A review of Samsung’s mirrorless camera the NX200.

The current photographic community has two basic philosophies that are best personified by a couple of pop culture character heroes: “Batman” and “MacGyver”. Neither approach is inherently better but do carry with them their own sets of pros and cons.

Hot Rods and Pinup Girls kinda go hand in hand. What better place to shoot pinups than a great hot rod garage.

For years, I have driven past this old time country grocery store and I knew I wanted to shoot some sort of vintage pinup girl session here, just needed to put together the pieces. Lucky for me, I have some great friends that hook me up with awesome cars for my shoots.

Location, without a doubt, can make or break the picture and can also determine whether or not your clients will trust you with their precious memories. If you are looking for great locations to capture memories for clients’ photo shoots, get inspired by the following tips.

This is the final installment of my series on how to keyword your images to increase your stock photography sales. All the suggestions I’ve made should be applied to your images, whether you’re a full-time stock photographer, an hobbyist who hasn’t taken the plunge into selling stock yet, or if you are managing an image library for your company, school, non-profit or group of any kind.

So, you think that the WHERE and the WHEN of an image should take about 5 seconds to cover. Well, the way most images are keyworded for these concepts, it’s easy to believe that most photographers think this, but there are several layers of keywords worth using to ensure your images are looked at by as many appropriate buyers as possible.

This post will cover the details of keywording the WHAT in your images, basically anything that is a “thing” in the image, including the subjects of the image and the background things.

This post will cover a lot of the other keywords you should be adding to your images of people.

This week, I will delve into the details of keywording people. People are such an important part of stock images, and buyers will be searching for a lot more than just woman or boy.

In a series of six weekly posts, I will show you a way to systematize how you look at an image to come up with all the appropriate keywords.

Many people who start off in photography as a business will take every single dollar that comes their way. I know because I did, we all have to make ends meet. I started off with the goal of shooting weddings as my profession but realized wedding photography was not for me.

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the Friday Business Challenge bought to you by Current Photographer and Today is Different. Did you miss the 7 weekly challenges? If you did it’s not too late to go back and check them out?

In this article William Petruzzo shares some tips that he uses to control the efficiency in his photo processing workflow.

Friday Photography Business Challenge week seven is all about goal setting and the next seven weeks.

This week Robyn Mayne shares 7 steps to email marketing.

This week Robyn Mayne shares 7 steps to creating a referral program for your photography business.

SEO is a large and complex topic. You can pay someone to do it for you or you can immerse yourself in all of the technical information trying to figure out how to optimize your site.

The truth is you may need to adopt one or the other of the options above. But before you do, try these tactics and make some small adjustments, and most likely you will see improved rankings quite rapidly.

Your challenge this week is to conduct a review of your website in two parts…

I love board games. They pass the time, are generally easy to pick up, and offer a competitive outlet. One of the most popular board games of all-time is Monopoly. One can learn a thing or two about life and business from the game of Monopoly, especially in retrospect.

The question is why should someone decide to hire you, over all the other photographers in the area? What is it that’s so special and unique about you that they should choose you over all the other choices available to them, including doing nothing at all?

Welcome to the very first Business Challenge bought to you by CurrentPhotographer.com and Today is Different (that’s me). And can I just take this opportunity to say woohoo! I am super excited to be joining Trevor in bringing you The Challenge!

When I started my business, I knew that I wanted to photograph high school seniors. My biggest hurdle was finding seniors when I started. Here’s my story about how a low cost Facebook ad really got things rolling.

For as long as I can remember I have watched “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS, every 4th of July. I love the music and the fireworks with Washington, DC and all of the monuments as a backdrop. Since I was a little girl, I dreamed of sitting on the National Mall, on the 4th of July, experiencing it all firsthand.

In December I had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas for the first time. I had heard of Red Rock Conservation Area, just outside of Las Vegas, from friends who had visited in the past and knew that it was a priority to visit. During my pre-trip research I also read about Valley of Fire State Park. Red Rock is less than an hour’s drive west of Las Vegas and Valley of Fire is about an hour’s drive northeast of Las Vegas. Both places intrigued me, so I planned a big day trip to visit both.

The best way to force yourself to grow as a photographer is by giving yourself no choice but to step outside of your comfort zone. This is not entirely about growing and learning new things. It’s also about diversifying your work and opening your and your audience’s eyes to a new take on images.

Many of my photography marketing posts talk about SEO – the simplest form of affordable advertising where the only cost is your time spent. This post talks about the importance of titles and meta descriptions, and why the keywords in the meta description don’t matter!

Personally, I love knowing what other photographers are carrying around with them. So in anticipation of summer travel season, I thought I would share what’s in MY bag!

I want to discuss the act of posting image after image on a blog or photo sharing web site. This article isn’t meant to be a guide on when to post and what to post. Rather, I want to get as many people out there to stop and think about the process of selectively (or not so selectively) posting images.

Web 2.0 website builders ensure that you don’t have get involved with the technical nitty-gritty unless you want to. Instead of worrying about FTP, PHP or security breaches, it can be well worth signing up with a suitable provider and focusing your energy on creating content and sharing images instead. In this article we’ll take a look at several popular website builders that have some great options for photographers.

Take travel style fine art photography of your own home town. You live where you do for a reason – you probably really like it. So when you are at home, spend some time over the course of a year or two photographing important sites in your city during different seasons. You would be surprised at what you can do with photos at home – plus, its good practice for making great images when you are on the road!

The combination of silhouettes and landscapes is an underutilized art and one I wish more people practiced. Not only is it extremely useful in creating dynamic landscape images, but it is also extremely easy to execute.

A video leaked onto Youtube has sparked rumors about handset manufacturer HTC working on an impressive 16-megapixel smartphone. Although HTC is not confirming the rumors, the video’s story-board styled ad-spot also describes the phone as featuring duel LED flashes.

The San Antonio AWAI Ultimate Money-Making Photography Workshop

At the MIX11 conference Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled the upcoming version of their Windows Phone OS – codenamed Mango. The announcement included a variety of exciting new platform features including multitasking and augmented reality.

As the camera race on mobile phones speeds ahead in megapixels and image quality, a new contender has the industry buzzing – the first smartphone with a built-in 3D camera.

In this video John Ricard takes a look at the “usability” and “focus” of the Leica M9 digital camera.

Using a fast shutter speed will freeze motion in its tracks, and using a slow shutter speed with moving objects will spread the image over time. This creates a sense of motion. There are many methods to achieve this motion blur, such as panning on a moving object, shooting from a moving platform (train, car etc), using the zoom feature while the shutter is open, moving the camera on a still subject, or keeping the camera fixed while the subject is moving. Here we will focus on the latter.

Amateur (noun) – a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity

I think we can all agree that the definition of amateur doesn’t exactly have the nicest ring to it. A lot of photographers out there do fit this description, which is perfectly fine or everyone with a camera would be doing this for a living. The trick is not letting other people know it. The three things I am about to cover are major pet peeves of mine that will instantly drop an image from the ranks of great to mediocre. My goal is to have you think the same thing by the end of this article.

So you’re a product photographer and your client is looking for something different or fresh for their website, why not offer 360º Product Photography?

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to travel to hone your travel photography skills…you can practice right in your hometown! It may not be a lot, but there ARE people who travel TO your city and there are places to sell these photos.

As a landscape photographer, I love using lens filters. There are certain benefits you gain in effectively using filters that simply cannot be reproduced in Photoshop. Learning the ins and outs of proper filter use is an art form in and of itself and takes a lot of practice. What I would like to do today is introduce a few of my favorite lens filters, why I use them, and what they can specifically do for your landscape images.

Ryan Armbrust from Boudoir Louisville, visits the Neon Boneyard in Las Vegas for a classic Las Vegas themed pinup girl photo shoot.

When booking a hotel for your next destination, don’t forget to consider the view. If you choose wisely, your hotel room or common areas of the building may provide a unique vantage point for photos of the city you are visiting.

There’s a lot of photographic talent out there besides yourself. You need to differentiate yourself from an ever-increasing pool of photographers selling their skills and their work.

If you are interested in getting started in Boudoir, you need to think first, why you want to do it? There is no wrong answer, but learning will be focused on different areas for different goals.

What we’re going to take a look at today is a fairly simple tip but one that is often overlooked; getting low. Vantage point can do wonders for your images and it goes beyond a simple line of sight. We can add impact with foreground elements, alter depth of field in an interesting way, and catch the sun at a completely different angle.

To stay competitive today, you’ve got to change your thinking. Stop looking for the Home Run and concentrate on getting Base Hits. What I mean by that is to focus on finding several places that will send you a few new clients – vs looking for one source that will send you tons of clients.

Saving the negatives or digital files from a shoot can be a major undertaking and realistically the money you get for the odd copy you sell is not worth the effort. But keeping them could be of great value historically.

Have you sorted out what’s going to happen to your historic collection or are you leaving it to a member of your family to bury or cremate them alongside you?

When we last met, I shared with you how I prepare for a trip. Today I will cover what I do when I reach my location.

As landscape photographers, there are many elements of a scene we look for when composing a shot. Typically the first things we analyze when shooting a landscape are the foreground and background elements, but often times we overlook what’s above our heads. It’s easy to dismiss clouds as another piece to your landscape puzzle, but if you pay special attention to the fluffy white stuff, your images can take that next step. I’m going to touch on why you should start paying more attention to clouds and break down some techniques on making them work for you.

Most of my travel is to major cities in the US and Canada…this is both good and bad. Good because there is plenty of easily accessible information about major cities on the Internet. Bad because, well, there is nothing “hidden,” or “secret,” or “unknown,” about major cities with plenty of easily accessible information. Here are some techniques I use to prepare for a trip.

In this behind-the-scenes video, Joseph Cristina from Allure Multimedia tests the Hasselblad H4D-40 medium format DSLR camera in a high-end fashion shoot. Joe’s creative vision and “run and gun” style of shooting combined with the superior quality of the H4D-40 captured some amazing images of these original fashion designs.

Impressionist painters were more concerned with colour than line. Their goal was to leave the viewer with an impression of the scene rather than a literal depiction and their works often included a sense of movement.

Photographers can also create emotional abstracts that leave only an impression of the original subject by using a slow shutter speed, from 1/50 of a second to 1/2 second, and moving the camera while the shutter is open or allowing a moving subject to pass in front of the camera.

This technique is fun because every frame turns out different. An afternoon can easily slip by as if moving on the waves of colour.

There is one skill in particular that if mastered will propel your business forward faster than anything else. Best of all it works whether you’re speaking to someone directly or you’re letting the copy on your website or brochure do the talking for you. What is it???

Normally, the best photography sites in the country are not in our back yards. That means travel – often, by air. So that raises a question. Should you trust thousands of dollars in camera gear to the tender mercies of the TSA and airline baggage handlers? Or should you ship your gear ahead of you?

With the onset of Facebook, Twitter and blogs, we have to keep in mind that everything we post as photographers WILL BE READ. Over time I have noticed that with these outlets it is so easy to get too comfortable with what we put out there. Regardless of our true feelings about any situation especially when it comes to clients, both past, current and potential, we must always come across as positive.

In this article, I’m going to look at Twitter and Facebook pages as they might be used for a business, and share some insights into growing an online community that has value.

Learn how a simple one light and reflector setup can help you produce some amazing looking child portraits.

When acquiring a Business Portraiture client it’s always best to know before hand how the client will use the image. Meaning if the client will be using his/her image for web posting or high quality publication it’s best to light for deeper shadows. This is more or less for men especially as deep shadows can [...]

Andrew Wagle shares 3 DSLR camera accessories that help you explore your creativity and have fun making pictures.

In this article Anne McKinnell shows two different approaches to capturing a high contrast scene using ND Grad filters and HDR processing.

The aspiring Digital Debbie with some spare cash can head on out to the nearest store and in an hour or two, with a little tweaking, can look almost like a professional. You know the three shoulder bags and a couple of tripods and an air of superiority can actually make you believe you really are a pro and not just a usurper.

Even in this digital-Twitter-Facebook saturated world, in-person networking can be some of the most productive that you can do. I’ve been to a thousand of these events for various positions that I’ve held, and I’m here to tell you that, done correctly, it’s not a waste of time. In this article, I’m going to give you some tips to make your time at these events productive and maybe, just maybe even enjoyable.

Confused by your camera? Overwhelmed by all the settings? This post will tell you about the first three settings you’ll need to learn about in order to correctly expose your photographs and is the first step down the road to great images. At first glance, they appear quite technical but once I took the time to read about them and understand them they actually became almost second nature to me – just like breathing or blinking. These three settings relate to one another very much in an almost symbiotic circle – what happens to one impacts the other in some fashion.

When you take a photograph, you’re essentially allowing a select amount of light to pass onto your camera’s sensor for a given amount of time. These three settings control essentially this, and how it’s interpreted through your lens and by your camera sensor. When it comes down to it, it’s all about exposure to light. You can vary ISO, Aperture or Shutter Speed up and down by distinct amounts to adjust for changes in light. Read on to discover how these settings interact and start to correctly expose your photographs.

Every day I find numerous articles and testimonials about the possibilities inherent in the exciting field of HDR photography. Some even claim that you aren’t a true practitioner of HDR art if you don’t shoot multiple exposures. So, what’s the real deal with HDR photography? I sat down with Scott Brownstein, to sort through everything.

I set my lights up and popped off a couple test shots. I wanted to get everything in place so I would not be rushed at sunset. I wanted that nice cobalt blue sky that last about 10 minutes. After everything was set up, we headed to the other end zone to grab some natural light shots. AS SOON AS WE GOT TO THE OTHER END OF THE FIELD, THE SPRINKLERS CAME ON!

If you’re photographing people don’t forget about the most important part – the people. Being in front of the camera can be rather difficult and stressful for some people and it’s our job as photographers to make them feel at ease so that they in turn will look better in the image. Here are five tips to improve your attitude (and in turn your portraits).

Ryan Armbrust from Boudoir Louisville shares a behind-the-scenes look of a pinup shoot at the Kentucky State Fair.

Photojournalists are not as bad as people make them out to be; they’re not vultures who go around scavenging for photographs of people who are dying in order to make a fast buck and find their way into the spotlight. They just happen to be at the right place at the wrong time. Besides, they endanger their lives too in search of such photographs because nature is very unpredictable.

Adobe Photoshop has an entry in the iTunes App Store that allows you to edit your iPhone photos on the fly – on your phone or on your iPad. Better still, this app is free!

This post is going to elaborate a little more into why certain cameras suit your particular style of photography and what you should know before buying your camera. Choosing your camera is one of the most important decisions to make when you get started in Photography and ideally, a decision you only need to make a couple of times as it can get quite expensive. Every manufacturer of SLR cameras carries its own range of proprietary lenses that only work with that particular manufacturer’s camera bodies so this choice becomes even more daunting when you realise not only are you committing to a particular model of camera, but also committing to using only those lenses manufactured for that brand.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes two, three, or four pictures grouped together can tell an even more interesting story. Diptic, an iPhone and iPad app, affords you the opportunity to do just that – combine photos taken with your iPhone to tell a more compelling or complete story with diptychs, triptychs, and even quadtychs.

In this article Chris Horner talks about choosing a niche for your photography business to focus your marketing efforts on. You can’t be everything to everyone.

An introduction to casual wildlife photography, part 1 a look at the gear you will need.

This is a video tutorial on how to set up your Facebook Privacy Settings. A complete walk through including how to make your photographs private.

Photography rules exist to follow, and then break. There is no reason to stick with them 100% of the time but they make for a great guideline. Rule of thirds, Horizons, Diagonals, Leading are just some of the types of rules. Read them study them and then don’t be afraid to break them. It is as simple as that.

You love your camera. You love your iPhone. You love the camera on your iPhone but wish it looked a little bit more like, well, a camera, and a little less like a phone. Your wish is PhotoJojo’s command! The folks over there have put together instructions for creating a custom skin for your iPhone (with alternate instructions for other sorts of smart phones) to make it look like the camera of your choice.

If you wish to maintain and even grow your customer base in difficult times, you must be better, more creative and more appreciative than other studios who may be scaling back. If you display effective methods of appreciation for clients, they will stand by you and refer you to their friends and associates.

This is the first post in a series of fortnightly posts on how to get started in photography which I’m calling Finding Your Feet. I intend the series to be impartial and gear-agnostic; hopefully what I have learned since I picked up a camera and recall throughout the series will help you too.

Here’s an excellent response for educating the customer who questions why she should pay him to print photographs when she could get them printed from the CD at a low-cost processor.

Dominic Lee and friends share their stories about silly things that their customers have said to them.

The iPad’s roomy 9.5” display makes it perfect for displaying and viewing photos, but to date, there is a dearth of Flickr apps to take advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate with regard to viewing photos. A new app called FlickrStudio fixes that, and makes for a great viewing app.

Guy Van Hooveld shows some examples of how he uses strobes with color filters to create thee mood he’s looking for in-camera rather than during post.

Get HDR on your iPhone regardless of whether it’s the new iPhone 4 (with its built-in HDR capabilities) or you’re using an older model of iPhone.

In this video John Ricard compares AC powered strobes to battery powered strobes with a focus on the usability factor.

There is no faster way to improve your business prospects than to improve your portfolio. Be careful of what you are communicating with your ‘body of work’. If an image doesn’t speak to you, get rid of it. Your portfolio is your reputation and there is simply no greater asset.

In this article Brian Matiash shares some of the practices that he religiously follows and wholly attribute to getting to where he is now and to how he’s been able to meet, and shoot with, some of the most talented, fantastic, and generally great people in the industry.

Pricing is always a tricky proposition. Customer psychology and market knowledge must be in balance in order for your pricing to work for you, instead of against you. Contrary to what you may believe, the lowest price is not always the most attractive to customers.

In part 2 of the HDR Best Practices Guide, Brian Matiash show how he manages his images for a smooth and efficient workflow.

I find that the very nature of the photography craft can be very liberating. Reconnecting with it helped me through some of my most trying times in my life, but as a result, it opened my eyes to so much more. How much? I went from f/10 to f/1.2… okay, bad joke, but you get the point.

This might sound strange but it is possible to get interesting effects with a flash on a very sunny day. The classical application is to use fill flash to get the proper exposure in the shadows, but there are other possibilities as well.

Go behind the scenes with the Boudoir Louisville team during a classic pinup girl photo shoot at the Georgetown Drive In Movie Theater.

In this article Brian Matiash talks about how using the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport improves his HDR images by helping to correct white balance and create custom DNG color profiles.

Dominic Lee, one of our Guest Bloggers, created a beautiful book titled Out of Your Tree 2. It’s a collection of images showing some notable personalities such as Sir Richard Branson and Michael Flatley as they explore their passions and inspirations. All proceeds from the book go to aid The Irish Cancer Society. For more information and to purchase Out of Your Tree 2 please visit Priory Studios’ website.

Go behind the scenes with Boudoir Louisville as he shoots pics of pinup model Kellie with an awesome ’29 Chevy Sedan!

In this video John Ricard gives a breakdown of lighting theory for a beauty shot. The main principle explained in the video is that it is necessary to light each element of the photograph separately.

In this guest post, Marc Sadowski shares his technique for avoiding photography burn-out.

In this article, Brian Matiash shares his best practices for capturing HDR images in the field.

How you price your work has more to do with the perception of value than what most people realize. Each photographer brings something unique to the market in terms of artistic talent, skills and experience. Effectively articulating this uniqueness to customers is the difference between a business strategy that is built on value and one that depends largely on your competitor being dumb.

When becoming an actor, Actor Headshots are one of the most important requirements and can make the difference between getting casting calls or not. In this article Joseph shares 5 points that help make for a great looking headshot.

It seems as if this social media craze has placed the cart before the horse when it comes to marketing. Many have built huge followings without a product or service to sell to them, believing that someday the right thing will come to mind that will be perfect for these new found friends. Instead of using the medium to learn more about their current customers and potential customers, they have a love fest going on with many people… just not people who can bring anything to their immediate bottom line.

When starting a new business you can cut corners and save money in many areas but when it come to the face of your establishment, its “BRAND” or “IMAGE”, this is something you must pay a professional to get it right.

Dominic Lee gives us a look back at what wedding photos cost back in the 50s.

Angelo Stavrow is a freelance photographer and writer in Montreal, Canada. Learn from his experiences as he tackles his first Wedding shoot.

It’s time to ditch the 80′s Real Estate Head Shot and have a true Branding Portrait captured by a professional photographer.

When someone is inspired, then learning becomes fun. Without the inspiration there is no curious mind and you end up with simply more work.

If you’re not going forward, you’re sinking! In this tough economy many photographers are barely surviving let alone gaining new business. What can you do to keep moving your business forward so you more than just survive, you thrive.

Ian Kydd’Miller talks about his experiences with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens.

The 10 Commandments of a successful wedding photographer.

If you are actively shooting (or interested in shooting) images for stock, one of the common questions that comes up when submitting stock imagery concerns image orientation. Which perform best – horizontal, vertical or square images?

How many of us professionals forget that our strobes have a “ZOOM” feature? Zoom is normally set too automatic and will focus the strobe beam of light based on the lens “Zoom” setting.

I’ve found that not only is Facebook a great platform for displaying new portfolio images to current and potential clients, it also provides immediate feedback and an increased opportunity for additional referral business. Now that’s great, but recently it got even better…

So many photographers have 20+ megapixels cameras and brag about how they now have more latitude when cropping in on a photograph. This is very true but is it really as great as it sounds? Personally, I’m of the old school film days and have always tried to get what I wanted in the camera [...]

Even if you can’t afford the expensive lighting and gear you can still have a blast playing with light. Go to Home Depot and pick up some Sylvania DOT-it lights.

Rosh Sillars is a photographer, social media expert, podcaster and creator of NewMediaPhotographer.com. In this video Rosh shares some ideas on using social media to help promote your brand and drive traffic to your website.

Armed with a Flip video camera, Scott Wyden takes you on a video walk through of a recent studio setup for a clothing line shoot. It’s a great look at the gear he used and how to efficiently set up a small room.

Simon Carter is a professional outdoors photographer recognised internationally for his distinctive rock climbing photography. Named by Men’s Journal Magazine (USA) as one of the World’s Best Adventure Photographers, Simon has worked professionally for 16 years and in the process has travelled widely and built up one of the best and largest collections of unique climbing imagery [...]

Scott Holstein is a freelance photographer based in Tallahassee, Florida. He specializes in environmental portraiture and other on location photography. This video is a behind the scenes look at how Scott made the image “Quagmire.” He set up a scene with a beautiful woman and her unlikely companion in a Florida swamp at dusk. For [...]