Over the last couple of years, I've mentioned Alicia Caine's Served Up Fresh website a number of times. For business savvy portraits photographers visiting her site is kind of like going to Mecca. I am not talking about just her product offers. Read her blog!

While equating it to a religious experience may be taking it a bit too far, let me tell you that I believe her guides: Happy Place Business Plan, Easy as Pie Pricing, Piece of Cake Marketing and the retired LuxUndercover are all resources portrait photographers interested in succeeding should buy, read and re-read.

Look, while I am now be an affiliate of her's, I bought every one of those products and devoured them when they first came out. In fact, thanks to these foundational guide books, I now think of myself more as a portrait photographer than ever before. Part of what she does well in each of these workbooks is she gives you a chance to think about your business in a very different way. When light bulbs pop on constantly, it's easy to see the kind of value that's delivered within the pages of these guide books. The worksheets have nudged me along a very different path than I was going on before.

Alicia is offering a rare (and I do mean rare because of how high the discount is) and epic summer sale of her products, now through Wednesday, July 24th.

You can purchase Happy Place Business Plan for $74.50, Easy as Pie Pricing for $174.50, Piece of Cake Marketing for $174.50 and the MegaPack (Easy as Pie + Happy Place) is for $197.50.

These are are all 50% off! Plus, the first 25 100 people to use the coupon code “EPICSALE” gets you Alicia's bonus download of her retired ebook LuxUndercover (valued at $149). If you ever wanted to get your branding and customer service right for high end clients, this book is priceless.

The sale doesn't last forever and given that Alicia is hinting at a new site and new products in the Fall, these may just not be offered in the future. The sale ends July 24th.

As I've said above, I am an affiliate and make a small commission on each sale (helps support this website).

Without a sale, you don't have a business. You have a hobby. Which, by itself may be where you want to be, but most readers of Tiffinbox are either professionals or aspiring professionals, so I figured I give you a head's up on this short video by Kristen Kalp introducing her new product offering called Sales Without Shame.

Some of you may recall that I reviewed Kristen's e-book, Circus Circus. If you follow Kristen's popular blog – BrandCamp Blog – you'll immediately grasp what she is trying to convey thanks to her lucid writing and her humor.

Sales Without Shame promises to be another remarkable and useful guide for those of us who are shy about in-person selling. If your online sales are off the charts, then you may not even need this guide. If, however, you are not seeing great results with that strategy and want to try selling your services and products to your clients face-to-face and don't know how, Kristen's guide is your ticket.

Personally, I do very little online sales. All of my portrait clients now expect to come in to meet with me after their session so that they can see all of the images I created for them and it gives them an opportunity to fully describe what it is they are looking to buy. Selling, to me, isn't about pushing products on unsuspecting clients. It's about having a good understanding of what my clients may need now and in the future and then suggesting a few valuable options to them.

While I have not had a chance to see the final version of Kristen's new guide, I mention it here because I find her writing and advice for photographers so very valuable. I trust that Sales Without Shame will teach me a few more ways to help my clients better appreciate the art that I create for them. And lucky for you, if you order Sales Without Shame, you get to learn from her as well.

So, here's what you should do next: Go to Sales Without Shame and enter your email address. Once you do that, you'll be sent a “sampler,” which in itself is chalk-full of great info that you can put to use in your business today. Then, at the tail end of this month (May 29th or so), you'll get an email inviting you to purchase the full version. Bingo!

UPDATE: Sales Without Shame launches on May 30th for $247, until June 8th when it goes up to $447. So jump to it!

Right around the holidays last year, just about everyone I know bought or received a camera. No, these weren't the point & shoot variety (hey we have our iPhones for that right?). These were DSLR‘s or digital SLR's. The excitement over opening the camera was palpable. I know because I received several emails soon after asking me … “So, I got a DSLR, but my images still suck. Why?”

My first response was always, “did you read the manual?” The silence at the other end was quite telling. Most of us, I know fail to read our manuals. When I bought my first Nikon DSLR, which I believe was the D70, I don't remember diving into the manual either. On the one side, there is a new toy to play with and on the other, my ego was saying to me: “Yeah, I can figure this out. No problem.” That's until I started seeing images I'd be ashamed to show my mom.

So, if the manual is way too daunting, or even boring, what do you do? Until today, you could have scoured the interwebs and patched together a bunch of the info that may have helped elevate your game. That too is time consuming and unless you are nuts about photography or pursuing as a professional, chances are slim you would be inclined to curate that information, digest it and then deploy it on your next go around with your DSLR.
Rob & Lauren Lim, the duo behind Photography Concentrate, have just published Extremely Essential Camera Skills. I was one of the few lucky ones to receive a review copy gratis. Having seen some of their earlier tutorials – Photo Editing Skills and Album Design Skills, I knew this one was going to be special.

Think of Extremely Essential Camera Skills as the foundational course you forgot to take when you started experimenting with your camera. It's exquisitely designed – consistent with their other tutorials and extremely engaging website (which you must bookmark). When you open up the PDF, you are presented with a set of colorful tabs for the different chapters such as: The Camera, Focusing, Exposure, Lenses, Depth of Field and Camera Settings. I found the built-in navigation to be very helpful as it makes it easy to skip pages or navigate back to the ones you want to read again.

Unlike other tutorials that teach but fail to train, what I loved about Rob & Lauren's latest offering is that they are serious about making sure you get the concepts they have just taught before moving on to the next chapter. They do this through tips, exercises, videos (more on this in a bit) and pop quizzes. Though it is incredibly thorough, Extremely Essential Camera Skills is not a read it and forget it kind of manual. The lessons you will learn, each one at your own pace, will stick with you for a lifetime. The definitions and demonstrations are easy to understand and absorb.

As a professional, most of the concepts were familiar to me. But that's only because I use my camera every day, so it does become intuitive. Having a guide like Extremely Essential Camera Skills will help you get to that point where you too can easily make images you are proud to show your family and friends.

If there was one area where I could see the authors develop more content, it's the section on using an alternative to that pesky flash that everyone insists on deploying. To their credit they do say this: “The built-in flash on cameras generally sucks.” So true. May we see a sequel to this guide that will dwell on off-camera flash? I hope so, but I do believe this guide will lay the foundation for better images using flash. So, I do urge you to get this one first.

The 7 videos by Lauren are fantastic. Her even, conversational tone and excellent examples helped me better understand the concept behind exposure compensation. So, the take aways are many. With Rob & Lauren's permission, I am considering using this guide book for photographers (I really don't want to call it a manual) in the beginning photography class I teach high schoolers. Yes, it's that good and it is perfectly fitted to meet the demands of amateurs and semi-professionals too.

As I have already stated, I received a review copy Extremely Essential Camera Skills and loved it. If you are struggling to use your DSLR, this guide book will help you get comfortable. For the next two weeks starting today, Rob & Lauren are offering a launch sale. You can get Extremely Essential Camera Skills for $29.97, that's 40% off the regular price of $49.99. In addition to the 89-page PDF and videos which you can view on your computer or your iPad, you will receive the Extremely Essential Camera Skills Field Guide, which you can print and tote around while you are photographing.

Full disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive a commission on the sale of this PDF to support Tiffinbox. If you enjoy the content on this site, I ask that you use the links in this post to buy Extremely Essential Camera Skills. Thank you!

This guest post is by Livingston, New Jersey photographer Chelo Keys.

If you’re a part-timer working hard to be taken seriously, save yourself from some of the mistakes I’ve made.

It’s no secret that part-time and emerging photographers have to work hard to shake off the “weekend warrior” label. First, it’s hard to be taken seriously when there are so many part-timers entering the market at super low rates. Second, it’s very difficult to form good relationships in the photographic community when both your weekdays and weekends are taken up. With that said it’s easy to find yourself in a place of isolation, stumbling in the dark and making mistakes as you try to build a sustainable business. But even if you’re thinking of throwing in the towel, the good news about being a part-timer is that it’s never too late to start over, reassess your business and earn respect amongst your colleagues.

I’ve made some whopping mistakes starting out. But, I’m in the mist of a huge overhaul and can say that the following helped me chart a path to starting anew.

Practice Humility

Picking up a camera for the first time and thinking you know everything about the business is seriously obnoxious. I did this, so I know. If you’re doing this, stop it. I once worked for a prominent photography studio. Their practices were “old school” but the clients were rolling in and the sales were piling up. I was convinced that they were doing it wrong because they didn’t blog, Facebook or have a fancy flash website. Instead of soaking it in and taking notice of what they were doing right, I was pig-headed, left the job and thought I could do it better myself, but far from it. I failed and flailed. Lesson learned: Never rebuff anyone that is successful.

Accept Critique

I don’t think there is anything more anxiety provoking than taking critique from colleagues. But if you have the ear of a successful and trustworthy professional, take advantage of her or him. I recommend face-to-face critique. But remember, there is nothing more frustrating than advising a person that has selective hearing. Make sure to be open and don’t take it personally. If their advice is sound and you rebuff them, it will only bolster the idea that part-timers are Uncle Bobs with no regard for building skills.

Be Respectful

Things are hard when you’re just starting out, working part-time or transitioning to full-time. You need advice, but maybe you’ve found that other professionals are reluctant to speak with you. First of all, it’s my belief that good teachers should be paid for their time. Personally, I don’t mind answering questions because I don’t think I’m a super star. But I have contacted prominent photographers in the past and expected them to spend their precious time divulging everything to me. How rude! Don’t do what I did. Instead, contact the person that inspires you and make it clear that you are willing to pay for their time. Most importantly state that you are looking for advice on your business and not wanting to know every detail about theirs. Who knows, maybe they won’t want to be paid – but don’t make the assumption that they owe you anything. I’m happy to say that I’ve found a great teacher thanks in part to being respectful of their time.

Don’t Be A Groupie

This goes along the same vein as being respectful. I’m very eager to learn anything I can from successful professionals and it took me a while to learn that prominent photographers are real people. I remember second shooting for someone I really admired. I spent so much time star struck that in the end my photographs of the day left little to be desired. I may have also made the person uncomfortable. Needless to say, they never called me back. I also remember landing a small part-time job with a studio I was completely enamored with. I was so blinded with admiration that I exaggerated my skills, asked way too many questions and found myself fired 2 weeks later. Remember, fawning is not always taken well by others.

Don’t Brag

It’s unbecoming. There is nothing wrong with posting that you’ve booked another wedding on Facebook or Twitter. However, when colleagues state that they are having a difficult time in this economy, don’t counter with “Don’t know what you mean! I’m doing better than ever!!” Especially if your prices are still relatively low and you’re not able to fully sustain yourself on your photography income. Remember, part of this business is about building good relationships.

Be Professional

This should go without saying but you should be paying taxes and have insurance, even if you are part-time. You should develop a sound business plan and formulate rates that adequately cover your expenses and don’t undermine the industry. We’ve all heard the “you have to start somewhere” excuse. But believe me, after undervaluing myself for close to 3 years I’d rather the “somewhere” I started from was an educated and sound place!

Take it Easy

This is the last and most important point. Don’t rush into things like I did. You’ll find yourself paying for mistakes long after they are made. I’m excited to say that there are some great changes coming to my photography business and that the path ahead is promising. That’s the other great thing about being part-time – you can take the time to do things right. But, if you’ve stumbled around like me you can always, always start over.

Your comments below will inspire a dialogue. We want to hear your opinions. So, step up and speak up!