It’s time for another “Best of the Rest” where I sort through all the fluff on the web for the best photography-related articles that will help you grow your business and be a better photographer.
I’m just going to dive right in because there’s so much awesome stuff to share today. [Click to read more]
Black Friday.
If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s the start of holiday shopping for the United States that gets a bit crazy.
There are crazy 1-day sales that are lower than anything you’ve ever seen for the rest of the year, so it’s a great time to pick up some of the things you’ve been thinking about at insanely low prices.
Here’s a list of Black Friday Sales for Photographers that I’ve found around the web or heard of from other photographers.
I haven’t used all the companies, so this list is not an endorsement but is simply a reference to see what’s out there. A few of the links are affiliate links, but the majority of them are not.
If you know of something going on that’s not on the list, leave a comment with the details and a link! [Click to read more]
If you’ve been reading this site for awhile, you’ll have seen a number of links to Photography Concentrate, another amazing site with photography tips that I highly recommend.
“Learn Photography Faster” is their tagline, and they’re serious about it.
Lauren and Rob were kind enough to give me a copy of both their Super Photo Editing Skills and Awesome Album Design Skills tutorials to check out and review, and they’ll be giving away your choice of one of them to a winner (see entry info below).
I’ve been using Lightroom and InDesign for editing and album design for a few years now, so I was pretty sure it’d all be review for me.
Boy was I wrong. [Click to read more]
Are you as exhausted as I am?
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On top of that, we’ve had a lot of personal things on the calendar lately, our dryer decided to stop working correctly, and it feels like there’s just too many things to do that all need to be done now. Plus I’d like to spend more time with my family.
With everything I’m juggling right now, I’m feeling serious burn out.
It seems like every year when I get to this point, I tend to shut down or lose effectiveness for awhile. I think I just get stressed about everything I have to do, and overwhelm myself a bit trying to keep on task and really get things done.
I jump from one thing to the next, not always finishing the first one, and I stress that I’m choosing wrong and should be doing something else more important instead.
But this week I had a breakthrough.
This week has been one of the most productive weeks I’ve had in awhile, so I thought I’d share what made all the difference. [Click to read more]
So, you’ve been invited to attend a wedding as a guest.
For whatever reason (good or bad) the couple has decided to hire someone else to do the professional photos.
Should you bring your good camera or leave it at home entirely? What is okay to do and what isn’t?
We are wedding photographers who were recently invited to a wedding as guests, so we had to wrestle with these questions as well. The last thing we wanted was to be a hindrance to the main photographer and to be considered an annoying Uncle Bob.
We thought we’d help make the process easier for you. Here’s the Photographer’s Guide to Being a Good Wedding Guest from The Modern Tog.
[Click to read more]
I cannot tell you how often I’d been asked by a friend or client what camera I would suggest they buy.
Last year I had a TON of people asking me that question, and I got tired of writing out a specific response to each one of them.
So I wrote a blog post about What DSLR Camera To Buy and started simply sending people to that post.
That post made me $145.38 in 2 months simply by telling people to visit that post instead of writing it out each time to every person that asked. So easy. This was the start of my search for passive income to supplement our regular photography income.
You can do it too. It’s super-easy to set up, and it can add significant money to your yearly income if you put some time and effort into it. [Click to read more]
Back for the third time by popular demand, here are some of the best resources from around the web that I’ve seen in the past few months. Three blog posts and two ebooks that everyone should read, not to mention a birthday celebration event at the end! Enjoy!
1. Photographers Web Marketing E-Book – William Bay put together this awesome guide about how to market your business using the web. He shares how to put together a website, how to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and other super-important web marketing strategies (like email marketing, which is where the money is really at when done correctly) that make this a great place to start if you’re not sure if you’re really using the web well or not. Use coupon code TMT to get $5 off before October 21st.
2. It’s not sexy, but you need it. – Brand Camp Blog hits another one out of the park with this awesome tip for getting you more customers that’s shockingly simple.
3. How to deal with criticism – Brooke Snow tackles this straight on. Read it.
4. How to Photograph Your Friends (and Why it’s Super Important) – Photography Concentrate speaks to the elephant in the room about how to work with friends who you once shot for free but now you’re a professional. It’s not about pricing so much as how to enjoy the process and embrace working with friends.
5. Click: How to take Gorgeous Photos of your Kids – While this book is written for people who are either photography enthusiasts or newer pros, I thought it was an incredible resource anyways and picked up a number of good tips about how to get good photos of kids (both mine and other peoples’ kids).
It’s shockingly inexpensive for all its content, only $19.99 right now increasing to $29.99 on the 19th. Your purchase before the 19th also enters you to win a $1000 dslr camera, so that’s pretty sweet too! Totally worth checking out.
Today I turn 30 years old. Scary to move into a new decade!
In celebration, I’m offering a crazy 50% off sale on all my products, good until midnight tonight (October 14th) MST. The discount will be applied automatically in your shopping cart.
Check out the Photographer’s Pricing Guide Workbook and our awesome Photography Client Questionnaires!
If you found this post helpful to your business, please pin it on Pinterest or Like us on Facebook! Thanks!
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Fresh content keeps your website interesting to potential clients but is also much loved by the Google spiders which helps you to rank better in internet searches.
For these reasons, blogging has become crucial to the online efforts of many photographers and creative spirits.
But like most things that we know are good for us, sometimes we don’t do it as much as we should.
Or more likely, you blog like crazy for a while but then editing, practicing and general blog burn out sets in and your weekly posts turn to monthly and pretty soon you sound like a major cooperation with their quarterly or semi-annual reports.
If you are in this predicament, don’t fret. You are not alone.
Peruse any number of blogs and you’ll see that many people have dips in their output. In fact, look at my photography site and you’ll see a painfully long gap between posts during this past summer.
I’m writing this not because I’m perfect at regular blog posts but because I know what it’s like to fall off the blogging wagon and what it takes to get back going again.
Here are 4 steps to getting yourself out of your blogging slump: [Click to read more]
Hello there Digital Photography School readers! Thanks for coming on over from my guest post titled “When to Ditch the Day Job and Follow Your Dreams“.
My name is Jamie, and I’m a Madison, WI Wedding Photographer and am here to help equip you to have a successful photography business. There’s a lot of good stuff to learn here, so take some time to look around and learn something valuable for growing your business.
Curious who I am? You can read more about me and The Modern Tog here.
If you’re really observant, you can also find me juggling somewhere on this site as well. Yes, I juggle. Kind of. It’s amusing. I can also unicycle, but that’s not on the site (yet).
Here are some of my favorite posts on the site: [Click to read more]
It is so easy to spend every extra moment you have working on growing your business.
If you’re not careful, it will end up taking over your entire life, sucking away the moments that are truly worth living.
We’ve all been there – the late night editing session, the tax-season craziness, working over lunch breaks.
But if we’re not careful, we’ll end up making this business more important than the things that really matter in our lives. [Click to read more]
It was one of those phone calls you never want to get.
Some of our best friends called us late at night because they lost their young daughter unexpectedly to SIDS.
One of the things they eventually asked us to help with was to get some photos printed for the funeral that was just a few days away.
I put in the order with ProDPI late at night, with a little note explaining what they were for and when we needed them, and offered to pay whatever extra I might need to in order to make sure the photos made it there in time.
[Click to read more]
