Tag: tips

What do Photo walks and software cycles have in common?

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Tune in to this week’s episode of the Canon Blogger Podcast Series, Episode #58, from either the blog or your feed readers today!  I also tackle a few listener questions, and offer up a photo road tip for the listening audience.  So, pick up the feed today, or stop in to the blog to not only download the show, but also to see the other content that isn’t in the daily feeds (things like the Online Photography Test, Colors and Textures Galleries, polls and more!

As I tinker a little with the audio quality of the show and try to make things more seamless and enjoyable, you’ll notice I am pushing the show out in segments, with some music to break things up in little snips between the subject material.  If you like it, chime in via the comments section of the blog.  If you don’t like it, well…chime in via the comments section of the blog.  If you are ambivalent, well…chime in via the comments in the blog.

Hmmm…seems like someone would like to hear what the listening audience thinks of the changes in the format for the audio podcast.  And it also seems that the feedback can easily be done via:  the comments section of the blog!

If you’ve listened to the show and are still yearning for more, please stop by fellow podcasters Scott Sherman and Michael Stein’s new podcast series:  Digital Photography Life.  Formerly, these guys hosted the Digital Photography Show on another network and they’ve since moved on.  Their first show on the new network mis up and ready for your listening pleasure, so do stop over and give it a listen – great to have them back on the air!  Their podcast can be found here:  Digital Photography Life

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Making Money off your Photos

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In the tightening economy, many of us are considering additional ways of supplementing our income, and as hobbyist photographers, we all have wondered at times whether we could parlay our hobbies into sources of revenue.  For a short time I even considered this blog as a possible method for generating revenue.  By and large though, I found that the blog was not well-positioned to be a significant source of revenue, for a number of reasons.

So, I decided to turn the idea arond, and think about whether my photography could be considered as a source of revenue.  Thus far I have resisted the urge to do so, primarily because I don’t want to add the stress of running a side business to my enjoyment of photography.  Nevertheless, I have considered it seriously, and in so doing, read quite a bit about it.  And what have I learned?  Quite a bit actually.  But today, I’d like to share 5 tips about how to make money off your photos.

5 Tips for Making Money off your Photos

  1. Magazines – Magazines are always looking for fresh images for stories.  Get yourself a copy of The Photographers Market (most recent publication year is 2008)), and find out the magazines that match your interests most and send them the appropriate information as specified.  Don’t be dejected if at first you don’t garner much interest.  There are many others like you also submitting images regularly and it can take a while.
  2. Stock Photography – Stock photo sites like Getty, iStockPhoto, Crestock, and a host of others offer a great venue for tapping into the enthusiast photographer market.  You simply create an account, upload some sample images, and once you get enough “approved” you are off and running.  The problem here is that your images are being sold for mere pennies (in your pocket).  So, in order to generate sufficient revenue, you need to have hundreds upon hundreds of sales.  In turn this means you need a portfolio of at least that many images available to get any kind of penetration into the stock market genre.  This is becoming quite crowded, but if you are talented, and have the library – upload away!
  3. Consignment – An often untapped resource is local restaurants and businesses.  Go talk to small business owners whether it be a restaurant around the corner, a body shop, or other such enterprise, and offer to decorate their walls for free.  In exchange, you get free exposure and possible image sales.  Often the business owner will want at least a cut on the profits, so don’t be shocked if they ask for it.  It also helps to have several images all ready to hang, so go prepared with at least 5 images in 3 different sizes.  I would suggest a 5×7, 8,10, and 11×14 matted and framed out to 8×10, 11×14, and 16×20 respectively.  Be sure you are also prepared to be told “No.”  Persistence and self-confidence here is key.  It also helps if you scope the place out ahead of time.  You can do so by eating a meal there, having some auto work done, or going in for a cup of coffee (whatever, you get the idea).
  4. Medical Offices – Here is a real sleeper that can pay off in spades.  Doctors offices love to have fine art on the wall – it can sooth anxious or sick patients.  Even if they have a set of artwork already displayed, it never hurts to ask.  Simply offer a rotation for the next month, or 2 months, or 6 months, and be prepared to offer a portion of image sales to them (doctors like to make money too – or so I’ve heard!).  Also, don’t limit yourself to the traditional image of a doctor’s office – go see dentists offices, orthopedists, optometrists, orthopedics, etc.  As always, be prepared and quick – these guys (and gals) make money off their time, so the more time you spend trying to convince them it’s a good idea, the less time they spend seeing patients, and the less time they are making money.  Go in, be quick, be professional, wow them with great images, and get out.
  5. Banks are another great resource.  Try seeing if your local branch will let you set out cards on display, or perhaps hang an image or two.  Some banks even offer this service to local businesses.  WHen I was in SC, my local bank had one day every week where a local business was featured.  I put my cards out, and once or twice I even had my info up on display.  It generated some interest and even a few gigs.  Once I found out about our move to Colorado, I stopped though, for obvious reasons, and once we’re more settled down here I’l be doing the same.

So, there’s 5 tips for you on how to make money off your photos.  The common theme here is to have your images out there.  If you don’t put your images into the hands of potential buyers, no one will ever buy anything from you.  Oh yeah, and don’t forget to keep at least 5-10 business cards or calling cards with you at all times.  Keep ten in your car, ten in your wallet, and ten in your coat.  You never know when someone will say “Do you know a good photographer?” and you’l be kicking yourself for not having a card wth you!

There they are, 5 tips for making money off your photos.  Anyone else used these tips with any success?  What about other tips?  Feel free to share your own thoughts, suggestions, and ideas in the comments section (or via email.)  Hope everyone’s weekend was good, and we’l see you back here tomorrow for the weekly podcast!  Happy shooting!

Tuesday Tricks

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Orange
Orange

Jason Moore has his bi-monthly Photographic Compostion posted today, so be sure to stop over there and see the others (I am sure they were more creative than the one I came up with at the last minute yesterday…)

Rather than record a tip or trick for this Tuesday, I thought I’d share a few ideas and suggestions I’ve picked up from various magazines, forums, and photo communities for managing and handling your gear in the field.  These things have become almost second nature to me now and I can’t tell you how helpful these tips and tricks have become in helping me keep everything organized.  So without further ado, here’s my Tuesday tricks:

  1. Pack a large plastic ziploc or other sealable bag in with your camera gear.  When it’s windy or there’s lots of dust around, you can change your lenses from inside these bags to minimize dust.  Additionally, it serves as an additional layer of protection should mother nature decide to dump a deluge of water on you with little warning.  (I keep several sandwich bags in my pack for protecting things like CF cards, wide angle lenses, TC’s and other items.
  2. If you must change lenses in the field, keep the body of the camera pointed down so as to prevent dust from falling into the opening (dust won’t wall up…).
  3. Keep a notepad and pen in your pack, in case you find a location that you want to remember, meet someone and want an email or phone number, or to get an address to send prints or perhaps a resume to!  On the same note, having some business cards and model releases handy for handing out and in case you have a willing model…
  4. Turn your CF cards around backwards when full, so you always know which ones are used versus unused.
  5. Buy a car converter for AC to DC.  This way you can charge your batteries while en route to a shoot.  They’re only like $20 at Wal-Mart or Radio Shack and can add a certain peace of mind that you are going into your shoot with as much of a charge on your portables as you can get.  (Just make sure you add the battery chargers to your packing list…)
  6. Speaking of packing lists – make one!  This can help ensure you leave with everything you brought to a shoot.  I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s been a while, so bears mentioning again.
  7. Pack a micro fiber cloth for wiping off lenses in a pinch.  (Better a microfiber cloth than your shirt!)  These can be begged off any eyeglasses store (try Wal-Mart, they are pretty liberal with handing these things out..)
  8. Need a better way to store your gear at home?  Try shoe boxes.  You can get them for a buck a piece from a dolalr store – makes a great way to compartmentalize short lenses from long lenses, accessories, flash equipment, battery chargers, CD media, gray cards, lens cloths, etc.  A few labels from a Dymo label maker and everything is neat, and easy to find in your bedroom closet!
  9. Dress in layers – weather can change, especially if you are shooting at sunrise or sunet.  It can change from cool to warm or warm to cool very quickly and having a layer to take off (or put on) can extend your shoot time before you start getting uncomfortably warm (or cold).
  10. Take a bottle of water and a granola bar in your pack!  You’d be surprised how quickly you can dehydrate and how hungry you can get while shooting.  I’ve been on shoots where there is so much creativity and so many shooting opportunities, I can often forget to eat or drink.  When things finally end you can be very hungry and or dehydrated where even a bottle of water or a granola bar (or both) can give you the needed boost until you can get to Starbucks or the house for more healthy refreshments!

So, that’s my ten tips/tricks for the day.  Got any of your own to share?  Sound off in the comments – I’d love to hear what others have to say about shooting preparations.  In the meantime, happy shooting, watch those apertures and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for the Week 13 episode of “What’s This?”

Eureka! Tutorial Tuesdays Triumphant Return!

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For those that have been visiting the blog, you know that Podpress, my plugin of choice for putting out podcasts has been broken for some time as the developer has not released an update that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.6  Well, since it has been several months now, I am officially parting ways with it as my method for publishing.

Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger.  So, in the interests of getting the content posted to iTunes and to those feeds that had not been updated from web references, I am going to spend the next few days providing some video content updates.  The expanding ease of the .mov format not only in this interface, but also for portability purposes also seems to suggest that I am going to stick to that format exclusively for the foreseeable future.

For those that had been coming to the blog for their content, you will already have seen this video, but for those who have been waiting on the feed for new multimedia, this will be new material.  Today, I am re-publishing the tutorial on reducing noise in your images. Enjoy!  For the rest of you, see if you can tell the differences between some clouds shot with and without a circular polarizer.  Share your thoughts in the comments on which one is with and which is without.

Image A:

Clouds

Image B:

Clouds

Monday Minutia: Memory Management

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CF Cards

A post over on This Week in Photography got me thinking about my memory cards and the rituals or practices I take to conserve my image data. As they suggested over at TWIP, I do format my cards in camera prior to using. This in-camera formatting optimizes the data sectors and creates folders to organize image data. However, I also occasionally format my cards on the computer for that exact reason. Since the XT only has an image counter that goes to 100, whenever I pass that 100 mark, it creates a new folder.  If I were to never format the card outside of the camera, those folders would always remain there – and I would wonder if there were images in there not being copied out to my hard drive for backup.

So, I do format my memory cards in the computer. About once a month I’ll insert my cards into the card reader, plug ‘er up, and format away. On the PC, that would be: format E: /fat32 (With “E” being whatever drive letter is assigned to media once you connect it. Having said that though, once the PC format is complete, I will do another format in camera to optimize sectors for the camera prior to shooting.

The last step I take in the format process is to take a picture. My very first picture on each card is a screen shot picture from my monitor. On my monitor, I put together a Word document that gives my contact information (Name, mailing address, phone, and email address), along with a request to return the card to me (see above – naturally, the info there is more accurate, but you get the idea). That way, if I ever lose the card, hopefully some benevolent person will find it and put it in their computer or camera and find that content there. I took the shot with PrintKey (Windows only- if you are on a Mac, use CTRL+SHIFT+4 to grab the area manually yourself), and then opened in PS and saved for web settings to minimize the space it takes up on the CF card (32K). This may seem rather a p.i.t.a., but the step for me is worthwhile just as a safeguard against the possible loss of my CF cards.

One final note, in case anyone is interested, I do have a few suggestions for vendors to use: I like Sandisk and Ridata. Both have been very good to me, and with three 2 Gig cards, I am probably safe with those. Although, I do know of others (like Scott Kelby) that recommend Hoodman. For those of you that are technically inclined, and want to know all the nitty gritty details of write speeds, failure rates, etc., Rob Galbraith also has an excellent page on all that stuff if it is up your alley.

This may be a rather unique approach to memory card maintenance, but it works for me. Maybe this will give others ideas for procedures to use in their own approach to memory card management. What about everyone else though? Any other tips or tricks to suggest for managing your media? Feel free to share those in the comments.

Custom Brushes

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Custom Brush

For this weeks tutorial, I thought to take a look at custom brushes and brush sets. It can be a pretty handy thing to have some custom brushes of things you do often, or looks and styles that you apply often to your photos (such as a signature, copyright, or some other such logo). The idea came from someone in one of the photo forums (NAPP forums if I recall correctly), asking if there was a brush set out there that had a set of hash marks (like for the days of the week). We talked back and forth on a few alternatives when it dawned on me – we could make a brush to do that! You really can make brushes to do whatever you want, it’s just a matter of doing it once and then saving it, much like an action.

So, here’s a tutorial that examines how to create, save, and load custom brushes inside of Photoshop. We’ll see you back here tomorrow! Until then, Happy Shooting and watch those apertures!

Creating Custom Brushes