“How to Promote your Photography using Facebook” plus 1 more: Digital Photography School

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How to Promote your Photography using Facebook Posted: 29 Nov 2010 12:17 PM PST A Guest Post by Saurabh Jain. Being an amateur photographer, promoting my photography from commercial stand-point was difficult. I started my own website (burning a good amount of cash) whose promotion took me endless mailers and sharing on social networks, resulting in a page-loads exceeding my expectations however, generating almost no business. I had a feedback mechanism which never saw light of more than a couple of dozen comments. Upon investigating I concluded that reaching out to mass audience is possible via mail but to remain fresh in their memory is not possible and eventually you are branded as a virtual terrorist disguising under email bombing! Therefore, I decided to give Flickr a try, I received considerable amount of comments and small business. No doubt Flickr is a great photo-sharing and networking tool but nothing beats Facebook, though it doesn't provide you with great photography tools like Flickr, when it comes to promoting your commercial interests or otherwise. Flickr enables you to connect to a large photographer community which may not really boost your business since most of them do what you are also looking at. However, through Facebook you really reach out to the audience who would be interested in hiring your services or buying your prints (if they like your work that is). Best way to promote your photography is to start your Fan page (best naming option would be "(your name) photography" or name of your studio). Starting a Fan page is easy but you should take care of certain things right from the onset to ensure a smooth run: 1. Pheromonise As butterflies are attracted to beautiful flowers so are humans. People will be attracted to your photos if you can titillate their visual senses and unless your photographs appeal to them they wouldn't lift that finger to press the like button. Hence, before starting a fan page have a backing of strong photographs which will pheromonise the fan base. 2. Rule of Patience Having created a Fan page, do not rush to upload all your work at once. Hold on! take a deep breath and control the anxiety to showcase your work. It is a slow rather laborious task which is sure to reap benefits if carried out patiently. 3. Customer is the king Start with uploading a couple of your best photos. Invite your friends requesting them to join the Fan page. Be polite and thank them once they have joined. You would want to treat others as you'd like to be treated. 4. Respect their "wall" Most important thing to do is not to clog your page with more than one photo a day. It will help you get a more focused response from your fan base and will keep them away from blocking your posts appearing on their wall. Posting a lot of photos at a time may irritate the viewer resulting in a more negative publicity rather than positive. Also, a person loses the patience to sit and comment on all the photos. Having a single photo ensures that you get all the eyeballs you year for! 5. Quality matters The guru-mantra here is "Focus on quality rest all will follow" Upload only the shots which make you say out loud "Wow". Posting not-so-good photos or just for the sake of posting will only result in a lower brand value. Make sure when you post, you post the best! 6. Touch their hearts Be proactive and alert! Create content which has a chronological, social or political importance and touches your fan base.For example on Children's day I posted a photo of a kid in her dad's arms and gave out a message on female infanticide which got me hits of over 300 people. The photo was shared by a lot of users which helped me gain more user base. 7. Tag people Don't shy away from tagging people. It only increases your brand value and fan base. As, a photo once tagged is displayed on the wall of the entire friends list of that person. Moreover, people feel happy if they are being tagged. 8. Be choosy As getting that one shot may take several agonising hours so does getting users to your fan page. Consider some interesting facts from the most popular fan pages. Roger Federer's official page with 5 Million fan base gets only 0.5% response (includes likes and comments)at max per post. Facebook's own page which has over 26 Million fans gets roughly between .1 to .3% response. Therefore, reach out to a set of audience you think could help you with the business. If you are a wedding photographer, it makes little sense to promote your page to someone in Iran when your operational area is limited to India. It will surely increase the number of users but may not lead to commercial benefits. Personally, I am very choosy of who joins my page and with a fan base of around 450 my photos receive response of somewhere between .8% and 7% with an average of 4.2%. Being selective has helped me stay close to constructive criticism and has helped me generate constant revenues which otherwise may not have been possible. Initially, it was a little tough but as the good work started spreading, word also spread. My work has taken me to a lot of places across India (all expenses paid). 9.) Ads Once you have constant revenues, you may opt for Facebook ads which are highly customisable as per age and locational preferences. They work out real cheap! If you take care of above points it is sure to result in a great fan page with quality fan base. Do you run a fan page? How is your experience from commercial stand-point? note from the editor: Don’t forget to check out the dPS facebook page here. ‘Like’ us to stay in touch. Check out more from Saurabh Jain on his… Facebook Page! Post from: Digital Photography School

DPS Giveway! – Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Video Tutorial Posted: 29 Nov 2010 06:01 AM PST Ladies and gentlemen, this is exciting! We are giving away not one, but three free copies of Trey Ratcliff’s downloadable version on his HDR Video Tutorial! Trey has taught thousands upon thousands of people how to do HDR through workshops, his award winning HDR Tutorial on his site, his book “A World In HDR” and now he has released a video tutorial which is just like going to a workshop! Watch as Trey actually works his way through processing 10 different images from start to finish and follow along each step of the way. This video download normally sells for $99 but we are giving away 3 completely free! So How Do I Enter To Win? It couldn’t be easier, all you have to do is leave a comment below telling us why you love HDR photography. That’s it! The contest will run 48 hours, and when the timer runs out we will choose 3 random winners. If you don’t win, no worries! You can still purchase the video tutorial for a special DPS discount of 10% using the coupon code “DPSISREALLYAWESOME” at checkout. Just follow this link to purchase the tutorial. Note: This coupon code will only be good from now until the end of the year! It is good for all 3 ordering options About Trey Ratcliff and Stuck in Customs Trey is best known for his site, StuckInCustoms.com, which has become the #1 Travel Photography Blog on the internet with around 350,000 visits per month including one from his mom. He’s also on Flickr and SmugMug, where his photos have recently passed over 45 million views. His work first became popular after he had the honor of having the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. After that, he was fortunate enough to be represented by Getty, and has been featured on the BBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC, and has had numerous showings around the world. Some of Trey’s Work Post from: Digital Photography School

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“Why Is The Snow In My Pictures So Blue?” plus 1 more: Digital Photography School

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Why Is The Snow In My Pictures So Blue? Posted: 28 Nov 2010 12:07 PM PST Snow! Some of us love to see the white stuff falling from the sky, as long as we don’t have to drive through traffic in it. Now imagine not only do the kids have the day off from school, but you don’t have to report to work! It’s time to go play in the….wait a second….why is the snow blue in half of my pictures? I don’t remember there being any blue snow. Blue snow happens because not all cameras see things the same way. Our human eyes and brain are still a thousand times better than the average camera at tasks like HDR, contrast and color correction. For those of us without certain conditions such as color blindness, we see snow under daylight conditions, for the most part, as snow. White stuff. In the sun? White. In the shade? White. Even in the dark of night, it usually looks white, unless colored by some city lights. Blue snow happens when a camera fails to recognize what snow looks like in the shade. Again, different cameras will handle things differently and maybe your camera is spot on, all the time. But maybe you get blue snow. I know I have from time to time, even with quality cameras. With a point and shoot camera, use the "Shade" white balance, if the camera has it. This setting can also be used with a DSLR. "Shade" tells the camera all the light hitting the main subject has come from indirect sources from the sun. This light is about 7500K, while noon-day daylight is around 5000K (give or take a few hundred K). If a camera is pointed to a sunny scene and then pointed at shade, it may not switch fast enough. This also happens if the scene is a mix of shade and directly lit objects. Mind you, even when not shooting snow, this blueish colorcast will be there, but it is not always as noticeable depending on the colors in the shade. Something might not seem right and if there is not a lot of white, the blue cast doesn’t show itself as prevalently. Let me show some examples of the importance of white balance in snow shots. I’ll use the exact same photo in the first set of examples, adjusting the white balance in Photoshop Lightroom. I will then drop the Blue Saturation in each photo to zero, to show the extent of colorcast (click on photos for 1000 pixel tall examples). This scene contains very little natural occurring blue, even from scattered light (the house is an off-white color). First, the original shot. ISO 100, 60mm, 1/125sec, f/5.0, Canon 7D, Canon 28mm-300mm lens, shot soon after sunrise. This is the control shot with white balance set to Daylight as selected in-camera (5250K). Now, I will select Cloudy in Lightroom (6500K). Below it is the same picture with Blue Saturation set to 0. Next is the Shade setting (7500K). Lastly, I selected the White Balance Selector tool and pointed it at a spot of well light snow on the railing. This brought back a balance of 9700K. It is interesting to note the drop in overall blue saturation that is obviously experienced as different settings are selected. As there is less blue, the yellow colorcast becomes more prevalent. From my own interpretation of the scene, the Shade setting is closest to the real life colors. When choosing the snow as a white balance, this swings the scale too far to the right. If you are wondering what the scene looks like in mixed light, here at the same pictures take around 1pm (a half hour past mid-day sun). ISO 100, 60mm, 1/200sec, f/7.1, Canon 7D, Canon 28mm-300mm lens. Set to Daylight. (5250K) Now Cloudy. (6500K) Now Shade. (7500K) White Balance Selector on the same snow spot in the shade, as before. (9300K) When I used the White Balance Selector to choose a spot on the sunlit snow, on average the reading came out to 5200K. Here, that white balance is the closest to color renditions in real life and that of the control in the second set of photos. In a mixed scene, there is little to be done to remove blue snow short of removing all blue saturation in post processing. But then, the scene will often look fake, especially if there are any blue objects in it. A slight decrease in the blue saturation will help and is what I believe our brains do to the images our eyes send it. Correcting for blue snow can be as easy as selecting the "Shade" white balance setting on your camera before you begin shooting. While that setting might not have seemed important before, it is vital in removing the blue colorcast most evident when viewing snow photos. It is also important to remember the limits of this setting, especially when moving into direct sunlight. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go play in the snow before it melts away! Post from: Digital Photography School

Using Nik Color Efex Pro to Draw the Viewer Into Your Image Posted: 28 Nov 2010 06:49 AM PST A Guest Post by Rob Dweck. The majority of Photoshop plug-ins specialize in one specific function or process. There are plug-ins for noise reduction, masking, black and white conversion, framing, and the list goes on. Unlike those one trick ponies, Nik Color Efex Pro and Onone Software Photo Tools both offer a huge selection of practical and creative options that can enhance almost any photograph. When I’m editing my images, Nik’s Color Efex Pro is easily the most used plug-in in my arsenal, and I will show you why over the next few posts. With dozens of filters to choose from, I find that the time can fly by as I experiment with various filters on a single image and play with the different settings. (Yes, I said play. There’s no reason for image processing to be grunt work. You can have as much fun and be just as creative when editing as when you’re shooting.) Two of my favorite Color Efex Pro filters are Vignette and Darken/Lighten Center. Both of these filters allow you to easily create darker and lighter areas in your frame to help direct the viewers eye within the image. Since the viewers eye is drawn to the brightest area, manipulating the brightness and darkness allows you to guide the viewer through your image.While not a substitute for selective dodging and burning, quick global adjustments can easily be accomplished. Sure, you can add a vignette to your image in Photoshop without a plug-in by using the Lens Correction Filter, but the Vignette filter in Color Efex Pro is far more flexible. The Lens Correction filter provides only two parameters, amount and size, for applying a vignette, whereas Color Efex Pro provides seven parameters. All of those extra parameters equals more control over your final image. On this Photograph of Mount Rainier, my goal was simple: Create a vignette to darken the edges and keep the viewer’s eyes in the image. This is especially important on the right side where the sky was brighter due to the position of the sun. That brightness could easily draw the viewer’s eyes to the edge and out of the frame. The first step was choosing a shape for the vignette. Color Efex Pro offers four options including round, oval and two rectangular choices. I generally gravitate towards the oval vignette since the majority of my photographs are rectangular and I find it gives me the most pleasing and natural effect. Rather than using the standard black vignette, I used the eyedropper tool to select a dark blue from the water near the bottom of the image. From there, I went between the Adapt Edges, Transition, Size and Opacity sliders to darken the edges while also taking care not to darken the top of the mountain or the bottom of the mountain’s reflection. I generally start with the Size slider, get to the approximate size of the vignette, and then change the opacity according to how dark or light I want the edges. By adjusting the Adapt Edges and Transition sliders I have additional control over the shape as well as the smoothness of the vignette. I usually stay with the higher values on the Transition slider to get a smoother, less obvious effect. Drag the Transition slider to far to the left and you'll see an obvious border where at the edges of the vignette effect. You may notice that the bottom left of the image is already fairly dark, so I want to apply less of the effect in this area. This is where Color Efex Pro, and Nik plug-ins in general, really shines. Using what Nik refers to as “U Point Technology,” control points can be dropped anywhere in the image and then used to increase or decrease the amount of the effect in that area. By dropping a control point in the lower left corner, I can reduce the amount of vignette and select the size of the area affected. In the final image, the edges are darkened and the bright area on the left no longer provides an escape route out of the frame. The power of the Vignette filter doesn’t stop there, using white, or another light color gives the opposite affect of what is achieved here: The edges become brighter instead of darker. Another great feature of the Vignette filter is the Place Center control which allows the center of the vignette to be placed anywhere in the image. Similar to the Vignette, the Darken/Lighten Center Filter can yield dramatic or subtle results. For this Leopard photograph, I used it to completely change the mood of the image. While on Safari in Okavango Delta in Botswana, my wife and I spent the several hours one morning tracking this elusive leopard. We first spotted him shortly after sunrise, but he was in the brush and on the move. Getting a clear shot was extremely difficult. By the time he came to a stop under a tree hours later, the sun was high in the sky and the light was quite harsh. Despite the unappealing light, I liked the pose and the facial expression, but there was no impact to the image. The biggest issue was that the leopard’s backside was brighter than his face, not exactly the makings of a captivating wildlife image. Enter the Darken/Lighten Center filter. By placing the center point just to the left of the leopard’s right eye and moving the center luminosity slider to the right, I brightened the leopard’s head. I then moved the border luminosity slider to the far left and brought the center size slider down to 11%. This created a small bright area around the leopard’s head while dramatically darkening the rest of the image. With the leopard’s head now the focal point, there were still some distractions and bright spots that needed to be toned down. The vignette filter took care of the edges, and with a little burning of the bright spots and some small adjustments to add detail to the eyes, the transformation was complete. The Darken/Lighten Center filter is also effective for more subtle adjustments. Use it in portraits to add a little pop to your subject or try it on still life images to bring up details. As with all plug-ins, the same effects can be achieved directly in Photoshop, but it will take far more time and effort to get such gratifying results. Rob Dweck is a San Francisco Bay Area based photographer who specializes in landscape and nature photography. His work can be viewed at robdweck.com. Post from: Digital Photography School

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