Fall is still going strong here in North Eastern Ohio, so I grabbed a couple of my favorite models, the fun and fabulous Brooke, Chloe, Emily, Erica, Kelly, Lexi, Tenley and Zoe, and we Headed to the Hills… oh, right, it’s totally flat here…so we Headed to the Forest of Peninsula, Ohio one early, crisp fall morning. We had everyone Continue Reading
The post Close-knit, Connected and Cohesive: Coming Together in Fall Colors appeared first on Photodoto.
Larry Becker discusses the new Canon EOS 7D Mark II DSLR. He explores the camera’s many high-performance features, including its dual DIGIC 6 processors, 20.2MP APS-C sensor, full HD video capture, and fast, accurate autofocus. He also demonstrates many of the “hidden” features that make this camera a welcomed update to the groundbreaking EOS 7D.
Are you ordering one? Or maybe you already have one on pre-order?
I know a few photographers that do weddings and shoot sports and action that are really excited about the focus and drive on this new Canon body. What are your thoughts?
The post Canon EOS 7D Mark II – Hands-On Review by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Sometimes you get that photo that is almost perfect. If all it takes to make it great is a little head swap, well, today is your lucky day! I’m going to show you two techniques, for quick and easy head swapping. I’ve even included a demo video at the end, if you want to watch the tips in action. I am using Photoshop CS6 for this demonstration. If you are using a different editing program, these methods may not work for you. If you are using an older version of Photoshop, the techniques should work the same, but your screen may look slightly different.
Ready to see how to combine two photos to make that perfect photo? Let’s get started! First, open the two photos you want to work on in Photoshop. Select the photo that you want to swap a head FROM. Now we’re ready to really get to work.
For the first method, we are going to use the Lasso Tool. You can click right on the lasso in the menu, or click “L” as a shortcut. The instructions will indicate shortcuts in parenthesis (L) to help speed things up as you as you try these techniques on your own photos.
Use Cmd/Ctrl+C to copy the selection
Use the lasso to draw a loose circle around the part of the photo that you want to move. You’ll want to leave extra room, and make the circle fairly large. This is easy to take off later, but if you have to add more on, you can’t do anything except start over. Copy the selected part of your photo.
Go back to your original photo, and paste the selection there. I like to decrease the opacity of that layer so I can line things up a little bit easier. Select the move tool, and move the layer around until things are as lined up as possible. In the photos I worked with, I tried to line the mom’s fingers up exactly. If you can find something near the edge of the new part and the old part that is the same in both photos, this can make things a lot easier.
Bring the opacity of the layer back up to 100%, and add a mask to the layer. Layer masks are really awesome! They allow you to show parts of that layer or hide them.
Now you can select a soft brush. You want your brush to be black, because your layer mask is white. When you are turning part of the layer off, you need to make sure that the brush is the OPPOSITE color of the mask (white reveals, black conceals). If the white box is in the front, just click “X” to toggle back and forth between black and white.
Use that black brush to hide the excess parts of the new layer. I like to start with the hard circle edges, and then work in to the details. You can zoom your photo in as close as you need to for this part.
Once you feel that it’s mostly there, you can click the visibility off and on on the layer to see if there are strange things happening, or spots that you missed. If you turned too much of the layer off with your black brush, simply change your brush back to white and brush it back on.
Not too hard, right? Let’s try another method for swapping heads, this time using the Clone Stamp. This one is not as forgiving, but it is super quick! You’ll want to make sure that your two photos are very similar for this one. The placement needs to be close to the same for both photos. This method works especially well if you just need to replace closed eyes with open eyes from an almost identical photo.
Select your Clone Stamp tool, and let’s give this one a try!
It’s easiest if you select a part of the photo that is easy to see and line up once you switch to the original photo. In this example, I selected mom’s hand.
Cmd/Cntrl+J duplicates the layer as well
You can do this without making a background copy, but if you don’t make a background copy, and you make a mistake, you have to start over. This allows you to fix a mistake later without starting completely over.
Line the stamp up with your selected spot, and then, while holding down the mouse button, move the stamp over the old part that you want to replace. As you do this, you’ll see the new face appear.
If you covered more area than you wanted to, add a layer mask, and use the soft black brush again to take off some of that layer. (Just like we did before.)
Head swapping doesn’t work for every photo, and it always works best for photos taken one right after the other, with all the people positioned almost the same. It never hurts to give it a try, and the more you practice, the better you will get at making it look natural, and working quickly. You’ll also be able to tell at a glance if a head swap will work for two photos or not.
I’ve made a quick video demo to show these techniques in action. Let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them. Now, go swap a few heads, just for fun!
The post Two Quick and Easy Photoshop Head-Swapping Techniques by Melinda Smith appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Charging people money is scary. Having people I’ve never met ask me to produce something I have metaphorically promised the world I can do at a professional level, that may or may not meet their expectations, is terrifying. There is so much I can’t control – the weather, the mood of everyone involved, my camera suddenly deciding to jam without warning, that nerve condition I Googled last night where something snaps in your eyeball without warning and you go blind in mere seconds. Never mind that every single time I leave my house, I’m pretty sure that I am completely out of any possible creativity, creativity that will never renew itself, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes I’m just a fraud that got lucky for a while.
And that’s on a good day.
I get hired repeatedly by my clients, seem to be able to pull off a shoot in most elements, and as of yet, that nerve hasn’t snapped in my eyeball. However if you look at my pricing comparatively for my area, my pricing history, or ask my mom, I am not charging enough. It’s not that I don’t want to make money of course, it’s that I feel bad taking it from people. I’m not sure I deserve what I am currently charging for what I do, never mind even more. There is no true way to measure the market rate for a photographer, but there are plenty of reasons that setting my rates – determining my true market value – is enough to make me want to go pick-up an application at McDonalds.
At some point I am hoping that all of us can get together and agree that owning a fancy camera does not make someone a photographer by trade. I happen to own a really nice guitar after a gifting incident that took a wrong turn. Sometimes just for fun, I sit at my desk with it and strum like I’m a fledgling musician in a coffeehouse working for tips and free lattes. But all of the strumming in the world isn’t going to change the fact that I completely lack the coordination to have my left hand do about anything and I can’t play a single note.
Consider every job that relies on nice equipment – a baker needs a fancy oven, an auto-mechanic requires a collection of expensive tools, a fast car alone doesn’t make anyone a race car driver (though with the right stretch of highway and a good song on the radio, we all have the potential to be a rockstar). Ownership, or even a working knowledge, of a tool does not make someone a professional anything.
Chances are if you are a professional photographer, you’ve done portfolio building of some sort; maybe you did portraits for friends for free, did corporate work for cost, or photographed thousands of landscapes until you felt comfortable putting your work out there for sale. Making the step from being a budding photographer to a full-fledged “real” photographer who charges money for their work is a huge but necessary one. Once you have established that you are a photographer with a body of work to show for yourself, you are no longer building from scratch. If you’ve built the house structurally sound, you’re not going to build another house to put on top of the original that’s better. Build your business to be sturdy, flexible, and confident and instead of tearing down and starting over, you will just remodel from time to time and rearrange the furniture when you need to freshen the place up.
Spend a day going through your entire portfolio and honestly reflect on your work. Do you have a nice representation of the type of photography you want to charge for? Can you see noticeable differences in the images you created when you first started to now? Do you have images that you are quite proud of and show what you are all about as an artist? If you answered yes, the truth is you already have a portfolio. You will continue to build on this portfolio as you have more (paying) clients, as your skills improve, and as your style becomes more defined and evolves but charging your honest market rate is what is going to help you to get there.
Admittedly I spend my editing days in pyjamas at my desk. Most days I don’t commute anywhere, I eat lunch in my own kitchen, and I never have to contribute to a coworker’s birthday party fund. On the surface it appears I spend next to nothing to bring in a lot, but what I lack in dry cleaning bills, I make up for in expensive equipment, monthly subscriptions, website maintenance, business collateral, and more. Once a chunk of change has already been spent on that fancy camera, building it into your actual cost of doing business can be quickly forgotten.
Come up with a list of every single expense you have from your electric bill to run your computer, to how much you spend in cat treats to keep your cats nearby, giving you someone to talk to all day so you don’t go crazy. Don’t forget to allow for things like wear and tear on your cameras and lenses, new software you may need, and the traveling involved with getting to a shoot. You should also include extra funds for unforeseeable repairs and expenses, increases in printing costs or other regular fees, and any classes or workshops you will attend to support your photography. Divide this total by the amount of days you can reasonably work in a year and what you have is the bare minimum day rate you need just to keep doing it. Know this budget as actual numbers, not just a vague amount and it will become very clear, very quickly, if you are not charging enough to make it worth your while no matter how much you love it.
I don’t have a good rebuttal for this one. All I know is that if photographers couldn’t charge money for their work until they had a proven workflow in place, there would be no photographers.
Even if you don’t subscribe to the flakey artist bit, your process is going to change often, having to constantly accommodate for seasonal fluctuation, client needs, and your own style. So long as you have a true desire to be a professional photographer and a method to getting pictures out of your head and into your camera, and then into the hands of clients, you have a workflow sufficient enough to charge a reasonable rate and work from there.
Do not feed this monster! This monster will come to your door often in your career and just like my kid’s friends, the more candy you give him, the more frequently he will come around and the longer he will stay. Be realistic and competitive, but do not base your entire pricing system on a lack of confidence. Photography, like most creative occupations, is often personal and will never fit firmly in the category of just business.
Ask an objective friend to take a thorough look at your portfolio and prices. Show them your competitors and walk them through exactly what it takes you to go from nothing to a finished image, ready for delivery.
Rather than being a large business that strives to be the cheapest choice for customers, you are one single person. It’s easy to get hung-up on the idea that if professional photography isn’t in your budget, then it’s not in other people’s either. I haven’t paid for photography in six years – I take pictures of my own children often and when I want family photos or any other picture that actually includes me, I trade with a photographer friend. I am not a good judge of what people are willing to, or can spend on a family photographer.
Do you buy art? Do you support artists? This includes musicians, actors, and that guy on the corner that can fold himself into a two foot plexiglass cube and eat fire. I give that guy a dollar every time I see him and I bet you would too. People budget for what they truly want and what is important to them. If they want to invest in your time and talent, who are you to tell them no?
Ouch, this one stings. Everyone wants to be liked and let’s face it, kind words are better than a sharp stick in the eye. Especially a compliment that is given based on skills you have worked hard to perfect. Confidence is something every photographer needs at least a bit of, but accolades don’t pay the rent.
If you aren’t charging them, someone else will be happy to and collect the compliments too.
Besides – I would be a terrible fry cook.
The post 7 Things That Keep You From Charging What You’re Worth (and how to get over them) by Lynsey Mattingly appeared first on Digital Photography School.
With the holiday season just around the corner, many of us will be toting our cameras to festivals, parties, and family gatherings to preserve our precious memories for years to come. Unfortunately, you might look back at some of your pictures and wonder why they were blurry, out of focus, or just not all that interesting. Whether you have a smartphone or DSLR, here are a few simple techniques you can use to make your photos not only stand out, but help you learn a bit more about photography along the way.
While you might be tempted to pass the time visiting with adults and catching up with friends at holiday gatherings, some of the best photos years down the road often end up being the ones of kids. It’s fun to see them grow and change over time, and when browsing photo collections people will often linger on photos of children for all the memories they bring back. When you have your camera out, though, remember to get on eye level with the little ones! It can feel a bit strange to squat down or sit on the floor to get a good shot of your three-year-old niece while all the adults are visiting in the other room, but the results will be well worth it. It’s tempting to shoot down at kids from your eye level, but this often results in unflattering pictures that seem cold and distant. Putting yourself physically at the same level as the kids offers a much more interesting view of their world, and makes for photos that are far more personal and memorable.
My friend and her daughter before a Thanksgiving feast. I had to crouch down to get on eye level with the girl, but the results make for a much more interesting picture.
If you leave your camera on Automatic mode, you might notice the flash constantly going off which can result in washed-out colors and unnatural shadows across people’s faces. But if you try to disable the flash, your photos will often come out blurry or out of focus. To fix this, you can set your camera to Program mode instead of Auto, which will allow you to have more direct control over the ISO setting and get better shots in low-light conditions (like indoor holiday parties) without using the flash.
Using a flash would ruin this photo of a candle-lit Christmas Eve service. I got this shot by bumping the ISO up to 3200.
The higher you set your ISO, the less light your camera needs in order to take a photo. This is nice if you want to avoid blinding people with your flash, but the trade-off is that your pictures might look noisy or grainy. Fortunately, most modern cameras do a fine job even at ISO settings as high as 3200 or even 6400 – particularly if you just want to share the photos online or print at smaller sizes like 4×6.
Make sure to practice beforehand so you are comfortable not only setting the ISO, but knowing the limits of what your camera can do. But if used carefully, adjusting the ISO instead of using the flash can result in much better holiday photos with the added bonus of not blinding your guests or having to deal with red-eye corrections later on.
If you really want to use your camera to its full potential, ditch Auto or Program mode entirely and try shooting in aperture priority (A or Av) mode where you choose the lens aperture and ISO while your camera calculates the best shutter speed. Or you could try shutter priority (S or Tv) mode, where you choose the shutter speed (1/60 to 1/90 second are good starting points when shooting indoors, such as holiday gatherings) and ISO, and your camera figures out the best aperture. I would recommend getting lots of practice with these modes and making sure you know how to adjust your settings accordingly before the holidays, though. You don’t want to try something new for the first time when everyone is opening presents and have a bunch of dark or out of focus photos as a result!
Finally, it’s worth noting that many modern digital cameras have user-programmable Auto ISO settings. You can use this to tell your camera to select the best ISO when using the semi-automatic (A/Av, S/Tv, or P) modes but stay within a few parameters that you define. For instance, if you know that your camera gets too noisy above ISO 3200, you can set that to be the maximum allowable ISO but let your camera do the rest. Or you can also set a minimum shutter speed before the Auto ISO kicks in. If you don’t want to shoot anything slower than, say, 1/30 of a second, your camera will do everything in its power to maintain proper exposure by adjusting the ISO in order to stay above that shutter speed. This can be quite handy at holiday gatherings when you don’t want to spend all night fiddling with your camera’s menus and settings but also want to make sure you get the best shots possible without the pop-up flash constantly blinding your guests.
It might be tempting to run around with your camera at holiday parties barking out orders like “Smile,” “Look here!” and “Say Cheese!” But a better option is to be a little more discreet and attempt to shoot moments instead of poses. Capturing the essence of what people are doing – talking, laughing, opening presents, sharing a drink – often makes for much more interesting photos as well as better memories in years to come. There is certainly nothing wrong with posed photos or having people look at you and smile while you take their picture, but these often lack context aside from the clothes people have on. What else was happening? Who else was present? What sort of activities were people doing? By taking a documentary-style approach and shooting pictures of people just being themselves (particularly if you turn the distracting flash off and adjust the ISO instead) you will capture memories that will strike a chord years down the road.
This picture of a game of cards over the holidays carries a great deal more meaning to me than if I had told everyone to look at the camera and smile.
This might sound counter-intuitive for an article about how to get better holiday photos, but as the saying goes, there is a time for everything under the sun. This includes a time to shoot pictures and a time to just be with friends and family. Rather than 100 photos of your family opening presents, just take a handful and use the rest of your time to simply be with your loved ones and enjoy your time together. Try to be intentional when taking fewer photos, and the result will be more keepers that you want to look at years down the road instead of dozens and dozens of images of the same scene.
Rather than a boat load of present-opening photos, just a handful will likely suffice and the rest of your time can be used to visit, laugh, and share memories.
If you are still shooting with the kit lens that came with your camera, now is a fantastic time to spend a little money on a prime lens and get used to it before the rush of the holiday season. While these lenses don’t zoom in and out, the trade-off is an ultra-wide aperture that lets in so much more light (especially compared to a kit lens) that you will rarely have to use the flash even at lower ISO values. You will get the added bonus of having a lens capable of smooth blurry backgrounds that can capture the beauty of even the most mundane subjects. The Nikon 35mm f/1.8 is a fantastic choice, as is the Canon 24mm f/2.8, but there are plenty of options to suit your needs depending on your camera and shooting style.
What other tips do you have for getting good pictures at this time of year? Leave any in the comments below, and maybe share a few of your favorite holiday memories too!
The post 4 Tips for Taking Better Holiday Photos by Simon Ringsmuth appeared first on Digital Photography School.
The time of year is upon us when things turn brown up here in northern part of the world. Leaves turn yellow and then brown. Grass changes from green to beige as nature prepares for winter. You may consider brown a boring color and one that isn’t very photogenic or interesting. But there is a lot of nuance and varying tones in browns. Let’s see what’s possible.
Set of brown tone images:
On the top of the world by aranka delina janné on 500px
Boxing Bear by Olav Thokle on 500px
House of Furballs by Alex Greenshpun on 500px
Talk to the Paw by Holly Kuchera on 500px
Alpine Autumn Dusk by Stefan Hefele on 500px
Bourbon by Darcy Evans on 500px
Daisy by Darcy Evans on 500px
![Photograph [ ... snæfellsnes autumn ] by D-P Photography on 500px](https://gp1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/806614/photos/photos.500px.net/51502108/d8912c87fbf92158838096430cfedd749aeed47d/4.jpg)
[ … snæfellsnes autumn ] by D-P Photography on 500px
Shadows of the su by Christian Wig on 500px
Deadvlei by Thierry Hennet on 500px
Desert by Reza Eqbali on 500px
The Sewing Room by Cindi Ressler on 500px
Baby Wallaby by Joana Senn on 500px
In The Spotlight by Joni Niemelä on 500px
Eye Candy by Aaron Yeoman on 500px
Single Bed by Jose Vazquez on 500px
Rotting Jalopies by Todd Klassy on 500px
A glimpse into the past by K.C. Jones on 500px
Buddha's head in tree's roots (Bodhi tree) at Wat Mahathat, Ayut by SimplySiri on 500px
S A H A R A by Boyer Jean marie on 500px
sepia crayon by kak tuss on 500px
Brownie by Fionac on 500px
The Photographer by Maria Gvedashvili on 500px
Brownie Cupcake… by Hooman Mesri on 500px
Chocoholic by Anide Photography on 500px
{ Brownies } by cynthia cliche on 500px
Burgundy Goliath Birdeater by Milan Zygmunt on 500px
Hornbeam leaf by Maciej Figiel on 500px
Common Buckeye on Verbena by Karen Hernandez on 500px
Parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) in the forest by Jancsi Farkas on 500px
Goat's beard 4 by Margo B. on 500px
Hidden in the leaves by Dan LeFebvre on 500px
Gentleness by Tomasz Wieczorek on 500px
old suitcase by Naeema on 500px
Freshly baked bread by Natalia Klenova on 500px
?????? by Natalia Lisovskaya on 500px
Steaming coffee by Károly Nagy on 500px
House by Justine Carlyle on 500px
The post A Set of Brown Tone Images by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Brown is an unassuming and subtle color. For examples see the set of brown tone images I shared earlier.
When I say the word “color” I’m guessing that brown isn’t likely the first one that comes to your mind. But there is so much of this color all around us in the world, in nature. Many animals are brown. Many people have brown hair. It’s a natural and comfortable color, it feels warm.
So your challenge this week is to photograph the color brown. This could be a brown item, or maybe even a black and white image that you make into a sepia tone. Here are a few ideas for you how to incorporate this tone into your images:
By Oliver Hammond
By Julie Falk
By Johnson Cameraface
By andy li
By Rjabinnik and Rounien
By David Jenkins
By Lotte Grønkjær
By Algiers Photography
By eirasi
By Erica Annie
Now it’s your turn to go take some images of brown things, or tone them brown in post-processing.
Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section as pictured below) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer upload them to your favourite photo sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Here are some more brown images to give you ideas:
By pieter musterd
By Jan Fidler
By Eric Vondy
By The Wandering Angel
By Jairo
Okay, what you got?
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Brown by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
The Nikon D800 is a professional full frame camera from Nikon that features a whopping 36,3 megapixels, the autofocus system from the D4, and dual card slots. But is Nikon’s lightest full-frame DSLR capable of delivering the image quality and dynamic range that Nikon promises? Let’s find out… Here’s a quick rundown of the important specs and features: 36,3 MP Continue Reading
The post Nikon D800 Review- The King Of Full Frame? appeared first on Photodoto.
As you enter the field of professional photography, there is one thing that will become immediately clear. One of your biggest obstacles will be fear. You will worry that you are not prepared for a job, that you are not experienced enough, that something will go wrong, or that they will not like your images.
Business Portrait. Each photography job will have a different makeup and you should create a game plan going in.
This is normal and I have bad news for you; the fear will never fully go away. It will get easier however, and you will become better at pushing through it. As time progresses you will find yourself confidently going into jobs that you used to make you petrified. But even then, a whole new set of fears will arise as you move into more advanced jobs.
This can paralyze you, especially as you are starting out. It is the biggest obstacle that will stand in your way towards becoming successful. But fear not, because you are not alone. Even the more experienced photographers stay up sleepless the night before jobs.
The key is to harness that fear and understand that it is normal. It is good in fact, because it means that you are progressing and trying new things. It means you are doing something interesting that you will be proud about afterwards. As you learn, you will make mistakes, but it is how you deal with those mistakes, how you learn from them, and how you push through the fear that will be the impetus for your success.
Here is a list of my toughest fears to push through as a professional starting a photography business, and how I deal with them.
When you begin to think about starting a business the scariest question is whether your work and your abilities are good enough. You may have heard you are talented or that you have a gift for image making, but the reality is that being a good photographer is based on your experience and the amount of effort, thought, and study that you put into your work. Anyone can take a good photograph, but professionals learn to do it day in and day out in a variety of circumstances.
If you are starting out, no matter how good you are, you will have a lot to learn. It is important to know this. Everyone started somewhere. Spend time researching people who do the type of work that you want to do and figure out how they do it. Learn from them. Read about photography and settings and situations. Use websites like dPS to improve your skills. Before you do a job research what you want the photographs to look like and plan out how you will pull them off. Go into the job with a plan.
Environmental Portrait. If you are an introvert like me, interacting with subjects to get them in the right mindset will make you nervous. This will improve with experience and you should study other photographers to pick up tips on how to best interact with subjects.
If you treat your image making like this and put the work into it, even if you are not currently ready, you will be soon. The more prepared you are, the more confident you will be when going into jobs and marketing yourself. All of the information is out there for you to prepare yourself, it is just a matter of doing it.
You will most likely look back on your work two years from now and see how much better you have become, and that is the point. Everyone had to start from somewhere and it is the prepared and thoughtful photographers who ultimately become successful.
Pricing is an artform based on experience. At first it can be scary because you will not have any experience with it. Also, if you are not confident in your work or your ability, then how can you be confident in pricing your work?
If you are entering the professional world you have to understand that you are starting a business. You need a business plan. You have to charge enough to make a living. If you are making the commitment to do this, even if you are not fully comfortable yet, you still have to make a living.
Research other photographers in your area or field and figure out what they are charging. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about what they might be willing to pay. Create a pricing structure based on this and raise your prices as you become more experienced. Some jobs you will lose because you are too expensive. No matter what you charge, there are always people who will think you are too expensive. Do not let these people affect your opinion of what you charge. Other customers will pass you by because you are not expensive enough! That happens.
Environmental Portrait. Some jobs will be much easier than others but always plan for the worst.
Imagine you are hiring a wedding photographer with a budget of $ 5,000 and you like two photographers who seem like they have fairly similar experience, but one charges $ 2,000 and the other charges $ 4,500. Which one will you hire? Some might hire the $ 2,000 photographer but many would hire the $ 4,500 photographer because they would assume that this photographer was more experienced solely based on the price they command. They would not want to risk hiring the cheaper photographer for the most important day of their lives.
Also, if people tell you your prices are too high, educate them on why you charge what you do. Many people who hire you will not understand photography. There are a lot of people out there who think photography is just about getting a camera, showing up for an hour, going home, and sending the photos. That is so, so far from the truth. Explain what you will be doing for them, the time and knowledge that goes into the job, and why it is priced where it is. Some people will understand, be happy that you explained it to them, and will then hire you. Some will not, but then you don’t want to work with those people in the first place.
Do not be afraid to lose a job because of price. That will inevitably happen and it should not dictate your pricing strategy.
This one scares the heck out of me. What if something breaks while I am on a shoot? If you are creating a photography business, you need to have backups in place. A photographer plans based on contingencies. This is not only a vital business practice, but very important for your peace of mind and confidence.
Have an organized system for your equipment and bags and a consistent way of packing them for jobs. Have a backup of everything. If you do the same job regularly, then it is worth it to purchase two of everything that you use regularly. You can consider renting equipment for jobs that you do not do as frequently.
I used to have a big problem taking jobs that I shouldn’t have gotten involved in. I would be flattered that someone wanted to hire me and I hated to turn down income, particularly during the lean times. This became a huge problem, especially with the difficult clients who kept changing the job parameters and asking for more. This mistake cost me a lot of time and ultimately money.
Your time is valuable and certain jobs, particularly when you are starting, will not be worth your time. If you are starting a photography business you need to build up a steady stream of clients and having one take up an inordinate amount of your time, particularly if they are not paying you well, is just not worth it. You could be spending that valuable time marketing yourself and building your knowledge and business.
Always get all of the information up front from the client before you quote a price and size them up. It can be obvious, sometimes right away, when a client will be difficult. When you get all of the details stated up front, if the parameters of the job happen to change later in the process, then you will have the grounds to ask for more money for the extra work they are asking you to do. This will keep clients from taking advantage of your time and asking for more than what was agreed upon. Sometimes they will not even remember what they had asked for at the beginning.
An engagement portrait. Some clients will prefer more posed portraiture that looks like it came out of a magazine. Some will want both. The better you know your clients the better you can anticipate what the will want.
I have been doing photography jobs for a decade now and I still get nervous every single time I have to press the send button for the final images. No matter how confident I am in them, that fear is never going to go away for me. It might be the same for some of you.
However, it used to be more debilitating than it is now. At the beginning it would cause me to procrastinate and it would cause me to take so much longer editing the images than it should have. I notice that this happens to a lot of photographers. Newer photographers often spend much more time on the editing than the more experienced photographers. Some of this is based on speed and experience, but I find that the biggest factor is that the experienced photographers have their editing process down to a science. There is a structure to the way they do things that makes everything more efficient and having this structure also helps reduce the fear.
Create a consistent structure for how you edit jobs. Here is mine:
Friendly and natural business portraits. When you need to create images that feel natural you need a game plan for how you are going to make the subjects feel relaxed. Think ahead of time about what you can say or do to achieve this relaxed environment.
Once I have this done, the path to the finished product is laid out before me. I then go through all of the negatives and get them to the exact crop that I want. I do this because I want to see the whole sequence of images that I will be sending to the client before I start editing the final look of them.
Finally, I go through and edit the images. The hardest aspects for me are getting the color balance, contrast, and exposure to be perfect. Also, one of the toughest things to do is to make all of the photos feel consistent. This is why I like to have the final edit of negatives chosen and cropped before I begin to work on the aesthetics. It gives me a clear path to get to this endpoint.
Do you see how an efficient system can cut out hours and even days of editing time? It keeps you organized and this organization is meant to break through any procrastination and worry about the final photographs. Then, all you have to do is stand up for a second, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and hit the send button.
Take yourself seriously, especially when you are starting out. If you are starting a photography business, commit to it. You are a photographer, you don’t do photography. You have a product that takes a lot of effort, knowledge, and skill. Your product has a lot of value and not everyone with a DSLR can do what you do.
Need more help with business? Try these other dPS articles:
The post 5 Fears to Overcome When Starting a Photography Business by James Maher appeared first on Digital Photography School.
I almost didn’t purchase the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens. I remember a conversation when I bought it a few years back on Google+ with my good pal Gordon Laing where I was really debating buying it. It was in pre production and I had an order in with B&H but it hadn’t shipped yet. At around $ 1,400 the lens felt expensive for what I worried might be an oddball lens, a lens useful for making a few high impact fisheye shots but not good for much else.
I’m happy to say that I did buy the EF 8-15mm fisheye lens and that I couldn’t be more happy about that decision.
My main dilemma with the EF 8-15mm fisheye was that I already owned the excellent EF 24mm f/1.4 lens and EF 14mm f/2.8 lens, and so I felt like I had the whole wide angle world covered. Now I find that I use this lens at 15mm much more than either my EF 24mm f/1.4 lens and EF 14mm f/2.8 lens and get what feels to me to be a remarkable more normal non fishy looking wide angle shot. Yes, you can tell it came from a fisheye lens at 15mm, but barely and I love the slightest degree of distortion I get there artistically speaking.
Of course I have way more fun shooting this lens at 8mm and have found that beyond traditional fisheye subjects, this lens has opened up a whole new world to me when it comes to shooting more abstractly — especially with architecture. I find these days my EF 14mm lens stays in my bag and instead I put on my EF 8-15mm fisheye lens for almost every ceiling photo I take.
I find this lens gets me my highest impact shots. Shots that make you go wow and make people notice.
On a full frame lens this lens gives you a perfect circle at 8mm. I love the square crop format and frequently shoot it at 8mm and then crop square afterwards.
The lens is super sharp and great if you want to get the entire ceiling of Chihuly’s amazing sculpture at the Bellagio like in the photo with this post.
While it’s not the best portrait lens, it can be fun to use as well with photographing people in new and creative ways (like this version of the human eye that I used it on).
As a reminder, my analysis of my Canon gear is being done in partnership with Canon and I am receiving compensation for this work with them.
