Heres a list of blogs that I follow of Off Camera Lighting Geniouses and Creative Dynamos that are in Wedding Photography now:
Neil Van Neilkerk – He knows his stuff. Straight from South Africa he has extensive experience and has been writing at his website planet neil for a long time even before the whole strobist.com boom.
Bruce Dorn – Bruce primarily blogs about gadgets and fun trinkets but he does speak of lighting often. He always talks about cinematic type of lighting. He is a master at lights.
David Ziser – He blogs at digital pro talk. His blog is excellant its always on schedule and he blogs everyday about something particular.
David Williams - I’ve learned from him and have personally attended his seminars. He’s brutally honest and very helpful. His seminars are great he tries to show you a more wholistic approach to photography by drawing influences from art history and portraiture.
Wedding photographers now have a elephantine predicament with digital photography: How do you store all those photos?!
Here are some suggestions:
External Hard Drives
Online Storage
DAM Expert – Hire a digital asset management expert
Here are some real world solutions.
Create a Workflow where you copy the DVD twice. One in a lightsafe box and another possibly in a fireproof safe or safebox at the bank
Get a hard drive that mirrors your hard drives as they’re being created. This is usually called a RAID Array. They come in 4 configurations. Not tech savvy? Hire a IT Tech to help you.
Buy multiple hard drives. Manually make sure they’re on different hard drives
Upload your photos onto the internet. I highly suggest SmugMug.
Backing up immediately
I like backing images immediately. After shooting a wedding make sure you burn and copy all your photos onto a dvd. DVD’s nowadays are very cheap and can be a good way to back up your files initially.
Backup onto another hard drive. Hard drives are pretty cheap nowadays. Some even come with built in RAID abilities. Which means if one of your hard drives fail you can just swap it out with another one.
Worried about Fire, Viruses or Theft? Find Another Space
Worried about fireproofing? Even if you do backup all your files with dvd it doesn’t mean that your place is fireproof. Heres some ideas:
Buy a Fireproof Safe – Purchase a safe and place your hard drives or dvds into that safe. But you could imagine eventuall you’d run out of space. This might be the best solution if you’re just starting.
Bank – rent a safe keeping box at the bank and store your dvd’s as well as important business assets there.
Online – Online is always another great option here.
Online Services
Smugmugis an excellent option. Smugmug allows unlimited storage as well as allows you to sell photos online through their website. Just purchase the account and there are many options that they provide to upload your photos: Lightroom, Browser Uploading, etc.
Mozy is an online backup service. You download their software and it automatically backup areas of your computer. The service is pretty transparent. I’ve never really actually tried it but their services are pretty affordable.
Carbonite is another online service that mirrors your computer data. It requires installing client software as well. Backups are scheduled automatically and are pretty transparent.
If you’re a smart photographer you should avoid the lines and shop online. There are actually some excellant deals at some of the online retailers like: adorama.com & amazon.com
Today would be a good day to stock up on external harddrives.
Hope everyone is having a great holiday. Happy holidays!
Google has taken the responsibility to archive and publish online all the photos shot by Life Magazine photographers. This is a tremendous and huge project.
I’m excited to see the results of this. Google hopes to translate this into 16 different langauges and who knows what they’re going to do to it next. Google has already archived a lot of texts and books that are currently fair use.
In part 3 we will explore the importance of how facebook can be the best free tool for you to find the right and perfect client for you.
Network. Old school networking in person never changed when transcended into online social networks. Just make sure you don’t come off the get go to try to sell. Remember online communities and online social networks always have etiquette. Always observe a community or group first and see how they interact (do your research!!!!!). Some things you can do: Post and comment on photos. Offer
Pimp your profile: Add some facebook applications that will adorn and display your favorite photos. Which leads me to the next point:
Start a conversation: Create some sexy photos (Not that kind of photos; you perv!) with couples or the type of photos that you’re so passionate for. The photos that make you excited to that you became a wedding photographer.
Wall Posting: Find whatever reason you can to post onto other people’s walls. Try to connect with people when they’re at their most happiest point of their life: Comment on status messages conveying or exuding their extreme happiness, Birthdays, Anniversaries, engagements etc.
Be patient: Social networking and social media is not something you can produce ROI on instantly. But this is free. The only thing you are spending is your time. Time is essentially something you have to commit to.
Have fun: Be yourself, and be expressive. You’re pretty much doing this to make friends. This will drive your word of mouth marketing.
Keep updated: Use facebook apps to host and update your network with new and fresh wedding photos. Make sure you keep your facebook status updated as well.
Twitter: Use twitter to update your facebook status. If you don’t know about twitter please visit http://www.twitter.com . There are zounds of awesomephotographers . I will discuss Twitter in some next social marketing series.
Add friends: add more friends as you go along. I would suggest meeting people in person and then adding them. You have to remember about etiquette. Most people won’t add you unless you’ve got a reason.
Go do it now. That’s it for now. Go out and do what i’ve told you to.
In this part II of our 4 part series we will look at building your network. We will look at creative ideas to grow the number of friends you have in your network.
Facebook becomes the best ways to keep up to people. It is virtually the best Contact Resource Manager. It is so easy nowadays to connect with people and keep up with them. Part of being successful is meeting some of your contacts in person and then going home and remembering to add them. Make sure you have permission from them. Remember Facebook is permission-only marketing.
Add friends you already have on Facebook. With every person, there are probably a handful of friends that you already know. It is probably a better idea to build your network with existing friends that you already know. So if you can start with the closest friends you have and add them to Facebook.
Convince friends to join Facebook. If your closest friends aren’t on Facebook have no fear. Just ask them to take a few seconds and themselves.
Network with people in person. Stir up a conversation. Where ever you go there’s always people to meet and talk to. Bring it up in conversation and discuss your experiences of Facebook and let them know what they’re missing out on. Some might even be so curious that they’ll join and add you themselves
Patience. Facebook is also about letting your network of friends grow organically. You didn’t accost individuals and meet the friends (you did now in real life) by just demanding them to be your friends instantly. That would be silly and preposterous.
Marketing. Publicize that you and your business are on Facebook. Put it on your website, Use in store signage, email marketing, in advertising you already currently are pursuing (make sure if you are doing print you check out the guidelines for logo placement).
Next month we will cover some marketing strategies to pimp your Wedding Photography.
Alesky previously emailed me a while back in response to my post requesting wedding photographers for interview.
We’re looking to spotlight more wedding photographers as time goes on. We just require that people place a link back to our blog. Wedding Photographers Blog: How long have you been doing wedding photography? Alesky Antoniewicz: I have always been “official” family photographer but professionally I have been
shooting weddings for about 7 years.
WPB: Where are you located ?
AA: I am based in Chadwell Heath but I usually meet with clients at their places
where they feel more comfortable and relaxed.
WPB: What do you photograph with?
AA: Most of the times I use Canon 24-70/f:2.8L and 70-200/f:2.8L lenses attached to Canon Eos 5D camera. I use prime lenses for portraits and posed photos but zooms are much more convenient when there is no time for lens swapping.
WPB: How are you trying to do to improve the wedding photography business
overall?
AA: By being knowledgeable, courteous and dependable I strive to give the client a quality of service that helps make the special day, and the memories after, a treasure to share with family and friends. I also always over deliver by giving something more than agreed. Never less.
WPB: What is your favorite wedding?
AA: I never had a nightmare wedding so all my weddings were good and everything went smoothly. I always thought that if things go wrong there is more to talk about years later. There is one wedding I remember for the atmosphere of the party after the ceremony. That was the first wedding I would enjoy more as a guest and I regretted I was at work.
WPB: What made you decide to pursue wedding photography (You can’t say for the
money)? AA: Long time ago someone told me that the most important thing in life is doing what you really like. That was something that helped me with the decision. Photography was my passion throughout all my life so I thought I could join profession with pleasure. So far I still enjoy weddings and I still think it’s one of the most rewarding jobs. I must admit I didn’t expect it to be so hard but knowing that people can keep memories of their special day thank to me makes my heart warmer.
Alesky has a website. You can see more of his work at the following: www.aleksy.co.uk and he can be reached at alex@ashiro.co.uk if you inquire about the technical details about his work.
