My friends at Photoshelter have packed a one-two punch by launching two guides about growing your portrait photography business.

Part 1 of the series will interest portrait photographers who photograph families, kids and high school seniors.

This one has tips from seasoned portrait photographers to target an audience, determine pricing packages, master people skills, and influence word-of-mouth referrals. Plus the guide has tips to:

– Build a portrait photography business from the ground up and grow a presence online.
– Capture a subject’s personality, read body language and be an expert storyteller.
– Demonstrate a unique style when shooting kids and seniors.

Learn more about this guide here.

Part 2 of the series is geared specifically to editorial and commercial portrait photographers.

Portrait photographers will get pointers to:

– Prepare for a shoot, including the top questions to ask before you arrive.
– Build connections with clients with great customer service.
– Impress photo editors with an exceptional online portfolio.
– Get smart about pricing and negotiating contracts and licenses.

The guide also contains interviews with some great portrait photographers, including Brian Smith and Jim Jordan, to get their tips on shooting killer photography, plus the secrets to great portrait lighting.

Learn more about this guide here.

After you download both guides, would you please come back here and let us know what you thought of them? What did you particularly take away from them and how will you deploy those tips into your portrait photography business. Inquiring minds want to know! Comment below.

Houston based photographer Christine Tremoulet described a new project she has co-founded, called Vivid & Brave, for creative women.

If you are a creative woman, running a business that requires you to write blog posts from the heart and evoke your core vision for your ideal clients, you are going to want to check out Vivid & Brave.

Christine and I sat down last week to talk about Vivid & Brave and what it means for creative women.

Vivid & Brave is a labour of love collaboration between Christine & Stephanie. After meeting at a professional photographer's conference in 2011 and working together over the past two years as mentors, we learned we are committed to the same mission – to help women rediscover the parts of themselves that far too often get lost in the journey of life. We want to help you find your voice again, and share it with the world.

From Christine's last message to me, I know there are only 4 spots left in this inaugural class she is offering with Stephanie O.

Find out more about Vivid & Brave and apply to be a part of this new experience. Your business and your clients will thank you for it!

Amanda Kraft is a photographer and holistic health coaching living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She photographs high school seniors and recently created Stop Editing, Start Living to help creative professionals regain control of their businesses, so they can live the life they have always dreamed of. Most days she can be found coaching her clients, preparing gourmet dinner, relaxing with her husband or enjoying the open road in her jeep. Read part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this series before continuing ahead.

Visualizing A New YOU!

We've discussed taking back control of your schedule, setting up boundaries and now getting back to the basics of eating.

Remember it took you awhile to reach this point in your life and an overnight fix isn't the answer. You will need to chip away each day until you find the right work/life balance for you. What works for me and my family might not be right for yours. It's going to take a bit of trial and error, until you are headed in the direction of your desired goals. Hopefully my suggestions have put you closer to finding the balance.

It is easy to become consumed with our businesses that we forgot that they are only an extension of who we are. We are on some level or another deeper than our craft. If you are unsure of who you are without your photography, graphic design, web design or videography business than one exercise I suggest you do is create a vision board.

Schedule a “personal day”, listen to your favorite music and day dream about the life you want to live, remove your business from the picture. Simply focus on everything that you want to experience, own and embrace in your life. Take those dreams and put them on paper: maybe you want to vacation in Hawaii during the off season in a little hut on a cliff overlooking the ocean, learn to paddle board, treat yourself to a designer purse, fit into your skinny jeans again. Whatever your dreams are, find photographs that represent what you desire and incorporate them to your board.

Each day, when working at my desk my vision board is within sights and it is amazing all of the “visions” I have included that have come to fruition. Think back to when you started your business and you created some sort of vision for your business from the logo, website style, colors and tag lines. It's time to use the same concept for creating the vision for your life. 

I hope you have found this series helpful to you and that some or all of it has resonated with you. If you would like to learn more, I am here to help you. Feel free to contact me through my website.

I am also giving away one seat to my next Stop Editing, Start Living workshop. To enter, simply follow the prompts below to follow both me and Seshu on Twitter and LIKE both of our Facebook pages. One random winner will be drawn on September 30th.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Paul Jarvis is the web designer behind Danielle LaPorte, Justine Musk and Alexandra Franzen‘s web sites. If you visit each of those fine establishments, your jaw will drop. At least mine does. Paul is also a writer. You can check out his books here.

Paul publishes a newsletter which I rather religiously open every single time and read it because I personally like his restrained or minimalist style. His approach is often matter-of-fact, based on his experiences as a designer and might I say, a thinker. Just about everything he produces feels mindful and almost precise.

In one of his recent newsletters he offered to make some time to speak with blog publishers about his new ebook called “Everything I Know.” Unlike his other book projects that were self-published and were offered only as electronic downloads, “Everything I Know,” is going to be produced as a hard-cover book if his Kickstarter campaign meets its goal of raising $20,000. That he is well beyond the half-way point right now tells you a little something about this project. People want to see “Everything I Know,” in print.

My goal for this book is to illustrate the potential you've got inside you, right now, to do something unique and innovative.

Before he and I sat down to chat, I insisted that he send me a review copy (on the promise of course that I would still support his project). He promptly sent me a 20-page teaser, which I read in about 10 minutes flat. The large font, simple sentences and short (and funny) anecdotes corralled my attention and had me nodding as I quickly turned the pages.

“Your work is a reflection of you, so why no make it something you love?”

Though I have only read a part of “Everything I Know,” I get the sense that it is less a “how-to” type book and more of a “write your own manifesto” type book. If you are spinning your wheels not knowing what to pursue, I would urge you to take a closer look at this book. It may just help define who you are and why you want to do what you do.

For now, let's listen to this conversation I had with Paul about his new ebook project:

“We need more people who make things. Useful and meaningful things that change the world.”

Krista Guenin, a wedding photographer based in Boston is on a mission to end the sex slave industry in Nepal and India.

I recently chatted with her about Untouchable: Children of God, a documentary project she is looking to complete by the end of December of this year.

Thousands of Nepali minors are forced to sleep with more than fifty men per day; they are locked into rooms or cages where they are beaten, starved, drugged, burned and raped by their captors and countless men who use and abuse them.

What will strike you the most about Krista is her commitment and conviction to help these girls out. To her, and this struck me most profoundly, it simply makes sense to use her skills as a photographer – what she refers to as a “gift from God” – to better people's lives.

It's not an easy commitment to make. She could have just as comfortably decided to simply photograph weddings in New England and been quite content. But she chose to step out of her comfort zone a number of times, to connect with these girls from India and Nepal and to tell their stories so that we may see them as human beings.

What will end the sex slave industry in Nepal and India? Conventional wisdom points to first changing a mindset among men. And this documentary, Untouchable: Children of God, aims to do just that.

Whether you are a woman or a man, I urge you to support this project. Krista and her colleagues are about half way there right now. Help them reach their goal to raise $50,000 so that they can finish this film and screen it in Nepal, India and more than likely distribute it worldwide.

To learn more about this project, please visit Untouchable: Children of God. If you have questions for Krista, please step up and ask them below. She has promised to come back and respond to you.

We all have a responsibility to do something. Every day that we delay another girl dies. The situation is urgent, and this film spotlights ordinary people compelled to take extraordinary risks for the cause of freedom.

Also, are you pursuing a personal photography project like Krista? Please feel free to tell us about it in the comments section below or email me directly.