Marketing tools for a photography business

Marketing and publicity of your business are very important and are of paramount importance to promote your products and advertise your business. A photography website is an absolute must for any business to succeed  in this age of technology and the internet. This is the number one marketing tool which can advertise your business globally. It is therefor imperative to get first impressions right,right from the outset. 


It is essential to produce a very impressive website of a very high standard with nothing but your very best images included if you want to generate new business and customers. The site has to hold the viewers attention at the first view, load quickly and to sell your product right from the first instance. It's critical that your home page is very well thought out which captivates potential customers and keeps their interest


My view is to use minimalist content which oozes quality but will keep your potential customers interested,wouldn't recommend adding sound to the site as this slows down loading times and can be very annoying to potential customers.First Impressions count and potential customers will move off your site if it does not produce that initial impact


Prices vary to produce a website from a few hundred to thousands of pounds. Initial costs can soon escalate  as a successful site has to have it's content updated on a regular basis


This grab below shows the homepage from world renown wedding photographer Yervant, again it appears minimalist but also shows a contemporary quality design quality. This type of site would most probably have been designed by a professional web developer

The link below takes you to some of the world's best wedding photographers and their websites

http://www.mastersofweddingphotography.com

The grabs below are all taken from one of the world's best wedding photographers Martin Shembri. His site shows minimal content but is of a very high standard which shows quality from the outset

The website below is a very low cost budget website of a local wedding photography business which has not been thought out very well. All of the content of this website is crammed onto the home page with little or no thought gone into the construction and initial homepage. The home page is very cluttered and appears very busy

The prices are very cheap and there will be certainly be a market for the lower end of the market

I do not wish to criticize any of the photography on these websites as I 'm sure the content is of the highest possible standard. I'm sure there are different markets available to suit everybody's budgets and you get what you pay for.This blog is intended to highlight the different standards of websites available and is not intended to defame any of the business's or photographers 

concerned

The link below shows some of the best photography websites on the net

http://www.expertphotography.com/top-20-photography-websites

Shown here are 35 of the most beautiful websites on the net

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/10/35-beautiful-photography-websites/

Portrait Textures

Shown here are some of my portrait textures which show what can be achieved using various blending, filter and layer techniques using the image manipulation software "Photoshop"

Shown here are a sample of my textures that I have photographed when I'm out at different locations around the country. I find stately homes,castles and old woods etc have provided me with an endless supply of textures

Autumn is a great time of the year to collect textures,there are so many colours, shapes and interesting objects to add to a collection

I have a large collection now of my own textures which I have amassed over the years. Shown here are  are just some of the ones I have incorporated into my textured work

I have captured the screen grabs shown here in the software "bridge" which show some of my catalogues of various textures

Photography Studio visit Sat 26th Nov

Status ongoing under construction

Today a group of level 4 students and I from Burton College visited a live working photography studio in the town of Belper about 20 miles away from Burton. The visit was setup and managed by our course tutor Steve Davies to provide us with a better understanding of how a photography business is run

The studio is run by professional Photogrpher and businessman Adrian Heapy a likeable 60 year old happy chappy with a passion for photography. Adrian has been in the industry for over 40 years and has a wealth of experience in this field. It has taken a lifetime to build up his business and enabled him to atay ahead of any rivalsAdrian made us all feel very welcome then proceeded to give us a tour studio and delivered talk on his business as we were escorted around this huge property

The studio itself is a very old GPO building converted into a very large photographic studio with a smaller additional studio and various other rooms that were used for image processing,offices and storage

The studio is very large and there are only a handful of studios outside of London which can cater for such large photography shoots. This is quite unique as there is little  competion able to copete for such large photography jobs of this nature for the niche phtogrphyThis is a boom for Belper a small former mill town and it's local economy as there are large amounts of people involved in these photography shoots who all need hotel accommodation, restaurants, pubs, shops etc to facilitate their visits

The studio itself was vast and is mainly used for large commercial photography shoots,including rooms, kitchens, furniture etc where set builds take place between shoots. On our visit a set was being built for a new furniture shoot that he was being commissioned to shootThe floor space was enormous and  numerous cars could be photographed inside the studio with room to spare.

So why did he bye the premises here? set in a small mill town in the amber valley on the edge of the peak district. "Location, Adrian said" It is set in a central location in the middle of the country which can be be accessed from the motorway network. The size of the premises was also another governing factor which persuaded him to buy the building, which allows very large photo shoots to be completed without the need to go out on location

The studio is equipped with very expensive lighting sets which Adrian has accumulated over the years

This shot shows the studio with Adrian (right) giving my fellow students a talk and guidance of the morning's visit

Another shot of just part of the massive studio

Shown here are just some of the various lighting sets Adrian has at his disposal, they vary in luminance from small modeling lights to very high end spot, strobe systems

Shown here is a shot of various dummies in a secondary smaller studio that adrian uses for modeling, portraiture,band poses etc 

Shown above here is the attic at Adrian's studio which shows the numerous props that he has accumulated over the years as a photographer. These props are used over  and over again for different shoots with various clients

This shot of Adrian shows some of his finished work that is presented in photo books that he has produced to promote his work and his business

A remarkable statement made by Adrian was that only 10% of the whole photography shoot time was apportioned to photography, the other 90 % was used up by management, planning, preparation, set building, marketing, advertising, office and paper work etc

Adrian stated that his business is all about quality and he produces nothing but the best high end quality photography for his customers.This ensures repeat orders from exciting customers which also keeps his customers ahead of their competition when it comes to marketing their products

The beauty about the studio and premises is they are very large

He likes to work along side company directors which he accommodates in a large office complex built into the roof of the premises. In this way he gets his directive straight from the hourses mouth instead of wasting value time and money working alongside various managers

Adrian say's the fresh face entrepreneurs straight out of university try to emulate his his work and compete with his business by using image manipulation software such as "Photoshop" He said, they try to cut corners and try to use the software to enhance their images but they cannot reproduce the actual quality and finished product that he can produce without using such enhancing techniques

The day gave me a broader understanding of how a photography business runs and gave me some good advice of how to prepare should I wish to pursue a business venture of my own in this field

A shot of our tutor Steve Davies preparing a health and safety brief which he explained to us all outlining safety do's and dont's along with fire evacuation points around the building

The visit was a little disappointing as there was no photography planned on the day we visited and no lighting setups which I hoped I would be able to learn from and document 

If there was to be a return visit to the studio would it be possible to visit when all the lighting is in place and the possibility of seeing some live shots taken? This would be far more educational to all students present to compound our knowledge and understanding of exposure/lighting techniques etc and to use image quality comparisons of high end commercial cameras compared with the top end consumer models that the majority of us use

The main Camera that Adrian uses for his work is a £64,000 Haselblad along with other Canon cameras

Shown below is a link to Adrian's website which highlights his skills and his products


Marketing

Shown here are the search results that are returned when Adrian's name is entered into search engine"google" the biggest search engine in the world. As you can see from the results that a websisite is of paramount importance    ongoing

Candid Photography

I have been the second photographer at quite a few weddings over the past year now and have been commissioned to provide candid images from these wedding by a colleague of mine

So what is candid photography? candid photography is photography that focuses on spontaneity rather than a technique, which focus on events rather than focusing on setting up a staged situation or pre prepaired  camera setup.

Candid photography is best described as un-posed and unplanned. This is in contrast to classic photography, which includes aspects such as carefully staged portrait photography, landscape photography or still life etc. Candid photography catches moments of life as they happen usually of people when the subject is unaware that a photograph is being taken


The images recorded are often private, they involve people in close relation to something they do, or they involve people's relation to each other. Candids are the kinds of pictures taken at children's birthday parties and on Christmas morning, opening the presents or pictures or what a wedding photographer takes at the reception, of people dancing, eating, and socializing with other. I have included some candid images here.These were taken at some of my most recent  weddings over the last couple of months

The shots above were taken from a local wedding which was planned with a fifties style theme. I find shooting this kind of image has to be taken at the "decisive moment" this is the moment when I feel the shot will have the most amount of impact which can be very rewarding. I find the best shots are always taken when your subject is totally unaware that the shot is being taken. These moments tend to be when the subject is just carrying on with their everyday activities and are just acting naturally. Most of my images tend to be taken from a distance where I am not intrusive to my subject. Posed or preplanned images do not possess any of characteristics that a candid image produces and cannot show the spontaneity, humour,fun etc

Henri Cartier Bresson the famous French photographer might be considered as the master in the art of candid photography, capturing the "decisive moment" in everyday life which he recorded in a unique moment in time.I have tried to capture this "unique moment" in my photography shown above at another wedding I photographed recently

Flash Techniques

Over the last 6 months I have been using even more flash in my photography. I bought a Canon 430EX 2 speed-light for some weddings I was photographing to assist me with enhancing my images and to use  mainly as fill in flash 


Jim my work colleague being a bit of an expert on the subject has been giving me lots of tuition on using speed-lights recently and at long last I think I have mastered these wonderful gadgets


At first I thought like everybody else,stick it on auto and fire away. Wrong, this is the worst thing you can do with such a great piece of equipment, you must learn how to use it and get to balance your flash with ambient light, the results can be amazing


It took me some time to understand the flash and learn how to use it but now I think i am reaping benefits of my studies


At first I didn't understand sync speeds but after some studying,reading and watching video's I have finally got my head around them now. I understand the science of the subject now and everything has fell into place


Here's a brief explanation of sync speeds and what they do:


Sync speed is the fastest shutter speed you can use with that flash with your camera 


When you take a picture, the shutter opens and closes to let light strike the image sensor. When it does so, the shutter is fully open for a very short time. If the shutter speed is too fast, the burst of light from the flash won't fully expose all parts of the image sensor and part of the scene won't be captured in the image. The fastest shutter speed that can be used is called the flash synchronization speed and is usually between 1/125-1/500 second. My Canon 7 D uses a sync of 1/250th sec. If you select a faster shutter speed directly or indirectly, most cameras will override you and lower it. The shutter works with two curtains, a front and rear (sometimes called first and second curtains). The shutter opens when the front curtain slides out of the way and ends when the rear curtain slides to close it. The flash fires either when the shutter first fully opens or just before it's about to close.

Shown here are some images that explain the process

(Top row) Front/first curtain sync (the usual mode) means the flash fires when the shutter's front curtain first fully opens to expose the image sensor.

• (Bottom row) Rear/second curtain sync means the flash fires just before the shutter's rear curtain starts to close to end the exposure.

A focal plane shutter opens a curtain to begin an exposure and closes a second curtain to end it. At fast shutter speeds (top) the second curtain starts to end the exposure before the first curtain has fully opened so the two curtains form a slit traveling across the image sensor. Flash would only expose the area uncovered by the slit between the two rapidly moving curtains. At the flash sync speed and slower (bottom) the second curtain doesn't start to close until the first one is fully open.  
 

Images from location shooting (Seascapes)

The shot above was taken on Bamburough beach in Northumbria at 6.55 am

I am in the process of producing some practice/development shots taken at various locations in and around the uk to use as evidence for my course work. I will be producing my final images later in the course


The images displayed here are all location shots taken at various outdoor locations using a variety of different methods,skills and techniques which have helped me to develop my photography even further and hopefully take it to the next level.


 T


I  am constantly trying  to develop my photography even further, learning new skills and techniques which I hope will help improve my photography and add to my creativity


The images diplayed here are not by best and far from it. There are a lot of times in photography where I end up feeling very dismayed  frustrated  and disillusioned mainly because the 3 most important elements to produce a good image do not always come together and are not always evident at the same time


The 3 main elements of a good image which I consider to be really important are:


1- Really good composition 
2- Good subject matter or location 
3- Excellent lighting 


I always pre plan my images and know exactly what content I want to show in my images. I compose my images with great care and will not settle for "that will do" If I cant' compose the shot or some of the elements are missing I don't take the shot


I find I am becoming more selective with my image content and don't agree with the philosophy of taking 20 images of the same shot and hope to to achieve at least one decent one. With this type of image taking the photographer is not considering composition,lighting etc and in artist's terms will never produce a masterpiece

This shot here is all about being at the right place at the right time. This foam was created when the tide was coming back into an estuary at a phonominal rate, 2 minutes after this shot was taken the foam had dispersed and the shot was lost

Again the lighting here was to severe.The shot was taken early in the afternoon and the brightness reflected of the foam was very intense which was washing out my image. To remedy this condition I could'd reduce the intensity of the shot by reducing the ISO as I was already on my camera's lowest ISO setting of 100. I always try to shoot at 100 as this setting always retains the most detail and clarity.The only other technique's I had avaiable to me were to increase my shutter speed or choose a higher F stop and use a smaller apperture. As the shot was a landscape I chose a higher Fstop of F11 from F8 whch halfed the light again entering the camera reducing the light intensity. Using F11 enabled me to increase my depth of field which is more suited to a landscape shot

This shot was taken at 2 pm in the afternoon whch is not an ideal time to take this sort of shot. The sun was high in the sky with brilliant sunshine which does not give the photo any kind of depth and form and produces vivid blue skies which are not pleasing to the eye. 

I had to travel to this venue just befor sunrise to record the ideal shot but when I arrived the sky was so dull and bland with no sunlight evident that I abbandoned the shoot. We stayed at this location all afternoon hoping to capture the castle as the sun went down tried but unfortunately after this shot was taken the skies clouded over again whch was another wasted day

The sun did break but this was the middle of the afternoon.This was the only time on this particular day when the sun broke which enabled me to record a half decent image

I took this shot just as the sun was going down but again 1 of the 3 elements let me down. The lighting was missing which was so poor,flat and uninteresting which created a pretty flat image

This shot would have been far better taken ist thing in the morning or just before dusk when we have a low level lighting which is far superior and produces shadows, depth and form. The ideal lighting conditions for most out door photography and especially landscapes is what's known as the golden hour. This is the time of day just after sunrise and just before dusk when the sun  produces a lovely rich type of  warm light that is only produced at these times of the day. An example of this can be seen in my first shot at the top of the page whch has captured the golden hour lighting as the sun was coming up over the horizon, 2 minutes later this special kind of light had disappeared

Shown below are a set of images I took of Bamborough castle in Northumbria which shows the ever changing light conditions taken over a couple of minutes. The images show the lighting changing the colour of the clouds from pinky blues to orange just before the sun goes down


I had vistited this location on a couple of previous nights trying to compose some nice cloudscapes but the clouds and lighting were not evident  and a decent image would have proved inpossible. On this particular night everything was perfect,location,composition and lighting all critical elemets to produce a good photograph


I took the images below with a budget compact point and shoot pocket camera lent to me by a friend as I had earlier had an accident with my 7D camera and dropped it in the sea

It just goes to show you don't need to have the best camera in the world to produce some lovely images, after all a camera is only a box with a hole in it. I just made sure I got the key elements correct,location,lighting composition and timing

The meta data shown here in this grab shows a shutter speed of 1/40 sec which any photographer knows, hand holding a camera at this speed will result in blurred images. I remedied the camera shake by mounting the camera onto my tripod, setting the camera settings onto a 2 second self timer which eliminated any evidence of camera shake

This camera was lent to me by a friend in an emegency and didnt have any manual modes. The ISO of the camera did go up to 800 but I have learnt from experience using these compact cameras with high end ISO's you end up with extremely high noise levels which can ruin the shot

As I had my tripod at hand I could still use the camera's lowest ISO which was a 100 to maintain clarity with hardly any noise visible

Image capture and storage

All of my  images captured with the cameras I am using at the moment a Canon 7D and a Canon 5D are recorded onto digital memory cards known as CF cards or "Compact Flash".


The advantages of this type of card are, the cards hold vast amounts of storage data and are the Ideal media for storing vast quantity's of photographs.They range in size from a couple of GB to approx 64 GB for top end storage. They come in a variety of different types,speeds  and makes and price ranges to suit. The faster the read write speed of the card the quicker response time you will get from your camera and computer

Photographer's use these cards to store their photos because they are very small and potable and can be easily carried in a shirt pocket. They are very compact and can be sent through the postal service very cheaply because they are very light in weight. They are relatively cheap to buy and top end cards are very efficient at reading and writing data, which allow fast downloads/upload speeds from a camera and uploading to a computer.

There are mainly 3 main manufactures in this field who produce these types of cards and they are:

Sandisk

Lexar

Kingston

More information on compact flash cards see the link below

This link below is a technical link from the encyclopedia Wikipedia and gives loads of information about compact flash cards and their technical data

Although information on Wikepedia is not verified by any organisation it is a free encyclopidia that anyone can add to or edit. I have always found information on this site to relevant and true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompactFlash

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Comparison's

I have used all of the cards mentioned above and have found there are some distinct advantages of some cards compared to others.These I have outlined below

Sandisk

Shown below are some examples of Sandisk's CF and SD cards  

The biggest manufacturer of these type of cards. They have a vast range of cards to suit the amature to the professional. They are very well made rugged cards aimed at all levels and branches of photography

At first I used to use a lot of Sandisk cards. There is a large variety of cards on offer from this company. There are cards to suit all types of digital photography. There are really fast cards which have very fast read write speeds, ideal  for press photographers who need speed at hand instantaneously. 

There are HD(high definition) CF cards designed for  photogrphers who use there camera's for video. You can buy top end very fast cards that cater for HD recording nowadays something that all camera manufactures are using now. Read write speeds have to be very high to record and playback HD movies

There are also slower cards made by this company with slower read/ write speeds tailored for the amateur photographer who's not bothered about speed. These cards are a lot cheaper to buy but downloading large raw files from your camera to your pc can take a lot longer and images take a long time to open

However I have found that a lot of these cards from Sandisk have been counterfeited and have actually bought some of these fake goods. They were supplied by Amazon and they are not sure how these counterfitted goods have infiltrated their stocks. I have 2 faulty cards bought from Amazon and both have crashed my camera. I cannot say if these cards are faulty because they are fakes,it's hard to tell. On two occasions I have lost a vast amount of images and I'm very reluctant to use this make of card again

Follow this link below to Sandisk's website. It shows a variety of video's on the correct card to use for your photography and their specifications

http://www.sandisk.com/consumer-products/camera?utm_source=Camera_link&utm_medium=ProductUsage&utm_campaign=HomePageTracking

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Lexar

Another large card manufacture of CF and SD cards. In comparison to all the other cards I prefer Lexar cards. I haven't come across any fakes yet.  I now tend to use a lot of  high end Lexar cards. These cards are very fast and efficient cards and have never let me down. They are competitively priced compared with Sandisk's products and work out a little cheaper for a high quality card. I have moved over to this brand because of all the fakes infiltrating Sandisk's cards

I tend to use the 300x or 400x speed cards which are more than adequote to cater for all my photogrphy needs. In comparison, Sandisk's top of their line pro series cards are the best you can buy way out of my price range

Shown here is one of Lexar's top of the range Cf cards which delivers 90 meg a second download speeds and the technical data taken from their website

Link to Lexar's site

http://www.lexar.com/products/compactflash

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Kingston

The Kingston cards tend to be a lot cheaper cards and haven't got the speeds of the top end cards of Sandisk and Lexar. I have used these cards in the past but now would only use these for geneal use photography as the performance of this type of cards are very slow. They really lack the performance especially for high end HD video shooting or handling very large raw files that most cameras manufactures are producing nowadays

Follow this link to Kingston's page for CF cards

http://www.kingston.com/ukroot/flash/photo.asp

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Over all you get what you pay for and I tend to pay the extra for a more efficient faster card. In comparison with all the other makes of CF card, I now choose the high end Lexar cards for my photography. They are very fast, efficient and reliable and also prove very cost effective

SD Cards

Another common  format of memory cards that I use in my compact camera are "SD" or Secure Digiatal cards (shown below),which again are similar to CF cards but are smaller and cheaper but do not hold as much data as CF's. I also use this type of card in my mobile phone and on my

computer

Cloud storage and External hard drives

Once stored onto these cards I upload the recorded images onto my computer for further secure storage and image manipulation. I use a USB lead and a very fast Lexar CF card reader which transfers my images from my camera to my Pc in super fast times. Using Lexar cards and  my card reader shown below  a lexor professional it transfers a 25 mb file/pohto in less than a second and takes about 30 sec's to trasfer 1GB of phto's to my PC. You get what you pay for and this was one of my best buys

I then trasfer my images as a backup solution to other external hard drives and cloud storage online another very good form of storage and security as an extra security measure to insure against loss of my images

Using cloud storage is relatively inexpensive and costs me appox £105.00 for 3 years unlinited storage. I think that this kind of storage is the way forward and for ease of use and convenience would rate it 8/10. It does have it's down side all of  your data or photo's have to be uploaded online and all this  depends on your ISP's speeds and policies etc. Some ISP's have a cap on the upload/download you can use  so it pay's to check out your package

People also worry about their data being kept secure, well in my opinion,it is more secure than your home pc being hacked online and data stolen from under your nose,ask yourself how many times has this happened to you? Cloud storage is very efficient and very secure and a lot of the country's top companies now use this type of storage

Apple has recently joined the cloud "Band Wagon" storage and now offer a free 5 GB cloud storage to mac,I pad and I phone users and additional storage can be added for various fees

The main companies include:

Mozy

Livedrive

Carbonite