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7 Things That Keep You From Charging What You’re Worth (and how to get over them)

02 Nov

lynseymattingly6

Charging people money is scary. Having people I’ve never met ask me to produce something I have metaphorically promised the world I can do at a professional level, that may or may not meet their expectations, is terrifying. There is so much I can’t control – the weather, the mood of everyone involved, my camera suddenly deciding to jam without warning, that nerve condition I Googled last night where something snaps in your eyeball without warning and you go blind in mere seconds. Never mind that every single time I leave my house, I’m pretty sure that I am completely out of any possible creativity, creativity that will never renew itself, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes I’m just a fraud that got lucky for a while.

lynseymattingly5 And that’s on a good day.

I get hired repeatedly by my clients, seem to be able to pull off a shoot in most elements, and as of yet, that nerve hasn’t snapped in my eyeball. However if you look at my pricing comparatively for my area, my pricing history, or ask my mom, I am not charging enough. It’s not that I don’t want to make money of course, it’s that I feel bad taking it from people. I’m not sure I deserve what I am currently charging for what I do, never mind even more. There is no true way to measure the market rate for a photographer, but there are plenty of reasons that setting my rates – determining my true market value – is enough to make me want to go pick-up an application at McDonalds.

#1 It seems like everyone is a photographer – and even the one’s that aren’t have a fancy camera

At some point I am hoping that all of us can get together and agree that owning a fancy camera does not make someone a photographer by trade. I happen to own a really nice guitar after a gifting incident that took a wrong turn. Sometimes just for fun, I sit at my desk with it and strum like I’m a fledgling musician in a coffeehouse working for tips and free lattes. But all of the strumming in the world isn’t going to change the fact that I completely lack the coordination to have my left hand do about anything and I can’t play a single note.

Get over it

Consider every job that relies on nice equipment – a baker needs a fancy oven, an auto-mechanic requires a collection of expensive tools, a fast car alone doesn’t make anyone a race car driver (though with the right stretch of highway and a good song on the radio, we all have the potential to be a rockstar). Ownership, or even a working knowledge, of a tool does not make someone a professional anything.

#2 You’re stuck in portfolio building mode

Chances are if you are a professional photographer, you’ve done portfolio building of some sort; maybe you did portraits for friends for free, did corporate work for cost, or photographed thousands of landscapes until you felt comfortable putting your work out there for sale. Making the step from being a budding photographer to a full-fledged “real” photographer who charges money for their work is a huge but necessary one. Once you have established that you are a photographer with a body of work to show for yourself, you are no longer building from scratch. If you’ve built the house structurally sound, you’re not going to build another house to put on top of the original that’s better. Build your business to be sturdy, flexible, and confident and instead of tearing down and starting over, you will just remodel from time to time and rearrange the furniture when you need to freshen the place up.

Get over it

Spend a day going through your entire portfolio and honestly reflect on your work. Do you have a nice representation of the type of photography you want to charge for? Can you see noticeable differences in the images you created when you first started to now? Do you have images that you are quite proud of and show what you are all about as an artist? If you answered yes, the truth is you already have a portfolio. You will continue to build on this portfolio as you have more (paying) clients, as your skills improve, and as your style becomes more defined and evolves but charging your honest market rate is what is going to help you to get there.

#3 You’re forgetting about your overhead costs

Admittedly I spend my editing days in pyjamas at my desk. Most days I don’t commute anywhere, I eat lunch in my own kitchen, and I never have to contribute to a coworker’s birthday party fund. On the surface it appears I spend next to nothing to bring in a lot, but what I lack in dry cleaning bills, I make up for in expensive equipment, monthly subscriptions, website maintenance, business collateral, and more. Once a chunk of change has already been spent on that fancy camera, building it into your actual cost of doing business can be quickly forgotten.

Get over it

Come up with a list of every single expense you have from your electric bill to run your computer, to how much you spend in cat treats to keep your cats nearby, giving you someone to talk to all day so you don’t go crazy. Don’t forget to allow for things like wear and tear on your cameras and lenses, new software you may need, and the traveling involved with getting to a shoot. You should also include extra funds for unforeseeable repairs and expenses, increases in printing costs or other regular fees, and any classes or workshops you will attend to support your photography. Divide this total by the amount of days you can reasonably work in a year and what you have is the bare minimum day rate you need just to keep doing it. Know this budget as actual numbers, not just a vague amount and it will become very clear, very quickly, if you are not charging enough to make it worth your while no matter how much you love it.

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#4 You don’t yet have a solid work and edit flow

I don’t have a good rebuttal for this one. All I know is that if photographers couldn’t charge money for their work until they had a proven workflow in place, there would be no photographers.

Get over it

Even if you don’t subscribe to the flakey artist bit, your process is going to change often, having to constantly accommodate for seasonal fluctuation, client needs, and your own style. So long as you have a true desire to be a professional photographer and a method to getting pictures out of your head and into your camera, and then into the hands of clients, you have a workflow sufficient enough to charge a reasonable rate and work from there.

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#5 You assume you’re not good enough

Do not feed this monster! This monster will come to your door often in your career and just like my kid’s friends, the more candy you give him, the more frequently he will come around and the longer he will stay. Be realistic and competitive, but do not base your entire pricing system on a lack of confidence. Photography, like most creative occupations, is often personal and will never fit firmly in the category of just business.

Get over it

Ask an objective friend to take a thorough look at your portfolio and prices. Show them your competitors and walk them through exactly what it takes you to go from nothing to a finished image, ready for delivery.

lynseymattingly2

#6 Because you couldn’t afford yourself

Rather than being a large business that strives to be the cheapest choice for customers, you are one single person. It’s easy to get hung-up on the idea that if professional photography isn’t in your budget, then it’s not in other people’s either. I haven’t paid for photography in six years – I take pictures of my own children often and when I want family photos or any other picture that actually includes me, I trade with a photographer friend. I am not a good judge of what people are willing to, or can spend on a family photographer.

Get over it

Do you buy art? Do you support artists? This includes musicians, actors, and that guy on the corner that can fold himself into a two foot plexiglass cube and eat fire. I give that guy a dollar every time I see him and I bet you would too. People budget for what they truly want and what is important to them. If they want to invest in your time and talent, who are you to tell them no?

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#7 You’re allowing yourself to be paid in kind words and compliments

Ouch, this one stings. Everyone wants to be liked and let’s face it, kind words are better than a sharp stick in the eye. Especially a compliment that is given based on skills you have worked hard to perfect. Confidence is something every photographer needs at least a bit of, but accolades don’t pay the rent.

Get over it

If you aren’t charging them, someone else will be happy to and collect the compliments too.

Besides – I would be a terrible fry cook.

The post 7 Things That Keep You From Charging What You’re Worth (and how to get over them) by Lynsey Mattingly appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Inky’s Giga Bundle: $4,816 Worth Premium-Quality Resources for Only $69

11 Sep

Do you remember InkyDeals? We tell you about them every time they have some amazing design and photography deal worth sharing. This time InkyDeals came up with Giga Bundle that includes vector illustrations, t-shirt designs, high-quality textures, Photoshop brushes, video tutorial for creating an old retro-style countdown timer, and 9 responsive premium Bootstrap 3 templates. Awesome Deal For Photographers As Continue Reading

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Deal Extended! Get $20,048 Worth of Top-Quality Resources – From $49

11 Jul

Do you remember the awesome design bundles from InkyDeals? We told you before that InkyDeals is one of the leading deals websites in the design community, with a devoted community of more than 300,000 design enthusiasts. Whenever an awesome deal appears on Inky Deals, we share it with the Photodoto audience, so that you never miss interesting and useful stuff. Continue Reading

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Is Visiting the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley Worth It?

03 Jun

racetrack-playa-workshop

I probably won’t ever go again. That’s how bad it’s gotten. Not unless something changes.

If you’re into travel and landscape photography you’ve likely either been to or have on your bucket list the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park. I’ve been twice now, which is really a lot harder than it sounds if you haven’t been before. In this article, I want to go over my current thoughts on this peculiar and incredible place and the impact that tourists and photographers are having on it. I think it’s an important dialogue to open up, so I hope you’ll join in the conversation once you’ve read the article.

What is the Racetrack Playa?

Perhaps you’ve never heard of the Racetrack Playa, or maybe you’ve heard of it but just don’t know much about it? The Racetrack Playa is a remote location deep within Death Valley National Park. It is a massive playa (dry lake bed) that measures 2.8 miles long by 1.3 miles (4.5 km by 2.1 km) wide. The playa is famous amongst tourists and photographers because of its mysterious “sailing rocks” that leave trails behind them on the playa. It’s said that nobody has ever witnessed the rocks moving. Because of that, there is no shortage of theories about how they move about the playa. While the Racetrack Playa is incredibly remote, in reality it’s really not all that far away from the main attractions at the park like the Mesquite Sand Dunes. The problem is that a mountain range sits in-between the two (so you have to drive all the way around).

Screen Shot 2014-05-19 at 3.53.48 PM

Getting there

Once you’ve driven the two hours on Scotty’s Castle Road and stopped at Ubehebe Crater, you still have a daunting 27 mile washboard gravel road to contend with. From Furnace Creek to Racetrack Playa, you’ll be driving uphill the entire way and will gain around 3,500 feet in altitude. The gravel road is fine in a few areas, but absolutely frustrating most of the way. The entire time you’re dodging large rocks and boulders in the middle of the road, pulling over to let oncoming traffic pass by and trying to ride that balance between going safe and slow to avoid a flat tire, and fast and dangerous to avoid the washboard style road and all the bumps and vibrations.

Both of my trips into the Racetrack Playa had potentially horrendous outcomes but both also produced some great images for my portfolio. The first trip in was with my buddy Cliff Baise in his VW Toureg. We made it in just fine, but on the way out the road just proved too much for the SUV. His drive train got damaged at some point and we had to limp into Las Vegas for three days while the car got repaired. The second trip was during the first of two photography workshops I led inside the park with Mike Mezeul II back in February of this year. During that workshop, we took another SUV in and got a flat tire when we pulled into Tea Kettle Junction. Luckily we had a spare tire and got out fine (but it could have ended a lot worse if we had gotten another flat on the way out).

All of this to say that by the time we actually got to the playa parking lot–after 3 hours of driving and a flat tire–I wasn’t in the best of moods, and I was doing my best to stay calm and happy for my workshop students. After all, this place is a bucket list item for most photographers and just being here is a huge blessing. So if just getting to the Racetrack isn’t bad enough, here’s what we were greeted with as we walked out onto the playa…

racetrack-damage

We anticipated this, but had no idea the extent of how bad it was. The Death Valley National Park Facebook page had shared a similar photo at the beginning of the month but we had heard rumors that the photo was taken well off the beaten path of the playa. Here’s that photo:

Image originally posted on the Death Valley National Park Facebook page. Used with permission.

This is what happens when logic flies out the window. This is pure stupidity and selfishness at it’s worst. Matt Kloskowski wrote an article that somewhat defended the actions of whoever did this. He wasn’t by any means saying it was ok, just that they didn’t know any better and that it’s just dirt. I respectfully disagree. When I took my workshop group out onto that playa, it was plenty dry enough to walk on without leaving any trace. If it was still damp or muddy, we would have turned right around and left (the group knew that going in). As we explored the Racetrack during sunset, it was virtually impossible to find a good composition that didn’t have footprints littering the scene. It was far, far worse than I had expected. Nobody could have done this without at least thinking to themselves that maybe they shouldn’t be doing it. I refuse to believe otherwise.

But it’s just dirt – who cares?

It matters because the playa, and the park as a whole, only get around one to two inches of rain per year. That means that these footprints will likely be on the playa for years and years. Unfortunately, that’s not where the problem ends.

Childish playa mischief

Another thing that becomes painfully obvious while exploring the Racetrack Playa is the increasingly high amount of mischief going on. The very first rock trail that I came to on the playa had no rock at either end. The next trail I came to was around 15-20 inches wide (quite large for the playa) but only had a tiny rock (maybe 6 inches) at the end. Yet another rock trail I found was just the opposite; around 6 inches wide but with a much larger rock at the end. There were trails with no rocks, trails with rocks at both ends, rocks with far too extravagant trails behind them and so on.

It’s quite clear that people tamper with the rocks at Racetrack Playa. Unfortunately, the likely source of this mischief is other photographers. It takes a LOT of walking and a LOT of patience to find the perfect rock, with a perfect trail behind it, with a perfect backdrop behind that. The problem is, some people don’t have the amount of patience it requires to get a shot like that. My guess is that photographers are finding good trails and good backdrops, and then replacing the rocks in front of them with larger rocks from somewhere else. I talked to one photographer out there who heard a rumor that another photographer took a picture of a rock and then move it as far away as he could, ensuring that nobody else would ever get the same photo.

There have also been tire tracks both times I visited the playa, leading out toward the rocks. So who’s responsible for that? Is it tourists, or photographers who just don’t want to make the hike out to good rocks? Is it people who take their trucks out on the playa to drag the rocks around? Who knows. Either way, there are plenty of signs prohibiting driving onto the playa.

So what can we do?

I think the most important thing we can do is just get the word out. I’m convinced that the overwhelming majority of photographers are good people and respect the things they photograph. It’s just unfortunate that the small percentage of people who don’t fall into that category can completely ruin a good thing like the Racetrack Playa.

I hate to say it, but at this point I think I would totally support Death Valley National Park changing the Racetrack Playa to a permit only destination and even making it a lottery system much like Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. Those who get accepted to go in will be educated on the playa, how to take care of it and precautions to take when going out. The footprints would disappear, the mischief would go away and photographers everywhere would rejoice.

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Conclusion

My experience with the Racetrack Playa has been a frustrating one to say the least. That’s why I really want to get the word out about the shape that it’s in and get people talking about it. What do you think about all this? What’s your opinion? How should we fix it? Let me know in the comments below!

Editor’s note: I think this is an important topic for discussion. Some photographers like Ansel Adams were key in the conservation of National Parks in the US and he was a big advocate for leaving nature natural. So how have we gotten so off track since Ansel Adam’s time? If photographers of his era were as careless and selfish there might not even be parks for today for us to enjoy. So what legacy will be leave our future generation? How can we make a stand and make a difference? I just used this quote on someone else and thought it appropriate to share here also:

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale (often wrongly attributed to Helen Keller as she has used it in her writing as well)

So what will you do?

The post Is Visiting the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley Worth It? by James Brandon appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Check out the Big Bang Bundle: A Design Bundle Worth $15K for Only $49…Insane!

19 May

Yup, you read that right: If you want value on top of value that you can’t beat or find anywhere else, then you absolutely have to make plans to check out the Big Bang Bundle from Inky Deals. You won’t regret it, and you’ll be surprised at the insane degree of value that you’ll find there. Calling all photographers: This Continue Reading

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The Ultimate Photographer’s Guide to Photo Contests That Are Worth Your Time

14 May

The Internet has brought an influx of photo contests. It seems like every blogger, photographer and “momtog” is putting up a photo contest. As a serious photographer, how can you know which ones to submit to, and if you do choose to submit to one, how to maximize your chances of winning? Here is everything you need to know about Continue Reading

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The New Colossal Bundle with $10,063 worth of Top-Quality Resources – From $49

16 Apr

Maybe you’ve heard of Inky Deals before. If you’re the kind of person who’s always on the hunt for massive deals, monster discounts and insane bundles, then you likely know all about Inky Deals. They’re the website that’s always putting out amazing resources on a regular basis for a very good price. And boy, oh boy, do we have a Continue Reading

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How to Charge What You are Worth as a Photographer and Why

13 Apr

bambi-cantrell Bambi Cantrell may not be a name you recognize unless you are a wedding photographer. She’s been doing photography since about 1982 and was someone who I followed early on in my career in photography. She’s a frequent speaker at the popular WPPI conference every year and was a recent teacher on Creative Live. These videos are segments of that talk that discuss that area of value of yourself as a photographer and pricing so make a profit and a good living.

In this video below Bambi talks about many extremely important aspects to being a photographer including:

How important what you do as a photographer is to documenting the lives of your clients, not just what they look like but who they are as people
How you need to follow your dreams and to never take no for answer, but to always keep moving forward no matter what anyone else says
Doing what it takes to make it, and perseverance is key to success
If you can afford yourself you are too inexpensive
How to charge what you are worth confidently and to value yourself as an artist and photographer
Perceived value and when it’s okay to spend more money on something

The second video below covers some of the same concepts again and more in depth on the topic of valuing yourself and your work, and charging enough to take enough money home at the end of the day.

So if you are an aspiring photographer hoping to make it as a pro, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while and just can’t seem to turn a profit – give these a listen!

You might also want to learn about creating relationships to help you grow your business, how to make your next big decision be the right one, and the Ultimate Guide to Going Pro – all right here on dPS.

The post How to Charge What You are Worth as a Photographer and Why by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Are Lightroom Develop Presets Worth the Money?

27 Mar

Delicious Presets review

I was recently approached by a representative of Delicious Presets to review their product. The review is below, but when I looked at the details on their website it occurred to me that there are other questions to answer:

Are Lightroom Develop Presets (the sort you buy from someone) worth the money?
And if they are, how do you know which ones to buy given that most websites won’t refund your money if you are unhappy with the product?

Let’s start with Delicious Presets, then dig into those later. The promise on the website is that their presets will increase the quality of your processing and save you time in Lightroom.

They seem to be aimed primarily at event and wedding photographers. On the surface, their presets seem expensive at $ 40 a set (you can save money by buying in bundles) but from a business perspective that is a relatively small investment for something that saves you time. An example: I recently spent around $ 150 on a good quality polarizing filter for a new lens, and you can buy all the Delicious Presets in a bundle for less than that.

Here’s what you get in each set:

Between 11 and 13 Develop Presets
Delicious Controls, which gives you three sets of presets for taking control of sharpness, grain and tone
Plus 37 vignettes and frames

All the presets have been updated to work with Lightroom 5. You can go to the Delicious Presets website and view the details for yourselves.

If you want to learn more about Lightroom Develop presets in general, you should read my article A Concise Guide to Lightroom Develop Presets.

Delicious presets website

Delicious Controls: Sharpness, Grain and Tone

The Sharpness and Grain presets really do nothing that you can’t do on your own, although it might be nice to use presets created by someone else if you don’t have the time or inclination to work out the sharpness and grain settings that suit your photos. Complete beginners to Lightroom may also find them useful as a way of learning by analyzing how the presets work.

The Tone Control presets are a little more useful and give you some colour grading options that you might not have come up with yourself. But again, they are fairly simple in nature and are really just a set of Split Toning presets that can be applied to either colour or black and white images. They do look nice in black and white and you can tweak the saturation if the tone is too strong for you.

Delicious Controls: Vignettes and Frames

While I can see the use of the sharpness, grain and tone controls as part of a workflow aiming to save you time, I don’t understand the point of the vignettes and frames. The vignettes are rendered useless by The Radial Filter tool in Lightroom 5, a tool that is easier to use and more versatile. The frames are just cheesy.

Delicious Presets Collections

Now let’s look at the preset collections themselves. Lightroom Develop Presets tend to fall into one of two broad categories. The first are one shot Presets – they tend to be presets that you use once. These ones are pretty binary, they either work or they don’t, and the effectiveness depends on your photo. If the preset matches your photo you’ll get a good result, and if it doesn’t, it won’t.

The second category are what I think of as genuinely useful presets. These are a bit better thought out and may be presets that the photographer who created them uses in his own workflow. They may work in modular fashion, so that you can build up the effects by layering them on top of each other. Each preset tends to adjust just one or two settings, so that you can pick which adjustments you want to make. The best ones combine flexibility with consistency, allowing you to create a variety of looks while retaining a consistent feel throughout your portfolio.

The Delicious Presets presets fall into the second category, if used with the Delicious Controls presets.

Delicious Colour Presets

This is a promising set of presets. The key to getting the best out of them is pick one you like and use it as a starting point, tweaking the sliders in the Basic panel until the tonal values are pleasing to the eye. Here’s an example with the Autumn preset:

Delicious Presets review

Another with the Blue Love preset:

Delicious Presets review

Yet another with the Vivid Tones preset. For this example I used the presets in a modular fashion, adding a vignette, grain, sharpening and the Brownie tone using the Delicious Controls presets:

Delicious Presets review

The verdict? I like these and think they have a lot of potential for portrait processing.

Delicious Black and White Pepper Presets

This is another promising set of presets that give you 12 instant black and white conversions. They need a bit of work to get the best out of them, but the potential is certainly there. This example uses the Black Pepper preset:

Delicious Presets review

Below is the Black Pepper preset with the Warm Tone from the Delicious Tone Control presets added:

Delicious Presets review

This is an interesting collection and they are certainly helpful for creating black and white conversions rapidly.

Delicious Analog Story Presets

These presets are aimed at photographers who like the look of photos produced with film cameras. There’s no doubt this is a trend in the world of event photography, and these presets aim to bring that look to you with a click of the button. There are some interesting presets here that complement the Delicious Colour presets nicely. This is the Blue Vintage preset:

Delicious Presets review

Distinct Analog Presets

Another set of analog presets, and I have to admit that these didn’t work well. Most of the presets just looked horrible with this particular photo, although you may of course get a better result with different subject matter. The Love Letter preset didn’t look too bad:

Delicious Presets review

The verdict

If you buy the bundle with all four singles collections you end up with 37 colour Develop Presets and 12 black and white ones. You also get the Delicious Controls which may provide a useful shortcut to some people. But essentially you can achieve the same effects by pushing sliders. The Tone Control part of the Delicious Controls gives some nice tones but the others are not really worth bothering with.

That leaves the Develop Presets themselves. Are they useful? The Delicious Colors, Delicious Black & White Pepper and Delicious Analog Story, yes. Especially if you are willing to use them as starting points and adjust them to suit your photos. The Delicious Distinct Analog is an exception – I didn’t like this one, but it may work well with other peoples’ photos.

Are they worth the money?

I don’t think so. They are too expensive for what you get and you will get better value elsewhere. I think the fair price is around $ 10 a set, although I’m sure many people will disagree. It’s hard to name a fair price for Develop Presets but there are plenty of people selling similar sets for around the $ 10 mark and I don’t see anything special about the Delicious Presets collections that sets them apart.

Don’t forget you can go to the Delicious Presets website and check them out for yourself.

A negative review?

Is this review too negative? I’m the sort of person who speaks his mind and I’m not going to tell you that a product is good value for money if I don’t think is. But, I understand that some of you may see things differently. If you have used any Delicious Preset products, then please let us know in the comments to balance out my point of view. Do you like them? Do you think they are good value for money?

You can also check out the Delicious Presets blog, where they give examples of photos processed with Delicious Presets. Take a look and make up your own mind.

Free Develop presets

There’s no question about value for money with free Develop Presets, but are they worth the time? My favourite free presets are the Signature Collections from OnOne Software. But what are your favourites? Let us know in the comments.

Other Develop Presets

There are lots of Develop Presets out there, and I haven’t tried them all. That’s where you come in. Have you purchased any other Develop Presets? Did you find them useful? Were they good value for money? What are your recommendations? Please let us know in the comments, and hopefully we can build a good list of useful Develop Presets.

Some that I have bought and found useful are the ones sold by Craft & Vision and the Black and White Workflow Collection from Pretty Presets.

Tips for buying Develop Presets

You don’t always have to pay full price for Develop Presets. You’ll often see presets offered for heavily discounted prices at websites like Snapndeals, Photo Deal Cafe and Photo Dough.

Another tip is to sign up for the newsletters of websites that sell Develop Presets. If they have a sale, they will let you know.

For more on Lightroom check out these:

Processing an Image in Lightroom 5 – a Video Tutorial
6 of Lightroom’s Hidden Treasures
Organizing Images in Lightroom 5
Lightroom How To – One Tip and One Trick

Mastering Lightroom: Book Two
Mastering Lightroom Book Two Develop Module My new ebook Mastering Lightroom: Book Two – The Develop Module teaches you how to process your Raw files in Lightroom for spectacular results. Written for Lightroom 4 & 5 it takes you through every panel in the Develop module and shows you how to creatively edit your photos.

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Buy our New Posing eBook and Go in the Draw to Win $2000 worth of Lenses

05 Feb

NewImage Last week we launched a brand new dPS eBook – Portraits: Striking the Pose – an eBook to help you take natural looking portraits that bring out the true character in your subjects.

When we launched this eBook we suspected it would do well as it’s a popular topic and written by one of our much loved authors – Gina Milicia – who really knows her stuff.

However we had no idea just how popular it would be. In the first two days of it’s launch we saw more people grab a copy than we usually do in the first two weeks of a launch.

And the response has been so positive from those who got a copy.

Check out this comment from one of our readers – Brad Granger – who bought a copy last week:

I picked up a copy of this eBook last week and have read it through 3 times already.

I can see that what I’m learning is already improving my portraits but what excites me most is that I took a photo of my wife that she’s proud to show her friends! She normally doesn’t like photos of herself but today she uploaded it to Facebook – something I’ve never known her to do before.

Thanks DPS and Gina!

Win $ 2000 USD to Put Towards Camera Gear

win camera gear with our eBook We launched Striking the Pose with a bonus set of 7 posing printables with 67 poses that you can put in your camera bag to help you on your next launch. This is an early bird offer only but before we end that discount we thought we’d add one more sweetener for those who pick up the eBook before our launch ends.

Everyone who buys a copy of Portraits: Striking the Pose before midnight on Friday 28 February US eastern time (including those who already have bought one) will go into the draw to win $ 2000 to go toward camera gear.

The Prize

The winner (chosen randomly) can choose a combination of gear to suit their needs. So Canon owners can choose Canon gear. Nikon owners can choose Nikon accessories or a new body. Micro 4/3 camera owners can choose lenses to suit their cameras.

The winner can choose to spend their $ 2000 USD on one single camera or lens or might choose to buy a bundle of things (as long as they total up to $ 2000).

FAQ

Based upon previous competitions I know we’ll get a number of questions on this so here’s some FAQs:

what if I already purchased Portraits: Striking the Pose? – you’re in the draw and don’t need to do anything else. This is also the case if you bought it as part of a bundle of Gina’s other eBooks.
is this open to all international readers – yes, everyone. We’ll ship the lenses to you anywhere at our cost. Our preference is to use B&H Photo and Video but if you live outside of their delivery area we’ll work with a local supplier to you to get you your lenses.
can I enter more than once? – no, there is one entry per person. Multiple purchases of the eBook only get you one entry
are there any conditions of entry? – yes, just one. The only condition of entry is that you allow us to publish your name on the blog when you’re drawn as a winner (we’ll keep any other details private). This way everyone will know who has won (we’ve previously had winners ask not to be named which has been difficult to be transparent about winner announcements).

Here’s the deal in a Nutshell

Buy Portraits: Striking the pose before midnight on Friday 28 February (US eastern time) and you get:

7 Bonus Posing Printable Guides (worth $ 9.95)
an entry into the $ 2000 gear giveaway
Plus (and most importantly) you’ll come away from reading the eBook with some inspiration and knowledge to go away and take beautiful portrait images – this eBook has the potential to transform your photography!

To enter simply buy Portraits: Striking the Pose before midnight on Friday 28 February (Eastern US time). We’ll draw the winner that evening and notify them of their win and then publish their name here on the dPS blog in the coming days. If the winner doesn’t respond within 7 days we’ll draw another winner and publish their name on the blog.

As this post goes up you have just a few weeks to take advantage of this offer – so don’t hesitate and pick up your copy of Portraits: Striking the Pose here today!

The post Buy our New Posing eBook and Go in the Draw to Win $ 2000 worth of Lenses by Darren Rowse appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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