Last year, Instagram became a part of our everyday life. With over 200 million users, this network is one of the most powerful tools these days to promote your photography business. If you have not used it for business purposes, I have to say you’re losing a great opportunity. Instagram as a photo and video sharing application is a perfect Continue Reading
The post How to Effectively Use Instagram to Boost Your Photography Business appeared first on Photodoto.
It’s been a while since we asked your opinion on something or had a poll so I thought I’d bring this one back again to see if there’s any change from last time we asked this question.
So tell us what kind of photography do you do most often? I’ve set it up so you can pick up to two options from the list so pick the two that you do the most frequently. If you do another kind of photography that isn’t listed select Other and tell us in the comments section.
By participating in polls like this it helps us understand the kinds of articles that you would most like to see on dPS. So please take a moment to fill it in and tell us more about you.
In July 2013 we asked the same question and we’ve had over 55,000 responses since then. These are the results from 2013, let’s see how it compares to now:
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
The post Poll: What Kind of Photography do You do? by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Earlier I shared a bunch of images of wild animals for you to admire. There are some amazing shots out there and it takes a great amount of patience to be a wildlife photographer.
So your challenge this week is to go out and photograph some animals. They don’t necessarily have to be wild, but if you can find some – bonus!
By Massmo Relsig
Your dog, the squirrel in backyard, or even a visit to your local zoo will work. Think about your lens selection (wildlife photographers usually use really long lenses, partly to keep their subjects from eating them), your camera settings to freeze or blur any action, and your timing. Will you use a tripod or a monopod? What time of day is best to find the animals and get the best light?
These are all things I want you to consider as you go out to photography animals. Remember if you head out into nature:
Take only photographs – leave only footsteps
Photographing animals will require patience. They may not do what you want or expect them to do, so you have to be ready and anticipate their actions. Are you up to the challenge? Go!
By jimmy brown
By Silver Doctor
By Tobias
By Lumiere2005
By Martin Fisch
By Terry Chay
By Humberto Moreno
By Tetsumo
By Marie and Alistair Knock
By Ian Robertson
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.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge: Animals by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Nature is an amazing thing. This week I share with you some images of wildlife, animals in nature. Some may have been taken on nature preserves or even in a zoo, but if the image is well done and we can’t tell kudos to the photographer.
If you do any wildlife photography you’ll appreciate how difficult it is to get the perfect shot. So enjoy these and be inspired.
ONCE in a LIFETIME by Marina Cano on 500px
beautiful dolphin jumping from shining water by Vitaliy Sokol on 500px
Winter Ponder by Kyle Moffat on 500px
Tiger C L A W S by yudi lim on 500px
Happy Fox by Roeselien Raimond on 500px
Evil Dark Angel by Harry Eggens on 500px
Norwegian Caribou by Ole C. Salomonsen on 500px
Baby owl by Limm yangmook on 500px
Swan on a Mission by Roeselien Raimond on 500px
Let me have a Smell first by Julian Rad on 500px
Thirsty Squirrel by Julian Rad on 500px
Surprise! by Simon Roy on 500px
Bye Bye by Massimiliano Orpelli on 500px
Dust by Chris Fischer on 500px
Beauty by Chris Fischer on 500px
Awful Close by Chris Fischer on 500px
Bolivian Flamingos by Pedro Szekely on 500px
Wild sunset. by Patrick Galibert on 500px
for you by Gabriele Tenhagen-Schmitz on 500px
Golden eagle having a discussion with Red fox by Yves Adams on 500px
Midnight in Svalbard by Yves Adams on 500px
Vulnerable by Marina Cano on 500px
Arctic Fox (Vulpes lagopus fuliginosus) by Einar Gudmann on 500px
Csodaszarvas by Just Smile Photography on 500px
Skua by Einar Gudmann on 500px
African Perforator by Marsel van Oosten on 500px
Facebook Update by Marsel van Oosten on 500px
Run on the water by Marco Carmassi on 500px
King Of The Night by Marsel van Oosten on 500px
Midnight Shake by Marsel van Oosten on 500px
Lions, Masai mara by pekka Järventaus on 500px
Morning Lion by Andrew Schoeman on 500px
Serengeti Sunset by Brian Tarr on 500px
The post A Walk on the Wild Side: A Collection of Wildlife Photography by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Dreaming about a career as a professional photographer? With the right guidance, practice, skills, network, and portfolio, you can make your dream come true.
Developing the necessary skills required to be a professional photographer cannot easily be summed up in a single blog post, let alone many. And networking… well, if you are like most artists, that can be nightmarish, but nevertheless, is absolutely critical. As your referral network grows, so will your business. But that can take years.
Step 1 – create your portfolio. This is a great starting point to help launch your career as a photographer.
Here are eight tips to get you on the right path to creating an online photography portfolio and securing those potential gigs.
In other professions, people use their resumes to apply for potential jobs. However, as a photographer, your portfolio will act as the resume and will showcase the breadth of your work. It will give potential clients a deeper look into your particular forte and expertise.
Your breadth of work should be arranged according to theme or subject. If your work is presented in an organized and easy to navigate way, chances are, potential clients will appreciate the curation and level of professionalism that went into putting your portfolio site together. It also makes their lives a lot easier when looking through your work.
Remember, this is your portfolio site, not your external hard drive. So, you want to make sure that only the best of the best goes up. No one needs to see every single thing you ever shot. Clients need to know what you are good at, so make sure to show only those images that truly count. You may also want to put your best work at the forefront of your site. Most clients are busy and don’t have the time to scan through every photo in all of your galleries, so make sure the work that you are most proud of is at the beginning of your photo galleries.
Often times photographers create beautiful sites and then wait around hoping that clients will see them. However, they forget that they need SEO (search engine optimization). How will anyone hire you, if they can’t find you in a search? Use a portfolio service that enables you to take control of your SEO, and includes search engine friendly URLs, crawl-able content, and unique meta tags. These features will drive traffic to specific places on your site and build links to more than just your homepage.
You may have good intentions to build your own custom portfolio site, wanting it to be a representation of your own unique brand. However, make your life easier and focus on your work, and leave the coding and technicalities to the professionals. Portfolio builder sites will take the guesswork out of the process and will allow you to quickly put together a working, professional site in a short amount of time, so that you can focus on creating and refining your photography.
Nowadays, there are so many portfolio sites to choose from that it can be overwhelming. Some highlight cheap services, various levels of efficiency, and different features. For an aspiring photographer, you want a site that is easy to use, and has a large selection of customizable and flexible templates, so that the site you create truly reflects your personal branding and style. You may also want to use a site that includes unlimited photo proofing. As a professional photographer, you may find yourself uploading thousands of visuals, and you don’t want to be stuck paying for each upload. Stick to a platform that allows you to do this without charging exorbitant fees.
Look for a platform that makes it easy for potential clients to use. The platform you decide to go with, should make it easy for clients to navigate your portfolio using a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone. Using a portfolio website service, with responsive design, will allow your clients to see your site perfectly formatted to their device. Also, if you plan a career as a commercial photographer, like focusing on weddings, kids, etc, you may want to give your clients the option to purchase certain images directly from your site. Look for a site that has a built-in e-commerce function that clients can use to easily choose and purchase the images they love.
Lastly, you want a site that helps you to connect all your social media pages with your portfolio site. This way, visitors can share your photos on social media platforms with just a click, allowing you to gain more visibility for your brand. You also want to look for a platform that helps you manage your client email list, so that you are ready and organized for sending mass emails.
It may at first seem overwhelming all the things you need to do to get your portfolio together. However, if you really sit down and get your plan together and choose the right portfolio website builder, you can create a beautiful, professional site in days. Now get out there and start putting your site together!
More tips on making a portfolio here:
The post 8 Tips for Creating an Online Photography Portfolio by Julian Dormon appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Sample From My Newsletter
Ready for some controversy? Well, here it goes: One of the most useless things I see a lot of photographers doing with their time is trying to get popular on social media. There, I said it! Now, please let me explain.
There are certainly benefits of having a strong social media presence. I would be an idiot not to realize that. Just look up people like Colby Brown, Chris Burkhard, Nicole S. Young, Trey Ratcliff, Hilary Fox, etc. These people get flown around the world by large and small companies because of their social reach. The fact is, most of them either have unheard of work ethics or had some big breaks along the way to help kickstart their social media presence. And guess what…a lot of them have very successful and large newsletter (email) lists.
So, how much time do you spend every week posting your images to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, 500px, etc? For a lot of you, it’s countless hours. Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels? How much of your income have you earned from doing so?
I started offering workshops through my photography business in January of 2014. I had done a couple local ones before, but never out of state. I started my (email) newsletter in January of 2013 and was fortunate enough to build it up to around 10,000 by the time I announced the first workshop.
So here’s the rundown: At the time I probably had around 40-50,000 followers on Google+, 5-6,000 on Twitter, 1-2,000 on Facebook and of course the 10,000 on my newsletter. When I announced the first workshop I was pretty nervous (stepping out like that and going for something I hadn’t done before on this scale). To my absolute surprise, the workshop sold out in less than 17 hours!
Here’s the crazy part; every single person that purchased a spot on my workshop came from my newsletter. I ran the workshop with my buddy Mike and he didn’t even have a chance to announce the workshop to his followers before it sold out! Not a single spot sold from my social media following, which outnumbered my newsletter numbers almost six-fold.
You can find plenty of stats out there that say newsletter subscribers convert into sales at a rate of around 250% more than social media. In my case it’s much much higher.
As Lao Tzu said so eloquently, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. I highly suggest making that first step by heading over to MailChimp (note from dPS use this link to get a $ 30 credit when you sign up, disclaimer: yes we get a credit also) and getting your first newsletter set up. Their account is 100% free up to your first 2,000 subscribers, which is quite insane if you ask me! That’s a LOT of free subscribers! After you exceed that 2,000 mark you will have to start paying. In fact, my newsletter is currently pushing well past the $ 160/month mark. That’s fine though, because it forces me to make sure I send out a newsletter on a regular basis to make sure I’m not throwing that money away. And trust me, that $ 160 monthly fee is well taken covered.
MailChimp is, at least in my opinion, the absolute best newsletter engine out there. The design is fantastic, it’s easy and intuitive to use, and they recently updating their pricing methods which is saving me a ton of money. That isn’t an affiliate link to their website either, I just truly believe they are the best.
This section is a bit difficult to address considering it’s a bit personal, but I’ll do my best. My experience has been that simply being open, honest, and transparent is what people want. I don’t have anything to hide, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I think people appreciate that (at least the ones on my newsletter list do). If every newsletter you send out is selling something then you are going to start losing the trust of your subscribers. I don’t sell something through my newsletter unless I know it’s going to benefit my subscribers in some way. Instead of selling stuff at every chance I get, I fill my newsletters with free photo tips, free presets, updates on my life, my travels, my family, etc. I want to make sure that when they see my newsletter in their inbox, it will bring a smile to their faces.
Another way to make your newsletter successful is by not doing anything irresponsible with it. Everything kind of black hat tactic to getting a bigger list in a faster manner, is shooting yourself in the foot. Subscribers cost you every month, so it would be really dumb to start trying to buy up lists of email addresses from folks who didn’t actually subscribe to your list. These will not be targeted subscribers, and your list’s health will reflect that. Even if the email addresses are industry specific, they won’t be people who actually wanted to be on your list.
Another thing you should never do is sell your subscriber list. You will get caught. There are plenty of people out there smart enough to use unique email address for your newsletter so they can track whether or not you sell their information (check this article out for more info).
There were rumours going around a few years ago saying that including affiliate links in your newsletters (specifically with MailChimp) would get you banned. This ultimately was not true (here’s MailChimp’s response) but they suggest using caution with affiliate links. Some companies are very clear about doing this when people sign up for their newsletter (think Snapndeals, PhotoWhoa, PictureCorrect) but the basic premise is that when someone signs up for your newsletter, they are signing up to hear about you and potentially purchase things from you, not someone else. If this sort of thing gets abused and your list stats reflect spam, you could easily get your newsletter yanked. All that work, gone.
I’m very, very picky about which newsletters I subscribe to. I get enough email as it is already. I also read articles on plenty of websites, and have a tons of things to do for my photography business each and every day. So if I’m going to allow a person or business into my inbox, it had better be worth it. I keep that in mind every time I send out a newsletter. I ask myself, is this worth sending out for the people receiving it? I have deleted three or four entire newsletters when the answer was no.
That being said, how do you make your newsletter worth subscribing to? Well, the best way to entice subscribers is by giving away something free. I put together an entire ebook just for my newsletter subscribers called: 10 Tips For Improving Your Photography Today, and it has consistently gotten great feedback. It’s short, to the point, and each tip is truly something useful that they can put into practice immediately if they so desire.
Another method is to use auto-responders (now called Automation inside MailChimp) to send out a multi-email campaign when someone subscribes. This could be a three part series, or three different ebooks, that get sent out at specific times after a successful subscription. For example, your first free gift could go out immediately after they subscribe. The second could go out a few days later and the third a few days after that. This gets the subscribers pumped up and happy to be part of your list. Just don’t set them up for a newsletter that is non-existent or not worth reading afterwards.
When I click Like on a photographers Facebook page, I’m not really any more committed to them than I was before. I just want to keep up with them more. When I start reading their blog on a regular basis they have really struck a chord somewhere, and I am very interested in what they have to say. For me, to subscribe to their newsletter means that I am a huge fan of whatever they are doing. Be sure to remember that when you conduct your business!
My newsletter subscribers are first in line for everything. They get access to workshops before I announce them publicly. They get exclusive discounts that nobody else gets. They get random free stuff like presets and video tutorials. They get a deeper look into my personal life and what drives me. Essentially, I make sure they are taken care of because I truly, honestly, appreciate and value their time and their willingness to follow what I do.
I sell products (ebooks, presets, textures, video courses, etc.) and workshops through my newsletter. I realize not everyone does that. But if you are in business (making anywhere from 1-100% of your income through photography) then you have something to sell. Use your newsletter to primarily keep in touch with your clients and keep them updated on the happenings of your photography business. This keeps you in their sights and makes sure they don’t forget about you. Clients love connecting with the people they do business with, and a newsletter is perfect for this. From time to time you can send discounts for photo sessions or on print orders, do giveaways where you send a winner a free print, and so on.
I’ve been wanting to write this article for a long time now. Having a good, healthy newsletter is almost like having this huge secret that nobody else seems to be pursuing. I see so many photographers out there grinding it out on social media while their efforts could be spent so much better at getting a newsletter started.
I would be remiss if I didn’t invite you join my newsletter after writing an article about the importance of one. If you join through this link I’ll make sure you are taken care of handsomely! Not only will you get my standard free ebook and a discount code to my online store, I’ll also throw in my best selling ebook Tack Sharp as well as a set of 20 Lightroom presets – all totally FREE. On top of that, you’ll be able to read my newsletter that I work so hard on and extract some tips from how I use it.
If you really want to brighten up your inbox, be sure to also sign up for the dPS Newsletter (sign up box at the top of every article). I’ve been subscribed years and love it!
The post How to Grow Your Photography Business with an Email Newsletter by James Brandon appeared first on Digital Photography School.
I started Digital Photography School as a simple blog in April 2006. My goal was to share the things I knew about photography with those just starting out in their journey – in a time where digital photography was really gaining momentum.
Since that time dPS has changed in many ways.
One of the changes since starting dPS in 2006 is the rise in social media. We’ve embraced this early on by creating an active dPS Facebook page and Twitter account.
These accounts are largely about highlighting new tutorials that we publish each day as well as highlighting some of the 4700+ posts in our archives that readers might have missed.
Many of our readers appreciate these accounts but we’ve always been really aware that there’s a lot of great photography content on the web beyond what we produce at dPS.
In response to this we started a dPS Pinterest page to curate the best content that we’re seeing around the web. This has been well received so we want to extend the idea further and just a few days ago started a new Facebook page which will largely about sharing content we like on other sites.
The new Facebook page is at Do You Like Photography?
Each day on this page we’ll post a variety of tutorials, inspirational images and ideas to help you in different types of photography. We’ll also occasionally share a post or two from our archives that we think might be relevant but it’ll largely be content from other photography blogs and sites.
So if you’d like more photography tips and tutorials in your Facebook stream (in addition to the dPS page where we will continue to publish the same amount of posts each day as we’ve always done) follow our new page here and you’ll hopefully start seeing them in your feed shortly after.
PS: it’s only been five days since we started our new page but we’ve already had over 43,000 people like it – thanks everyone for your support!
The post Follow our New Facebook Page & Find the Best Photography Tips from Around the Web by Darren Rowse appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Rihanna is probably one of the world’s biggest pop stars right now. But along with her catchy songs and rough music videos, there is something else that gets her to the top of the music world. It’s unique marketing campaign. Today I’m going to talk about 5 lessons you can learn from Rihanna for your photography brand. Here you’ll get Continue Reading
The post 5 Lessons from Rihanna to Learn for Your Photography Brand appeared first on Photodoto.
Last week’s challenge was also black and white and in keeping with the them, earlier today I shared a set of black and white portraits. Your challenge this week, if you choose to accept it, is do photograph a real person and do a portrait in black and white.
By Sean Molin
There are lots of articles here on dPS to help you with that and get some inspiration including:
Here are a few more example black and white portraits:
By Sean McGrath
By Ben Raynal
By Neil Moralee
By stephane
By Ronn aka “Blue” Aldaman
By Dietmar Temps
By Nicolas Alejandro
By Gustave Deghilage
By Dietmar Temps
By i k o
By Fadzly Mubin
If you want to learn more about black and white grab a copy of the newest dPS ebook The Essential Guide to Black and White Photography at early bird pricing only until September 13th.
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 leading lines using pathways and roads in this week’s challenge.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge Black and White Portraits by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.
Winners of the 2014 British Wildlife Photography Awards have been announced, with an overall winner, category winners and highly commended photos receiving recognition. Winning entries will be included in an exhibition touring the UK as well as a photo book, and the overall winner will be awarded a £5000 cash prize. Take a look at the photo that took top prize as well as category winners. See gallery
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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