Today's guest post is by Mike Hartley, a website developer and founder of bigflannel, an online photography template. Mike has been building websites for photographers for 12 years. His commendations include PDN competitions, an American Photo cover, an ID Magazine Annual Design Review, Communications Arts sites of the day and the Webbies.

SEO and Web Design For Photographers

Photographers get a return from their website when 1) people who want to buy photos or photography find the website and 2) when they do find the site, it makes them want to choose and use the photographs or photographer they have found.

These two things are equally important.

Google says “Googlebot's got no eyes” and there doesn't seem to be much chance of that changing soon. What they mean is it's difficult to index anything other than words. They don't pay attention to fonts, colors, shapes, movement, images, video, just the words around them. They don't pay attention to the things that add value in a visually literate society (have impact) or to the very item we're hoping someone will find and pay for.

So photography websites are stuck between being found, which requires words, and having an impact, which requires the use of images, to be successful.

Web addresses, page titles and the text on a web page are within our control and in part determine the words a site is indexed on. Unfortunately, the deeper we get into a site, the less important these become (pages deep in a website are indexed less highly than a home page).

Links into a website, and the text of the link, are perhaps as, if not more, important than the original site itself (remember George W Bush's resume was once the top hit on a search for “miserable failure”). The more links in a page has, the more important it is on a search for the words used to link to it. So whether or not people can find a website depends on a few things, not just what's on the site, but how people link to it.

Again we're managing the balance between words to be indexed and images for impact; impact both encouraging the visitor to choose to use us and encouraging links in. Alongside this, people are competing with us for attention and the words people are using to find what they need are changing and evolving all the time (people use more words in a search these days then they ever used to, for example).

For this reason, I think the best website set up for photographers is a combination of an online portfolio and a blog. The portfolio indexes on basic words (name, location etc.) and is used to create impact; to display images beautifully. The blog indexes on many words and is used to position a site in search and to build relationships.

Get a 10% discount on your first year of bigflannel Portfolio with code TIFFIN10.

Full disclosure: Yep, some links are affiliate links.

Today's guest post is by Michael Howard, a photographer in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to being a photographer, he is a visionary. He founded Musea, for photographers. He has also created the Musea Gatherings and produces a podcast where he interviews inspirational photographers.

Ok not ALL photography education sucks, but most of it does and that’s why I created the Musea Gatherings, to give photographic artists better education opportunities.

I’ve been a working photographer in the wedding/portrait industry for the last 10 years and I have lived through the digital boom, the textured images, the obsession with off-camera lighting at sunset, the Fong Dong, Trash The Dress sessions, Photoshop actions, Spray and Pray, pee yellow skies, WPPI, Rock Stars and the rise of wedding blogs.

Through it all, I sat back rather quietly, but I kept saying to myself, ‘Is this the best we can do as an industry?’ My answer is ‘Hell No!’ We can do much better, and I believe there is a ground swell of photographers craving something with more honesty and respect for the craft.

When I look back over the previous decade of education for wedding and portrait photographers, I see a lot of sizzle, but no substance. I see an obsession with the surface of things rather than deep, nourishing content. Sometimes you hear people say things like, ‘Running a photography business is 80% about business and 20% about making quality images.’ Sadly, there is some truth to that, but I blame ourselves more than our clients. Many photographers were taught that you just need to buy this awesome, radtacular action set to make your crappy photo look like a piece of ‘art’. Camera makers keep making it easier and easier to shoot in low light, so you don’t even have to think about that anymore. Just ‘Spray and Pray’ and throw some sexy film presets on there, and your clients will never know the difference. To all of this I say, ‘BULLSHIT!’

It doesn’t have to be like this, but this is why being a wedding and portrait photographer is often seen as the low rung on the ladder. A lot of it is very amateur and there is no respect for the history of photography, nor the craft of imaging making. The generation of photographers who has risen since the advent of digital imaging has been bombarded by vultures looking to make a quick buck off their naivete´. They have been pressured by camera companies to jump on the hamster wheel of gear acquisition. They have created this feeling that photographers need to upgrade camera bodies every 6-12 months. On top of that, we have been slapped around by new software and the idea of ‘Oh, I’ll fix that in post.’ All of these marketing tactics by camera and software creators have hindered great image making, not improved it. Today, there are more images than ever, but I don’t believe the ratio of masterful images has increased. I merely think the bar has been lowered for what’s ‘Awesome!’ and what’s not. The idea of ‘that’ll do’ rules the day and it’s hurting all of us.

Most education events are centered around the idea of more. You need more lenses, more off-camera lighting, more film-like presets, a sexier camera bag, more product offerings and more light modifiers. The big photo conventions need more attendees that don’t know anything, so they can sell more gear, gimmicks and magic bullets to them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stay in business. The unfortunate thing is many of us have believed this lie at one point or another. We thought we could buy our way into being better photographers. We’ve said things like, ‘Oh if I just had that L lens, then I’d really be kicking some ass!’ So we go and buy that lens and realize our pictures didn’t improve at all, they are merely clearer pictures of our unchanged vision. When we buy that item that promises to be a shortcut to better images, we’ve actually hindered our growth by relying on another crutch the industry threw our way. Photographic vision isn’t found in the gear you buy, it’s found in your beliefs about the world and in hours of shooting.

All of this lead me to create the Musea Gatherings, which are centered around the idea of rethinking photography education. It’s time that we raise the bar instead of lower it. We should be taught by people that hold themselves to a higher standard and don’t have some fancy new toy to sell us, especially ones that look like Tupperware.

The Gatherings are about embracing the concept of ‘less is more.’ It calls out the lie that you need more stuff, when what you really need is less stuff. You need to edit your life, your career, your business and your portfolio much tighter. You need to cut all the dead weight, and the teachers at the Gatherings will help you do that.

We live in a world where we can do whatever we want. There are no rules, but the reality is that creativity isn’t fostered by freedom. Creativity is born out of limitations. It’s staying within a box, a set of parameters and coming up with as many solutions as possible. The content that will be taught at the Gatherings are designed to give you a set of mental parameters that you need to improve your work and business. You won’t be sold any magic bullets or snake oil, but you will be given some proven guidelines that will point you in the right direction and you’re assumptions will be challenged. We will shake you up, but also give you a tool box to improve your work and business.

Hopefully, you can come to one of the Gatherings this year to help create a better industry that is rooted in the history of the medium and holds all photographers to a higher standard of working. Even if you can’t make it to a Gathering this year, I urge you to improve your photography by educating yourself on the deep things of art and stay away from the empty promises of more gear and software. The next decade of wedding and portrait photography can be the best the world has ever seen, and I want Musea to play an important role in helping us get there!

Good morning and a very Happy New Year to you all! Thank you for making 2012 such a special year for Tiffinbox. It's with your participation that we can make this site even better in 2013. I am truly excited to tell you that Angela Pointon, whose posts you have read here in the past, has agreed to come on board as a monthly contributor. Kicking that off is this very useful post for photographers who want to rock out their market in the new year. Read it, join us, comment!

A lot of photographers get confused by marketing. They consider it in the very beginning of their business, and those considerations typically include things they know they need, such as a website, business cards and a printed price list.

However, marketing is so fundamentally rooted when done well, that if you don't think about it properly, you'll end up spending a lot of money and wondering if it really made a difference in your business. Working on your own marketing is like being a doctor. If you don't truly understand the human body and how it functions, you cannot make it work better.

STEP 1:

Understand your target market deeply and fully. Often times, I find that business owners day dream about working with a certain target market, but find themselves consumed by working with another one. Thus, it creates an unfulfilling business and a bit of a feeling of quicksand that is difficult to get out of.

When you understand who you want to target, you take the first step toward landing more business from them.

STEP 2:

Understand what makes your business different. And remember, it has to be different in the eyes of your defined target audience… the people you want to be working with. I recently wrote an entire post about figuring out how to be a different, special and unique business in the eyes of your audience.

Read more about being different here.

STEP 3:

You have to define what financial bliss means for you. This is as unique as any other aspect of your business. Figure out how much you want to make and how many bookings you have to land in order to get there. Why is this important to marketing?

Your marketing should align with the goals of your business. If you do not define your monetary goal, how can you manage to market enough to obtain it? Oh, and one more thing about defining you financial bliss… it cannot limit you. Financial bliss is not a ceiling; it is just a target that you are shooting for. Exceeding it is highly possible and therefore, should be welcomed (assuming you're willing to work harder).

STEP 4:

Create the business goals you need to achieve in order to satisfy your financial bliss. These goals could include bookings, events you want to do or anything related to your business' success in 2013. I recommend including anywhere from 2-5 big goals.

STEP 5:

Take your big goals and break them down a bit. They should become a list of key steps you need to take in order to achieve the goals. As the days progress, your list of key steps will become daily tasks. I personally use Evernote, a free web-based tool and app, to keep track of the daily tasks I need to tackle in order to achieve my big goals. Goals become easier to obtain when they're broken down to small, easy-to-do daily tasks.

The One Page Marketing Plan

I recently launched a free webinar called the One Page Marketing Plan, where I went through the five steps listed above in greater detail and provided a free template for recording all of your thoughts and ideas. Download it here for free.

Photography Marketing Academy

On January 3rd, I am launching a new educational program called Photography Marketing Academy. This simple three-session program offers you access to up to five of your photographer peers and me. Together, we'll walk through your business goals for 2013, your current marketing, and you'll leave the sessions with clear, actionable steps you need to take in order to achieve a year of your dreams in 2013.

Learn more about Photography Marketing Academy and register. Space is limited and registration will likely close the morning of January 3rd.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz is a New Jersey Photographer and the Community & Blog Wrangler at Photocrati, NextGEN Gallery and the Photographers SEO Community, teaching other photographers on how to increase business with their website.

These days, websites are so important for photography businesses. They can be used as a marketing tools, a sales tool and even an accounting tool if so desired.

WordPress is the most popular website platform among the industry, and most industries for that matter. After picking from WordPress photography themes, many photographers are looking for advice on what to do or where to go next. With WordPress being such a flexible platform for websites, it is understandable that someone can be overwhelmed at first.

This is where a new eBook comes into the picture. (pun intended) 10 Tips To Supercharge Your Photography Website contains advice from ten photographers who have done the legwork of figuring out some secrets to website success.

For example, Jamie Swanson of The Modern Tog talks about local marketing and SEO by using a website. Justin Balog, of HOSSedia, talks about using your blog as an education resource to attract clients. Brian Matiash, of onOne Software, talks about using social media to further promote your work.

Photographers in the eBook:

• Jamie Swanson
• Andrew Funderburg
• Angela Pointon
• C.C. Chapman
• Zach Prez
• Brian Matiash
• Chris Frailey
• Justin Balog
• Rosh Sillars
• Jodi Friedman

Even with the three examples and the tips from seven photographers, Photocrati has added their own advice to the mix.

“Choosing a WordPress theme is very personal, even when choosing for a business. As photographers, we are visual people and tend to lean towards more visual themes, which completely makes sense. Of course, you can pick between free and premium (paid) themes, but premium themes provide a lot of advantages.”

So as you can see there is a lot to be learned in the ebook. Did I mention it's free?

Aaron Hockley is a photographer (and speaker) in Vancouver, Washington. He downloaded a copy of the photography website eBook and sent me an email saying:

“Great tips for photographers of all sorts – whether you shoot people, artwork, or landscapes, these website strategies will apply to your site.”

So with that, I urge you to visit the eBook page and download your free copy, because it's only a few clicks away.

Heber Vega is an editorial and humanitarian photographer. Originally from Chile, Heber has been based in northern Iraq since 2003. He specializes in documenting the work of humanitarian organizations and also in portraits of people through editorial photography. Heber works primarily as a freelance photographer, working on assignment. He has been commissioned by various organizations, and lately by magazines as well. He is on Twitter and Facebook. You've got to follow him.

Photography is for the soul. It is therapy for the heart.

Zack Arias: Yes, the well known photographer that we hear a lot of these days. I respect him deeply and consider him an online mentor to many of us. I appreciate his generosity, sharing his insights of this industry, and building a community. He once said: “Those of us who make a living with a camera aren't curing cancer”. Actually he’s said that many times… and I totally understand what he means. Sometimes we take everything in this field far too seriously.

Without taking his words too far out of context, I want to propose the idea that photography can heal our own souls and the hearts of others. Photography can help us rise up out of whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

I love photography; I always have. But I’m from Chile, and the Chile of my childhood was a third world country. I never had the necessary resources to own a camera. My best option was to borrow any that I found. Once I became an adult, I totally forgot about those childhood dreams of becoming a photographer. I moved to northern Iraq (Kurdistan) nearly 9 years ago, and began to live and experience life as a humanitarian (NGO) worker.

Kurdistan is an autonomous region filled with people who sadly know too well the meaning of words like pain, genocide, persecution, death, gas attacks, etc. These people have been under every imaginable hardship, yet have been able to survive. Resilience is what has formed their character as a nation and today that resilience has allowed them to create a new era filled with peace and hope, where they have become self-sustainable and finally respected as a nation. The experience of learning about the Kurds, just like experiences I had back in South America, introduced me to the stories of people and places worthy of filling hundreds of books. The frustration of coming across so many important but untold stories led me back to photography. It has become my tool for telling stories, for expression, for giving dignity and for giving (if only for a few minutes) freedom to people with chained souls.

Since then I’ve been pursuing this passion. I’ve been able to work for other NGOs and charities in Iraq, as well as my home country of Chile. Today I’m specializing in portraiture as a way to understand and reveal more of the souls of my subjects. A year or two ago, I had a dream of using photography for people trapped in difficult situations. Why? Because through the years I’ve witness the power and freedom that a camera can give, in the right hands.

This dream led to the creation of The ONE-SHOT Project. I regularly see the healing that can happen. I want to share some of those untold stories and give you the chance to experiment yourself, and perhaps to help empower someone else with the liberating
experience of owning a camera. The names below have been changed, but the stories are very real.

Felipe: I met him through the internet; he was desperately looking to own his first camera. I helped him, gave him some advice, but then I asked the important question “Why? Why a camera?”

His answer hit me. He said, “I’m a cop and I deal with a lot sh** every single day. I’ve been severely depressed for 2 years, and I need to focus on something else. I need to breathe; I need to find myself and spend some time alone.”

Within a few weeks, Felipe got his first camera and is doing much better. He’s taking weekends off and spending them making landscape images…

Muhammed: He is one of the children we have worked with through the ONE-SHOT Project. He’s an orphan and dealing with a lot of pain from his past. Muhammed took part in a photography workshop with us for a couple months, and during the closing ceremony he approached me to speak in private. “Am I good enough? Am I good at all? Did I do a good job? Am I good enough?” He was so insistent that I had a hard time answering back. Why? Because I knew he’d been labeled as a “problem” many times in his life. He struggled at school and was probably a difficult child to deal with. But you know what? Over the months of the workshop, he was one of the most talented students….

A camera, an opportunity to explore and express his curiosity, plus the therapy that comes with caring was all he needed to do well. That day I told him honestly “You are brilliant! You’re one of my best students. You did an incredible job!” Those words are still resonating with him today, in part because he’s so rarely heard those words.

Rasheed: He was a problematic child, more than anyone in his class. I thought it was going to be difficult to keep him in the class; he didn’t pay attention, he was constantly moving, and sometimes was aggressive with the other kids. After a few classes with a camera in his hands, he found focus. He was all about photography: creative like no one else, finding new angles and perspective that only an artist could see. A camera and the experience of making images has made him into a new child. He went from being the most problematic student to the one that arrived 30 minutes before each class, organizing the space so that everything would work well…

Ana: She’s a beautiful person, but after knowing her for a while you can tell that she’s been dealing with a lot of baggage from the past. Behind her warm, candid smile and all the friendship she’s able to share with whoever may happen to need company, she hides pain and problems with self-esteem. Photography for her has been huge. She now advocates for other people with the same problems, especially women. She’s been using her camera to empower people, and today she’s able to share her story knowing that it may help others as well. Step-by-step she is learning how valuable she is for the rest of us….

Myself: For years I wasn’t able to speak in public or a class. I was frightened about what other people would think of me. I was afraid to try new things; afraid they would become the next new failure in my life. I had very poor self-esteem and was incapable of believing that difficult things could be made possible. I was deathly afraid of meeting new people, engaging in conversation. In some ways this is still me, but more and more it describes the stage in life before using a camera broke down those walls.

We are all dealing with a lot stuff. That “stuff” is reflected in our daily lives, in our businesses and in our relationships with the rest of this world.

My call today is to grant you permission to allow your camera to lead you into new situations, and to push out the boundaries of your own life; to allow yourself to experiment with life in a new way. I know that cameras don’t talk, but our souls do. Take a moment (an hour, a day, a week), GO ALONE with your camera, and let it go free. Unleash the talent in your heart. Go somewhere else, maybe the other side of the world as in my case, and allow that camera to discover your surroundings. Allow that camera to discover your true self. Don’t let fear drive you. This is time to connect with ourselves, and to live in the moment with a new pair of eyes.

Travel, seek, analyze, observe, connect, admire the world around you. If you step out so far that fear fills you again, HIDE! But hide behind a viewfinder, until you gather the courage to try it all again. Keep your eyes there, gazing through a lens… and breathe. Breathe deeply.

Ask questions, ignite your curiosity, be gentle and keep doing this, day after day. Don’t worry about all the technical details; learn how to take one photo at a time. Then add something. Ask the next question of your subject; challenge yourself with a new technique or experience. Before you know it you will be immersed in this new world of frozen moments, a world of beautiful details, a world with a window to the souls of those you meet. Photography is a license to get rid of fear. Photography cures, not cancer, but our souls.

Be the next story on the list. Be who you really are!

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