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Weekly Photography Challenge – Childhood

06 Sep

What does childhood mean to you? This could be photos of children, their small hands, or the things associated with that time of life like crayons, rubber boots and puddles, frogs, toys, old photos, and so many other things.

Crayons are for kids – or are they? Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Weekly Photography Challenge – Childhood

Let’s see what childhood means to you?

Share your images below:

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge. Sometimes it takes a while for an image to appear so be patient and try not to post the same image twice.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images on the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Childhood by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How to Find Your Photography Niche

05 Sep

This is a quick tip to help you see why finding your photography niche could be beneficial to you and the growth of your photography.

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The problem with shooting everything

If you could shoot anything you want and get paid for it, why wouldn’t you? That’s an easy enough question for pretty much anyone to answer. You know what you like to shoot, what you get the most joy out of, have the most fun editing, and what gives you the most satisfaction when you see the end result. But if you are like the many photographers all over the world shooting pretty much everything, you aren’t making the kind of artistic growth you’d like to see or have the satisfaction you’d like to experience. A good way for you to overcome a lack of satisfaction or a decrease of productivity is to dive into a photographic niche.

What is a niche?

A niche is defined as a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. There’s a reason why you go to a doctor when you’re sick, call a plumber when your pipes burst, or a contractor when you want to build a home. They spend years studying and working in their fields, and the consistent quality of their work is proof of it. It’s the same with photography.

You wouldn’t go to a landscape photographer to get your portrait taken, or a sports photographer to shoot your new product When you think of great photographers, who comes to mind? The landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, portrait photographer Richard Avedon, or fashion photographer Annie Leibovitz? You associate each of these people with the type of photography for which they are famous.

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What do you like to photograph?

Now, think about yourself for a second. What do you want to be known for? What have you been shooting, what do you want to shoot? The first step in deciding which photography niche you want to delve into is identifying what you want to shoot. The decision is ultimately yours when it comes to finding a niche or genre that you really enjoy. Take a look at the work you are doing now and ask yourself if it’s fulfilling or if there’s something else you’d like to shoot.

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Do you want to shoot something else? No? Then congratulations, you’re a few steps ahead of the game. If you do want to shoot something else, however, the next couple of paragraphs are just for you.

If you’re not shooting what you want now, it’s definitely not the easiest thing to change, especially if you’re known for whatever it is you’re doing at the moment. It can be a scary and drawn out process going through a rebranding, but in the end, it will be the right decision. Making money doing what you want to do has many benefits.

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Create a portfolio

The first step is to target your preferred audience and curate a portfolio. Spend a decent amount of time making your new portfolio something you’re proud of. Start off small, book TFP (time for print) shoots with models if you want to get into fashion. Set up a small studio in your garage if you want to get the best product photos you can manage. Get out there as often as you can and shoot, but don’t share anything just yet. You want to make sure that you have a cohesive body of work ready to go first.

Some niches are harder to get into without an existing portfolio, but it’s doable. You don’t need an amazing wedding portfolio to book your first wedding. But at that first wedding you photograph, be as deliberate as you can be in order to make as many photos portfolio shots as possible. Stockpile a good amount of content because you’re going to need it soon.

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Clean up your online presence

Once you have a good amount of content for whatever niche you’re wanting to get into, you need to scrub out every remnant of your previous work off the Internet (if you have any). I know that once you post something on the technological marvel which is the world wide web, it’s out there in some way shape or form. But removing the primary source, like anything on your website or social media is pretty easy to take care of.

Once you get rid of that, anything linking to the post is now a 404 error, meaning that it doesn’t show up anymore. Once you have your old work more or less purged from the internet, now is the time to get your new work in front of your preferred audience. Throw those photos on your website, inundate social media with your images, GET THEM SEEN by your target audience.

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Conclusion

That’s it, in a nutshell. When it comes down to it, you need to identify for yourself what you want to shoot, and go out and shoot it. Start small, simple, and perfect your vision and build that portfolio. Set the foundation of your brand within the niche you select.

Practice as much as you can and get your vision as close to perfect as you can. Once you build up your new portfolio, get it seen by your target audience. Identify, visualize, curate, and execute. Think about these steps and get into the photography niche that you want!

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Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

04 Sep

It sounds tempting and exotic. Traveling the world taking photos and seeing those photos appear in newspapers and magazines can be thrilling but are you made for a career in travel photography? Here are seven ways to know if a career in travel photography is right for you.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#1 – You have a longing to travel

The first requirement of being a travel photographer is actually enjoying traveling but it’s more than that. It’s a restlessness that simply doesn’t go away no matter what you are doing or where you have already been. You simply can’t sit still and want to explore everything and everywhere. Does that sound like you?

But it’s also important to remember that taking photos while traveling is different than traveling to take photos. Your time on the road as a travel photographer has one reason and one reason only and that’s to take photos. Nothing else matters and nothing can come between you and your next great shot.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#2 – You enjoy your own company

Travel photography is a lonely business and most of your time is spent on the road with your own thoughts. Yes you’ll have the odd conversation with a local but ultimately you are working alone. You are usually awake and out and about before others and you usually end up being the last one back to the hotel room. While spending time on your own can sometimes be nice, can you handle days, weeks or even months by yourself?

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#3 – You can adapt quickly

There is a common theme amongst travel photographers and that is “not enough time”. You will usually find yourself with a long shot list and not enough time to fulfil it. So you need to be able to adapt quickly and hit the ground running straightaway, even in new destinations. There won’t be time to spend a couple of days getting to know a destination and every second wasted is eating into your time needed to cover off your shot list.

But you also need to learn to adapt while you are at a destination, for example, if the weather is causing problems to your shot list. You need to be able to think, act, and plan quickly and efficiently.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#4 – You have an eye for what people want

I remember learning very early in my career as a travel photographer that you need to learn what people want to see. This is a business after all, and the only way that you can earn a living from it is by being able to sell your images or getting paid for assignments. Some photographers are better at this than others. Ultimately the success or failure of your photography business comes down to being able to give people what they want to see and what they will pay for.

Part of this will come with experience through years of seeing which of your images sell. But you also need to actively spend time researching and looking at trends in the travel industry, be in the know with up and coming destinations and the news. For example a major airline could be starting a new route, or a previously “closed off” country could be opening its doors to tourists.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

One of my images recently used by Tatler.

#5 – You can function with little sleep

There’s no getting around it, being a travel photographer on location is tiring work. You often have to function on little sleep as you’ll be getting up before sunrise, spending all day walking around, then hanging around until well after sunset to capture great shots.

In the summer months that could mean having to get by with just a few hours of sleep a night. Add to that carrying camera equipment all day and not eating properly and you will quickly learn that being on a photo assignment is completely different than being on holiday.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#6 – You are confident

As a travel photographer, you often have to do things by yourself. Whether that is adapting to a new location, finding your way around a city or trying to explain to a local why you want to take their photo. But arguably the biggest requirement for a travel photographer is being confident in your ability to capture great photos that will go on to sell.

Unlike working in a studio when you can set up and art direct your shoot and make adjustments as necessary, as a travel photographer sometimes you only get one shot at documenting a location. You may only have a few days at any given place so you have to capture what you need to in that time.

Because of this you need to believe in your ability both to compose and frame your photos, making sure things like the lighting and the subject are right, but also in your ability to execute that shot perfectly. Sometimes there are no second chances to correct a photo that is blurred or poorly focused.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

#7 – You can work quickly

Travel photography is about telling the story of that destination. Whether it’s a famous monument, a beautiful cityscape or a local going about their day, a travel photographer’s job is to capture that. Often those moments are fleeting and don’t stay around for long. For example the gap in the flow of traffic in front of that famous monument could just be a few minutes. Or the interaction between a market vendor and a customer could last a few seconds. Even capturing landscape or city shots could only have a short window where the light is perfect.

The only way to ensure you don’t miss these moments is to be able to work quickly. This means being ready and knowing how to use your camera completely. With practice over time you will naturally improve and get faster in your work and your camera will become an extension of your arm.

Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You?

Conclusion

Despite all of these points, there really aren’t many jobs that can give you the same excitement, anticipation, and satisfaction as being a travel photographer. Seeing your work published makes all of the early mornings and endless hours of walking around and waiting worth it.

So do you think a career in travel photography is right for you? Share your thoughts below.

The post Is a Career in Travel Photography Right for You? by Kav Dadfar appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Tips and Tricks for Night Photography of the Starry Sky

04 Sep

During the last year, I’ve become a big fan of night photography and the night sky. I’ve always enjoyed it but my hometown in Norway doesn’t have the most interesting landscape. So I rarely bothered to go out during night – unless there was a rare show of Northern Lights or meteorite showers. After packing up my stuff and moving to the north of Spain, however, I’ve found myself spending more and more time photographing the stars. What appears pitch black to the naked eye can be beautiful scenery through the camera.

In this article, I’ll share some tips and tricks on how you can photograph the various states of the night sky including The Milky Way, new moon, or northern lights.

Camera Settings for Night Photography

Light is the most important part of photography; without light, there’s no picture to be taken. During the night it is dark and the light is sparse, making it challenging to photograph. In fact, in order to capture an image during the night, you’ll most likely have to sacrifice some image quality – forget about using a narrow aperture and low ISO.

Unlike regular landscape photography, night photography requires less than ideal settings in order to capture enough light to properly expose the scene. Since there’s not a lot of available light, that means opening the aperture, increasing the ISO and lengthening the exposure time (shutter speed).

Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

There isn’t one correct setting for each and every scenario as it depends on many factors (such as the brightness of the moon). But as a rule of thumb, you want to use the widest aperture your lens allows in order to get the sky as detailed as possible. Lenses with an aperture of f/2.8 are widely popular amongst nighttime and astrophotographers and if your lens allows for such an open aperture, this is where you should begin.

ISO and shutter speed

The ISO also needs to be increased quite a lot for night photography. For regular landscape photography, I always stress the importance of shooting with the lowest possible ISO. Even though we still want to shoot with the lowest possible setting we’re now looking at an ISO of at least 1600 at night. It’s not uncommon to use an ISO of 3200 or 6400 during the night. Still, to maintain as much quality as possible, try to use the lowest possible option.

Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

Choosing the shutter speed is slightly more challenging as it depends on the focal length of your lens, but I recommend not going longer than 30 seconds unless you want to photograph star trails (I’ll come back to this later in the article). The 500 Rule is a good guideline when choosing the shutter speed. Basically, divide 500 by the focal length of the lens you’re using and you’ll know the maximum shutter speed you can use (to avoid star trails). If you’re using a crop sensor camera you’ll need to calculate the equivalent focal length of a full-frame lens (for example 20mm on crop sensor = 30mm. 500/30 = 16.6 seconds).

Remember that a tripod is essential for night photography in order to get a sharp image. It’s simply not possible to hold your camera still for several seconds!

Planning to Photograph the Night Sky

Scouting can be hard during the night so it’s often beneficial to have familiarized yourself with the area before going there in the dark. I know this isn’t always possible but the very least use an app such as PhotoPills to learn the phase of the moon, its position, as well as the time of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset and anything else related to your shoot. The more you’ve prepared, the higher the chance you’ll get a great image.

Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

Let’s summarize what you should know before going out photographing:

Time of twilight
Time of Nautical and Astronomical dark
Phase of the moon
Moon’s position in the sky
Time of moonrise and moonset
When The Milky Way is visible (if applicable)
The Milky Way’s position (if applicable)

All this information is easy to find in an app such as PhotoPills or by doing a quick search online.

General Ideas for Night Photography

If your goal is photograph stars and the natural night sky, I think it’s fair to guess that you want to see as many stars as possible. In order to get the best possible view of the stars, you’ll need to position yourself at a location that’s away from larger cities and light pollution.

Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

A subtle display of Northern Lights in Lofoten.

Website and maps such as DarkSiteFinder are great resources when searching for areas with less light pollution. If you live close to a major city you’ll probably have to travel a little further than if you live near a small town. There are filters, such as NiSi’s Natural Night Filter, that help reduce the light pollution but it won’t magically remove it all and give you a starry sky – it simply neutralizes the color of the light pollution.

For the most detailed night sky, it’s also ideal to avoid the weeks closest to a full moon. During that period, the sky is brighter and there are fewer stars visible to both the camera and the naked eye. However, that doesn’t mean that you should stay home; there are many interesting subjects during the full moon as well.

The Milky Way

Norway is known for Northern Lights, dark and starry nights, as well as the overall beautiful landscape but what we don’t have is The Milky Way. Let me be a little more specific; the Galactic Center (the brightest most visible part of The Milky Way that you see in most photos) is never visible in Norway – we only see the edges of it. So, you can imagine my excitement every time I get a chance to photograph the Galactic Center and The Milky Way in its most beautiful display.

Milky Way photography - Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

The techniques for photographing The Milky Way are mostly similar to other types of night photography. You’ll want to use an open aperture, high ISO and a shutter speed of no more than 30 seconds. I find that a slightly higher ISO and a shutter speed of around 25 seconds (when shooting at 14mm @f/2.8) gives the highest amount of detail when photographing The Milky Way. By using a slower shutter speed, the camera starts picking up slight movement in the stars (due to earth’s rotation) and it begins to get blurry.

It’s also best to photograph The Milky Way during the new moon or before the moon has risen. The darker the sky, the more stars you see and the more detailed The Milky Way becomes.

Photographing a Meteor Shower

Whenever there’s a meteor shower, such as the recent Perseids Meteor Shower, I keep my fingers crossed for clear skies. There’s nothing more magical than being outside in the pitch black, looking up at dozens or even hundreds of shooting stars during a span of several hours.

Northern Light Meteorite - Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

Since most the shooting stars last for only a second or two, it can be hard to capture them in an image. In order to capture as many of them as possible, I set my camera to interval shooting and I let it go continuously. To pick up even the smaller shooting stars I increase the shutter speed slightly to approximately 15 seconds (depends on the brightness of the night).

Photographing the Northern Lights

Northern Lights is a phenomenon that we’re lucky to have in the northern hemisphere. It’s unlike anything else and I can guarantee that once you see it, you’ll want to witness it again.

The challenges when photographing the Northern Lights is that it often moves quite quickly and it can be rather bright. In order to freeze the motion, you’ll need a quicker shutter speed such as 1-10 seconds. Exactly how quick depends on the intensity of the lights. Just keep in mind that if they’re moving quickly, you should use a quicker shutter speed.

Northern Lights Iceland - Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

Also, pay attention to the histogram as it’s easy to blow out the highlights. Since it’s a bright phenomenon in the otherwise dark night, the contrast can be great. I recommend always exposing for the highlights and if needed take a second exposure for the landscape that you can blend in later during post-processing.

Slow it Down and Photograph Star Trails

Due to the rotation of the earth, your camera registers movement in the stars once the shutter speed becomes too long. This creates a blurry and soft sky and can be quite displeasing to watch.

That being said, every now and then this is something you want to use as an advantage rather than viewing it as a problem. By lengthening the shutter speed to several minutes or even an hour (this lets you use a low ISO and narrow aperture but may result in hot pixels) you’re able to capture what’s known as star trails. This effect can be really interesting but make sure that the shutter speed is long enough so that the stars don’t just look blurry.

Stars over the Sahara desert – image by dPS Editor Darlene Hildebrandt. Series of 30-second exposures over 45 minutes, stacked using StarStax, blended with a couple of light painted images of the tent.

Alternatively, you can capture a series of images using a shorter shutter speed and merge them together in Photoshop or a software such as StarStax.

Full Moon and Bright Moon Phases

As I’ve mentioned previously, nights, when the moon is small, are best for night photography as it’s during this period you’ll see most stars. However, when the moon is up there are still many interesting images to be captured.

moonrise in lofoten - Tips and Tricks for Night Photography the Starry Sky

First of all, since the moon is a bright source of light, you can get away with using a slightly lower ISO or narrower aperture. It can also be easier to find a composition as the landscape is brighter. Use this light to your advantage and pay attention to the shadows in the landscape. Perhaps the moon lights up a mountain? Perhaps it creates a nice reflection in a lake? During this period, it can be wise to compose your image to include more landscape than sky as that’s where the most interesting things are happening.

Personally, I prefer to photograph the moon when it has a low position in the sky as I find the shadows to be slightly more interesting during that time. Note: This is for the same reasons shooting at sunrise and sunset are best for daytime landscape photography.

Conclusion

Have you tried night photography before? If not, grab your camera and tripod (and maybe a buddy for some company) and get out and give it a go. Share any other night photo tips you have in the comments below as well as your night sky images. We’d love to see them.

The post Tips and Tricks for Night Photography of the Starry Sky by Christian Hoiberg appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How To Pick the Best Camera For Your Photography Needs

04 Sep

What is a good camera for me? Everyone might have a different answer to this question. At the end of the day, the best camera is subject to someone’s photography needs. Sometimes you don’t need to buy the most expensive one just to take that simple shot. And of course, you can’t just use your point and shoot if you Continue Reading

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How to Make Sense of Photography Hardware Terminology

01 Sep

There are many different pieces of hardware that help to hold camera equipment together and attach things to stands. Here is an overview of some of the photograph hardware you need to understand. It’s not glamorous but having the right parts will help you get things done.

Tripod connection

Ever since the early days of photography, the need to keep the camera steady has been a prominent issue. The long exposure times and the size of the equipment in those days made it impossible to handheld the camera with sharp results. So, the tripod was invented and to this day it remains as the go-to solution to stabilize your photographic equipment.

The tripod is connected to the camera via a thumbscrew that secures both parts. Virtually every camera on the market has a threaded hole on the bottom dedicated to the attachment of a tripod.

Tripod mount on the bottom of most cameras.

As recommended by The Royal Photographic Society and regulated by ISO 1222:2010 these female threads are compatible with one of these two stud sizes used on tripod plates:

The 1/4 20 stud that measures 1/4 inch or 6.5 mm in diameter and has 20 threads per inch.
The 3/8 16 stud that measures 3/8 inch or 9.5 mm in diameter and has 16 threads per inch.

Tripod insert.

The 1/4 20 thread is the most common and used in the majority of equipment in the market. Meanwhile the 3/8 16 is used for heavier equipment as it is much sturdier and able to stand heavier load. It is fairly easy to convert between the two threads with adapters like this male 1/4 to 3/8 or female 3/8 to 1/4.

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Connecting light stands to gear

Even though camera tripod connection is the main use for these threads, there are a lot more uses for them as well. These are the standard size for a vast array of photography accessories connection compatibility.

The spigot connection complements the threaded system as it is quick and easy to use, and it is not limited by the thread tightness positioning. It is used as a building block for many things around the studio from holding flash heads on a light stand to background and reflectors holding systems.

A 3/8″ spigot left, and ¼” one on the right.

The combination of these two systems allows the mounting of accessories like a flash and umbrella swivel bracket. You can use the spigot system to connect to the tripod and the 1/4 thread for a flash cold shoe.

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All the female and male thread combinations are possible with a conversion kit. It is composed of three elements, a spigot with 1/4 and 3/8 female thread, a 1/4 to 3/8 male converter and a double 1/4 male stud.

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Combining this three pieces in different positions allows all the threaded spigot combinations and interlocking of different pieces of hardware. Sets are available that contain all of these pieces.

Other uses

There are many other things you can connect using these bits. A good example is the use of a magic arm. It is a really sturdy system for holding things in place and has many thread options on each side.

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Connecting it to a clamp with a female thread is a great combination for holding reflectors, lights, or positioning production accessories in your photography set.

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Another great accessory that allows the combination of all these pieces of equipment in the same place is the universal junction sphere. This handy little gadget has multiple 3/8 threads and allows many accessories to be mounted on the same base.

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Conclusion

So, here are just a few examples of photography hardware accessories that are not of great use by themselves, but make powerful tools when connected together. It is just a matter of picking the right combination to get the job done!

Let us know in the comments what combinations you use.

The post How to Make Sense of Photography Hardware Terminology by Ivo Guimaraes appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

31 Aug

No photographer wants to get into the photography business with the aim of becoming a marketing expert. But the reality is that if you don’t focus on the marketing and business end of photography, your business will not be able to survive long enough to do the fun stuff. It stinks, but this is the truth.

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Luckily, the learning curve at the beginning is the toughest part, and as you get used to the business side, everything will come much more naturally to you. Eventually, you might even learn to enjoy it, or at least appreciate the work, after you see how powerful it can be in getting you where you want to go.

So here are 10 of the most important strategies you can start right away to make sure your photography business succeeds.

1. Use Your Personal Network

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Nobody wants to be that annoying marketer that always pushes their business on their friends and acquaintances. However, this fear can push photographers way too far in the opposite direction, never working with the people that have grown to trust them the most. Your personal network is your strongest asset and even more so at the beginning of your photography business. These are the people who will give you your first jobs and introduce you to your first clients.

Photography is unique in that no matter what genre you are involved in, people in your network will most likely need your services at some point, whether it’s wedding or event photography, business portraiture, family portraiture, or print selling. So let your network know what you do and how you can help them.

Create a mailing list and send out an announcement to your network. Show your best work, talk about your photography business, and make sure to explain how you can help people. How can your business benefit them? They will not know unless you tell them. In addition, make sure to ask for referrals.

2. Take Advantage of Local Marketing

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Whenever you say the word marketing these days, for some reason everyone immediately starts talking about social media. That is funny, because as important as social media is, it should be one of the last steps to think about for any marketing plan.

Your first step should be working within your local community. Similar to the last point, these are people who know you. You are just down the street from them. There are businesses of all types in your community that can probably use your work, so create a plan for how to get in front of them.

Make a good impression

Keep in mind that you only get one first impression, so be smart about how you reach out. First and foremost, figure out how you can benefit them. If you are going to reach out to someone, you need to know how their business or life will be better with your services and explain how you can help. Always be kind and courteous with their time, and if possible see if you can get an introduction before contacting someone cold. Does anyone in your personal network know the person you want to contact? That’s always a great first step, but if not, just reach out yourself.

The more you are seen, the more people in your community will notice you and start to think about working with you. Whether it’s local events, business events, fundraisers, you name it, you should make the point to be there, particularly at first. This is the way to create new relationships and to spread your reach.

Similarly, reach out to the other photographers in your area. Many photographers will assist others when they need help and vice versus, and this will help strengthen everyone as a whole. It can be easy for photographers to feel competitive with each other but avoid this. The ones that work together and refer each other will do much better in the long-run than the ones who try to do it all on their own.

3. Create a Mailing List

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Use a mailing list provider such as MailChimp or Aweber to keep up with your clients, personal network, and fans. Email lists have the highest engagement of any form of marketing, and it is the way for you to stay on people’s minds.

Ask people if you can add them to your list, and always have them opt into the subscription. Put signup forms or popups on your website that encourage people to join. Consider giving away something to encourage them to do so, such as free computer wallpapers of your photography.

When sending out emails, create content that your list will enjoy. Do not sell too often with it. The more benefit and interest that you provide for the people on your list, the more they will enjoy it and the more they will like you. Then when you sell, they will be primed to purchase your services or product. When it’s time to sell, sell.

4. Create a Personal Project

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

This image is part of a personal project I’ve been working on involving talking to and making portraits of people in my community.

Personal projects will not bring new clients to you right away, and they will take away time from building your business and making a living. This is the tougher side of doing projects, but they are immensely important for the long term growth of your business and for growing your voice as a photographer. A project can be done slowly over a long period of time, so you can build it into your weekly schedule.

Think of an idea that will resonate with both you and your community. This is a way of keeping your passion for photography alive. It will also help to set you apart from the other photographers in your community. It will show people that you are an interesting person. They will be more interested in working with you, even if the paid work you do is a completely different genre. It will be a way for you to gain press coverage and something for you to talk about to engage people. All in all, a personal project will make marketing yourself so much easier, and it will feel much more natural.

5. Respond Quickly

There is no point in building your photography business or marketing your work if you are not going to respond quickly to inquiries. Respond quickly at every step of the process throughout a job as well. Responding quickly does not have to mean within the hour, although sometimes that can help when getting a new inquiry. It can mean responding within 12 hours or a day, as long as you are consistent and prompt.

Fortunately for you, a lot of photographers are terrible at this, so this will quickly set you apart. It will show people that you are a responsible person, and it will make them more comfortable working with you.

6. Build Your Connections (Both Local and Online)

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Building your network is a lifetime process. As you go further and further in your career, you will begin to create connections with people who can do more and more for you (and who are tougher to get in contact with).

Whichever point in your career you are at, and whatever level your skill level as a photographer, start at that point and build connections there. Then over time, work your way up the ladder. Be patient, be smart, and don’t try to push too hard at first, particularly with people who don’t know you. First impressions are impossible to get back. Grow your network carefully and consistently.

7. Keep Your Existing Clients Coming Back

It can help to create a client management system. You can start off with an excel document at first and eventually grow to a more robust system, such as Sprout Studio. Keep in contact with your best clients, and even consider sending them holiday cards or a small gift to stay on their minds. A small gesture can go a long way, and it is much easier to get an existing client to come back than it is to reach a new one.

8. Makes Sure Your Website Sells

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Think about your website as your number one selling tool. Whatever your primary service is, your site should be developed for the specific purpose of leading people to hire you for that service or for purchasing one of your products.

Study the basics of copywriting, create specific sales pages for your offerings, and even consider creating sales funnels that lead people to an end goal. These can be very powerful ways of priming people to want to work with you.

9. Take Advantage of SEO

SEO, or ranking highly in search engines, is a long term strategy that takes some studying to understand how to do (beyond what we will be able to cover completely here). My belief is that you should always focus on local networking first, as that has the ability to get you very quick gains, whereas an SEO campaign can take years to truly get you where you want to be.

But that being said, SEO should not be ignored, because most people will use Google to find the right photographer for them. Always remember, the goal of Google is to serve up the most relevant websites for the query topic. If you want to rank for a specific term, make sure to create the best possible page that will answer that query. Without this, an SEO strategy will not work.

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

Listen to Google

Google runs on links, so you need to figure out how to get other related websites to link to yours. It’s interesting because while it may seem annoying to gain these links, Google is actually forcing you to do things you should be doing in the first place.

Network with websites that you would like to be featured on, and figure out how you can provide that site with some value before you contact them. You will get nowhere if you just ask for something, but if you contact them willing to help them out, it will help immensely. As you grow with your abilities and your marketing, your opportunities for getting covered will grow as well. Internet marketing gets much easier over time.

This is another area where a personal project can help grow your business. People want to share interesting topics, so even if you are not generating income from the project directly, you can use the project to get covered on websites and to make people more aware of you, which will ultimately help improve SEO and grow your network and mailing list.

10. Create a Daily Plan

The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business

All of this is way too much to do in a feverish month of working. Similarly, your marketing skills will grow gradually, so take your time and be strategic about how you work through your marketing plan. You do not want to spend a whole month contacting everyone you can only to burn out soon after.

Set aside a daily block of time to build your business. Contact a few people every day or every few days. Use the feedback from those to tweak your next pitch. Over time, you will figure out what works and what does not work. A small amount of work each day will eventually snowball into much bigger things.

Conclusion

The main theme throughout this article is that you need to put yourself out there. The work will not just come to you. Create an organized plan, stick to it, and go for it. Be both careful and relentless. That is what is needed.

It may seem like there is a huge wall in front of you that is impossible to cross. But if you chip away at it a little bit each day, within a few years you will find that you have opened up many paths through it.

For even more business help – join the Focus Summit 2017 Online Business and Marketing Conference for Photographers on Sept 26-28th 2017. We will cover marketing, business development, law, SEO, branding, blogging, and much more. Use the code “DPS” for a $ 50 discount.

The post The 10 Most Important Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Photography Business by James Maher appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations – What Would You Do?

29 Aug

Recently on a road trip to Newfoundland, and a visit to Sable Island in Novia Scotia, I ran into a handful of tricky photography situations. Like you, I’m typically pretty well prepared. I know my gear and I have a good idea of how I want my final images to look. In some of these cases though, I was a little out of my depth. Have you ever felt that way? You thought you knew what you were doing but then when you were actually doing it, things didn’t go as planned?

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - in Newfoundland

Bridge on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm lens at 60mm, 1/125th, f/16, ISO 800, hand held, processed in Lightroom.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about four situations, my goals, my gear choices, and my oh-no-this-isn’t-going-the-way-I-thought-it-would moments. Then I’ll own up, show you some images and tell you if think I made the right choices or not. Of course, then I want YOU to share what you would have done in these same situations.

This was my gear list for the trip:

Canon 5D Mark III (full frame)
Canon 7D Mark II (crop sensor)
70-200mm L f/2.8 lens II
100-400mm L f/4.5-5.6 lens Mark II
Canon 1.4x Teleconverter Mark III
Canon 24-105mm L f/4 Mark I lens
Polarizing filter

Situation #1 – Overcast day and a boat

On my first full day in Newfoundland, I scheduled a boat tour out of Bay Bulls to photograph Atlantic Puffins in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, with a sidecar of Humpback and Minke whales as we ferried to and from the reserve. The boat was about 50 feet long and 22 feet wide, making it relatively stable for photography though with about 100 people on board, it was a bit crowded.

What would you do - overcast day - Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do?

The morning of the boat tour was overcast and foggy. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm lens at 32mm, 1/180th, f/16, ISO 800, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Skies were overcast so I pulled out my full frame body Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens. I didn’t worry about the 5DIII’s somewhat laggy shutter speed since I’m not the best at photographing birds in flight. I didn’t even plan to try it from a moving boat. Instead, I hoped to photograph some nice puffin behaviors in their nesting grounds as well as whales, if they cooperated by breaching or showing us their tails. At the last minute, I tucked the 1.4x teleconverter into my bag.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - humpback whale

Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens plus 1.4x converter at 560mm, 1/6000th, f/8, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

I can tell you the first huge mistake I made right off the bat. I didn’t take a motion sickness pill that morning. So, I spent most of the boat trip feeling rather green and taking deep meditative breaths while trying to shoot. Mistake number two, deep-breathing near a bird rookery. (I think you know what I mean).

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - What Would You Do? - bird rookery

The wise choice around all these birds is to hold your breath or breathe through your mouth. Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens 1.4x converter at 140mm, 1/1500th, f/9.5, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

The third mistake I made was leaving on my polarizing filter. Blown out spectral highlights are hard to fix in post-production so I almost always use a polarizer when shooting on or near water. However, the 1-stop loss of light was too much on the rocking boat. I removed the filter and shoved it in my pocket immediately.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations What Would You Do - humpback whale tail

Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm lens 1.4x converter at 560mm, 1/6000th, f/8, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

The fourth mistake I made was underestimating how far away we’d be from both the whales and birds. Barely 15 minutes into the trip I was digging out my teleconverter, and hunkering down to protect my gear while I connected the teleconverter between the lens and camera body. Thank goodness it was in my bag.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations What would you do - puffins

Puffins are comical little birds! Canon 5DIII with 100-400mm 1.4x converter @ 560mm, 1/750th, f/9.5, ISO 2000, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

In the end, I recovered from my motion sickness (and I didn’t vomit from the odiferous bird smell). A common murre (bird) did have the temerity to hit me in the head as it flew off the rookery but it didn’t poop on me (much, anyway). Ultimately, I was only moderately happy with my images – mostly because of the super flat light.

Have you photographed from boats before? Would you have made the same choices? Do you have any suggestions for anyone that will be shooting in a similar situation?

Situation #2 – Adjusting exposure for fog

In Cape Saint Mary’s, Newfoundland, there is a renowned ecological reserve for seabirds, many of them Northern Gannets, which are white. The reserve is supposed to be stunningly beautiful. I can’t actually confirm if it was beautiful or not. Both times I visited, the fog was so thick that the visibility was terrible.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations -St Mary's fog

The famous “spire” is almost completely obscured by fog. Canon 5DIII with 24-105mm at 24mm, 1/350th, f/13, ISO 640, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Photographing in heavy fog is a problem because your camera’s exposure meter reads the white fog as grayer than it is in reality. To get a properly exposed image, you need to systematically check your histogram as you shoot. Pushing your histogram to the right, towards the white end of the histogram’s range, can give you a more realistic exposure.

In this histogram, you can see that the recorded data for the image falls short of the white point (right side). It also falls short of the black point (left side) but that can easily be adjusted in post-production. Whites aren’t so easy to adjust because when you brighten an image, you also add noise.

However, if you push your exposure too far to the right, you can blow out the highlights, creating patches of white with no recoverable detail recorded in the file. I increased my exposure compensation in 1/3-stop increments until it was almost 2-stops above my camera’s recommended exposure.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - blown highlights

Here you can see that the histogram climbs up the right edge indicating blown-out (unrecoverable) whites and highlights.

At 1 and 2/3rds-stops above the recommended exposure, the histogram still didn’t touch the right side, meaning no true whites were being recorded in the image. At two full stops above, the histogram crawled up the right side – indicating blown highlights. I decided that shooting at 1.66 stops above was the better choice.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - target histogram

It’s a subtle difference but the histogram I was looking for would have looked like this – just touching the right side but not crawling up it.

I said I’d own up to my mistakes, right? That choice was probably the wrong one. All the RAW files from that shoot look very flat and I only salvaged a few in post-production. I wish I’d experimented more with lowering my ISO to evaluate how that affected the exposure. If I’d lowered my ISO, I could possibly have increased my exposure compensation by two full stops without blowing out the highlights.

Later in my trip, completely frustrated by fog and exposure, I played with ISO values and – oddly – it did seem to help. With a lower ISO, I could increase my exposure compensation while limiting the number of blown highlights.

The moral of the story here is to think outside of the box. Don’t get stuck on what you think are the right settings. In situations like fog, change all your settings frequently to produce multiple files that are both under- and over-exposed and give yourself a better chance of having a RAW file that will give you the final images you were looking for.

Here’s a straight out of camera RAW file so that you can see exactly what I mean by “flat.” Canon 7DII with 100-400mm at 400mm, 1/800th, f/10, ISO 640, exposure compensation +1 2/3rd stops, hand held.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - processed gannets

Here’s the same image processed in Lightroom CC. You can see I had a little fun with it to give it some oomph. Lavender birds are way more fun than pea soup fog birds!

Note that the RAW file could have been pushed far more but personally, I felt that produced unattractive results. With extreme increases of Clarity, Contrast, and Dehaze, the birds did become crisper but it was still obvious that the image was captured on a very foggy day. The heavy processing didn’t make the image look anything like an image taken on a clear day.

Have you photographed birds or wildlife in pea soup fog? Would you have made the same choice? Any other suggestions for the dPS community?

Situation #3 – Photographing in the rain

One lucky evening the fog didn’t blanket Sable Island like it usually did. The ship was anchored just a kilometer away, so I jumped into the waiting Zodiac to cruise around the island’s shoreline. In the best of circumstances, as you cruise you can see wild horses running along the beach, colonies of seals happily snoozing and seals cavorting around you in the ocean.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - Zodiac

While this was taken earlier in the day, it gives you an idea of the logistics of shooting from a Zodiac boat. Many people never even pulled out their gear while on the water.

While there was no fog on that evening, it was still overcast. The wind and swell were also high. Salty sea spray was a significant gear hazard. Even though my camera was protected with a rain cover, I was nervous. It wouldn’t be easy shooting but there were three shots I wanted to capture:

Seals playing in the water around the boat.
Sleeping seals piled en-mass on the beach.
Wild horses on the beach, with the dunes as a backdrop behind them.

Twenty minutes into our shoreline cruise, the skies darkened and it started to rain. We continued to cruise but I tucked my camera away in the dry sack and just enjoyed the curious seals popping up around the boat. Before putting the camera away, I hadn’t checked off any of the three images I wanted but my gear stayed safe and I really enjoyed watching the seals.

Before I put my gear away, this was the sort of image I was getting. Canon 7DII with 100-400 II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/1250th, f/8, ISO 1250, hand held (in a small rocking boat), processed in Lightroom CC.

Ultimately, I captured two of three of the shots I wanted on another day but I’m curious, what would you have done? Have you ever photographed wildlife from a Zodiac? Would you have put your camera away once it started to rain? Or just kept shooting during this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

Situation #4 – Photographing far away wildlife

On one of my last hikes on Sable Island, I assembled what I call my “long combination” of the Canon 7D Mark II and 100-400mm with the 1.4x teleconverter. As much as I wanted to use my full frame Canon 5D Mark III, I just wasn’t able to get close enough to the horses on this trip. I needed the maximum focal length I could garner.

Here’s the focal length math:

Multiply your focal length by the 1.4x teleconverter. For example, 400mm multiplied by 1.4 x equals and effective focal length of 560mm.
Multiplied again by the 1.6 crop factor of the 7DII, the effective focal length increases to 896mm.

Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations - Sable Island Stallion

The lone horse I saw after hours of hiking. Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/500th, f/9, ISO 500, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Ultimately, did I make the right decision with my gear? After hours of hiking, I only saw one wild horse. Considering that, I was darn glad not to be carrying two camera bodies with multiple heavy lenses.

Tenacity pays off! Even though it wasn’t the animal I was looking to photograph that day, I’m delighted with this seal portrait. Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 368mm, 1/250th, f/8, ISO 400, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

On the way back to the Zodiac pick-up point at the beach though, I sighted a huge colony of seals. A ridge of sand actually obscured the hundreds of seals that were nearest to me until I was on the brink of being too close to them. I dropped to my knees and photographed them like a mad woman. The light was bright enough, if not soft and golden. And those shots of seals I wanted to get from the Zodiac cruise earlier in the trip? I captured them during this hike instead.

Canon 7D II with 100-400mm II plus 1.4x III @ 560mm, 1/640th, f/8, ISO 400, hand held, processed in Lightroom CC.

Conclusion

What would you have done? Take a look at my gear list (top of article). Would you have chosen the same gear? Or carried multiple cameras and lenses? Would you have headed back after hours of hiking and seeing only one horse? Or just kept hiking in hopes of seeing more?

Thanks for playing along today. Please take a minute to post a comment about a tricky photography situation you’ve encountered so that we can all learn from each other’s mistakes – and successes!

The post Troubleshooting 4 Tricky Photography Situations – What Would You Do? by Lara Joy Brynildssen appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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10 Quick Tips for Travel Photography

27 Aug

Here is a really quick video for you from the gang over at COOPH (Cooperative of Photography) with 10 tips for travel photography.

Enjoy, and check out the links to stuff mentioned in the video below it.

Links to things mentioned in the video

For more a more detailed tutorial on how to remove tourists check out: How to Remove People from Your Photos Using Photoshop

For sharing prints with people when you travel you might want to consider a Fuji Instax printer. Portable enough to take with you, prints photos from your Smartphone or tablet.

For backing up your images on the road, read the following:

How to Backup and Manage Your Photos When Traveling Without a Computer
Step by Step Plan for Backing Up Your Images While Traveling

Then grab one of the G-Technology drives shown in the video (the tough black and blue ones)

Shoot at sunrise: 4 Reasons Shooting at Sunrise and Sunset Will Help You Take Better Photos

Lastly, more on using framing in your compositions: Tips for Using Natural Framing to Improve Your Composition

Your turn

Do you have any other good quick tips for travel photography you want to share with us? Please do so in the comments below.

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Weekly Photography Challenge – Travel Photos

27 Aug

Going anywhere exciting soon? Or have you recently gotten back from a trip? Now is your chance to share your travel photos!

Weekly Photography Challenge – Travel Photos

Credit: Photo by Tomo Nogi on Unsplash

Share your images below:

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images on the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

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