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Posts Tagged ‘Using’

Tips for Using Golden Hour Light for Portraits

24 Mar

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Most photographers will argue vehemently that the golden hour – that pocket of time just after sunrise and just before sunset – produces some of the most gorgeous light ever. Golden light shows up during this time, generally about an hour or so before sunset (after sunrise). However these times are not exact because golden light does depend on where you live. The further away from the equator you are located, the longer golden hour lasts. The closer to the equator you are, the shorter it is. Golden hour is also seasonal.

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There is a reason why most natural light photographers tend to schedule their portrait sessions around golden hour – to maximize the amount of golden light that they can use and get amazing results for their clients.

Why do you want to use golden light?

There are several reasons why golden light is so sought after.

Golden light is very soft

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Soft light illuminates the skin tones evenly.

Since the sun is almost setting or just rising during golden hour, the sunlight tends to be much softer than when the sun is high in the sky. During the golden hour, you can have your subjects look towards the sun and not have to squint or shield their eyes. Practice discretion on how long you want them to stare at the sun, and also take care not to point lens and cameras directly into the sun.

Golden light is warm

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The warm colors of sunlight are striking against the green grass.

It is easy to think that any form of sunlight is warm – whether the sun is high in the sky, or close to the horizon. But in reality, the warmth varies as the sun moves across the sky. Sun near the horizon has less intensity of direct light since it must travel through more of the atmosphere. You may notice, it is much easier to look at a sunrise and sunset with the naked eye – not that you should because it can damage the retina. As per wikipedia, more blue light is scattered during golden hour, so the sun’s light appears more reddish.

Golden light has dimension

When the sun is high in the sky, particularly around noon, the overhead light is very harsh, creating strong highlights and dark shadows. This type of lighting is not very flattering or desirable especially in portrait photography. Most photographers will use external flash or even a reflector to add additional light to the subject’s face or body, to make the light more even. Because the contrast is lower during golden hour, shadows and highlights are not that extreme. In addition, the sun’s smaller angle to the horizon produces long shadows.

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How do you use golden light?

Location scouting

Take the time to know the area that you are looking to do photography. There are many website and apps that can provide exact sunrise and sunset times. Some even take it a step further and provide golden hour times – which is specifically for photographers! Even the location matters when searching for golden light. If your photoshoot is in a park that has a lot of tree cover, the light will be further diffused, giving you the option of having a spotlight type effect for your portraits. If you are in a big city, take advantage of the natural block that tall buildings provide when photographing a subject.

Metering

Golden light can be challenging from a metering perspective. Most people leave it in standard (matrix or evaluative) mode and then play around in post-production to try and get the look they want. There is an easier way to eliminate all that time spent in front of the camera. Spot metering is my preferred metering method particularly for backlighting situations. I spot meter off the subject’s face or shadowy part of the image and then recompose and adjust exposure compensation half a stop or more to get the look I want.

Front lighting

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Options for front lighting include the sun along the side of the subject as well as subject facing the sun.

Front lighting is when your subjects face the sun directly. Because of the low angle of the sun and the soft light, the sun isn’t as harsh and your subjects will not be squinting as they face the sun. The light is even and warm so make sure that is the look you want – gorgeous, warmly lit, imagery!

Backlighting

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Backlighting is when you put the subjects between you and the sun. This creates a warm glow and looks really stunning. Make sure you expose for your subject’s skin tones. If you expose for the sun, then you will get a silhouette effect (which might not be the look you are going for, but is equally stunning).

Rim light

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Rim lighting occurs when you are using the sun to backlight the subject. Here the subject is between you and the sun. If you have a darker background, you can see a faint glow outlining them. That is a rim light and it really helps the subjects pop out in the image, drawing attention to them, adding separation of subject from the background.

No matter what type of golden hour lighting you use, you are bound to get some awesome images. Experiment with various locations and techniques. Also go back to the same location at various times of the year and track how golden hour lighting changes – you will learn to gauge, judge, and use light as a key element in your portrait photography.

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The post Tips for Using Golden Hour Light for Portraits by Karthika Gupta appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Novo to produce filter range using sapphire crystal and Gorilla Glass

18 Mar

A new filter manufacturer called Novo is promising a range of filters that will be made from super-durable sapphire crystal and Gorilla Glass, which should have enhanced scratch resistance. The company also claims its filters will have extremely thin brass frames, and will feature ‘superior coatings’. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Using the Adjustment Brush in Adobe Camera Raw

17 Mar
Adjustment-Brush-title2

A before and after using the Adjustment Brush on the buildings.

What is the Adjustment Brush?

The Adjustment Brush is an editing tool in Adobe Camera Raw (known simply as ACR). This tool is possibly the equivalent of the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop. So what is dodging and burning? To dodge is to lighten and to burn is to darken a specific area.

What does it do?

When you make your initial global adjustments of a RAW file in ACR, more than likely, you will need to make local adjustments too. This is where the Adjustment Brush is useful for making adjustments to specific areas of your photo.

Recently, I have found I am using this tool more and more. If I am out and about just shooting for my own library, I tend to take photos slightly underexposed. This way, I can recover a lot of detail in the post editing stage. This is useful if you don’t have time for metering the shot perfectly, especially in the case where skies are involved.

How does it work?

The Adjustment Brush isolates a specific area by masking it, similar to using layer masks in Photoshop. When you click on the Adjustment Brush icon, the right panel changes to the Adjustment Brush tab. The bottom sliders modify the size of the brush and you can also determine how much feather and density (flow) you wish to apply.

When you use the Adjustment Brush on a particular part of your image, a pin icon appears to determine where your adjustment has just been made.

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The Adjustment Brush is located at the top left of the dialog box.

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How the Adjustment Brush looks when in use and the Pin icon which determines where on the image the adjustment has been made.

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These sliders adjust the size, feather and flow of the Adjustment Brush.

I do find using the Adjustment Brush a bit cumbersome. But this tool definitely has its merits. Like most of the editing tools in ACR, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc., there is simply no one-click button that magically does it all.

You may find with a bit of practice using the Adjustment Brush that it could speed up your editing workflow. Take for example this image that I shot of some blue containers on a pier. I made the basic adjustments in ACR. I then used the Adjustment Brush in several areas: to lighten the sky; to keep the highlights on the small white boat on the left from being blown out completely. I also used the Adjustment Brush on the wood section to give it more warmth.

blue-drums

Several areas where the Adjustment Brush has been used as shown by the Pin icon.

The Graduated Filter in conjunction with the Adjustment Brush is a great combination. It behaves in a similar way to a Graduated Neutral Density filter. I use this filter on skies, then use the Adjustment Brush to mask areas that I don’t want the Graduated Filter to effect.

Pros

  • Broad local adjustments lightened or darkened.
  • Speed up your editing workflow as you may not need further adjustments in Photoshop or Lightroom.
  • Works really well in conjunction with the Graduated Filter tool.

Cons

  • Cumbersome and sometimes awkward to use.
  • More refined detail is better done in Photoshop using layer masks where you have more control.

Tip:

A fantastic feature in Photoshop CC is that Camera Raw is now a filter. However, if you are using previous versions such as CS5/6, a substitute workaround is before you open your image from within ACR to Photoshop, make sure you open it as a Smart Object. You can do this by holding the Shift key and the Open Image button changes to Open Object. Or you can have this option ticked in Workflow Options. This is a pop-up dialog box located by clicking on the link at the bottom of the ACR screen. That way you can go back into ACR by double clicking on the layer.

Harbour

By using the Adjustment Brush on just the buildings, I was able to recover a lot of detail.

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Full Moon Photography Using The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3.0

16 Mar

IMG_0450The latest release of The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) releases even more tools to help us photographers get the shots we want. There is just too much for one article, so I am going to focus on a personal favorite subject – full moon photos.

Before handy apps like TPE, LightTrac and PhotoPills, figuring out where the moon might be on any given night took some educating. Pile on top of that the desire to know when the moon was behind, or next to, a specific feature, natural or man-made, and the calculations were beyond anyone lacking a degree in mathematics. But now, it’s all so much easier. Let me show you how I plan on getting a shot of the full moon behind Seattle’s Space Needle this May.

I’ll be using the iPad version of the app which allows for adding in a subject height. Nearly the same functionality is available with the Desktop and Android versions of the app, but the location of items may shift a little. With the desktop and Android version you will not be able to manually add in the subject height but can, using the Pythagorean theorem (and there are plenty apps for it), add in the angle you need.

Pre-planning

To get started, I have decided I want to get a shot of the full moon behind Seattle’s Space Needle. It’s a subject that lends itself well to moon photos. I had a shot in mind that I later confirmed possible after viewing Tim Durkan’s fine example from last year.

Laying out the steps before I open the app, my process will look like this:

  • Find a location where I can see the Space Needle, and one which faces mainly South or West (because of hills, I know shooting to the East is hard and the moon will not appear to the North of the Needle because of being in the Northern Hemisphere).
  • Plot out my location and the location of the Space Needle.
  • Account for elevation change and the height of the Needle.
  • Let the program do its magic.
  • Record my findings and make actual plans.

Finding your location

Loading the app brings up a fairly full featured screen.

IMG_0450

To center the map on your intended location, simply move the map around with your finger until the crosshairs are over your location. You can then tap on the inside of the crosshairs or tap the red observer pin that looks like this:(null)

I placed the location in a park near the shore of Lake Union, a place I know with good visibility of the Needle about 3/4 of a mile away. This will give me a good apparent size relationship of moon to Needle. Many locations can be scouted by using Google Street View.

Next, mark the location of the Space Needle. TPE has a decent search feature, you can use it to quickly find many natural and man-made features around the planet. Just click on the magnifying glass in the upper left and type Space Needle.

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Now click the Space Needle entry itself and you’ll see three options appear.

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In order from left to right, these buttons allow you to: center the map on the location as your primary location, set this location as your secondary location (the item you wish to photograph), and the third is an option to save this item as a favorite, making future recall easy without searching. You will want to click on the gray map pin to set the Space Needle as the secondary location.

(null)Using geodetic information

To make things easier to see, click on the Google Terrain map set – an option on the right side of the screen that looks like this (image right)

Now the map is a little cleaner and after zooming out you can see the red pin where I’ll stand and the gray pin at the location of the Space Needle. Those orange and blue lines simply show location of the sun (orange) and moon (blue) when they rise, set and current location.

IMG_0457

Notice that the lower display also changed? It now shows the elevation different between the two points, with distance (3,908 feet – can also be set to metric), bearing (213.4 degrees), elevation change (73 feet) and the angle at which you are looking, be it up or down (+1.7 degrees). There is also a nice plot between the points showing elevation differences.

This is great! But it only gives the elevation change at ground level. I need to add in the height of the Space Needle to position the moon properly. A quick wikipedia search tells me the Needle is 605 feet tall.

Click on the Shadow and Elevation tool at the top left of the screen, just to the right of the Search feature. Where it mentions “Secondary object height” put in 605 feet for the Space Needle.

IMG_0459

Now on the elevation plot at the bottom of the screen there is a big white bar, representing the height of the Space Needle, on the far right. Perfect!

Magic time

Now let’s have TPE do the heavy lifting and tell us when the moon will be perfectly behind the Space Needle, place the event on our calendar and go find other things to shoot!

Click on the Visual Search button, it is the one immediately to the right of the Search button on the top left. You will get a drop down that with all kinds of information. Click on the word “Moon” at the top and then “Full” and your screen will look like this:

IMG_0460

The app has filled in the target altitude (14.1 degrees), compass azimuth or bearing (213.4 degrees), and tolerance (2 degrees) for us!

For a first run, to get a full moon centered over the top of the Space Needle, click on the Duration you would like (I picked 5 years in this example) and then Perform Search. You will see a list of results that look like this:

(null)

Saving results

What does all that mumbo-jumbo mean? Quite simply, those are all the dates and times (and exact location of the full moon and how full it will be) that fall within a two degree margin of our requested position. You will notice the one at the bottom for August 16, 2019 has a green asterisk; this simply means the moon will be within .5 degrees of the request.

Clicking on the top item for May 4th, 2015 will make the map mimic the conditions at that exact time. Double tap the elevation profile at the bottom and it will show the Altitude Profile where you can see the full height of the Space Needle on the right (tall white bar) and the level of the moon in dotted blue.

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All lined up! We’re now ready to save this information on our calendar or send it to a friend if we like. Click the share button on the upper right and you will see the option for adding to calendar as well as messaging, emailing, etc.

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Here’s the calendar add-item screen.

The location is set to the Primary Location in the app. You may want to adjust the time so you arrive early, as it defaults to the exact moment pictured in the app.

The email option includes all the pertinent information to share the details with a friend. It will attach a map and the recipient can open the information in the TPE (if they have it) or on the web browser version.

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Conclusion

I left a lot of information out of this article because TPE simply has too many options to describe here. At its most basic though, it is excellent for placing the moon over various subjects.

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How about a full moon over the Statue of Liberty?

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Or the Great Pyramid of Giza?

All it takes is a quick Wikipedia search for an object’s height and about two minutes in TPE to plan that moon shot you have been dreaming of!

For those wishing to explore further, TPE’s documentation is fairly complete and worth the read to unlock a wealth of photo planning power.

How can you use this tool in your photography?

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The post Full Moon Photography Using The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3.0 by Peter West Carey appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Tips for Using Tilt-Shift Lenses for Correction and Creativity

01 Mar

If you’ve ever wondered about the effects of using a tilt-shift lens this video with host Vincent Laforet will show you some of uses such as:

  • Correcting distortion caused by wide lenses and converging lines
  • Create stitched images without distortion
  • Creating miniature looking scenes by shifting the focus plane
  • Achieving maximum focus on your subject using shift

Here are some of the Tilt-shift lenses mentioned in the video.

Obviously these are specialty lenses and not everyone has a need for, or can afford them. But perhaps if you have the ability you may want to rent one and play around. Check with your local camera store or online with places like Borrow Lenses. Or you can try the less expensive Lens Baby for making some fun effects.

Have you ever tried one out? Do you do the type of photography that requires a tilt-shift lens? Or is it a luxury for the wish list? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Weekly Photography Challenge – Using a Small Aperture

28 Feb

Time to try out your aperture range. Last week you were encouraged to shoot wide opened using a large aperture.

Now you need to crank it the opposite direction and get some maximum depth of field in this weekly photography challenge of using a small aperture.

Michael Chen

By Michael Chen

Weekly photography challenge

First let’s define small aperture. Usually when photographers talk about a large aperture it’s in the f/1.8 to f/4 range. Small apertures would include f/11 and smaller (f/16-f/32). What that means is the lens is letting in less light due to the smaller opening – and it also means more of the scene is in sharp focus, or deep depth of field.

You may need to use a tripod for this one as the small aperture consequently also means you’ll need to use a longer shutter speed. Keeping the ISO low will help you avoid noise as well and keep sharpness to the maximum.

Here are a few more examples:

Zman Z28

By zman z28

Michael Bohlander

By Michael Bohlander

Vasile Hurghis

By Vasile Hurghis

Photograph Lavender perspective by Peter Zelei on 500px

Lavender perspective by Peter Zelei on 500px

Share your small aperture images here:

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 favourite 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.

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Using the Lightroom Adjustment Brush to add Dimension to a Landscape Photo

25 Feb

Adding layers of dimension with the Lightroom brush

Lightroom has the power to completely transform your landscape photograph into something far more powerful, something that hits home with viewers, and something that pops off the screen.

By default digital cameras create flatter image files than what you see with your eye. Your eye has the ability to see dimensions like no camera can really capture. Although many try.

What is Dimension?

The definition of dimension is: an aspect or feature of a situation, problem, or thing. When utilizing the word dimension in your photograph, think of the features of specific locations and objects within the frame. As an example, in the photo you will see here, there are multiple layers of dimension to play with. There’s the sky, the water, the rocks, the buildings, the grass, and the shed. Each has its own uniqueness to it, and can and should be treated as such.

The Adjustment Brush Tool

Like the other local adjustment tools in Lightroom, the adjustment brush tool has the ability to fine tune specific parts of a photograph. Using the tool can create new dimensions you would never have otherwise seen from a camera rendition. Your eye, however, most likely did see the dimensions.

Lightroom Brush Tool

Where to find the Lightroom brush tool

You can see in the first photo that it’s a really cool lighthouse scene, but there is something drastically gone wrong. The photo is super flat. That is because it was a very rainy day with tons of fog everywhere, and mist from the water constantly hitting the camera.

To use the Lightroom Adjustment Brush, open a photo in the Develop module, then select the brush icon at the top right, just under the Histogram (the keyboard shortcut is K).

Once selected, a variety of local adjustments will appear. From there you have a wide range of options that you can make on a very specific section of your photo. For example, sharpness, exposure, or even brushing on a new color.

The first thing you should know before starting with the Adjustment Brush is that Lightroom keeps your last settings whenever adding a new brush. To zero out the settings simply double click on the word Effect.

Also, the Auto Mask feature is very smart. Think of it like a content aware brush. Simply put, it looks at the cross hairs inside of your brush and will try to stay “within the lines” and not brush on what doesn’t match up. This is fantastic for edges. However, the Auto Mask feature uses more Lightroom performance, so you may notice a slow down. My workflow is to fill in big spaces and then turn on Auto Mask when I need it.

As you are brushing in areas, hit the O key on your keyword to see a red mask of where you have brushed (hit Shift+O to cycle through the available mask colors).

Lightroom masking

Hit the O key to view the current mask in a red overlay

I started brushing the middle section of the photo with more contrast, and reduced highlights and shadows. This broke through the haze and enhanced the greens enough to where I like it.

I then made another brush by clicking on New in the brush panel. This one was to bring down the extreme highlights of the house and lighthouse. I brought it down just enough so it’s still white, but doesn’t blend in with the sky, which is also very white.

Then came a third brush, which was for the rocks. I wanted to make sure they popped out more than anything else. I didn’t want them to just have contrast, so I also used the clarity slider. Clarity will enhance a lot of edge detail, which is awesome on rocks.

Lightroom brush clarity

Add clarity to select objects using the Adjustment Brush

Now that the grass, the structures and the rocks all have different dimensions of contrast, clarity and light, it is time to play with the color dimension. So I created another brush with a hint of transparent blue to the water. This adds more life to the boring gray tone it had previously.

I then did the same with the sky, but with less transparency due to the whiteness of the sky already. Adding a hint of color the white sky helps separate the house and lighthouse from the background even more.

The last brush I added to the photo was on the roof of the house. The intention there was to recover the red color subtly, so it doesn’t take away from the rest of the photo. So I increased the contrast, dropped the exposure slightly and added a hit more red to the roof.

Lightroom brush color

Add color to specific areas using the Lightroom brush

At the end of the day, the photo has multiple layers of dimension. It’s no longer flat, and notone section has the same feel as the rest. Using the brush feature in Lightroom I was able to not only recover color and contrast, but add even more texture and life to the scene.

Think of the Adjustment Brush tool like layers in Photoshop or onOne Software. There are no actual layers but rather brush points which can be adjusted individually.

Below is a video showing what I’ve done with this photograph.

There is a lot more that can be done, like sharpness, noise reduction and even changing color temperature and tinting for specific areas in a photo. But what I have shared here is a handful of what you are capable of doing within your favorite photography workflow software, Lightroom.

I’d love to see some photos you have processed using Lightroom Adjustment Brush tool. Please comment to share with the dPS community.

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Freezeways: Using Bike Paths as Winter Ice Skating Corridors

11 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

freezeway design concept drawing

Proposed by a landscape architect from Edmonton, Alberta, this 7-mile urban project may not be as far fetched as it first sounds – in many regards it is simply a linear extension of an ice skating rink or more pragmatic variant of for-fun skateways found in Holland and Russia.

freezeway bike path summer

freezeway design concept drawings

For the many cities in the United States, Canada, Northern Europe and elsewhere that are only warm (and thawed) enough for comfortable biking half of the year, designs like The Freezeway by Matt Gibbs could provide a means to modify extant bike pathways to get exercise, have fun and commute to work during colder months. The process is not as simple as pouring ice on existing paths – issues of grade, embankments and connections would need to be addressed – but the concept is gaining momentum and these problems all have solutions.

freezeway winter commuting skaters

The idea has local appeal for places like its architect’s hometown, which is ice cold for much of the year and dark to boot, providing an excuse to get outdoors as well as a way to move about the city. It also has potential international appeal as a tourist attraction and urban icon akin to the High Line in New York, Garden Bridge coming to London, Sea Wall in Vancouver and other one-of-a-kind landscape projects around the world.

freezeway winter ice path

More details from the designer: “By shovelling a mapped out route, the space between snow banks could be flooded, perhaps by a fire hydrant at first (though it’s not ideal), creating a web of trails to explore on skates, requiring minimal expenditure …. This space could eventually be animated by lights and music. If popular, it could incrementally expanded every year.”

freezeway urban skate path

More on the advantages for and beyond commuting: “This project is not meant to be a tax payer’s burden. The Freezeway is meant upgrade city infrastructure for a multitude of uses, potentially doing wonders for the redeveloping City’s core, our international reputation, as well as attract investment into the City. The proposed route exists entirely on existing City infrastructure; the land is already secured. The numerous character areas along the route could be developed in phases, lending themselves well to private funding/sponsorship, like Calgary’s GlobalFest, or Vancouver’s Festival of Light fireworks shows, funded by donations of over 1 million dollars annually. The design team is currently exploring numbers.”

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Using Low Key Lighting in Your Portraits: Getting Moody On the Down Low

26 Jan

So you’ve been shooting for a while and you want to add a little more visual oomph to your shots, why not try a little low key? Low key lighting is a classic technique, a la where you use shadow and high contrast to show the shape of your model. Making the background dark can be super complicated or super Continue Reading

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6 Steps to Growing Your Photography Business Using a Recommended Vendors List

26 Jan

In this article I talk about a technique used in all types of business, but of course will relate it to photography. To make it easy to understand, I am going to discuss the technique specifically for wedding photographers. But it is important to know that the technique you will learn in this article can work for any type of photography niche or genre.

Wedding cake

Utilizing a business partner vendor list to grow your business

How so? By creating something of value to offer website visitors, which will in turn get them to give you their name and email address. When someone offers you contact information in exchange for something of value, they are now considered a lead. From there you have the potential to convert that lead into a paying customer.

Let’s break it down piece by piece. I’ll start with a list and then talk about each individually:

  1. Create a PDF document that is attractive to your potential customers. This PDF is intended to act as a conversion tool – a free offer.
  2. The offer utilizes a business partner vendor list by recommending preferred and partner vendors. This helps add more value to the download and also improves the relationship between you and the vendor.
  3. Create a way for site visitors to enter their contact information on a landing page, a magnetic spot like blog sidebars, or a pop-up box.
  4. Capture emails of website visitors, which then turn into quality leads (because they downloaded something specifically for their intention of hiring a photographer).
  5. The vendors included in the document are also likely to further promote the document.
  6. You now have huge potential of converting those leads into customers, via phone calls and email marketing.

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of each of those points. As mentioned earlier, this is geared to wedding photography. So if you are not a wedding photographer, take all I am saying and relate it to the type of photography you do.

Step one – create a PDF

The first step is to come up with a PDF document which you can offer for free on your website. Ideally it will contain everything that your potential customer would need to know about planning a wedding. It’s important that the document is branded to your business, and has an attractive design overall. You can use your letterhead (with logo of course), or a pre-made design for the task at hand (which I have made available) or templates from Keynote or PowerPoint. The important part is that your branding is in the design and that it won’t turn people away by looking unprofessional.

Photographer free pdf

Step two – utilize your list

Inside the PDF categorize it for different types of vendors. You may have a page of florists, and another for wedding venues that you recommend. Ideally make each a two-page spread if possible. One page would provide the information on the vendors, and the other page would contain your photography examples related to the vendor. Think of it like a portfolio of your best work combined with your recommended vendor list.

The beauty of this is that you are getting your photographs in front of couples planning their wedding. Your brand is there as well vendors, which the couple might also hire.

Step three – create the opt-in

Next up is creating a way convert website visitors into leads. This is a bigger section due to the complexity. By this point you will have already created the PDF, which leads will download. But the process of gathering the email addresses confuses many people.

The first step is to use an email marketing service like Mailchimp or Aweber. Both are fantastic. I personally use Mailchimp for its ease of use and pricing.

Both services offer a feature, which can automatically send emails based on certain actions. In Mailchimp it is called Automation, in Aweber it’s called Follow Up Series. There you will set up an automated email, which will be sent to anyone who signs up for the “Free PDF” list that you will have created. Definitely name the list something you will recognize immediately when logging into your account.

These services allow you to attach a PDF to an email, which is what I recommend. But if you are using a service that does not allow attachments then create a Dropbox or Google Drive link and include that in the email.

This is where the fun part starts. There are many places where you can place what’s called an opt-in form. That means, a form which asks a website visitors for a name and email address, or any other information you want to request like a phone number.
Note that the less information you request the higher your conversion rate will be – meaning, the more people will fill it out. So I typically ask for email addresses only (you will see why later).

The first place you want to place the opt-in form is on a landing page specific to the free PDF. The benefit of having a unique page for the document is connected to SEO (search engine optimization). A dedicated page can be filled with additional text and image content optimized to rank well on search engines. It can also increase the conversion rate (percentage of people who sign up compared to number of page visits) for the opt-in because there are no distractions from blog articles or other content available only your website. Services like Mailchimp and Aweber offer embed codes for your opt-in forms. You use it like you were copying and pasting HTML from YouTube, Vimeo or 500px.

The second place you can have the opt-in form is on your blog’s sidebar, or in a pop-up form. These are called magnetic areas because they draw the attention of a visitor’s eye directly to them. There are a few ways you can do the magnetic opt-ins. For sidebars you can use the standard embed code. Some services offer pop-up codes as well. For WordPress sites I recommend services like OptinMonster or Pippity, which come with many design options as well as timing and split testing so you can see what converts the best. I have helped a many photographers with this method.

Optinmonster

Step four – leads versus quality leads

Now that you have the PDF done, and everything set up for visitors to convert into leads – it is important to note the difference between a lead and a quality lead.

A lead is anyone who contacts you about anything. An example of a standard lead is a couple who contacts you for a price list. They might be interested in your services, but there is no way of knowing how interested they really are, how far along they are in their wedding planning, or how serious they are about you.

A quality lead is someone who has taken specific actions to do research and wants valuable information. For example, a quality lead would be a couple downloading your free PDF because it contains information specific to their needs. They understand that it will contain every vendor they need to know about to plan their wedding.

Quality leads have a much higher chance of converting into paying customers over standard leads. That’s because a quality lead is already more interested in your services than a standard lead.

Step five – inform your vendors

If the couple books a venue listed on your PDF, then it is highly possible they will mention you as a referral. Your vendor partners will appreciate that. So, be sure to send a copy to your partners so they know what you are offering potential customers. Then they are also more likely to promote it, and promote you.

Your best sales people are your brand advocates. Those are your customers and your business partners.

Biz partners

Step six – converting to customers

You have your free PDF and are converting site visitors into leads. You are utilizing an email marketing service as recommended. Next is where it really comes into play.

I mentioned earlier that I typically only ask for email addresses. That is because with email marketing you can learn more about your leads, so names and phone numbers are NOT essential. In fact, you may find that through nurturing those leads via email marketing that you will have more people contacting you than you contacting them.

After doing some testing, I came to the conclusion that sending one email a week to my list is most effective. You may find yourself in a different situation. But having an email marketing service that tracks statistics will help you identify the optimal sending scenario – days and times.

One effective trick I find for converting leads into paying customers is to ask a question, which warrants a reply. Whatever the question might be, you will find people replying. That is where the conversation really takes off. Something like this perhaps:

As a wedding photographer I am always so curious what types of gowns brides pick.  Please reply with the type of dress you will be wearing at your wedding.  Or if you already picked it out, I’d love to see a photo!

What have you learned

To wrap-up this article, I want to restate what you learned here and what your first step should be.

Your business partner vendors are more important than ever to your business. You can foster those relationships online, and offline, by creating a free PDF as described here. That PDF will be used as leverage for converting website visitors into quality leads. Using email-marketing you can nurture those leads and convert them into paying customers. All with a little help from a simple PDF that includes super valuable information.

New family

Once again, I used wedding photography as an example, so if you are not a wedding photographer then be sure to think hard about your vendor list and what your clients would need. Then start creating that document.

Hop to it!

Disclaimer: dPS does not agree or disagree with any recommendations made by the author. The author receives no extra compensation for these referrals and benefits in no way. He only recommends them because these are the services he uses – do your own due diligence when selecting any service for your business.

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