledge and will be packing it into this three day course.

Let's face it, learning new software can be a pain in the ass sometimes. As photographers we have to juggle between Photoshop, Lightroom, our camera's proprietary software, and countless other editing software tools. Most of us learn just enough to get the job done but in the process we probably fail to get the most out of each program. SLR Lounge has sent the Fstoppers team a copy of their new Lightroom 4 Workshop Collection to test out and this thing smokes! They've also discounted both the download and the physical copies for the holidays! Read more details

If you've been paying attention to Sigma over the past five months, you know that they have been producing better and higher quality lenses than ever before. I personally have been extremely impressed with the pro-level glass that Sigma is producing, with few complaints during testing. Recently, their new lens lineup has piqued a significant amount of interest from you readers, so we took a few minutes to sit down with Sigma and pose some of your burning questions regarding their new lenses, the business, and what we can expect in the future.

Starting today, creativeLIVE will be hosting Tim Ferriss to talk about The 4-Hour™ Life: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. During this exciting 2-day workshop, Tim will present his best lessons, principles, and hacks for becoming (and remaining) "healthy, wealthy, and wise." As always, the course is free while it's live and cheaper if pre-purchased before the course ends. Enroll here!

MyShoeBox is a new photo storage and sharing site that just launched the other week. It is a free and unlimited storage and sharing site that can be viewed from anywhere. Like dropbox but for photos only.

This week Instagram rolled out new web based profile pages for it's users making it easy to view a history of their photos, likes and comments. To access your new profile page just open any web browser on your computer and type, www.instagram.com/*username*. What do you think of the new profiles? Let us know in the comments. Read on to see screen shots and links to some of my favorite Instagram users.

I teamed up with Luquire George Andrews, an ad agency in Charlotte, NC, to create four images for a corporate brochure for Lincoln Harris, a commercial real estate company with properties in 26 states. LGA wanted to feature b/w photographs of executives in Lincoln Harris' properties.

According to InsideFacebook.com Facebook is rolling out a new feature soon for users to opt-in to receive a notification each time a page they follow posts something new. This seems to be Facebook's solution to all the business page owners frustrated by their posts not showing up in their fans news feeds because of the Facebook algorithm. Read on to learn more about it and let us know in the comments what you think.