Business

Let me set the scene: I’m a 24 year-old photographer based in London. I specialize in portraits with actors, models, and musicians and I started freelancing almost three years ago. I didn’t know what to expect when I first started working in the creative industry, but I soon learned the extent of how many jobs are expected for absolutely no payment in return. But is it really all that bad? Speaking honestly, I don’t think so. Here’s why I think we should stop complaining and, within reason, keep saying "yes" to more free projects.

Stress is a killer. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Study after study after study all concludes that stress can lead to a whole slew of nasty consequences. It would then stand to reason that it is in our absolute best interest to reduce it as much as possible. Anyone who has chosen to make their living as a photographer, however, will tell you that this is harder than it appears.

It's no secret that Sony is the amongst the biggest players in the imaging sensor business. Aside from the sensors that go into their own cameras, they make the sensors that go into your iPhone, Nikon's DSLRs... you name it. Even Canon is recently reported to be testing outside sensors for the first time (and there's a good chance some of those are Sony's). Needless to say, all of this talk and excitement over Sony's sensors means they're going to need to scale up manufacturing. Solution: buy and manage Toshiba's CMOS chip factories.

Part of the allure of being a full-time freelance photographer is the ability to work for yourself and make your own schedule. That means no more nine to five and no more of the monotonous daily routine, right? Not necessarily. Your routine doesn't have to be monotonous but according to the seemingly always energetic artist, photographer, and entrepreneur Chase Jarvis, a solid morning routine can jump start your day.

Smartphones get a bad rap. They’re ruining the photography business, they’re the downfall of society - you know, that sort of thing. Wedding photographers complain about the glare of screens dotting the aisle like a runway landing strip. Newborn photographers cringe when mom shoots over their shoulder. Clients text you at all hours of the night, not realizing your “work phone” is sitting on your bedside table. But as much as we hate on smartphones, we can’t ignore that they’ve given us the ability to network, communicate, and market in ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago. Here’s how to use your smartphone to build your business more effectively.

As third-quarter profit reports came out, it's now known Canon assessed a 16 percent loss in net income, largely attributed to smartphones and mirrorless cameras, unsurprisingly. Nonetheless, the popular manufacturer is optimistic for future growth.

AIG's recent move to begin insuring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) marked the beginning of the first large, national insurance company to get ahead of (or catch up with) the "drone movement." Like this season's migration of Canadian geese, everyone seems to be flocking in droves, clearly intent on getting to the online shopping outlets and local electronics stores that sell the latest drones. But few actually know about how to use their newly affordable crafts safely and without risking their entire life's savings. A quick phone call with the Hill & Usher insurance agency led us to a few clues about where to start.

Not so surprisingly faster than the FAA, apparently, AIG sprung into action to allow drone operators and owners to purchase insurance that covers not only their drone and camera equipment, but also a number of other terrible things that can happen while you're piloting a UAV.

Facebook is rolling out a cool new feature that will become a lucrative sales and marketing tool for photographers. Profile videos are here and they can help your photography business stand out, whether you're a travel photographer or a portrait and wedding shooter. Read on to see how it works and how your business can make smart use of these 7-second profile video loops.

Dixie Dixon has been a good friend of Fstoppers over the years, and she even came down to the Bahamas with us for the first Fstoppers Workshop. Lee and I have been preaching since the start of FS that photographers need to film behind the scenes videos their own photoshoots. I was absolutely thrilled to see that Dixie has produced this short video outlining exactly how you should incorporate video into your own business.

The Internet has done a rather annoying job of trivializing the photo selection process. Culling images is a critical process in a photographer’s workflow that the client or model often wants to be a big part of. The majority of photographers I’ve asked address this by dumping all the photos into some sort of web-based proofing site and just send the link off to clients and let them make their choices.

Building a respectable name for yourself as a photographer can oftentimes feel impossible, especially in a market saturated with other photographers. In an industry with so much competition, you need to differentiate yourself and your work from the rest your competitors if you really want to stand apart from everyone else. That sounds extremely overwhelming, but there is a very practical and efficient way to carve out your own niche in this market.

Whether you’re a photographer, filmmaker, video editor, first assistant, or even just starting out as a PA, you’ve got to work to survive. There are many lengths of time where the work might seem to be non-stop; you work so much that when you do have free time, you might not even know what to do with yourself. The winds of fate can change quickly though, and you might find yourself all of sudden not having any new jobs lined up. After doing this dance for over ten years as a video producer and photographer now based out of Lexington, Kentucky, I’ve learned a few things about dealing with the stresses of when business is slow.

When I started out photography professionally, I only wanted to do weddings. It was what I loved (and still love). I thought studio work was so boring. With time, I was convinced to get my own studio and started doing portraits, beauty, products, and other genres. It was great. However, after two years, I am about to terminate my studio lease and will not take a new one. While I love shooting in a studio, I think the cons outweigh the advantages. Perhaps they will not for you. Nonetheless, let me show you what I learned from my two-year experience of having a studio.

A few months ago I wrote a two part article on branding for photographers. In this article I will continue with branding for photographers, and why you should keep your brands separated. The most common thing I see are wedding photographers combining their wedding work with their family, baby, senior, and even commercial work. While I completely understand the tendency to not only simplify your marketing, but also the concept that by showing your multiple talents you will increase your value to clients, combining genre's is one of the biggest things hurting the growth of your business.

The rise of social media over the past few years is undeniable. It’s come to shape our habits and behavioral patterns, as well as redefine social norms. So, it’s inevitable that the creative industry has been influenced too; but in a world where our brand’s worth is often dictated by our follower count, just how important is mastering social media to any creative trying to make it in the industry in 2015?

As some of the world's biggest auction houses gear up to offer photographic pieces this week, statistics show that photographs are consistently lesser valued than their artistic counterparts. Take a look at why photographs have yet to find the same financial footing as other works of art.

You’re not a writer, so stop trying to be one. For the past 10 years I’ve struggled with the same thing, and that's website copy. I finally put that burden to rest and hired a copywriter. Here's why you should too.

Always backup your work, and then backup your backups! This opinion is brought to you by the recent news that Oakland-based photographer Jennifer Little lost her "life's work" when 21 hard drives containing over 70,000 photos were stolen from her home. To go along with the hard drives, she also lost eight cameras leaving only one left.

Recently our own Lee Morris shot a model photoshoot entirely with an iPhone 6s Plus, showing that with proper lighting technique, a good model, and proficient use of editing software, you can obtain professional looking results with even the most humble of cameras. Andrew Weber, a professional sports photographer, decided to take it one step further by capturing the unpredictable environment of a primetime NFL game with only his iPhone 6s Plus in hand. Weber was kind enough to answer some of our questions and provide a great sampling of his photos from the shoot.

In the continuing saga of musicians complaining about others stealing their work or not getting paid enough for their work and then ripping off hard-working photographers, the rapper T.I. has joined the pack. T.I., most famous for hits "Rubberband Man" and "Whatever You Like" has stolen a Trinidadian photographer's work for use in an invitation to a party he's hosting. The photographer has called him out!

It’s been almost 3 years since I moved to London to pursue photography as a career. I’ve learnt that there are many misconceptions about those who take photos for a living - so here I’m setting the record straight about what day-to-day life is really like for a portrait photographer in one of the world’s biggest cities.

I’m sitting at my desk on a Friday and I get a phone call. It’s Saturday’s wedding venue, and they’d like for me to sign my life away. In what’s becoming an all too common practice, the venue has decided that for me to be allowed to photograph my client’s reception I should grant them a waiver of liability that allows for their potential future negligence to go unchallenged in court, even if it results in my death. Seems like a pretty fair deal for the guy showing up to take pictures, doesn’t it?

In May we published an article covering three of the most critical things your website should do well. The original post included several critical suggestions that could help improve your website but was, by no means, a definitive list. In this article we will expand on the first by adding three more items to the list.

Wedding photographers would like to hold their clients — or would-be clients, for that matter — to certain standards. As a collective, we’d love to see them shop for the best vendors, spend good money on photography, and have unplugged weddings with nary an Uncle Bob in sight. The list goes on. It would stand to reason that most of us in “the business” would probably find the idea of a bride acting as her own photographer to be pretty abhorrent. We’d chalk it up to selfie culture run amuck or DIY gone wrong, wouldn’t we? Would you? I probably would have, if I’m being honest. However, we might be wrong.

I came across a web app for scheduling appointments that was a complete game changer for my business! It's by far my favorite productivity tool. Every wedding photographer needs to check this out. It could be the missing link you need in your business to book more wedding photography clients. In my first week I was able to arrange seven meetings and book two clients. Wow! This changes everything.

Starting your own photography business can be very rewarding. However, we often let our creative right-brain get ahead of the left-brain practicalities and fail to ensure we are adequately protected from a legal standpoint. Corporate Attorney Adriel Sanders sent us these important legal considerations that may seem obvious to some, but many overlook.

So, you want to be a successful photographer? Or retoucher? Or art director? Or just about any other creative field imaginable? It is a treacherous road, ranging from emotional bliss to hopeless depression. Be prepared to battle the fiercest of foes with nothing more than obsessive determination and your arsenal of skills.

Keeping track of contracts and payments can be somewhat cumbersome. If you're like me, sometimes you want to write everything down and have an excel spreadsheet just to double check everything. Along with that there is a neatly organized folder on your hard drive, external, and hard copied in a cabinet somewhere. Agree wants to eliminate a majority of the hassle we experience in our day to day when talking to clients.

If you ask any well-known and successful photographer what the most important thing you can do to grow your business is, they will almost all point towards shooting personal projects. Before the end of every day, I try to visualize at least one creative and interesting idea that might be worth photographing. Nine times out of ten, those ideas are complete garbage. Every now and then, I come up with a really great idea, but unfortunately, 90% of the time, I completely forget these great ideas and they never become a reality. Here is how I have solved this problem.

Many beginning photographers find it very difficult to translate their vision verbally. In order to save yourself time, effort, and frustration the day of your shoot, use a mood board. Mood boards are visual collages of inspiration designed to provide your team or client with a visual reference guide that everyone can agree on before your photo shoot.

An influx of talent naturally creates more competition and offers your client more choice. That choice ultimately leads to lower odds of you landing any given job. It would be very easy to look at the current state of photography and blame it on a numbers game, but then, you wouldn’t be entirely correct.

In this article I will share with you some SEO tips for those of you who are using WordPress as their content management system. For visual learners I have created a quick video tutorial that will walk you through the steps in this article.

Getting started in photography is expensive. Sometimes frustratingly so. This expense tends to compound a bit if one has to pay professional models to build a portfolio. Fortunately, you don’t. Models also need to build a portfolio, so collaborating with photographers to create images becomes extremely valuable. TFP (time for print, or time for portfolio) has becomes a keystone of the beauty/fashion/glamor world.

Last week I shared the story of Andy and Jess Wickstrom and the DesignEgg. Continuing with the theme of creatives who travel full-time for their work, brings me to the husband and wife photography team of HagePhoto.

Here I am on a Saturday night tucked away in my photography office finally listening to Dr. Dre's new album. With just two real full length albums, Dre is one of my all time favorite artists, and I always enjoy researching the samples and references he uses in his music. Tonight by way of Compton, I found record producer Jimmy Iovine's commencement speech he gave to the USC graduating class of 2013. Jimmy might be talking about producing music but I think his words ring true for photographers as well.

Giving a great first impression is imperative, especially when our work is mostly based on aesthetics. It can be the way we dress, the image we carry through social networks, or even a simple email signature. I have tried many different email signatures, using HTML formatted text, an image, or a mix of both. But I never was satisfied with how it looked. I then stumbled upon WiseStamp. A very simple way to create a professional and clean looking signature for your emails.

Being able to reach people easily with your marketing message is one of the most important aspects of marketing any type of business. In this article, I will share with you 3 tips to reach your followers and customers.

Erik Almas is one of my all time favorite photographers. His work mixes equal parts clever advertising and personal vision in a way that makes each image intriguing to study. But behind all of his brilliant images is a businessman who works diligently to get his brand in front of art buyers and advertising agencies. Today PRO EDU has released a free section about marketing from Almas' Composite Photography tutorial, and this advice is something every photographer should hear.

Many of us dream about the idea of traveling, and using our skills as photographers, filmmakers, or designers to sustain a lifestyle that allows us to travel and work at the same time. Guys like Elia Locardi come to mind, but his methods are just one of many different ways to make a nomadic working lifestyle a sustainable one, and in this article I’ll tell you the story behind Wickstrom Design.

I personally have never used a Wacom tablet or stylus in my life. They always seemed like the most useful post-processing tool ever, but I never bit the bullet and tested the waters. However, after filming Elia Locardi edit over 40 images for his "Photographing the World" landscape series, I am confident enough to finally give it a try myself. Luckily my good friends over at Phlearn have laid out five of the most useful tips for making your Wacom tablet easy to use.

Almost every photographer has found one of their images reproduced online without their permission. The first question you might ask yourself is "how much money can I get for this infringement?" However, copyright law can be extremely difficult to understand and there are many common or case law rulings that factor in on how an image can be used fairly or commercially. In this fascinating video, the guys at PRO EDU sit down with Joe Naylor with Image Rights and fine art photographer Peter Coulson to discuss how photographers can protect their art.

If you hadn't heard of it before, the Stand Out! Photographic Forums is a huge photography industry event (taking place in New York City, Toronto, and Los Angeles) loaded with affordable workshops taught by some of the biggest and most successful names in the industry. You can learn directly from legends like Mark Seliger, Pratik Naik, and Michael Muller. Phase One was even nice enough to ask me to come and teach classes on digital teching and shoot pre-production. You should read below to learn more about all of the classes and offerings.

Anyone who has been booked as a wedding photographer knows that this genre of photography can be extremely challenging. Perhaps no other field of photography throws as many variables at you more than those found on a typical wedding day. Whether it is crazy weather, horrible lighting situations, demanding wedding planners, strict church rules, or overall disorganization, there are a many many things that can cause the day to go less than expected. Here is what every bride should know about the challenges of photographing a wedding ceremony.

Photography is a business largely built on referrals, word of mouth and reputation. How you present yourself to others and take advantage of chance opportunities can make or break your career. Are you presenting the best possible version of yourself to clients and fellow photographers?

Jane Ridely of the New York Post revealed a compelling story of New Yorker Mark Reay, who for years has worked as a High-Fashion Model while living homeless. The rooftop dweller breaks the stereotype of the dirty, lazy, drunk that we tag along side our homeless community. Reay's roles and his look as that of the sophisticated and affluent. On set and walking through the streets of New York, you wouldn't guess that the well-dressed and well-groomed model may just be headed to sneak off to his rooftop sleeping quarters.

I am probably going to piss off Lee Morris and Patrick Hall and probably some of you with this post but there has been a lot of conversation lately, including multiple posts on Fstoppers.com, about ‘discounted,’ ‘gray market’ and ‘on sale’ cameras dramatically priced lower than their manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP).