Blogging has always been a sore spot for photographers. After all, we didn’t become photographers to write, but instead, we became photographers to take photos. So why, then, is blogging necessary for a successful photography business?
Being organized was somewhat of a luxury until I became self-employed; now it's the bedrock of my life. Filmmaker Matti Haapoja walks you through how you can be organized with your work flow.
There is a change happening in work culture. Bosses are more open to telecommuting and being a freelancer can be thought of as being the answer to a modern day working life. Here are some tools and comparisons to provide the best fit for you and the business stage you are in.
Something all photographers have to deal with on a daily basis is how to price their professional work. It’s something that’s not easy to quantify, and each job is usually a different monster requiring its own unique budget.
Monitor color calibration is a desperately boring activity to undergo, let alone discuss. However, if you're a photographer who wants to get serious about their work, it's utterly paramount.
We all have to start somewhere. Taking on that first job can be very intimidating, so here are some tips to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.
When you run a photography business, client leads are everything. However, if you can’t get potential leads to respond to you, your business can flounder. Here are a few reasons why potential clients may not be getting back to you after they initially reach out.
Photographers get your resumes and portfolios updated. A recent search lead to some interesting opportunities for the right people with varying degrees of experience.
There are simply no shortcuts to building a career as a freelance photographer. Making money out of something you love is really hard, but it absolutely can be done.
Putting yourself out there and getting new clients to see your value can be daunting. In Brendan van Son's latest video, he walks you through his process of pitching his travel photography to clients across the globe.
You've bought the camera, you've mastered the techniques, you're ready for business. What are your prices? This helpful video will give you some good guidelines for pricing your photography services.
It seems like every time you open Instagram, someone is complaining about their post exposure or the algorithm on their profiles. Whether algorithm changes or some other inexplicable event have dropped their engagement, the reason they don't have a following yet is because Instagram is always holding them back. What we fail to realize is that this free platform that promotes our work really doesn’t owe us anything.
Photography agents are nothing new. They've been around for a long time, but since the advent of social media they seem like something we are all a lot more aware of; anyone who's anyone has an agent, right? However, there are a few misconceptions out there as to what an agent offers.
Your “About Me” page is one of the single most powerful ways to define your brand, stand out from your competition, and make potential clients feel they can’t NOT hire you. So why, then, are you neglecting it? Here’s how to write a killer “About Me” page to capture more clients.
Do you love photography and hate numbers? Are you afraid you don’t know what you don’t know when it comes to starting a business? Here are nine critical items to consider before starting your photography business.
Despite a photographer’s best efforts, there will come a time when a client is unhappy with some part of their experience, whether it’s customer service or the finished images. Since it’s bound to happen, how should a photographer handle unhappy customers? The answer is: catch them before they can be disappointed.
Working for free is always a hot-button topic in the photo industry, and it can become an even thornier issue when it's friends and families asking for your services at a 100 percent discount. This great video examines the pros and cons of working for free for friends and family and how to set and maintain boundaries.
Have you ever been curious about what it is like to work with professional models and the process of matching your talents behind a camera with an agency’s catalog of models, but never really knew where to start? Here's a great how-to about getting started with working with a professional modeling agency.
Most clients today look at a digital portfolio rather than a printed book. Granted, the higher up the ladder you go, the more it leads toward print, but for the vast majority of us trying to make a living from photography, digital is king. Here are some tips on how to get bookings from your website.
When it comes to working with models (whether it be aspiring or established), there is one trait that I value above all others. If you're thinking that I'm going to say cheek bones, freckles, or a specific hair color you're way, way off.
If you’re in a place right now where you’re unsure of your pricing, and you’re not booking as many clients as you’d like, it may be time to consider raising your pricing. Here’s why raising your photo package prices may help book more clients and make you love being a photographer more.
A Canadian newlywed has been ordered to fork out $115,000 in damages after it was ruled she slandered her wedding photographer online.
You are about to embark on a magnificent afternoon of fishing, under a sun-soaked sky. Do you simply drive around town till you see running water, hastily place the car in park, and cast out, or instead carefully plan out a spot on the water that nets you the greatest chance of success.
What does it take to shoot for some of the largest magazines in the world? Not as much as you might think.
Relocating is never easy but it can be an incredible step in a photographers' career and craft. A new city, state, or even country is a blank canvas with endless possibilities. These possibilities and work to be done in order to transition can be overwhelming, where do you even begin?
Have you ever wondered why some photographers have excellent photo-taking skills but can’t seem to get any business? Or perhaps you've noticed some photographers don’t seem to have adept technical skills but are getting a bunch of business. This may be why.
There’s much more to being a professional photographer than meets the eye. Making photos for your clients is about 5 percent of the job. Making a living from photography is difficult to say the least. If you want to be a professional photographer, there are many aspects you should consider before diving in.
Good photography reps are worth their weight in gold, but what do they actually do and how can they help to accelerate your career and make you more money?
When we create something like a photo, one of the most painful experiences can be receiving negative criticism regarding our photography. However, positive criticism can be equally damaging (and sometimes more so). Here’s why.
While most of us here have been through the experience of your first paid photoshoot, there are definitely a lot of users here using the content of this site to further themselves to a professional level.
Practicing photography as a hobby versus building a business upon your photography are two very different monsters. Running a successful photography business is what distinguishes a pro from an amateur. Without the proper preparations or knowledge, your budding photography business can quickly flounder. Here’s what you need to know if you’re thinking of turning your hobby into a professional business.
When I talk to a lot of photographers, they seem to think that business and creativity are at odds with each other. Being a salesperson and an artist just don't go together, right? I think we've just been mislead on what it really means to sell.
If you've wondered why registering your image copyrights is a good thing, here's a case for you. Insect photographer Alex Wild is seeking $2.7 million in an image-use case in which a pest control company used 18 of his images without permission and refused to take them down.
Life spent in the photography trenches is what so many of us openly desire. While you may not be ready to turn that page just yet, you can still get the upper hand on positioning for the future you want right now. Here are a few thoughts on how.
I will speak from a perspective of a non-American here. I find lots of U.S.-based photographers who are working on projects they hate, and they admit it. I tried to dig into the reasons for that, and here are my conclusions, and my advices.
In an ideal world, we’d have every aspect of our business set up correctly from the start, but that isn’t realistic. The future version of your photography and your business will be shaped by the lessons that you are learning now.
Workflow can be a make or break situation in how your business is run. Spending all your time with file naming, culling, or unproductive backup techniques can create not only time constraints but also a negative relationship with your images after your shoot. Following some quick and easy workflow tips will get you back on track and more importantly back to shooting.
The business of being a creative is a challenging one. With the market becoming ever more competitive and more people entering the industry, it's becoming increasingly more important to learn new strategies to help us not only compete, but dominate. In this video I will share three principles that I learned from playing video games that helped form my mindset on business and how it can help you improve your business in 2018.
If you've ever considered uploading your work to Unsplash, you should probably watch these two videos, or at the very least, familiarize yourself with the points raised by legendary commercial and editorial photographer, Zack Arias. If nothing else, Arias wants photographers to understand the risk of facing a lawsuit as a result of uploading their images to the site.
By virtue of the process, photography can be a rather solitary thing. And while there's nothing wrong with working alone, there are many benefits to collaborating with others. This great video examines why you should consider working on a team for some of your shoots.
Taking the leap of fate to freelancing is probably one of the first major milestones and commitments we can make to both ourselves and our career. Jeff Rojas has now been working as a full-time freelancer for roughly five years. This video helps breakdown some of the tough questions and quips of wisdom that can help us push forward to being able to stably work as a freelance photographer.
Some people say that you shouldn't work for free because it devalues your work, while others say that you have to do some in order prove your worth in a world saturated with photographers. I know, I know: doing free work has been talked about ad-nauseam on every site and forum across the web. But I know better than everyone else, so prepare to get more nauseous. Grab a bucket and strap yourself in, folks.
For our New Year's Resolution, Lee and I decided to attempt to post 30 new videos to our YouTube channel throughout the entire month of January. We were not only curious if we could find the drive and motivation to complete such a feat, but we also were curious what sort of traffic, advertising income, and excitement it would bring to Fstoppers.com. Here is what we found out.
Blogging has been an excellent way to boost your SEO and maintain the attention of your clients. It shows off your brand, your images and your writing. However have you thought about how blogging can hurt your business if you lack consistency? If you have been stumped with new ideas on what to write about simply ask your clients to write for you.
Hey introverts, it's the guy you've never actually met at a party because he was busy playing with someone else's dog in the corner, and I've got some good news for you: introversion is not a disease.
The photography industry suffered a seismic shift with the advent of digital cameras, yet it may be the ubiquitous camera phone that sounds the death knell of the industry as we know it. Everywhere in every hand is instant access to high-quality image-making technology that has forever altered the landscape of photography from what it means to be a photographer to how the viewing public perceives the value of images and image creation. Are professional photographers aboard a sinking ship, or is it simply time for us to learn to swim on our own?
In today’s overly connected world, it’s relatively easy to gain access to nearly anyone, but meaningful access has become much harder than it used to be. People in general are incredibly guarded against the random DM and the unsolicited “let’s shoot” comments on Instagram to the point that it’s almost laughable to think anything would ever come of it. That’s not to say that nothing ever will, but your odds will be much greater if you follow at least some of the rules I’m laying out below.
A trade show is an organized event for companies in a specific industry to showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and customers, study activities of rivals, and examine recent market trends and opportunities. What this means for photographers is that if you're in the niche of the trade show this is your chance to be face to face and rub shoulders with the big names in your industry. To fully maximize the network and contacts you can make from these events you need a game plan and some guidelines to follow. These are my personal five tips to maximize your networking at a trade show.
Are you doing your best in client consultations? I wasn't, and my work was suffering for it. A thorough client consultation is a free, simple tool that can make a huge impact on your portrait photography business, both in terms of shoot quality, and in getting happy clients to come back for more. The best part is, it’s not difficult at all. You just have to do it.
CherryDeck is a new platform for photographers who mainly use Instagram to show their work. With CherryDeck, photographers can sign up for free with their Instagram account and get listed based on their area of expertise, allowing potential clients to search and find the best talent within seconds.