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.

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!

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.

Photo of the Week – June 23, 2008

This dramatic photo is courtesy of David De Dios of Pheonix, AZ.

Photo of the Week – June 16th, 2008

This cover shot was created by Steve Bedell for a recent Senior Book.

Photo of the Week – June 9th, 2008

This twist on a traditional bridal portrait comes to us from Kevin’s Photography of Albuquerque, NM

Be sure to check back each Monday for a new Photo of the Week.