Photography Success – The Lazy Man’s Way

Writen by Rohn Engh

Where do you keep your images? If your answer is a shoebox, plastic slide holders, or KODAK boxes, — you are not alone.

Many photographers are organized and can find a specific picture when a photobuyer calls for it. But most, unfortunately, are not. However, there’s hope. I’m going to outline what I call the “Lazy Man’s Way” of organizing and selling your photos.

First of all, I’m going to ask you to step into the 21st century and quit grumbling about how Kodak and Fuji no longer provide film for you at the local drug store. Whether we like it or not, the Digital Age is upon us. So, let’s get with the program.

You asked about being able to be lazy?

The Digital Age that you see others experiencing is the key to your newfound workable laziness. Why?

No more: chemicals, tin rolls, delivery of film, arguing about color balance, light table mix-ups, filing slides in pages and notebooks, humidity problems, sleepless nights worrying about delivery (or return) of your original slides to a client or a stock photo agency.

If you’ve lasted this long in stock photography, then you must be a dedicated person. It’s time to make your dedication move in a new direction: Digital. This is where the laziness comes in. It’s not so much the taking of pictures, or cataloging them, but in selling them.

A little history first.

After fifty years of dominating the stock photography field, stock photo agencies are gradually losing their exclusive grip on the industry. In the last century, the agencies were pretty much the only game in town. If you decided to go with one, you had to make sure it was a specialized stock photo agency. If you had five different specialties that meant you put one-fifth of your collection in each of the five specialized agencies. Today, whether you are a specialist or a “generalist,” it’s now more effective to market your pictures at an electronic “portal.” And this is where the laziness comes in.

Portals are digital stock photo agencies that feature your images in a massive collection. They utilize keywords to help visitors (buyers) locate special photo needs. Since all the photos are in digital format, you have no worry of picture loss as you would in a classic stock photo agency. Also, you are able to join several portals at the same time if you wish, and determine which one is doing the best job for you.

Photobuyers like portals. Photobuyers use the search power of the Internet when they start a search for the photo they need. Using keywords, a photobuyer might land on a series of portals. Each portal has its own keyword search section, so finding the “just right” picture becomes much easier. In the next decade we are going to see photobuyers working almost exclusively with portals for this reason.

And if you want to be a lazy marketer of stock photos, portals provide you the opportunity to literally dump all of your top-notch marketable images into the portal. There’s no cataloging necessary. Remember, keyword searches find your picture (in seconds), not a visual search. Here are more reasons photographers and photobuyers are placing their images in portals: portals are quick, (a photoshopper can browse a portal’s collection swiftly); they offer charge card payment; they pay you, the photographer, monthly (unlike stock agencies who may pay only every six months); they offer real time reports on sales; they often offer direct download (24 hour service); they offer a variety of photographer styles and personalities; they provide fresh, new ideas and trends because their photographers are constantly adding new pictures; they calculate the fee for the photobuyer which eliminates the need for any negotiating; thus they allow you to photograph and they do the selling for you; they offer a higher percent of the sale than most standard stock agencies; they are, in effect, an outsource catalog of your work.

Here’s a group of portals you’ll want to look into. Some are for Royalty Free photos, others are for Managed Rights, and others are a combination of both. Some aim at low-end buyers. The pay is low, too. Others are middle ground, and others are high-end.

adobe.com; alamy.com; artzooks.com; bigstock.com; istock.com; myloupe.com; painet.com; stock.xchng.com; shutterstock.com; stockphotomedia.com; vizpix.com; photosourcegroup.com

So you see, once your stock photos are in a portal, or portals, you can go about doing what you do best, take pictures. This new work style may mean that you’ll have to convert your top slides to hi-resolution digital images (about $10 each) and buy a digital camera. But if your dedication is alive and well, you’ll soon pay for those expenses from your sales. Now you can lie back in your hammock and have another mint julep.

Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. 1 800 624 0266; Fax: 1 715 248 7394. http://www.photosource.com

Starting a Photography Business – Home Based vs. Studio Space

Writen by Cindy Bracken

When deciding on a place to run your successful photography business, there are a few options:

Home Based Photography Studio

Many photographers are deciding to run their photo businesses out of their homes. This has several advantages:

Low overhead – no rent
No commuting time
Your work space is tax deductible
Great if you have kids at home
Family oriented and relaxed

Disadvantages of a home studio include:

Lack of sufficient space
You have to keep a clean house at all times!
Having strangers in your home
Some people may view a home studio as not being a “real” business

Buying / Renting a Photography Studio

If your business increases and you can no longer operate out of your home, then it is time to look into purchasing or renting a space for your photography business. Advantages of renting or buying a studio space include:

More exposure for your business (window displays, foot traffic, drive by traffic)
More adequate space for your equipment and props
More adequate space for parking
Some may view you as having a “real” photography business
Your work life and home life can be kept separate

Disadvantages include:

Higher overhead (rent or mortgage) eats your profits
Commute time
High prices may keep you out of more desirable neighborhoods or shopping centers
A less desirable location may mean that you have to lower your prices

Other options

Many photographers choose to shoot “on location” only. This means that they either go to the client’s home or shoot mainly at outdoor locations. This can work nicely because it allows you to avoid renting a space and keeps clients out of your home.

Other photographers may choose to temporarily rent a studio space for a day or more. Some photo studios rent out their space on an hourly basis, but if this isn’t available in your town, consider renting a small conference room at a local hotel (this would be good for a portrait event where you will be photographing numerous families).

Photography In The Raw

Writen by Kimberle Balsman

Enticing title, huh? No, we won’t be discussing nude photography, at least not today. Rather, this article will, hopefully, shed some light on the tremendous image quality advances of today’s digital cameras.

Imagine taking a developed 4×6 snapshot of your child’s birthday party and scanning it into your computer. If you printed the resulting photo, you would notice some considerable degradation of the image quality. The interesting fact is that most JPEG images are comparable to the quality of the scanned and reprinted image. Surprised? The JPEG image format is, by all means, acceptable for most consumer and even some professional purposes. JPEGs are definitely the best choice for sharing in email and even for printing on photo paper to place in an album or share with family and friends.

If, however, you are a camera geek (like me), you are simply not going to be satisfied with anything less than perfection from your images. In that case, you will definitely want to consider purchasing a camera with RAW image format capabilities. Working with the RAW format is the equivalent of working with a color or B&W negative. You have substantially more technical and creative control. The downside is that the RAW image format requires significantly more storage space on your media cards and demands more advanced photo-editing capabilities, which means investing in more powerful software with integrated RAW image editing functions (i.e. Adobe Photoshop CS2, retail cost $649). But, in my humble opinion, it is well worth the higher learning curve and expense.

Serious photography hobbyists and certainly those who may want to sell their photographic work will benefit tremendously from the superiority of the RAW format. The good news is that several reasonably priced prosumer digital cameras now offer the RAW image format. The Canon Digital Rebel XT 8 MP camera (est. retail $650) offers both JPEG and RAW formats. Likewise, the Sony Cybershot DSCR1 10.3 MP camera (est. retail $850) offers RAW image capture and an impressive array of features. For die-hard Kodak consumers, the new Kodak Easyshare P880 8MP camera (est. retail $500) offers a wide-angle optical zoom and RAW file support. Last, but not least, the Nikon Coolpix 8700 8 MP camera (est. retail $600) offers RAW mode image recording and many of the features commonly sought after by professional photographers.

So, if you are in the market for a new digital camera, you owe it to yourself to check out the latest, surprisingly affordable innovations in RAW image capture. I doubt you will be disappointed.

© Balsman Photography, LLC

Kim Balsman is the owner of Balsman Photography, LLC, a small, professional photography studio in Longmont, Colorado. Kim’s background is diverse, including formal education in communications and law at Truman State University and the University of Houston, as well as professional photography studies at the New York Institute of Photography. Kim spent more than a decade working as a paralegal, practicing in numerous legal specialties with law firms in Texas. Throughout her career, Kim has written thousands of legal documents but prefers the creativity of writing short stories, novels and journalistic pieces. Some of her work has been published in corporate magazines. Kim has lectured at entrepreneurial symposiums and educational facilities and led an initiative to help small printing franchisees compete for demanding legal document reproduction business. Kim enjoyed a brief career in real estate as a Century 21 agent in New England, grossing more than $2M in sales in a matter of a few months. She now devotes her full time to her photography business and writing.

Digital Photography and ISO Ratings – What You Should Know!

Writen by Jonathan G. Michel

Before Digital Cameras ever came to be, most of you probably owned a standard 35mm camera with an attachable flash, like my old Nikon F1, which I foolishly sold on Ebay. If you did own one of those, and you were very adept in photography, you’ll recall thatlittle nob at the bottom of the camera with a series of numbers from B1…to 4000 ASA/ISO.Simply put, when you bought film which was rated 400 ASA, as an example, you would adjust the nob to reflect an ASA reading of 400 in the small window pane aligned with a small, usually, red arrow.

The point of all this is the following; when you bring your knew digital camera to any large event, it is totally pointless to be using the built-in flash, although you see it all the time by the 100s of flickering lights. The built-in flash is much to small to have any effect when you’re 100s of feet from your subject.

Since cameras list the effectiveness of a flash measured in distance or range (3′ – 9′ etc.), you really have to be very close to the subject for the flash to be fullyeffective.

The ISO designation you should know, is a measure used for light sensitivity. For example, a film with a rating of ISO1000 (considered fast film) is much more sensitive to light than a film with a rating of ISO100, and therefore is better able to capture images in dark surrounding areas. Actually, if you were really good in the old days, we used this to our advantage in combination with the aperture opening of the lens for some really awesome effects. But we won’t go there and stick with digital.

So to be understood, digital camera technology uses the same ISO system, but since no film is used, the variable light sensitivity is accomplished by amplifying the signal.Sound confusing! In electronics, as you amplify a signal, you amplify noise levels, such as in a radio which has a weak signal. So you turn it up only to hear more static in the background.

So it was, when you selected a digital camera with a high ISO rating,because the quality of the image was less than desirable. In the early days of digital cameras, this constituted a real problem.

Today, however, this so called noise has been so controlled, that you can buy a digital camera with a high ISO rating reducing the need for a flash…in other words the capability of taking pics from far distances without a flash. In addition, when you set your camera to ‘auto’, the camera will automatically set the ISO, the aperture opening of the lens, and shutter speed to create the best picture possible.

For more information on understanding how ISO works, make sure you read your manual or check with the manufacturer of your camera. If you don’t yet own a digital camera, here’s a tip; make sure you buy the highest megapixel possible. It cost much more but well worth the investment. You won’t regret it!

Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Review- Personal Media Player

Writen by Brandon Baumgarten

The exceptional Vision 30 has a 3.7″ SharpPix 640×480 pixel high resolution 262,144 color screen with transflective technology that lets you see the screen, even in bright sunlight! It’s great to bring all your photos and entertainment with you every where you go. Tens of thousands of photos, up to 120 hours of videos, or 15,000 songs.

It’s an MP3 player, store your whole music collection on this player. Listen to over 1000 hours of music, Zen Vision even has a FM tuner built right in, so you can listen to the radio, even share your favorite songs with your friends with the built in speaker. Sync with Microsoft Outlook to transfer your calendar, contacts and task list so you’ll never forget all your important events.

Use the built in microphone to record notes, lectures and reminders. Even edit with Creative Media Explorer! The Zen Vision is not only lightweight and slim, beneath its classy magnesium casing are features that will fulfill all your digital entertainment needs. A must for all amateur and professional digital photographers. Weight: 8.2oz, Dimensions: 4.88″x2.91″x0.79″

The Creative Zen Vision 30 Specifications:

Capacity: 30 GB Hard Drive

Display: Display: 3.7″ 640×480 pixels, 262,144 colors SharpPix high resolution color screen

Case: Lightweight Magnesium

Video Playback Format: MPEG-1/2/4-SP, Windows Media Video (WMV) 9, Motion-JPEG, DivX 4 and 53, Xvid-SP3

Audio Playback Format: MP3, WMA and WMA with DRM

Size WxHxD: 4.9″x2.9″x0.79″ (with standard battery)

Photo Format: JPEG

Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Up to 97dB

Harmonic Distortion Output: <0.1%

Frequency Response: 20Hz – 20kHz

Audio Output: 3.5mm stereo mini-jack, NTSC and PAL systems and a built-in speaker

Video Output: Composite TV-out;

Battery Life: Up to 13hrs continuous audio playtime Up to 4.5 hrs continuous video playtime. Up to 26hrs continuous audio playtime (optional extended Battery). Up to 9 hrs continuous video playtime

Battery Type: Removable, rechargeable Li-Ion battery

Interface: USB 2.0 (backward compatible with USB 1.1)

Card Slot4: Plug&View CompactFlash Card Type I & II

Organizer: Syncs with and views Microsoft Outlook Contacts, Calendar & Tasks

Product Warranty: Creative offers a one (1) year parts, ninety (90) days labor limited hardware warranty.

Visit KISSERreviews.info to compare prices, read actual customer reviews or find accessories. You will also find KISSER reviews for the Apple iPod photo, Archos AV700, Archos AV500, Epson P-2000 and P-4000, Samsung Yepp YH-999, SmartDisk FlashTrax, iRiver PMP-140, Nikon MSV-01 CoolWalker and the JOBO Giga Vu. Also Nikon, Canon Cameras, Epson and Canon Printers.

For helpful information about, How to Become a Freelance Photographer and Freelance Photographer Jobs, visit our unique Digital Photography Website at: DigitalPhotographyWebsite.com for great ideas. There’s are a lot of free photography tips, tutorials and travel information there.

I have been a professional photographer at several western ski resorts. I started out at Grand Targhee Wyoming. Where I landed my first professional photography job taking action photos of skiers on the slopes at Grand Targhee, it changed my life. I am currently a freelance photographer in Lake Tahoe, California.

Buying a Digital Camera

Writen by Albreht Moy

When it comes to buying a digital camera, you need to ask yourself one question. “What type of pictures am I looking to take?” Then from that point on, try to envision the image perfectly in your mind, also how you would like then to turn out for others to see. From there on in, it can be easy clicking and all this can be done just by picking out what you are looking for in the features of a digital camera and the picture you have seen in your mind. Buying a digital camera should not be stressful and it does not have to be any longer.

Most digital cameras come with the essentials things such as picture storage and a viewfinder and other times when it comes to buying a digital camera, you will find that some extras may be helpful to you on making what envisioned seem real on paper or on a screen. Some digital cameras come with zoom, a self-timer and even flash, so choosing these qualities just might be right up your ally for great picture taking. One of the neat features that some digital cameras offer these days is a moviemaker or mpeg maker, this allows you to capture a few seconds worth of homemade film and can complement any picture you have taken.

Buying a good digital camera does not have to cost a lot of money for anyone, even for the beginner. The good thing about a digital camera is that it takes out the cost of developing the film at a local store plus the drive to the store and back. There is an instant gratification feeling, just by viewing the pictures on the viewfinder or they may also be downloaded from your camera to your personal computer. Almost all digital cameras come with software that can be installed onto your PC and it gives you full freedom of editing your pictures until you are content and happy with them.

About The Author:

Albreht Moy has many popular photographs for sale at his website.

Let’s Help Your Built In Flash

Writen by Kenneth C. Hoffman

Since most of our lives are spent indoors, most of our family pictures are taken inside. Unfortunately, we have to rely on our built in flashes to get the picture. These pictures include family portraits, table shots, fun gatherings, local indoor events, parties, and social events, to say nothing of the thousands of baby pictures and pet portraits. The built in flash often has enough power to light a subject no further than 12 feet from the camera. The resulting flash picture is flatly lit and must be printed with higher contrast than normal. Pictures taken with subjects further away are dimly lit, low in contrast and have little inherent color. While you may increase the ISO sensitivity to the highest setting, this often results in an image with a large number of artifacts, looking less sharp and grainy.

All these family occasions would be improved with better lighting. An old fashioned PC corded flash will not help you since your digital camera probably doesn’t have a PC socket or hot shoe and even if it does, the red eye pre flash would trigger the accessory flash too soon to synchronize. What you need is an accessory flash that ignores your preflashes and synchronizes with your shutter without wires. The Vivitar DF200 is such a flash.

Other features of this flash are the ability to mount to any camera with a tripod socket, full capability to swivel to the rear and angle up to the ceiling. With plenty of power on hand for good bounce lighting, the swivel feature is important. Another good feature is the ability to operate at a distance. The unit can be placed on a side board aimed at a white wall for a side light or placed high aimed towards a white ceiling for a broad source of light. The advantages of this broad source are a three dimensional look to the picture, reduced glare, more intense color and a sharper, better exposed image. The built in flash acts as the light trigger as well as supplying a fill light for shadow control.

Experiment with different camera and accessory flash settings for the best exposure and balance. A large room can be fully lit using the highest power setting while a closer, smaller area may only need the

What is Camera Shake and How Do I Avoid It?

Writen by Eric Hartwell

“My images appear blurred and a friend says this is caused by camera shake. What is this and how can I avoid it?”

If your digital camera makes even a small movement when you take a picture, you are at risk of having a blurred image. The reason for this is camera shake.

Digital cameras need to be got used to. Those new to digital photography, especially using compacts, should realise that the must use the shutter release button properly. Initially, by pressing the button halfway, the camera measures and sets it’s exposure and focussing parameters. The second press takes the photo.

Low light also leads to the possibility of camera shake. Here the aperture is wider (to let more light in) and therefore the shutter speed is slow. Using a long and heavy lens will also cause difficulty in holding the camera steady. Try to steady yourself or use a tripod for support. If you don’t have a remote shutter release, use the self-timer to trigger the shutter button.

If you don’t have a tripod handy, hold the camera steady using your elbows braced against your body for support. Holding the camera firmly against your forehead also helps.

Setting a faster shutter speed will also minimise the possibility of blurred images. And in low light conditions, using a flashgun will prevent blurring.

Eric Hartwell runs the photography resource site http://www.theshutter.co.uk and the associated discussion forums as well as the regular weblog at http://thephotographysite.blogspot.com

e-Photo Albums

Writen by Jonathon Hardcastle

Grandma might be the one doing the whining, if you have just graduated but your happy pictures can only be found online. Printing out multiple copies of your digital images and then having to assort them, before you have to sit down to create a photo-album that included dates, nametags, and even exam notes, seems like a big hassle. But then again, sending only a couple of hard copies to your mom or best-friend for them to use and decorate their fridge area, will not bring smiles to that poor grandma who wants a chance to show how proud she is of your accomplishment and she also wants to feel special. So, if your graduation, bachelors, wedding, baby, birthday, summer, camping, pool, pictures are corny enough for you to share them with friends by uploading them online in distant servers, why not taking the same amount of time to electronically create a photo-album everyone will cherish for years to come?

It is about time we face it. Although the original idea of pressing some buttons to produce a clear copy of the digital images stored in a computer’s memory seemed extremely hassle-free at the beginning, the truth is that the more you use your digital picture the more digital pictures stay in that computer’s memory for a long time. But storing them in a hard drive at home or online, does not permit everyone that wishes to view them to be able to do so, since not everyone knows how to log on to the Internet, if in fact an internet connection is available, or how to view and download their photograph copies from your choice of online image hosting server.

As a result, more and more people have decided today to return to using more old-fashioned ways in order to present their choice of digital photographs to their beloved ones. Creating an electronically made photo-album and then sending its hard copy to the homes of family members and friends, constitutes a lovely and thoughtful action. In fact, by creating a variety of photographically embellished products, communicating feelings and thoughts is easily done and much less time-consuming. Interested individuals are able to upload their digital images to some of these online image servers (image banks) and then select and create their choice of personalized mug, book cover, bag, t-shirt, and of course, photo-album. Reliving the excitement one once felt, when the local photographer called to inform that the prints outs of that trip’s pictures were finally ready, seems today to excite a great number of technology enthusiasts. With the ready-to-use image software of websites like Shutterfly, Photoworks, and Kodak EasyShare, producing a personalized photo-album version can be a fun as well as an instructive experience.

So, get started by selecting your theme and photo-album design template. Choose colors, textures and captions if you wish and send your lovely grandma her much-deserved copy of photographs. You better hurry up as time is ticking and you will soon be picking up the phone trying to figure out how to answer those “you’ve-forgotten-all-about-me” arguments.

Appreciate Your Photographic Assistant

Writen by Eric Hartwell

Most things can be done alone in photography. Sure, it would be nice to have someone lug all the equipment around and do little things like set up the tripod, get filters out of their containers and even simply pass you your camera when you need it.

A servant to make coffee when needed would be an asset too.

But we don’t have the luxury of such slavery. And we are, most of the time, on our own. When help is needed then it should be asked for and subsequently appreciated.

I have an assistant in the form of my lovely wife. She lets me get on with most things and her interest in photography is minimal. But she knows that she is the first person I call on in the studio when I need someone to hold the reflector.

She is always poised and ready. The inevitable instructions range from “up a bit” to “for goodness sake, can you at least do this properly if you are going to do it at all”.

Despite all this she remains calm and level-headed.

She is unappreciated, I feel. A studio session can last anything from half an hour to two hours. During that time she has to deal with abject boredom, aching arms and incessant happy speak between photographer and model. There are better things she could be doing, such as watching TV, playing with the kids or simply sipping red wine in front of a roaring log fire.

And I am sure she would measure a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to be preferable to the studio task she has to do.

I’ll get round to thanking her… One day.

Eric Hartwell runs the photography resource site http://www.theshutter.co.uk and the associated discussion forums as well as the regular weblog at http://thephotographysite.blogspot.com