PhotoPressPro – Your Photos. Your Design. No Code.

PhotoPressPro is a WordPress theme designed specifically for professional photographers, featuring a slidehow header, dropdown navigation menu, and an easy to use control panel.  PhotoPressPro makes it easy for you to customize all aspects of your blog, and lets you display full screen images, with copyright protection built in.  Having your own blog is essential in today’s digital world, and PhotoPressPro gives you all the tools you need to get started displaying your photos online and reaching new clients.   Click here to learn more.

Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?

Caught on Film has a good answer to a question that you may have been asked from your customers before – “Why do you charge so much for a print that I can get at Wal-Mart for under two dollars?”

The answer of course is that your clients aren’t paying for just a piece of paper – they are really paying for your time and expertise.  Or, as Caught on Film puts it, “Think of it this way – the next time you pay $X to get your hair done, a pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional.“

Read the entire article here.

HDR – High Dynamic Range Photography

Website cambridgeincolour has a good tutorial on the technique of creating HDR photos from a series of bracketed exposures.  The result is an image with with incredible tonal range.

This is acheived using Photoshop’s built-in ‘merge to HDR’ feature, and then tweaking the results.  The tutorial is a little on the technical side, but very good.  Read the full article here.

Obama’s Official Presidential Portrait Released

President Barack Obama’s official portrait was released Wednesday on change.gov.  The portrait was taken by Pete Souza, the newly appointed official White House photographer.  It is the first time that an official presidential portrait was taken with a digital camera.

Since it’s digital, we can take a peek at the EXIF data:

It was shot Wednesday, Jan 13 at 5:38 PM with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II using a 105mm lens stopped to f/10.  Exposure was 1/125, and the ISO was 100.

Online Tilt-Shift Tool

I’ve been playing with this cool website for the past few days.  Tiltshiftmaker.com lets you upload a photo and then automatically apply a tilt-shift effect.  It basically makes your image look like a photo of a miniature model.When your file has been transformed, the site will let you download it.  Unfortunately, it also resizes it to 72ppi, so you can’t print from it.  However, I found a tutorial on Design Pitstop that shows how to get this same effect using Photoshop.  Have fun!

Brides Speak Their Minds About Photographers’ Web Sites

As a web designer, I found this article incredibly interesting – Photo District News asked three brides to evaluate the websites of five different photographers from around the country.  Their answers are thoughtful, and give valuable insight into what might be going through potential clients minds as they view your site.  In a nutshell, the brides interviewed wanted to see pictures, of course.  Large, easy to navigate pictures.  The other thing that they placed a high importance on was biographical info and photographers blogs.  Their goal in visiting sites was really to find a photographer that they felt comfortable with, and they are basing this on the photos that they see and the personal information that the photographer reveals.

What ways could this photographer improve their site?
Jendrek: I would put the portfolio work before the info because I want to see the work before I get into details.
Saba: Organize differently, make it more user-friendly. I thought the groupings and topics were helpful though.
Erb: Add more photos, and more personal information. It is best to find a photographer who has a similar personality to the bride and groom and I would like to see more of her personality on the website.

Read the entire article here.

ProPhotoShow.net Podcasts

ProPhotoShow.net has a nice collection of podcasts focusing on marketing, equipment reviews, shooting techniques, software, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  Their podcast archive is here, and I believe they can also be found on iTunes.

Setting your prices – a comprehensive guide for wedding photographers

I am often asked questions about pricing by customers that are relatively new to the field of professional photography. They are unsure what to charge, and aren’t confident that they are pricing their services competitively, while still ensuring that they can make a profit. The short answer is… it’s complicated. It depends on the region of the country that you are in – prices in the Northeast, for example, are usually a good deal higher than studios in the Midwest – your overhead, the amount of time you spend meeting with clients, shooting and processing images, and a host of other factors. A good place to start is to look at websites of other photographers in your area, and see the range of prices that they offer.

I came across this guide today by Stacy Reeves, a wedding photographer in Dallas, Texas. In her own words, this is “The Single Greatest Guide to Wedding Photography Pricing That Ever Was and Ever Will Be.” It covers every aspect of analyzing your business and its financial needs, and then using that information to set effective prices. But, I will warn you, it is comprehensive – 24 pages to be exact. Still, I think it will be helpful, and not only for new photographers, but for established studios, too. There’s a lot of good information and advice, and I think it’s great that Stacy took the time to write this guide and that she made it available for free so that others can benefit from it. You can download her guide in pdf format from here:

The Single Greatest Guide to Wedding Photography Pricing That Ever Was and Ever Will Be

Cooksey-Talbott’s Vertoramas

Ralph Cooksey-Talbott has been photographing and printing landscapes and nature scenes since the early 70s, when he studied with Ansel Adams.

Cooksey, based in California, is now working in a vertical panorama format.   He calls his images vertoramas, and I think it gives his landscapes a really unique perspective.

“As I made more panoramic images I rapidly realized that there was only so much room to display 4 and 6 foot images.

I then started looking at the world in a vertical format and started getting images that are 10-15 inches wide by 4 feet tall.

A number of these images have a 180 degree field of view and show the world from looking nearly straight down to a little more then straight up.”

His gallery has lots of great images, and he also blogs about shooting techniques.  Poking around on his sight, I was happy to see that he prints using the same Epson 9600 printer that we have here in the lab for making our giclée prints.  Check out his gallery for some inspiration.

ImagingUSA – Jan 11 – 13, Phoenix, AZ

If you are planning on attending the ImagingUSA trade show in Phoenix next week, be sure to stop by booth #1247 and say hello to Ken and Steve.  They’ll be showing and talking about LustreColor’s latest products and services, including the Big Package,  our complete wedding package featuring one bridal book, 2 parents books, and 8 mini books, for one low price.