Drones or Aerial Photography Platforms

This week I want to talk about one of the latest styles in photography, drones or aerial photography platforms. As I am sure most of you are aware, drones have become more and more popular not only as a “toy” like the AirHogs for kids but also the professional drones like the DJI series, which are made for professional photography and cinematography.

This year for Christmas, if you went into ANY of the local stores here in the ATL area that carried RC items, all of them were sold out of drones about a week before Christmas. You’ll also know from my post last week that the FAA just started requiring drone owners to register themselves with the FFA and received a unique FAA ID in order to fly them legally even for hobby.

As someone who loves to photograph landscapes and my Forgotten Pieces of Georgia series, I am embracing the unique perspective you can obtain with a drone. I recently bought a fairly large unit called the Syma X8C, which is the same size and shape as the more popular DJI Phantom series, but at a fraction of the cost. I bought one of these models as most do as a starter drone to learn on and get used to the controls and flying in general. Now I AM planning to move up to the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced, which runs around $1,000 the first part of 2016. My little Syma came with a fairly low quality 2MP camera that can shoot videos and stills and do so from the radio transmitter, but you can modify the unit to carry the GoPro Hero 3+ and other such action cameras and I will be doing that mod to mine as soon as the parts arrive.

Now, what makes the DJI Phantom 3 such an expensive platform? Well the folks at DJI have purposely built the Phantom line with photographer’s in mind. It is capable of take off and landing on it’s own. You can upload GPS WayPoints to the drone to make it follow a specific route and shoot video or stills. It is basically a “smart drone” which means the machine itself can do ALL of the flying, while you the operator concentrate on just shooting with the onboard camera. The Phantoms can come equipped with a 12-16MP high resolution camera that can shoot anywhere from 2.7K to 4K HD video.

The Phantom units and some of the cheaper ones like mine also have FPV (First Person Viewing), which means it can beam what the camera sees live back to ground and onto your iPhone or Android device so you can use them as a remote Electronic Viewfinder and frame your shots properly. DJI’s drones are becoming especially popular with studios as a typical camera boom truck that a studio will rent for shooting a movie, runs around $60,000 a day to rent. Now this cost can be greatly reduced as the studio can buy even the most expensive Inspire 1 professional cinematography drone from DJI at $5,000 a piece and get the same shots they would get with that boom truck for way less money. They can buy 5 or 6 of these drones and use them over and over for movie after movie.

So, how good are the DJI Phantom photography platforms? Well look at the images here or videos online and jude for yourself. Here is a beautiful video from Kauai, HA and he shot all of it on the Phantom 3 Professional at 4K HD video.





Comments/Questions

Drones and FAA Registration

So this weekend I wanted to write about something a little different, drones. Drone have become more and more popular especially in photography because they offer a unique new perspective, allowing photographers to photograph from up high or in areas hard to reach by foot.

One of the most popular drones for photography these days are the DJI Phantom series and with good reason. The company that makes this particular drone has done everything in their power to make their drone the most intelligent model on the market. With smart take off and landing capabilities, “follow me” the ability to upload pre-determined way-points for the drone to follow, they have made flying this model kind of “idiot-proof”, so that you can concentrate on taking amazing photos or videos and not worry about keeping the drone in the sky and stable.

Now, of course with drones and their ability to go and photograph basically anywhere, they have caused some controversy, especially when it comes to people’s personal privacy and where drones should and should not be allowed to go and photograph or shoot video. So, now the FAA has stepped in and set up rules and guidelines for the use of drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for short. For now, the FAA has set up registration for drones that are being used for hobby only via their website. For those that use them for business, you need to obtain a special exemption as they will not have the complete rules, regulations and registration system in place for business use until mid-2016.

Now as far as registration is concerned, it is officially open as of Monday December 21st, 2015 and is fairly basic. All you have to supply to the FAA is your name, address and email address. No information on the make or model of your drone or drones. When you register, you will receive a unique FAA ID number that you must put on ALL of your drones so that they can be identified. They will also email you a certificate that you MUST carry on you at all times when operating your drones, either a printed copy in your wallet, or the ability to pull up the digital copy on your smart phone or tablet is fine as well. The registration is only $5 for three years and if you register by January 20th, 2016, the $5 fee is refunded.

Under the new UAS laws and regulations, you cannot legally fly your drone without having it registered first, to do so you face up to nearly $300,000 in fines and 3 years in prison. Your drone only has to be registered if it falls between the weights of .55 pounds to 55 pounds. You can read more information on the rules and register your drone here,
FAA UAS Registration Page there is also a PDF document with some of the most common models of drones listed and whether or not they meet the registration guidelines.

So, now that you know more about drones and the new FFA registration and rules, get out there and makes some awesome aerial photos and videos and be sure to post them on PSPN!

Comments/Questions

Portrait Lenses

Since as a photographer portraits will probably be your bread and butter, this is a question that is asked a lot by photography students, “What lens or lenses are best for portraits?”

As a general rule, we recall people’s feature best from what’s called the 15 feet rule. In the case of facial recognition, when we see a familiar face, our brain is triggered to reconstruct an image of that face and those features as they appear from 15 feet away according to researchers, so,in order to achieve realistic proportions, we need to shoot from around 15 feet from the subject.

Outdoor portrait shot from around 6 feet with my EF 85mm F/1.8

So, what is the optimum portrait lens? Well it depends on how much of a person you are shooting and show much you want showing. If you want the whole person standing, then you would use a 50-70mm lens, if they sit down then a 50-105mm would work great. If you want a tight head and shoulders shot, then you’d want at least a 200-300mm lens since you want to still be around 15 feet away. Ever see a professional model shoot on location? The photographer is usually using a fat lens on a monopod like a 300mm F/2.8 or even a 400mm F/2.8.

Now I am not advocating that the 15 feet rule is set in stone, different photographers will shoot from different distances to get the look they want. I will sometime used a 50mm and get closer to the subject, with the 50mm, the distance is around 5 feet with a full frame body like I use and I also love, as many photographers do, to shoot portraits with my 85mm portrait lens and when using that lens I can stand at around 9 feet from the subject and fill the frame nicely.

Environmental portrait of WWII actor shot from around 15 feet with 70-200mm lens at 200mm

Many photographers these days will just use their 70-200mm F/2.8 for all their portrait work, which is why this particular lens is the most popular and the lens that sells the most by any builder. One thing you do want to remember when shooting portraits is to be mindful of the distance you shoot from as when you get closer you can make the subject’s nose bigger and their ears smaller. Shoot from too far away and you make their face flat.

Also remember your depth of field as generally the idea is portraits is to make the background disappear, you want the background to be blurry and out of focus as your subject is the important part of the image in an portrait.



Comments/Questions

Christmas Sales for Shutterbugs

Since we are rapidly approaching the Holidays I thought this would be a good week to post an article on some good gift ideas you can share with your family if you are a shutter bug or gifts you can buy your shutter bug.

Canon released the 7D Mark II not long ago, which has been a very successful follow up to their popular 7D and now the 7D Mark II is $1,049 down from it’s original price of $1,400, but you have to buy it with a PIXMA PRO Printer. If you want to catch this deal, run on over to B&H to get one, according to our friends at SLRLounge.

One again Amazon is blowing people’s minds by dropping the price of the original Sony A7 Full-Frame Mirrorless to under $1000 for the holiday season. You can run over now and get it, body only for $998 here.

Another great deal on the B&H site is Sony SD 32GB Memory cards at 94MB/s for $12.99. That is an insanely low price for such a fast memory card and if you remember my post from last week about memory cards, this is one of the ones you want.

For some holiday gifts for under $50, you cannot go wrong with the following winners for shutter bugs.

Joby Gorillapod tripod now just $39.99 on B&H, I personally have one of these and they are fantastic. You can literally wrap the legs around tress branches, fence posts, etc and mount your camera on it for unique perspectives.

Fotodiox Canon 24-105mm F/4 L IS USM Thermos Cup - $14.95

Pelican 0915 Memory card case - $17.99 This model is for SD, Mini SD and Micro SD cards and is made of Tough Polycarbonate Resin and water resistant. They also offer a model for CF cards (Model # 0945) if you have those as well like I do for $17.48

Last but not least in my opinion is the RAVPower 15 Watt Solar Charger with Dual USB ports that is foldable with iSmart Technology. This is one heck of an awesome way to charge your iPhone, iPad, or camera batteries out in the field. I am getting one this year after listening to my friend SnapChick rave about hers on her YouTube Channel. Currently on sale for $49.35 on Amazon.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and are lucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of these awesome gifts.


Comments/Questions

Memory Cards

One of the most important pieces of your photography set up, even more so than your camera, is your memory cards. I can hear many of you out there now gasping, “How can you say that? The camera HAS to be THE MOST IMPORTANT part of a photographer’s arsenal!”

Well, you would be wrong. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post titled It’s Not ONLY About the Camera, your camera is not nearly as important as you might think or as camera sales people would have you believe. Your camera is your primary tool as a photographer, but even more important than your camera is the memory card that you use.

Why is the memory card so important? Because your camera has what is known as a buffer, which is the amount of internal space in memory that the camera can hold images in before it has to start writing them to the memory card. If you are someone that shoots sports or anything else with action, like wildlife and have your camera on continuous shooting, you can only snap so many shots before your camera starts blinking that it’s “Busy” and the little red light that indicates that it’s writing to the memory card starts flashing like mad. When you reach this point, you cannot snap anymore images until the camera is done emptying it’s buffer.

Your wait time can be seriously shorter if you make sure you only buy FAST memory cards. Now I know the next thing you are all saying is “I thought ALL memory cards are fast, they are faster than hard drives!” Well, you would be right in that respect, except for SSD or Solid State hard drives, which are basically massive memory cards used in place of a conventional hard drive. However, not all memory cards are created equal and you need to be aware of this when you are buying them for your camera so that you can get maximum performance when you really need it.

Whether your camera uses SD cards or CF cards, you need to make sure you are buying the fastest ones you can afford so that you spend more of your time shooting and less time waiting on your camera to write those images to the memory card. Trust me, if you are shooting sports and you miss an awesome shot because your buffer is full and your memory card is so slow it takes 30-60 seconds for your buffer to clear, you will not be a happy camper! Memory cards do have different write speeds and as a result, the faster cards cost considerably more than the slower ones do. If you walk into say your local Walmart and buy an SD or CF card in the photo department, you will get say a 32GB SD card for $12 or maybe even $10, or that 8GB CF card is only $8 and think, “Man that is a great deal!” It’s not such a great deal when that $8 or $10 memory card costs you a once in a lifetime shot.

When you are buying memory cards, look closely at the label and see what the write speed is. For CF (Compact Flash) cards, you really want once that have a write speed of 120-160Mbps, which means Mega-bytes per second. For SD cards, look for ones that are class 10 only and XC with 900x for the speed are some of the best. With either of these kinds of cards, you buffer will empty in a few seconds instead of 30-60 seconds or longer. Now these memory cards won’t be cheap, but they don’t have to break the bank either. Look on sites like Amazon and wait until they go on sale to “pull the trigger” so to speak. The Sandisk Extreme Pro CF with 160Mbps speed is $79.99 for a 64GB model or $44.95 for a 32GB one. The same model in an SD card is $42.99 for a 64GB model and $24.95 for the 32GB one.

Now that you are better educated on memory cards, hopefully you won’t miss that shot! And remember, you don’t HAVE to get them as big as 32GB or 64GB, 8GB or 16GB will do, unless you shoot thousands of shots at a time.

Comments/Questions

Photography Gear Luggage

As a professional photographer one of the things you will need to consider at some point and time is luggage for your photography gear. When it comes to packing and carrying your gear there are several ways you can do it depending on your needs at any given time.

1. Waist bags - these are small bags that you wear around your waist like a regular belt, but they can carry your camera and a couple of lenses and batteries. Think of them as kind of a fanny pack for your camera. There are several companies that make them from LowePro to Targus and they can range in quality and price from $20-$100.

2. Backpacks - These are just like they sound, you strap them on your back and carry your gear that way, great for hiking or walking around an event. They usually hold 1-2 bodies and 5-6 lenses and also have compartments for batteries, filters, iPad, laptop, and hoops that hold your tripod. They range in size from small to fairly large, are made by many companies from LowePro, to Targus, to Canon and Nikon and prices can run from $40-$300.

3. Rollerbags - These are similar to the suitcases people use to travel by air, they hold your gear and have a telescoping handle with wheels on the bottom and you pull them behind you. They can hold 2-4 bodies, 4-8 lenses, memory cards, Speedlights, filters, laptop, iPad, tripod and other items. They usually have multiple pockets and compartments and vary in size. Again they are made by the usual camera luggage makers, LowePro, Targus, Canon, etc, and can run in price from $100-$500 depending on the size and materials they are made from. You can also buy special roller cases that will carry your studio lighting for you as well.

4. Briefcase - These cases are usually made of quality aluminum and have foam inserts to protect your gear. The inserts can be ordered custom cut for your gear, but that usually makes them more expensive, or pick and pull, which means the foam is perforated and you can pick and pull pieces out to make your own custom size pockets for your gear. The most common maker of these is Zero Halliburton and they run $200-$800.

5. Durable Plastic Trunk - These are usually make of high strength plastic and again have the pick and pull foam to custom cut your own compartments with your fingers. These are most commonly made by Pelican Cases and range in price from $129-$600 depending on the size. Recently, Pelican started making a version of their trunks that have the telescoping handle and rollers wheels so you can pull it behind you instead of carrying it like a foot locker. They also come with padlock ports on each end to keep your gear secure.

Of course any time you have to fly for a shoot I would recommend the Zero Halliburton aluminum cases or the Pelican ones as they are the toughest and can be stowed in the belly of the plane. Some pros prefer to carry they heavy gear in these cases and stow them but carry their actual body and lenses in a smaller carry-on bag like a backpack to keep them with them at all times and not risk the airline losing their gear en route to a shoot.





Comments/Questions

Inspiration and What to Photograph?

Good morning everyone.

I am not sure if many of you might have had similar trouble in the past, but what do you do when you are looking to photograph something for an assignment? Maybe you are just looking for inspiration. This is what I have been doing all of yesterday and then a big portion of this morning.

Writing as an Ambassador for The Art Institute can be quite a challenging task and you need to make sure that the articles relate to the work that the students require and are learning about. Once you have covered all the basics of been a student you find yourself dealing with situations from the real world.

How do I get my work seen by the world? What genre of photography should I photograph? Will I make money by photographing that? How do I market my work? and the list goes on and on.

Today I found this article in the NY Times an article by Teju Cole. It is all about inspiration and where we look for photographs. Now I am not going to recap the article here. Your job will be to go over and read it. It is part of the process of finding what interests you and what you could be photographing.

I am here to tell you how that article has opened my eyes to seeing the world around me. Sometimes we just have to take a step back and look at the world as it is. Trying to find something that is not there can be very challenging and you might just not be looking in the right place.

What I took away from the article were the few words at the end of the first paragraph,  "photography could reach eternity through the moment.’’ 

I believe that when you enter the field of photography, you will definitely be learning all about the fundamentals and requirements of making a great photograph. However, once you have learned these rules and regulations it is up to you to get out there and practice them so that when the time comes you will be able to take the decisive photograph without thinking because of muscle memory and the training that you have received.

Yes, there are moments when you need to take certain photographs for certain assignments, but at times you need to just capture the moment and have some faith and trust in the training that you have received.

Have a great day and we will speak again soon.

© Henry Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Studio Shooting with Limited Space

One of the challenges you might face while working on your shooting assignments for AI is needing to shoot in an indoor “studio” environment and if you are like I was during school, I had a house full of people, so I had limited space for my shooting.

There are ways to overcome this obstacle, if you have kids that are in school, shoot your assignments in the living room while they are in school during the day, or use a portion of your basement or attic. At the time I was attending classes, I had 6 people living in my home in Georgia and it was cramped even with 1,800 sq ft and 4 bedrooms and a large living room and dining room. I would sometimes shoot late at night while everyone was sleep, but sometimes I had to shoot during the day and if I could not use one of the rooms in the house, I would use the garage.

Simulated outdoor shot using my garage

For one of my classes, we had to simulate an outdoor shoot in soil, but shoot it indoors. This is something you will frequently have to do in many types of photography. It might be a situation where the client needs this shoot done on a deadline and the weather is bad, or for other reasons. For this assignment, we needed to replicate the same amount of light outdoors with our studio lights. I chose to use some small toy dinosaurs as the characters for the shoot and shot them in some of the soil from my flowerbed in front of my house.

Studio set up for this shoot

Now I am not saying these are 100% perfect, but I did get an ‘A’ on the assignment and I think I did a pretty good job considering it was my first attempt. One of the things you will find as you pursue a career in photography is often you have to adapt to overcome situations. One of my favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis is like the king of overcoming obstacles for photography. He shoots a lot of sports action photography and has designed and built many of the customer rigs and mounts that he uses for commercial shoots.

If you have limited space using a small portion of a room for your studio for class assignment, then don’t use your light stands, rig up your lights on the top of a door or curtain rod if you have strong ones. If you still don’t have enough room, try using Speedlights instead. A Canon or Nikon Speedlight on a small stand takes up a lot less space than the full size studio strobes but still give you tons of light power.


Comments/Questions

Are you ready to sign up new clients....?

Hello everyone.

I say this not because I am curious about what you have done in the past or what you have already prepared for your clients, but it is more of a question for myself?

Tonight I went to a showcase for a company that I work for. It was a showcase for wedding couples looking for photographer's, DJ's and videographers. I have to admit I was not sure what to expect because I had never attended one before. So let me prepare you so that you do not make the same mistakes that I made.

Firstly, they always say that you should have a website or a portfolio ready to show prospective clients. Well, I got all of these. I have Behance it has some of my work but it did not have any of my wedding portfolios or any of my engagement sessions. I just realized that you have to make sure that your portfolio is up-to-date with the latest work that you have recently done.

I also have my own website which showcases more recent work. However the point that I am trying to make here is that you have to be prepared to show your clients all of your work no matter where you are. Tonight I had a number of different options available to me.

I used my IPad to link my Lightroom collections to my LR Mobile app. This helped me ensure that prospective clients can see some of my best work on a screen and they are able to make a decision on whether my work is suitable for their particular event. If you have not used this option before then all you have to do is download the LR Mobile app from the Apple or Android store and then when you go into your Lightroom collections you click on the little square box next to the collection name and this will sync that collection to your mobile app.

Here is a short video to see how it works.

Now you don't need a collection with hundreds of images. Just make sure it is a collection with your best edited images.

Next, make sure that you make a few prints. Whether they are canvas wraps or even large prints in a frame they are good selling points for your clients. They can see what it looks like when they have their photographs printed. It is also an investment in you and your company. Do not think of it as an expense that is wasted. It is a portfolio that you can take with you wherever you go. 

Finally, make sure that you have your business cards with you. Let the client leave knowing who they have spoken to and whether they would like to come back to you. You need to make an impression. This is your career that you are talking about and you always want them thinking and talking about you.

One additional item that I have added is a slideshow of some of my work. If you are a wedding photographer then have a great wedding slideshow of some of your best work. Here is a sample slideshow that you could have running in the background when you are speaking to potential clients.

So be prepared for any and all eventualities. I wish you all the best and success in your careers.

Kind regards.

Denzil

Two Ways to Make Lightroom Faster

This week I thought I’d blog about something a little bit different than photography itself. This week’s post is all about ways to improve Lightroom’s performance for when your Libraries are 30,000+ photos for a single year like mine are.

One of the first things you should be doing is using an external drive for ALL your photos. Don’t put your photos on your OS drive as it will fill up and max out too quickly along with all your software. I personally use a 4TB external drive with USB 3 for best performance and as soon as I finish a shoot, I copy all the images off my cameras memory cards and into this drive by year, month and day. Once that is done, you have to import them into Lightroom, now the way to improve Lightroom performance is to use SmartPreviews all the time. SmartPreviews takes your large RAW files and makes small versions of them for Lightroom to use and in turn make scrolling through Lightroom’s Library Module and loading Lightroom faster.

Notice the red circle around SmartPreviews

There are two way to deploy SmartPreviews, the first is on Import, so when Importing, under the Import dialog where you can add Copyright info, Keywords and such, check the box to use SmartPreviews. As Lightroom imports your RAW files it will then run the SmartPreview builder and make SmartPreviews of all your new images. The second way to activate SmartPreview in an existing Library of images is to select ALL images from the Library Module and then click the Library menu item, go down to Previews, and then choose Build SmartPreviews.

Deploying SmartPreviews from the Library Menu

 Now since you are deploying SmartPreviews for an existing Library of images in the second option it will take some time for them to complete, especially if your Libraries are huge like mine, but the nice thing is, once it’s done, it’s done and you can move around in Lightroom so much easier. The only catch is when you have SmartPreviews of an existing Library, you will now have doubles of every image, in a way, but the way around this is unplug or just unmount your drive as you work in Lightroom and make your edits and exports. You only need the drive mounted when you are adding new images from your camera and when you want the edits permanently saved to the original RAW file, then just mount the drive and Lightroom will sync the edits AUTOMATICALLY, that is a NO BRAINER ;)

Now, the next thing you can do to improve Lightroom performance is increase Lightroom’s cache. For those of you who don’t work in I.T. like I do for my day job, cache is a portion of your hard drive that Lightroom uses to augment the memory in your system. So if you are editing say a batch of 1,000 50Mb RAW files. That’s 6GB of files you are working with at once time and let’s say your laptop only has 4GB of RAM, how does Lightroom work under these conditions? By using some of your say 1TB hard drive as cache to supplement your system RAM. Now by default, Lightroom only uses 1GB of your disk drive for cache, which is nowhere near enough, so bump that setting up to 50GB. How do you do this? Well, click Lightroom, then Preferences and on the pop up window, cluck the File Handling tab and at the bottom you see Camera RAW Cache setting, in that box delete 1GB and type in 50GB. Why 50, well, I have tested 20GB and with both an SSD drive and a regular hard disk I noticed no improvement, but at 50GB I noticed improvement. In the screenshot you see I have mine set at 100GB, that’s because I have 12TB to work with so I figured why not double mine from the 50GB I recommend to you. Can you use 100GB, sure, but make sure you have ample space free on your system drive to do so first.

Changing the Camera RAW Cache size

That’s it folks, two ways to improve Lightroom performance in your workflow!

Comments/Questions

Giving Back Photographs Needed!

Good morning everyone!

I hope you all had a great start to the week. This post is going to be short so you can get back to your favorite activities soon.

As you know we have been doing the giving back photograph challenge. Well now is the time to get all those photographs in. I have created a location where you can all upload your photographs too.

 https://www.dropbox.com/request/k5RzDFo7FBn7x8QbadLS 

I am going to create a web site location once we get all your photographs in so that we can start the peer appreciation.

If you have any questions or suggestions then please do not hesitate to contact me at denzilern@stu.aii.edu 

Thanks everyone.

Denzil

Challenge Yourself

When it comes to photography, it’s always a good idea to challenge yourself to do something new and different, just to keep yourself fresh as an artist.

I personally, and many other photographers will agree, that one of the best ways to challenge yourself is to shoot with only one lens. I love to do these kinds of challenges myself. I went to a car show last Sunday called Wish Upon a Car, which was raising money for the Make a Wish Foundation of Georgia.

Shot with my Canon EOS 5D Classic with the EF 40mm STM F/2.8

For this car show, I challenged myself by shooting the car show with my Canon EF 40mm STM F/2.8 pancake lens. I love this little lens as it has the new STM or Stepper Motor auto-focus system, which is very quiet and the lens itself is very small and lightweight.

I know you probably have a telephoto lens or two as I do, but when you take your telephoto lens with you all the time, you tend to get lazy and hang back and shoot everything from a distance, instead of getting up close and personal with your subject. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, even though zoom lens technology has come a long way, primes still give you superior image and detail quality, especially when you are up close and personal.

Canon EOS 5D Classic with EF 40mm STM F/2.8

So, your challenge for the month of October, go out and shoot something with nothing more than one of your prime lenses and get up close and personal, as long as you can do it without endangering yourself or anyone else of course.

Comments/Questions

Where do you find your Inspiration?

I am sure that everyone of us goes through this dilemma. What gets you going? How do you find the photographs that you need? How can you just start photographing again?

No it is not just about picking up a camera and starting to photograph. That sounds so much like snapshots to me and that is not what I am referring too.

Last week I had a really tough week. I had to find suitable subject matter for my final project, work was crazy and my son landed up in hospital. Not a good week for me.I really did not feel like photographing at all and to be honest all I wanted to do was curl up into a small ball and sleep for a month.

Well that was not going to happen! So how did I get my spark for photography back? Well, that is a really fun thing to do for me. I cannot say that it will work for you but here are a few things that I did that forced me to get my camera out again and start photographing once again. It is really ground breaking stuff so I think you might need to write this down. Here it is!

I went for a walk.

Yup, that is what the ground breaking thing was. All I did was put all my digital devices in a draw at home and I jumped into my car and went for a walk at one of my favorite spots. Now you must be thinking how this would help the creative process. Remember I had no intention of photographing so I was open to the beauty and surroundings of the walk. I think it was my subconscious that was in charge on that walk because as a photographer, as many of you are aware, you see compositions in so many different ways.

You are aware of line, texture, shape and form. You are also aware of tonal ranges and perspective. These are the things we often take for granted when we are photographing because of muscle memory. In most cases it is your brain and fingers working in tandem to formulate all this information into your own master pieces. By been open to just the walk I started seeing all the beauty around me. My muscle memory immediately noticed all these patterns, colors and textures. So my immediate reaction is to reach for my camera. Well it is not there. Remember I left it all at home because I did not want to photograph. So I had to return later that same day to capture that which I had seen. I had gotten my mojo back!

It is the passion that gets me up in the morning. It is the medication that gets me through those tough days of sick children and awful hospital visits. It is the tonic for finding final project themes.

So spend some time without your camera and it might just be the solution you were looking for.

Here are a few photographs from my 3 hour walk.

Have a great week and I will speak to you again next week.

Denzil

Your Signature & Your Style

One of the things you have to understand about photography when you are starting out is that your style is unique. If I take a pen and sign my name it is my name in the style that I write. It doesn’t matter if I use a pen, pencil, crayon, it’s my signature and unless you are a world class forger you cannot duplicate it and even then a forensic signature expert will be able to tell that it’s not mine. The same is true for photography, my style and yours is unique and cannot be totally duplicated.

The camera companies don’t want you to know this, they want you to believe that a LEICA will make you shoot like Cartier-Bresson, a Hasselblad, or 4x5” will make you shoot like Ansel Adams or a Nikon will make you shoot like Galen Rowell or Chase Jarvis, because if you think like that, you are more likely to buy their camera.

My style for shooting Forgotten Pieces of Georgia

They don’t want you to know that the it’s you that make the image, not the camera. An image is as unique as your personal signature on a piece of paper, when it comes to photography, your images are your signature.

Cameras don’t know what to do and all cameras do pretty much the same thing when it comes to photography. Except for using filters, camera lenses are clear glass, and except for the Holga “toy” lens, all lenses are sharp when properly used by you. On the other hand, pens come in fine point, medium, heavy, gel tip, and so on, so not all pens will write your name the same way.

If I hand you my pen, will your signature look like mine? Of course not, no more than if I hand you my camera will your images look like mine. A moment ago I mentioned Ansel Adams shooting a 4x5” or a Hasselblad, Adams, used large format, usually 8x10” in the 1930s to the 1950s when he shot his most memorable work. But as he got older and maybe lazier, he usually settled for 2 1/4” Hasselblad after the 1950s, but did this make his images look any less like his own? Of course not, an Ansel Adams is an Ansel Adams. 2 1/4” and view cameras are as different as two cameras can be from each other and yet his work, his style stayed the same, because his style is as unique as his signature.

All photographs are reflections of the photographer who created them and good photographers are artists who have a style all their own. Crappy photographers are crappy because they spend their time trying to copy everyone else’s style or don’t think at all before they press that shutter. Buying the best camera in the world and leveling it on the most stable tripod and spending hours working over that RAW file in Photoshop is the best way to make completely forgettable images, but being yourself and showing the world your way of seeing things is how you make truly remarkable images.

Why are so many images boring? Because they lack a unique style and all look the same. Now get out there with whatever camera you have and make the world see things as you see them!

Comments/Questions

How to Keep Your Camera Dry in Bad Weather

So as you all know, we are headed into the fall and winter months here in the U.S., which means nasty weather. With the arrival of Hurricane Joaquin, we got a ton of rain in the Southeast, with massive flooding in South Carolina.

When headed out to shoot this time of year, you have to be mindful of keeping your camera dry with all the rain and eventually snow. One of the best ways to not have to worry about moisture getting into your camera is to buy a Professional camera like the Nikon D4S or the Canon 1Dx. Both of these cameras are weather proofed, which means they are sealed tight against rain, dust and dirt.

Now I am sure you are saying, “Yeah as a new photographer, I cannot afford a professional camera body, those things runs thousands of dollars.” I totally understand that and hopefully someday you’ll be successful enough to afford a professional body but in the meantime, there are a couple tips I want to share for keeping your camera gear dry.

1.) Don’t waste your time and money buying fancy camera water covers, you can go to a local store and just buy a shower cap to cover the top of your camera. It may sound silly, but those cheap shower caps actually work great for covering your oddly shaped camera.


2.) Don’t use your good lens cloth to get the excess water off your lens’ front element. Use a shammy to blot, not rub the lens to get as much water off as possible and then finish drying with the good lens cloth so you don’t get streaks in your photos.

3.) When done shooting in wet weather, put your camera body in a large Ziplock bag and toss in a Desiccant to absorb any lingering moisture. Canon support recommends ALWAYS using this third method when done shooting in rain or during the winter when it’s easy for your camera to develop condensation internally. I personally went on Amazon and bought a 50 count bag of 5 gram desiccant packs for $19.

So these are 3 simple tips to help keep your gear dry in rainy and snowy weather, now get out there this fall and winter and make some great photos!

Comments/Questions

Marketing and Promoting your Photography Business

Hello everyone.

This week I wanted to touch on another few aspects of marketing and promoting your business as we really move into the busy Holiday season.

I know we all want to be that creative geniuses that create all those beautiful imagery. It is the part of the business that I love the most. As I write this I am actually thinking about the wedding album that I submitted to my printers, Zookbinders.com and why they have not gotten back to me about the album design for my client yet.

Does not sound all that bad, but I have been working on getting photos edited and resubmitted with my client for about 2 months now and I am really tired doing this. However, it is an integral part of making sure that you get your photographs into the marketplace. You need to order sample albums, wall art and other promotional material that continual let's people know that you are in business.

Today, we see so many photographer's discounting their prices thinking that when I speak about adding value it really means offering lower prices. That is not what it is all about. If you keep doing that you are just going to be heading down a downward spiral of lower prices until you cannot afford to stay in business anymore.

One great thing to remember is that you are not only a artist, but a professional as well. You want to make a living as a photographer and to do that you have to think about the business side of your business as well. The side of the business that is going to be bringing in the clients. There is no magic formula.

It is something that you have to do on a daily basis, day in, day out. Some times you have to just sit back and think of different ways that you can make your business better. What can you offer the marketplace that will differentiate you from the other few hundred people in your area? Yes take some time out and just think about ways that you can make the photography experience better for your client. Investment in your company is not always about buying a new camera or lens. It is also not just about coming up with new innovative ideas. You have to put them into action. If you don't do it then someone else is sure to come up with the idea and they want to succeed just as much as the next person, maybe more.

Remember, that no matter what the product is in the marketplace there has to be something to buy. Yes, there is a bit of selling in everything. Many of you might think that just because you are creative that selling is beneath you. Well, a reality check. If you do not make money then you are out of a job and you might as well pack-up and work for someone else. If you prefer photographing different genre's then make different pages for your different work and see what works best for you.

I love head-shots, family portraiture and weddings. They are all people connected, but what is stopping you from branching out and photographing peoples pets or even adding some great video to your packages so that people have these additional segments to add to their buying experience. I recently added mini-albums to my orders and packages, but the thing that pulls people in is the free HD video I add to the entire order. I recently started using Animoto.com and that monthly is now part of my clients packages. They land up buying more and I can offer more to my clients.

These are the added value items that you need to consider when marketing your business. One thing that we are all aware of today is that social media plays a very important role in getting out photographs to people in the market. How are you able to tap into your clients circle of influence so that you can build this referral business. Here are a couple of companies that use social media and your photographs to help build a circle of influence.

Pass.us - If you are a photographer just starting out then this one is for you. If you keep your clients photograph selection under 100 images then everything is free. You get social media exposure and you might even be able to pick up additional sales because you are able to selling prints.

Pixieset.com - is another great client photography web site where you can display, share and sell your photography. They have some great pricing structures and well worth the investment.

So in closing a few additional things you have to remember. If you have a web site, then Google likes that you update your content on a regular basis. If you don't you might just get a call from some business saying that your score is 1.9 on Google's rating scale and they have the solution to get you to number one spot. Just update your content on a regular basis and you will be fine.

Lat but not least. Blog to your fans and friends. No you don't have to get a wiki page or free blog page. Many hosting sites where you have your portfolio might have this option already. I also use Exposure.co to get my photographs out there. It is a visual blog and the cool thing about it is that you might get your page showing up on Google browser. They have a add-on for exposure so that every time someone opens their Google browser they might just see your blog.

So get out there and just keep putting out your photographs for the world to see. Have fun and keep on shooting.

Denzil

I will leave you with a great photograph I submitted to Gurushots.com  I made the Elite level with this photograph and it is giving me some really great exposure.

Ways to Improve as a Photographer

This week I want to post ways that I think we need to use to always grow and improve as photographers.

Railroad crane shot at Southeastern Railway Museum

 1. Stop posting on photography forums. Too many times when lots of photographers post to the same forum the work starts to look too much alike. We want to always strive to be fresh and different.

2. Begin looking at art sites more often. Don’t always just look at photography sites, spend more time looking at art in other mediums for inspiration.

3. Start going to more museums and traveling exhibits, this is another excellent way to get inspiration.

4. Read and look at classic and contemporary art books.

Prayer bowls at Laotian New Year's 2014

 5. Force yourself to use a different lens each time you shoot. Often we get stale in our photography if we use the same lens all the time as we tend to always shoot the same kind of stuff.

6. Purposely stop taking the same kinds of shots when out in the field, recognize your habits and try to break them.

7. Start personal art projects, even if they aren’t popular with others.

8. Keep your eye on new technology, software and hardware, even if it’s not directly photography related. There might be a way you can use this new tech in your art.

9. Use your smartphone as a whiteboard to spitball ideas and possibly catch ideas and subjects that maybe you had not thought of before.

10. Ask “what if ___?” a lot and try to use your curiosity to come up with fresh, new ideas and projects to shoot.

I, and many others, find lists like this a great way to keep our work fresh and new at all times. Sometimes as artists, we hit a rut and then have a hard time coming up with new ideas for our creative outlet. By keeping a list like this handy, hopefully, we can always continue to come up with new things to shoot and work on and always keep things fresh and new.


Comments/Questions

Six Tips for Maintaining Sanity During the Busy Season

Hello everyone

I had such a hectic day yesterday and today so my apologies for not writing anything and posting in a timely manner.

For this quick post I wanted to post a link to a great review of what to do during the coming holiday season. It is a carry over from what I discussed last week, but here are what some other professionals in the the business think you should be doing.

It is from the Shootproof website blog. It is where I host all my photographs for my clients.

Hope you like the article.

Denzil

Scott Kelby's WorldWide PhotoWalk

This week I want to invite everyone to participate in the Scott Kelby WorldWide Photo Walk.

Scott Kelby puts on this photowalk every year for the last few years and it’s basically a chance to get together with other photographers, walk around a downtown area and just shoot. It has a secondary purpose of raising money for The Springs of Hope Orphanage in Kenya.

The walk generally starts at 10am and lasts just 2 hours and then the photographers usually have lunch at a local restaurant or pub. I personally feel it’s a great opportunity to shoot and socialize with other photographers in my area and many of my photo club’s members are participating this year.

After the shoot, you can upload your best photo to the Photo Walk site and have it judged for possibly winning a prize and you can share all your images on the Walk’s Flickr page as well.

The walk in my area is lead by a local pro photographer in the Covington, GA area and is the only one really close to me as they only allow 50 photographers per group and the ATL one always fills up fast. Since the Covington group is getting to be fairly large as well I am contemplating signing up as a Walk Leader for next year.

It just a great way to socialize and raise money for a good cause as well. He only asks for a $1 donation and hopes to raise $50,000 this year to help the children in Kenya and I am sure you can probably use some of the shots for your class assignments.

You can find out more at Scott Kelby WorldWide Photowalk

Comments/Questions

Costing a Photography session for your Clients?

Good morning everyone.

Well what a month we have just had. I had a few weddings to shoot this past month and I have to say that the amount of time I spend on shooting for a wedding and the amount of time that I spend editing and delivering images to my client can be quite exhausting, and needless to say very time consuming.

This made me think about the expense that actually goes into costing a particular shoot for a client. Yes, I know we have Blinkbid and a few other tools, I use Quickbooks online to get all my invoicing and banking sorted out. But no matter which application you use it always boils down to how much are you willing to charge your customer so that you can get the job, yet at the same time make enough money to pay for your bills, feed the family, have enough for insurance, buy new equipment, fix old equipment, transport, mortgage, rent, etc... and the list goes on and on.

Now you look at the market place and the guy down the street is charging $59.95 to do a family portrait shoot. What are you going to do? How can you compete with people that are charging such a small amount to get clients? How do you compete in this type of market.

Well, I am talking from experience here when I say this; I am sure you are also gong to be going through similar torments and agony about how to charge your customers. "I cannot survive charging only $59.95 for a portrait session!"

Now take a deep breath and now breath out. You cannot survive in this industry if you try and compete with every single person that is trying to under-cut everyone else in the market. Before you know it you have more expenses than income and you are out of business. This is what I did in the beginning thinking that I could get quite a few clients quickly and make lots of money. It worked for a time but the sad thing was that now I was thought of in the market place as the cheap person and I found myself losing money at every turn.

I had to change my way of thinking. I had to work smarter and charge more to make my business work for me.  I am not saying it will work for everyone, but I make a small profit on every client and I can pay for all my expenses that are generated from a photograph session and I have a little profit over to invest back into my business and save for a rainy day. This is what I did.

Firstly, know what it costs to run your business! I used NPPA calculator to give me a rough idea about what my costs are per year and the amount of shoots that I actually do or would like to do make a living. Here you punch in your expenses for all the tools that you actually use in your business and the amount of days that you have available to shoot or get clients and it gives you

1. Your total annual expenses
2. Your weekly cost of doing business
3. Your overhead cost for each assignment

Number 3 is what I use the most. Just to shoot a 1 hour portrait session tells you the minimum amount you need to charge just to get out of bed. 

As an example, I punched in all my data and as a portrait and wedding photographer I wanted to be booked for 10 months of the year. 2 Months for holidays and vacation off with the family etc.. and then I used 5 days a week for weddings and booking portrait sessions. I think that is fair, but you can change your requirements based on how busy or how little you want to work. At 4 weeks per month and 5 days a week that gives me about 200 days of work. 

Now I used generic figures in the calculator so these are just examples. Remember to put your actual figures to get a more realistic number. So as you can see I have an overhead cost for each day of approximately $448.50 just to break even. 

Now if you take that figure and make your bookings based on these figures you can see that you might need to do 10 1/2 sessions @ $44.50 or you need one big paying client @ $448.50 to cover all your cost of sales. The point here is to actually see the amount of money that is required just to cover your waking up in the morning money.

So for me that would be 2 weddings a month and then quite a few portrait shoots, headshots and any other photography sessions tat I can book.

Well now that you know what your expenses are you can make a more informed decision about how much you need to charge your clients for their sessions.

Here is a quick example. Know what your daily expenses are, would you say that you may be able to realistically do only (5) 1 hour sessions a day? That leaves you with a cost overhead for each session of $89. Therefore the guy down the road running the $59.95 dollar deal has to make sure that he gets at least 10 clients a day just to make a living and make $15.45 profit. 

Now, he has not done any editing yet and I can vouch that he has not costed this into his schedule. So he is working at least 10hrs a day making only $154.50 profit. Do you think this is sustainable. What about editing time, time spent with family, sleeping etc.. I can say that sooner rather than later he is going to be going out of business. I tried this people and it is not sustainable. It sounds good on paper, but when life throws kids, shopping runs, cooking, school and just relaxing time in your path you soon realize that there is not enough time in the day to do everything. So you are going to have to work smarter rather than harder.

How about trying this. Charge $159.95, offer your clients more rather than less. What am I trying to say here. For $59.95 I am sure the client still has to buy their own prints and then they have to pay for shipping and packaging. I realized this early in the game. When clients get more value for money they tend to spend more.

So instead of discounting how about charging more, $159.95, you still have your $44.50 cost but now you add in some prints. I give them 5x7's, two 8x10's a wallet and maybe a (4) 4x6's. This additional cost is approximately $24. Out of this the customer pays for shipping and boutique packaging. (Now I look really professional when I deliver my photographs) so the cost to me is $12. 

Let's break it down:

• $159.95 1-hour session
• -$44.50 (cost of doing business)
• -$12  - additional incentives for charging more

You now land up with a profit of $103.45 for each session. You now have to do just 4.338 sessions per day and you still get your cost covered. This is what I call working smarter. You are offering the client better value for the money that they are spending. You are delivering a better quality product and most importantly you are making an impression building great customer relations.

Yes, it all sounds so easy, but it is not. It took me two years to get to a point where people knew me in my neighborhood. I did my marketing at my kids school, advertising on my car,  a sign outside my house and most importantly, word-of-mouth. I use all the free social media methods and I am constantly talking about my business. Remember the examples above are just that, examples. You have to build a business model that works for you based on your numbers. The business months cover the lean months, like this month and the weddings did for me. I have two months of vacation in December and January when the snow is thick up here in the North East so that has to be taken into consideration.

So in closing I would just like to say. Get a plan in action and don't worry to much about the guy down the street trying to under-cut everyone. Work your plan and your numbers. Stay profitable for every shoot and you will be able to survive in this business.

As always, if you have any questions or want additional information about what I did then please leave a comment below and I will definitely get back to you. 

As we go into the holiday season I wish you all the success and profitability that you deserve.

Denzil

Fall Season and Christmas Marketing

Hello Everyone.A happy Wednesday to you.

Now as we all start winding down from the Summer vacations and our month of giving back. It is really not a time to relax, but rather a good time to start ramping up your marketing for the coming season.

Most photographers normally make most of their incomes from the next 3 months. So it is not a time to recoup but take some extra NRG  and then push ahead.

Normally your marketing plans should have been drawn up a year in advance so that you have the entire year mapped out. This is usually decided upon by taking percentage of your annual income and using that money for your marketing campaign. Mine is roughly 5- 10% of total income.

I have a separate account for marketing expenses and then when planning my calendar I have this money available to spend.

Now if you do not have the funds or you are marketing as the money comes in, then it could be that you are not seeing the results that you would like. Why do I say this? Well from experience I have found that if you are not consistent then you have the tendency to lose momentum. Not everyone is looking for the same message at the same time. So by being consistent you can minimize your losses by spreading your marketing over a longer period of time focusing on a smaller amount of campaigns.

The free social media platforms work well. Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram are daily methods of operation.This is where you have to post on a daily or weekly basis depending on your available time. However, you have to do it on a regular basis to actually see results.

You always have the option to pay for advertising. It is a personal choice, but I have found that you can use your personal circle of influence to generate quite a substantial income if you consistently mine the new opportunities that you encounter.

I use a lot of the free marketing videos and tutorials that I find from websites that I am subscribed to. One of them is from Sarah Petty of Joy of Marketing. There are great tutorials on her Youtube channel that can show you how to earn thousands of dollars.

Creativelive.com is also presenting their Photo Week conference starting Sep 18 - Sep 25th. It is all free and you will learn from the industry professionals how they find new customers and retain them.

So whatever your marketing plan is. Make sure that you are consistent and you are doing it on a regular basis. Don't spend any money if you have to until you have exhausted all your free options. Word of mouth is a great untapped secret that needs to be exploited and last but not least make sure that you get all your customer details so that you can start a marketing campaign using emails.

Try Mailchimp if you do not have any email marketing campaign and then you can always expand from there depending on your own business requirements.

I wish you all the best for the coming season and happy sales.

Denzil

Building Your Photography Site

 One of the big challenges you will face in your decision to become a professional photographer is building your business website. In order to better market yourself, you need to have one to showcase your work and have portfolios available for potential clients to view.

In this day and age, Social Media is king, it’s true, but without a proper website to go hand in hand with your Social Media efforts, you can be left out in the cold. When choosing your platform for hosting you photography site, you need to consider a few things.

1. Do they offer unlimited storage?
2. Do they offer unlimited bandwidth?
3. Do they have eCommerce capabilities?
4. Do they offer lab integration?
5. How much do they charge?
6. How do they stack up to the industry?

These 6 items are the main ones you should be concerned with when choosing your photography website platform for your new business. I am going to cover a few of them in this week’s post and the Pros and Cons.

SmugMug - SmugMug is without a doubt one of the big boys out there in the photography web hosting business. They have powerful servers and great uptime. They allow you unlimited storage and bandwidth, but only for the full one business accounts. They offer lab integration for selling prints without hassle and all the big labs are available. They offer price lists and you can make coupon codes for your clients. They also have the ability to create password protected or hidden galleries for your clients to view your work and they offer a wide selection of templates that you can customize. On the down side, SmugMug is not cheap at close to $400 per         year. The other big down side I saw as someone who used to use them is they also take a percentage of the money you make when you sell either prints or digital downloads.

Zenfolio - Zenfolio is similar to SmugMug, but to me their site looks a bit cheesy and needs a serious overhaul. They too offer pretty much all of the same features as SmugMug and like SmugMug, they cost close to $400 per year and take a percentage of the money you make when selling your work. Zenfolio offers an assortment of templates as well, but from what I have heard, they are harder to tweak and customize for non-web developers.

SquareSpace - SquareSpace is another of the heavy-weights when it comes to photography hosting, and they are extremely popular. They offer lots of customization that is easy to do and to my knowledge, unlimited bandwidth and storage as well. The downside I see to SquareSpace is they offer eCommerce, but it’s limited. I believe you can sell digital downloads easily, but they still do not offer lab integration and probably never will, and they cost as much as SmugMug and Zenfolio, both of which offer both digital and lab sales.

500px.com - 500px.com is a nice one as well, they offer unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth if you are a paid member. Their plans are $25 and $75 per year, but they do take a good chunk of the profits to offset their cost. If you sell a Royalty-Free download, which is $250, set by them, you get $175 and they keep the other $75. The nice thing is, someone of their clients are major magazines and publishers, the downside of that is when you images sell, they will not tell you who bought them so you can see the final product.

WIX - WIX is a newer contender in this arena and they are free, but I am not sure if there is a catch as far as storage and bandwidth. I have a few friends that use them and like them, but they don’t offer any eCommerce at all, neither lab integration nor digital download sales. This one is a good option if you are short on funds and just need something to show clients to get started. Their templates are highly customizable and friends that I know that use them say they are easy to work with. Now WIX offers paid plans as well, and on the free ones, you have to put up with them running ads on your site.

This is just a small collection of photography site hosting providers, there is also FineArt America, and many others, but these 5 are some of the best known ones. When it comes to choosing your hosting provider you really need to do your research and compare them before pulling the trigger. I was using SmugMug for quite a while but didn’t like that they charge me monthly and take a portion of all of my sales, so I dropped them this week, as for me, I found a better option.

I personally already have a regular web hosting account with GoDaddy for my other personal sites and some non-profits I help out and I have moved my photography hosting to GoDaddy and built my new site using WordPress. WordPress is well known and been around for quite some time. I coupled that with a company that makes an awesome WordPress theme called Photocratic, that has eCommerce built in. Now, it’s not full blown yet, currently you can sell downloads or prints, but have to do the work yourself, but you don’t lose any of the money to them. Their theme is $59, one time purchase, on sale right now, down from $89. The theme is easy to install and customize and they offer awesome support as well. The plus side is they are rolling out the fully automated digital download eCommerce update next month and then following that up with FULL lab integration a couple months after that, so once both of those happen, I will be GOLDEN!

Now, I don’t recommend this option for everyone as WordPress and the theme system does require some coding abilities, but if you know someone well versed in WordPress, it might be the way to go. For me personally, I have been a developer for 35 years and am fluent in around 20 computer languages including HTML and PHP so the WordPress option was a no brainer for me.

Sorry this week’s post is so long, but this is both a large and important topic to cover. If you have any questions, please comment and I will do my best to answer them for you!

Comments/Questions