The possibilities are endless, but to help keep you focused, here’s some insight on how to use them to build and promote your photo brand.

The video files were amazing; a no-brainer. This is what the EPIC does best, and it didn’t disappoint. Stunning resolution, accurate color, and smooth slow motion. Watching the clips at full resolution is actually a bit mesmerizing.

When it came to pulling stills, things weren’t quite as perfect

Lightroom 4 is footing the bill for a catered banquet, as the new Process 2012  raises the bar on image adjustments!  The new Shadows and Highlights sliders can do things curves can only dream about. Things that can really improve images

Link: DSLR News Shooter

‘Inside the Story: a masterclass in digital storytelling by the people who do it best’. It’s a collaborative ebook I’ve produced with the help of some of the best digital journalists working on the web. 

we’re detailing some tactics and tips that will help you take advantage of Facebook’s new format to help grow your brand.  This new layout has been met with mixed reviews, but we believe it can be truly beneficial to your photography brand if you really put forth the effort.

My headline is slight disingenuous: There actually is no simple recipe for photobook making. If you asked ten people about how to make a photobook, you’d probably end up with ten different answers. That said, from what I can tell, most photobook makers seem to agree on quite a few things. So I thought I’d throw my own thoughts into the mix. I hope that some people might find them useful

I’m going to skip the argument about whether you really need another social media account or how it can benefit your photography business, because the bottom line is this: we know from the analytics that social media drives traffic to photography websites (the aggregate of PhotoShelter websites sees about 23% of their total referral traffic from social media). More visitors to your website ultimately means the potential for more business. The end.

The 5D MKII came out nearly 4 years ago – but this is still one of the single most common questions I get to this day as new people are continually entering the HDSLR world.  I also find that many professionals aren’t aware of many of these settings themselves and I thought: “Better late than never.”    So here are the settings that I have used with the Canon 5D MKII – and a comparison between the standard picture profile, the profile I recommend, and the Technicolor profile with some examples on grading

via
John Nack on Adobe

Link: F. Scott Schafer

Got a call from VH1 to do a very large scale, two-day production for Mob Wives Season 2. They wanted a very decadent, over-the-top image that represented the countdown to midnight, as well as the new season, which started on New Years Day. The idea was that this image was taken moments before the main cast members engaged in an all-out brawl. We knew this would be a very complicated shot due to the sheer number of people involved, the restrictions of the location, and the limitations surrounding the main cast. For instance, the main women could not all be in the room at the same time. Since they are on a reality show, if there was any interaction between them, it needed to be recorded by the TV cameras. So we had to photograph them separately and then stitch them together along with all the other pieces that would be involved in this composite.

File names are hard.

Nailing down a coherent and consistent file naming strategy for my own library took some time. Let alone for my clients. And the thread goes way back. Back to before we even starting thinking about how to support folder structures and manipulate file names in Lightroom.

I think a lot of the reason why photographers have such a hard time with file names in general, goes all the way back to the innovation of “files and folders” in early desktop computer user interfaces. As much of an innovation as the graphical display of files and folders was, the one fatal flaw was that it reinforced a very distinct real-world behavior that eventually conspired to actually make finding a specific thing in the computer more difficult.

Video #7 Get Social helps you plan for your interactions with the 800 million people on Facebook, 300 million on Twitter, and 400 million on Google+. The numbers sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be – we’re not saying that every social media outlet will work for every photographer. But there’s enough evidence to suggest that a strong social media campaign can translate into real marketing exposure and revenue. Check out the video below for more.

The best photography websites today aren’t just pretty displays for your pictures anymore. Now they’re full-blown sales and marketing tools that can host your photo archive, sell photography online, and more. Bottom line: they’re an integral part of your photo business. Allen’s video for #6 Tune-up Your Website is a good reminder of what a functional photo website must have in order to draw clients and customers.

SEO for photographers is no joke – if you aren’t employing the most basic SEO strategies (at least), then you’re selling yourself and your photo business short. The goal of SEO is unsolicited website traffic – people looking for whatever your service or product is, without yet knowing who you are. In section #5 Build Your SEO, Allen talks about three main areas that all photographers can focus on immediately to improve their website’s SEO.

10b Photography has established itself as one of the world’s leading digital darkrooms, handling post-production for scores of award-winning photojournalists who trust that the company knows where to draw the line between processing and manipulation. Olivier Laurent meets the founders.

Combining strong photojournalism with strong graphic design is a win-win. In the crowded and competitive photojournalism marketplace, it behooves you to make every part of your online presence look thoughtful and professional.

Joe Gosen, a Visual Journalism Instructor at Brooks Institute, is teaching a class on web design for photographers. From my perspective, college classes in web design always seem to be behind the times, arming students with knowledge that’s a touch out-dated, and are structured around “how it looks” than “how it works.”

But his class is different.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll discuss how to choose a template, modify it using basic HTML and CSS and add useful plug-ins. To quote Placeblogger C.E.O. Lisa Williams, “No journalism student should be intimidated by the process of setting up and managing a website — it is well within your ability, and it can all be learned and practiced before you graduate.”

The intended audience is those who haven’t done any serious digital printing but would like to. In other words, this is the introductory stuff (and, to pre-answer the question I know I’ll be asked again, no, there is not going to be a series on advanced printing). It doesn’t matter if you have wet darkroom experience or not. If you don’t have digital printing experience, this is for you

This is the first of a three part series on how you can plan, design, build and maintain a successful photojournalism portfolio website. Part 1 focuses on planning your website