Photo Collages Increase Profit Margins for Your Photography Studio

Or, How to Do Things Your Customers Will Love

People are always asking me what are some of the ways, in the portrait market, I close a sale and bring in revenue. Before I even begin to speak about one of my favorite, tried and true methods, let me say I hope NO ONE is still using paper proofs.  Not only are they so last decade, they are also detrimental to your bottom line.  They’re there, already printed and so tempting for people to want to take home and ‘think about’ (translation: scan).  Also, they can encourage clients to devalue your work, because well….there they are, in those convenient little sizes that just seem so…….cheap.  And you’re not going to do anything with these anyway, so why can’t I take them home with me????[…]

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Photography in the Time of Sorrow

Or, One Artist’s Voice Speaks For Many

Two posts in one day. Who can live at that speed? I was surfing the web today, looking for an artist agent for myself. Along the way, I stumbled upon Altpick.com. For whatever reason, the fairies of the Universe conspired so that the first page that opened featured a fellow Atlantan I have never met, one Mr. Zack Arias. I loved what he had to say in his ‘Artist Message‘, so I naturally moseyed on over to check out his blog. That’s where I watched this video. I literally put my head in my hands and wept great big gobbets of tears. I have never heard words before that so clearly articulate what it can feel like to be alone with your creative demons.

pathos


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Camera RAW vs JPG

Or, How Someone Else Explains Things Better Than I Do

A lot of people want to better understand the differences or potential benefits between shooting in camera RAW as opposed to JPG.  There are a great many people who put their foot down firmly on one side or the other of this debate.  I’ve seen arguments get heated in certain forums, with each side claiming the high ground.

rawvsjpegJennifer Leigh, Karyn Christner, Robert Wallace

Me?  I shoot RAW.  Why?  Because I like to endlessly tweak things.  I come from a background of printing ‘old school’ and really like to get my hands in it and mess it around a bit.  Then maybe change my mind, erase it all and start again….and again.  RAW allows that freedom.  I also find JPGs to be more ‘contrasty’, both tending to blow out my highlights and block up my shadows.  Dude, if anyone is gonna block my shadows, it better be me.[…]

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Passive Income from Microstock Photography

Or, The Unexpected ‘Sleeper’ Hit

The image below is a masterpiece.  A work of art.  A thing of  beauty.  Right?  Nah.  Not even.

However, this little jewel has downloaded a stunning 282 times in the first half of February.   It has earned $93 for me during that time.  And what was I doing, while that money was pouring in?  A little web surfing, some grocery shopping, a tad of house cleaning, a few marketing calls, a couple of marketing emails, some nice long walks around the neighborhood.  In other words, for THAT money, I wasn’t doing a thing even remotely associated with that image.  Since I originally uploaded it, more than three years ago, it has downloaded more than 500 times, earning around $200.  I’m not exactly sure why there has been such a run on this particular image over the past 12 days, but I’m happy to take the money : )

[…]

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Studio Lighting for Headshots – Tutorial

Or, The Other Money Shot

There are at least as many ways to shoot a headshot as there are ways to skin a cat.  We won’t go into WHY someone would want to skin a cat, but I can tell you why people would want to shoot headshots.  This is a great basic skill to have in your repertoire.  Think of it as The Little Black Dress of photography.

It’s amazing at all the different types of people and professions who need headshots; realtors, editors, authors, entertainers, models, CEOs, dancers, moguls, rock stars, travel agents, ministers, entrepreneurs, business owners, internet marketers and even the occasional porn star, just to name a few. Being able to shoot reliable, polished headshots can bring in infusions of cash, and hey, who doesn’t like a little infusion, from time to time?

Studio Lighting for Headshots - Photography Tutorial[…]

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Make a Beauty Dish for Studio Lighting

Or, How To Whip Up A Little Something In The Kitchen For The Studio

Occasionally in my web surfing I come across things that strike me as quite clever.  One such example is a homemade beauty dish I stumbled upon on lifehacker.com.  Well, actually the lifehacker page was really the entry to a rabbit hole I eventually went down, that lead to  David Tejada’s blog for commercial photographers, where he references Tyler Burk‘s instructions for this clever little item on Flickr.  Such is life in cyberspace.[…]

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