Today I had the pleasure of partaking in a Webinar interview with Michelle Stark, Senior Photo Editor at Men's Health Magazine.  She discusses what the magazine looks for in it's photographers and the imagery it uses.  Advice is also given on how to present yourself when attempting to contact a magazine editor.

The following "article" is my personal notes/outline (interpretation / opinions) of the information covered in the interview.

Price Negotiations Strategies for Photographers

These are my notes from a recent Webinar I attended on how to better negotiate with clients for the best prices and terms. This webinar was presented by Photoshelter and hosted by Blake Discher.

The following notes are not verbatim. And not necessarily proper English, but I've organized it into the basic main topics that were covered. I think you'll still find some really good information.

I recently attended a very interesting webinar on how to better negotiate with your photography clients.  It discussed how to speak with the client, what questions to ask and a lot of good advice on controlling the conversions for the best prices and terms.  I’ve organized this overview into the basic main topics that were covered. I think you’ll still find some really good information.  This is not so much an article as my personal notes I took while listening, but I’m sure they can be quite useful for you as well.

The most popular article on this site is my in depth reviews of all the leading photography hosting sites w/ ecommerce.  You can find the article here: http://www.bigsunphotography.com/archives/598.

Today I dug deep into both Zenfolio and SmugMug to update any changes that have occured since my last review.  The two primary changes of note were the improved cart system for Zenfolio and the exceptional Lightroom plugin for SmugMug.

In addition I finished my long awaited research on both Saatchi Online and PhotoReflect.  I had high hopes for both of these services, but in the end had to deem them as unworthy.  You can read why in the reviews.  Since they simply were not useful (in my opinion for myself or my main audience) I kept the review short and sweet.

If you’ve been looking for a new website for your photography business.  Or just better galleries for your hobby.  You might want to check out BG Website Templates.   They are running a 10% off sale on all template types including their Photography Flash CMS sites.  I’ve used these myself and they are great.  Up and running in an hour with a full Content Manager system built in.   No programs to learn or buy.  It’s a hell of a site for not a lot of cash.  Anyway, I’m posting because they are having a sale and I can personally vouch for their products and service.  Check out the selection of Flash CMS Photography Websites.

Copyright laws and registration of photography images is complex and no fun at all.  Not for us artistic types anyway.  So more often than not, photographers know little to nothing about what their rights are and more importantly how to protect their work.  The following article is not going to dive into too much of that since entire books can be written on the subject.  What you will find below is a brief overview of your rights.  Then I tell you why it’s all for nothing if you do not register your artwork as well with the government.  Finally and most usefully I take you step by step through the registration process to show how relatively easy it is to protect your work.  This is basic information you can’t do without as a photographer or visual artist.

Hey folks!  I'm happy to bring you what I hope is a well received gift.   My personal Lightroom Keyword Library in Adobe Lightroom 3.x format.  So why would you want this you may ask?  Well, maybe you don't, but if you've put much effort toward creating a hierarchical keyword list in Lightroom including synonyms, then you'll know how very time consuming this can be.  To give you an idea, I've been working on this one for two years (estimated 200  hours)  and it's still very much a work in progress.  In it's current state it has over 6,000 categories, keywords and synonyms.

You may not find my particular style of organization to be your favorite,  In fact I'm betting you'll think it's a little odd.  But that is irrelevant as you can easily reorganize my hierarchal system to something which works for you.  Where you are really benefiting from my work is in the extensive list of keywords (and synonyms) which I'm providing.  This allows you to add one keyword and get almost every other keyword you need (for example type in "flamingo" and you'll also get "bird, birds, flamingos, feathers, wing, animals, wildlife and pink")

The following tips are a consolidation of ideas I picked up from listening to an interview with Ami Vitale.   I highly recommend watching/listening to the entire video as there is a whole lot more to the interview than these few bullet point.  The actual full interview can be found within the PhotoShelter Blog ( PhotoShelter website ).  You will find many great interviews and blog insightful articles on the photoshelter site.

Everyone needs marketing, especially photographers who are generally strapped for cash and have a world of competition to deal with.  After all, you can’t make sales if people don’t know who you are, that you happen to be a photographer and where to see your work.   Now,, there are a lot of ways to market.   Some cost lots of money (ads, email campaigns, etc), others like “Gorilla Marketing” and “Social Network Marketing” are effective (and should be done as well) but they take a lot of your time and energy.  One option is free and takes zero effort…

The dream of becoming a photojournalist is a common goal for millions of aspiring photographers.  The allure of endless travel, exotic locals, meeting the famous or even covering the dangers of war and conflict have inspired many to pick up their cameras in hopes of joining those elite.  The problem is becoming a photojournalist can be compared to heading off to Hollywood to start your new movie star career.  There are a limited number of jobs and usually you have to work long and hard at things you would rather not do, just for an opportunity to get your foot in the door.  Well, maybe that's about to change.  There is good news for the aspiring photojournalist (though possibly bad news for the established one).  A company called Demotix (along with others in the same vein) are paving the way for what might be called "street journalism".