Going to try something new for Monday's – will give you all a weekly wrap up from the previous week, just in case you have missed reading a post or watching a tutorial or video interview.

Love The Products & Services Posted On Tiffinbox? talked about how some of the reviews of products and services mentioned on Tiffinbox have actually been very useful to you and your photography business.

Robert Norman wrote a guest blog post on How To Use CardMunch To Manage Business Cards, an application for your iPhone that will scan and save your data. Pretty cool!

Leon Sandoval from Colorati came back to Tiffinbox for another guest blog post about < a href="https://tiffinbox.org/how-do-you-keyword-your-digital-images/">keyboarding digital files. He had two short tutorials on using Lightroom or Bridge, whichever works best for your workflow.

Blair Phillips has a handle on using video to attract high school senior clients to his studio. In his guest blog, “Video Speaks Louder Than Words,” he tells us just how he goes about it.

Lastly, I had an opportunity to speak and interview David Hobby, the photographer/teacher behind Strobist, a veritable repository for off-camera flash users. David also spoke about his new project “HOCO360,” photographing the people and events in Howard County, Maryland. Check it out!

P.S. This weekly wrap idea was highly influenced by the awesome Copyblogger blog. You ought to check it out too.

Blogs began as personal journals – ones that were kept private or open to the world. Now they are so much more than diaries. They are a way of communicating with your clients. Call it “marketing” if you will, but it works. If you are in need of learning something specific, there is likely a blog that covers that niche.

Photography is no different, though there are tons of photography blogs out there, including this one. What I've envisioned, of course, is to make this site truly community driven. That means hosting guest bloggers, entertaining opposing viewpoints in the comments section and being open to suggestions on making this site better for everyone.

To an extent, I have to be careful about what I publish and even promote. I am contacted virtually every week by a vendor looking to have her or his products and services mentioned here. And I am happy to promote them if (and it's a big IF) the products and services are truly helpful for other photographers.

There are times when I am sent review copies of magazines, books, scripts and Photoshop actions. Obviously, once these are sent to me, I get to keep them. If I am sent camera equipment to test, I do have to return those of course. While I am open to receiving these gifts and opportunities to review items, I am clear on one thing – if the items do not meet my standards or aren't going to be very helpful for other photographers – I reserve the right to not mention it here. Does that sound fair to you? There is little or no point in berating a product or service in public when we all know that we are all just trying to make a go of it. I do and have in the past emailed the vendor privately with my thoughts. So, please be sure that I do act as a filter, for your benefit.

The blog post about creating blog montages was clearly helpful to Richard Esposito, a Connecticut-based wedding photographer. Read his testimonial below:

“Thank you for the suggestion with using Storyboard! I used to do these collage type blogs in the past and it was way too time consuming. I just gave up. I write actions like this all the time, but I didn't have the time to even think this up. The Storyboard script for Photoshop is beyond just an action with all it's options. I purchased it and it will now be a big part of my blogging workflow. As you know, I'm a bit of a workflow junkie. Thank you Seshu and Storyboard! I'm loving the Tiffinbox blog.”

Or, this one by Stacey Doyle on Twitter just today:

I am loving @brandcampblog's Circus Circus to help me with my writing! Thank you @PicSeshu for your review! http://bit.ly/ewlClz

So, here is my question to you – Do you love the products and services mentioned here on Tiffinbox?

Was it an e-book like Ed Verosky's series on Taking Portraiture To The Next Level or Stuart Little's recent tutorial on creating rounded corners in Lightroom 3?

Tell me which blog posts you have found useful. Would you like to see more reviews, tutorials, or both? Email me at seshu at tiffinbox dot org. I look forward to hearing from you all. If you have suggestions on products and services that you feel photographers would find useful, please contact me as well. I am always open to learning about what is out there.

Stuart Little, is a Photographer, Writer, Blogger and Photoshop Educator with over 18 years experience in the field. Stuart has been teaching both Amateur & Professional Photographers since 1998 and he is based in the Scottish Coastal Town of Ayr in the West of Scotland. Visit Stuart’s website http://www.alittlephotoshop.com. Read his first post about creating rounded corners in Lightroom 3.

Thanks once again to Seshu for inviting me to create another LIghtroom video tutorial for your viewing pleasure. Today I am going to show you how to fake a Tilt n Shift lens effect directly within LIghtroom 3. Now I am not going to bore you with the history of this very popular style of image processing but needless to say there are 3 ways you go do this effect.

1. In Camera
2. In Photoshop
3. In Lightroom – Which is the way we are going to do it today.

There are two main reasons for doing this effect in Lightroom and Photoshop. 1) Shallow Depth of Field and 2) If you have an image taken from a high vantage point, then you can make it look like a miniature model partly because of the shallow depth of field blur and partly because of the subject and angle of the image.

In this video tutorial I show you how to create the effect from a shallow depth of field point of view which is how I mainly use the technique in Lightroom. If you want to go down the faking a miniature model look, then in my view you are better doing it in Photoshop. I have that very video tutorial over at alittlephotoshop.com if thats of interest to you.

Learn more about Tilt Shift Photography.

If you have examples of tilt ‘n shift work, please share them as links in the comments section. We'd love to see how you have used Stuart Little's technique, or your own.

Stuart Little, our next guest blogger, is a Photographer, Writer, Blogger and Photoshop Educator with over 18 years experience in the field. Stuart has been teaching both Amateur & Professional Photographers since 1998 and he is based in the Scottish Coastal Town of Ayr in the West of Scotland. Visit Stuart's website http://www.alittlephotoshop.com.

Thanks to Seshu for giving me the opportunity to share with you a really cool and utterly simple technique for creating a rounded border from within Lightroom 3.

When Adobe brought out Lightroom 3 they added 2 new features to the post crop vignette that made creating vignettes even better than before. So much so that the older paint overlay style has kind of been forgotten until now.

You can watch the video for all the juicy know-how but for those of you who just want to get stuck in via your RSS reader then slide all the post-crop vignetting sliders to the left for a black rounded border, job done, nuff said. Yep! its that simple But here is the another cool thing. If you want a white border then just take the amount slider all the way to the right.

Best thing of all. You can save the whole lot as a simple preset so that one click will take care of it all in future. Fire up the print module and set the background colour to compliment the border colour. Make sure you are using custom layout and then you can drag n drop the round images directly onto a layout ready for printing. Although if you are going down the inkjet route I would go for a white border and save yourself some ink. Enjoy the video tutorial and dont forget to swing but alittlephotoshop.com for more Lightroom 3 training and free workflow actions for Photoshop.

Stuart has offered to send me another blog post, this time about creating a tilt-n-shift effect in Lightroom 3. Here's the deal, though, for that to happen I need to see at least 20 comments from you. Ask questions or suggest an alternative way of creating round corners. But I do need to hear from you. So, will you chime in? If you liked this post by Stuart, I think you will enjoy the next one too.

Dustin Meyer is an internationally acclaimed wedding and portrait photographer with clients across the country. WPPI speaker, owner of MpactPhoto Blog, Collages.net CLASS leader, and contributor to the Pay It Forward Blog, Dustin is all about giving it back when it comes to marketing, social media, Lightroom, and sales techniques.

You’re nervous. As the barista brings you your latte, you glance at the clock in apprehension. The sound of your heartbeat fills your ears as you inspect your outfit yet again. Questions like “What if she doesn’t like me?” and “What if I sound like an idiot?” race through your mind as the door to the café opens and in walks the woman you came to meet.

Take a deep breath. You’re not on a date. You’re meeting with a potential bride. However, many times as we get prepared to meet with clients for the first time, it can feel just like your first date. Except, in the dating world, booking brides would be the same as competing on the Bachelorette. You’re not the only one hoping to shoot this wedding and therefore being yourself is more important than ever.

In most major cities, the wedding photography industry is pretty oversaturated. Everyone is grabbing a camera and calling themselves photographers. The frustration builds as the photo community begins to collapse on itself as we all try to compete with each other on pricing, style, and products.

In the beginning, our studio had booths at bridal shows and advertised in local wedding magazines. However, I couldn’t help but feel like a number as the overwhelming sea of brides passed our booth again and again. Identity can get lost as the crucible of marketing boils everything we have down to the numbers game. “How many images do you shoot per wedding” and “The guy three booths down can shoot my wedding for X dollars, how good can you do on that price” are questions that become so common it makes you want to just put down your camera and walk away.

But you’re not a number. You’re a photographer. Pricing and even photographic style don’t have a face attached to them. This is why it’s most important to get your personality out there.

Your personality is the one thing that other studios cannot copy. It’s who you are, along with the style and portfolio you’ve developed over the years. By letting go of the copycat game (mimicking another photographer’s Photoshop effects or stealing someone’s price sheet at a wedding expo) you free yourself to just be you. And that’s exactly what brides are looking for.

It’s easy to feel like the guy next to you must be doing it better than you, hence why so many people are doing the same thing. However, it’s far easier to just stand out by being yourself. By putting as much of your personality on your site, in your work, or in your presentation, you’ll find that the quality of your clients will increase dramatically.

As we all probably know, it was much better to be yourself back when you were dating. It’s the same when it comes to booking brides. The more you just act like you, the more compatible you are with your clients. So relax, have another sip of your latte, and be a pro at being you.

Got something on your mind after reading Dustin's blog post? Sound off below in the comments. We love to hear from you.