Annual Birthday Portrait

It's that time of year again, for my nephew's annual birthday portrait. Tristan is now 3 years old and he's always ready to lend a helping hand in the kitchen or with any construction projects that are going on. He is also a great photo assistant.

How to use Social Media to Boost your Business

I have mixed feelings about the value of using social media to get new business. To be honest, even blogging seems useless most of the time. I blog for the benefit of my students mostly, and to give myself a forum to express my views. Social media is all tricked-out now that large multinationals have figured out how to exploit the system. I don't do FaceBook mainly because I don't know where my information will end up, plus I spend enough box time each day. I'd rather connect with close friends and family through private channels like a personal email or a good old fashioned phone call.

So, what do I do? I am LinkedIn, as I view it as a more professional application, but again it's not something I check every day. I use it as a way to stay connected to my new and old clients plus a few of my top students. I also belong to RedBubble, which is a place where I can discuss photography with like-minded artists, and maybe sell a few prints a year, but it's not a huge revenue generator. It just keeps me connected to a creative community.

In all my years of business, all of my clients except two, have come through a referral or some form of personal connection. The ones that didn't came through an RFP for a large energy company, and the other by using SEO for my online stock photography. My social media is being-in-the-same-room social, as opposed to the box social. My most successful social media tool is actually getting out and being social at events, parties, and by simply staying personally connected with friends and acquaintances.

Doing what I do is my best method of self-promotion. People show their friends and colleagues photos I've taken. They tell a story about an experience they had while working with me or taking one of my seminars. They endorse me. That is the best way to get new business. I'm not a big star in the social media galaxy. I'm not writing for one of the top 10 photography blogs. Total strangers who read my blogs or see my web site don't know me so they probably won't hire me. I don't strive for hits, links, adwords, stumbles, or tweets. If I get them great, but I don't worry about my stats. I don't compare myself to other photographers. I don't try to steal their clients. I have a small humble business that serves a small group of really awesome clients, If I want to serve them well, I can't be too concerned about all the hype and latest tricks surrounding social media. Instead, I need to spend that time doing what I do even better.

Besides, soon enough something new will come along and then everyone will flock to it.

Here's another perspective on the whole subject of social media.
http://ittybiz.com/how-we-killed-social-media/

Stealing photos from web sites is wrong!

Do you think it's alright to take photos off web sites? Everyone does it. No harm done, right? Think again!

Since many of my readers are new to photography and very new to the business of photography, and since stealing photos off web sites is a common (and condoned) practice, I wanted to share this manifesto that is making the rounds of several photo industry blogs this week. Pay special attention to point #2.

The following manifesto comes from ASMPNY and can be found at: http://www.dontscrewus.org

1. Photographs are Intellectual Property and therefore have value to the creator. If you are tempted to steal, that is because you recognize the value of the IP and are not respectful of the value of efforts of the creator. That's not right.
2. Just because a photo is posted on the Internet, it is not free. It wasn't put there so you can simply take it. It was put there to share an idea, promote talent and gain attention. You can't walk into a museum space or a gallery space and walk out with whatever strikes your fancy. Cyberspace is no different.
3. There are laws in place that protect Intellectual Property and they come with penalties. These penalties are exponentially worse than paying to use the work and acknowledging the creator. Exponentially is a lot.
4. Professional photographers are just like you. We have families to feed and mortgages to pay. Stealing takes food off the table. Times are tough enough thank you very much.
5. If contacted directly, a professional photographer can be very accommodating, get involved and help you make your project better making you and your client look better. And who doesn't want to look better?
6. Stealing. Not cool. How did you feel last time someone pirated one of your ideas or advertising concepts. Sucks huh?
7. That photo you are thinking of stealing took time to make. Sure the shutter snapped in a fraction of a second, but there are years of hard work, education and talent invested in it. Stop for a moment and consider that please.
8. Speaking of investments. That photo wasn't taken with an iPhone or a disposable camera. Not that the iPhone isn't great for snapping pics of your BFF. Professionals have significant investments in cameras, lights, computers and software. These things are costly to own, upgrade and maintain. Remember that next time you are looking at our work.
9. We are passionate about what we do and we hope you feel the same way about what you do. Passion brings respect. We respect that you are potential clients and future collaborators. We want to work with you. We hope you want to work with us too. By the way, if the project is Work for Hire please let us know upfront. We can't respect you if you try to sneak one by us.
10. Some things were meant to be free. Human beings, primo parking spaces, unsolicited advice about your love life. And yes, even occasionally photos. Just ask.
    

Online Photography Courses

I am developing an interactive learning environment (ILE) using multimedia tools to teach photography, and am currently conducting market research. The program I am planning will focus on people fairly new to digital photography. In the future I will be developing courses for other imaging topics based on the feedback from surveys and the first round of courses. I will be launching the program sometime in the first half of 2010. It seems very far away at this point, but in reality there is still much to do!

Please take a few minutes to complete my survey, and pass it on to anyone else you know who might be interested in an online photography program.

Thank you!

Amazing Red Bubble Greeting Cards!

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now, but lesson prep and client work (yay!) have taken up all of my time lately.

So, a while back, I ordered some cards from RedBubble (RB), the place I sell my fine art prints and cards. It was a long wait to get the RB greeting cards that I ordered. I wanted to check the quality of the work before highly promoting the place, as I had never seen it before.

Well for any doubters or newcomers out there, I was very impressed with the quality of the printing, and I've done a lot of printing using various digital and photo processes over the years. The cards are on Kodak Endura paper, basically photographic paper, so the best reproduction you can get. Not laser or digital printing, but real photos. The colour also matched my own colour managed workflow.

The card stock is thick, over 1/2 mm. The photo is adhered to a writable surface. All the image info is on the back page, so people who receive the cards will know how to get more, or to see more of your work. I was wondering about that, so am happy the info is included.

So great job on the printing! The only downside is that it took so long. I ordered the cards August 16, and received them September 8. So that's over 3 weeks. If you have to order something for a special occasion, then you'll need to plan ahead or use the expedited shipping option.

Something About Flowers

This past week I took a short trip to Vancouver for a little break between my busy summer and upcoming busy fall schedules. I don't usually take my big camera on vacations, as it feels like I'm working, but I was hoping to capture some stock images as well as collect some new photos to use as teaching examples.

On one of my many walks I visited an inner city community garden. The sunflowers were in full bloom and the sky was a nice deep blue. The colour combination was just gorgeous. I know that flowers can seem like such common subjects, but I still love photographing them. They are easily accessible and naturally beautiful. Flowers make great cards and larger prints will brighten up any room.

The biggest challenge in photographing flowers is being able to capture and retain the full colour depth and saturation of the petals. This is best achieved by shooting in raw file format and post processing with those parameters in mind. In the shot above, the yellow was showing highlight clipping warnings. I had to use the recovery slider in Adobe Camera Raw to pull back the blown out areas in the red channel.

Democratizing your Portfolio

It's been about a month now since I joined RedBubble. I have 34 images on there so far including a couple of t-shirts. What is very cool about RebBubble is that certain images get viewed and favourited more than others. If you get featured, which I was lucky enough to have been, then those images also gain in popularity. When you get featured, people tend to look at the first couple pages of your thumbnails and they might click on one or two, and then maybe favourite one of them. At least that's how I do it. A similar thing happens on Flickr, but in Flickr lingo it's called interestingness.

Another thing I noticed is that if you upload only a few images at a time, you have more chance of getting noticed than if you do a bomb-load of all your work. So, I dribble in the shots as I have them ready, a couple a week. At least that's what's working for me so far. Also, joining good RedBubble groups and uploading work to the group sites is another way to get your work noticed. T-shirts seem to sell the most, so I'm working on more t-shirt designs now too.

People's style becomes really noticeable when you see a large group of their images. Strong, similar styled photos, just seem to look better together. I need to watch that aspect in my own RB gallery as well. It's tempting to put everything on there, just to get a sale. In the beginning I guess that's okay, as you're not sure what will sell or get noticed. Once you discover the duds, you can hide them from public view and upload more of the hits.

The work of painters and illustrators who use RebBubble, hangs much better together. I guess that's to be expected, as they tend to develop a signature style and stick with that for long periods of time.

The result of using sites like RebBubble and Flickr is a democratization of your portfolio. The community of viewers decides what images are worthy of praise by favouriting, and interestingness.