The Photojournalist

Paul Gero, a Wisconsin portrait photographer, was at one point a newspaper photojournalist.

You may remember that I featured Paul's work on this site here and here.

His journalism instincts are kicking in again. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, Paul has embarked on a neighborhood family portrait project.

And, yes, he is observing all relevant “social distancing” guidelines, as outlined by his state government.

Portrait Project

I had the honor of speaking with Paul last week about his project, “Portraits In The Time Of Corona.”

If you are wondering if the title echoes Gabriel Garcia Marquez' work of fiction, it does.

A Few Photographs

Here are a few images from Paul's project:

Other Portrait Projects

Several other photographers, across the country have either started to work on a similar idea or are about to embark on one as soon as it is safe to do so:

Sree Sripathy says she will be photographing the Indian community in the Bay Area.

Cara Soulia was featured on NBC for her project called and hashtagged #thefrontstepsproject

CBS News carried a segment about a Twin-Cities photographer who offers complimentary porch step portraits.

While most of the initiatives have been positively received, some feel photographers should wait till the “stay-at-home” guidance in most of the states are lifted before venturing outdoors and interacting with people again.

So, tell me, what would you do? Would you go outdoors and photograph families from a safe distance or would you rather hold off on any portrait sessions until everyone is safe to move about the country?

Update

Paul has wrapped up his project and launched a book of all the portraits he was able to create in his community.

Who is Steve Raymer?

Before Steve Raymer was Professor Emeritus, of Indiana University’s Media School, he spent 25 years at National Geographic Magazine, first as a staff photographer and then later as its director of the news service.

Block quote:

Raymer is author and photographer of Somewhere West of Lonely, My Life In Pictures, a visual memoir published in April 2018 by Indiana University Press. He also is author and photographer of Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Colonial Capital, published in 2012 by Oxford University Press; Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora, published in 2007 by Indiana University Press; Living Faith: Inside the Muslim World of Southeast Asia, published in 2001, and St. Petersburg, a 1994 book about the imperial Russian capital. Raymer is the photographer of several additional books, including The Vietnamese Cookbook, published in 2000 and Land of The Ascending Dragon: Rediscovering Vietnam, published in 1997. Raymer is currently completing a book titled The Public House: An Enduring British Institution — a volume that documents a centuries-old establishment that is threatened by an array of social, cultural, and economic changes.

My Back Story

I pursued a graduate degree at Indiana University in the late 90’s which is when I enrolled in one of Steve’s classes. He was still getting his bearings as a newly installed professor of visual communication (after I. Will Counts’ retirement from that same university), when I popped up with an idea to photograph the Muslim community in Bloomington, Indiana.

Steve was all for it, but as I showed him my contact sheets (this was back when I still shot lots of black and white film), he would take a red grease pencil and circle the frames that “almost” passable. He was a tough teacher, and I had no illusions that as a graduate student he expected more from me. I vividly recall the note he clipped on to the final images from the semester.

In measured sentences he asked me if I had the resolve to continue working as a photographer. I still hold onto that note from him because it fuels my 20+ year obsession in photography and it is one of the reasons I publish this blog. With a few words he lit a bon fire in me to keep at it, and to always feel deep inside that there is a better and stronger photograph to create the next time I am out with my cameras.

For that alone, I owe Steve Raymer a huge debt of gratitude.

The Interview

I had the pleasure of speaking with him some time ago and given that today is his birthday, I figured what more of an appropriate time than today to get this chat with him out into the world?

So here here it is:

Somewhere West of Lonely, The Book

Steve’s book, Somewhere West of Lonely, is one I recommend to all photographers. As you can expect, it is a visual feast. However, it is understanding a photographer’s backstory that makes this book that much more richer for me. And perhaps it will do for you as well.

Christmas is coming and Steve’s book will make for a wonderful gift this holiday season. I highly recommend you buy one for yourself and gift one to a photographer in your family.

G.E. Masana, a New York based wedding and portrait photographer has a boat-load of real-world experiences and advice on sales and marketing. If you are a wedding or portrait photographer, this post is for you.

I had the pleasure of speaking with G.E. Masana several months back about six specific strategies for wedding photography success:

The 6 Strategies For Wedding Photography Success

1. Be Strategy-Driven Rather Than Tactic-Driven
2. Strategy: Mean Something Significant To A Significant Number Of People, And For Which They'll Pay You Significantly More
3. Strategy: Responding To Inquiries – Stand Out From The Rest and Get Results
4. Strategy: Purpose Of The Phone Call Is To Set Up The Consult For Success
5: Strategy: “Just Get The Booking” and why
6: Strategy: Sales Without Pressure – Gently Guiding Your Prospective Clients To Sell Themselves On You

Mentoring & Courses

Click here for Mentoring, Coaching & Consulting Options

Maximum Wedding Album Profits contains business nuggets, aha! moments, insights and principles as well as a complete system for selling more wedding photos to place into your clients' wedding albums. A few booking strategies are thrown in for good measure.

Instead of a few hundred, you'll know how to set the stage to make thousands. I've averaged adding another up to $15,000 per wedding from regular every day couples with this system.

G.E.Masana's courses (yes, I bought these) are well-produced audio presentations that will help you move beyond the blocks you have:

How to Raise Prices, Increase Profits, Even When You Think You Can’t – Especially If You Think You Can’t

How To Turn Phone Inquiries Into Paying Clients

Other Resources

Listen to G.E. Masana's tips on sales or selling in Ben Hartley's Six Figure Photography podcast.

Buy the book: When They Say That, You Say This: For Wedding and Portrait Photographers – The Strategy for Handling Sales Objections

A Very Special, Time-Limited Offer

From G.E. Masana:

“So as you know, I'm playing with the idea of teaching wedding photographers my complete systems, strategies and tactics, which would cover everything from marketing to handling inquiries to getting bookings to after the wedding sales: the entire what to say, what to do and how to do it. No fluff and no cheer-leading, no theories, just solid info, everything 100% tested, proven and true.”

If you are interested in learning the strategies from booking to marketing your wedding photography clients, contact G.E.Masana right away. This offer is only for 5-10 wedding photographers, so you must act quickly.

Please include your name, location, how many weddings you do now and how many you want to do in the future, and how much money did you make photographing the weddings you say you have photographed.

If you enjoyed the interview and this post, would you please do me a favor and share it among your wedding photography friends please? Thank you!

The #1 Question Asked By Photographers

“How can potential clients find me online?”

Even in 2018, a lot of photographers believe that all one has to do is upload photographs to a website and their clients will miraculously find them.

Adding to that myth are these words, “oh, I have a website but I haven't updated it in eons.” Then they chuckle.

Imagine your business is a steam engine (remember those?). The content you add frequently and consistently is the fuel for your engine to go faster and farther.

These are both huge problems that Galen Mooney of PhotographySquares is committed to solving for photographers.

If you want to be found online, your website needs to be set up properly and you need to be posting online often, sending search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! (among many others) an alert that there is fresh content on your site.

Why Squarespace?

Right now I publish two other websites: Seshu Photography & Connecticut Headshots, both using the Squarespace platform.

While it was super easy to set them up initially, I kept hearing about how it was difficult to optimize Squarespace sites for search engines. Digging a little deeper, though, I found out that was not true at all.

Now, compared to WordPress websites that use plugins like Yoast SEO, there aren't any plugins or extensions for diving into SEO on the Squarespace platform. So, one has to set things up manually (but done once and checked often, you should be good to go).

I might have been poking around Google and Facebook when perhaps it was a targeted advertisement that presented Galen's 5-day SEO Challenge (going on right now, with tomorrow being day 5, so sign up now and you can watch the replays of days 1-4).

SEO For Photographers

This is Galen's promise:

SEO for Photographers is … “Made especially for Squarespace users! You'll learn how to optimize your image tags, how to tweak old pages and blog posts to get the results you want, and how to track your SEO success as you start seeing results.”

If you are considering a Squarespace website for your photography business or you already have a Squarespace site, you owe to yourself to at least check out Galen Mooney's 5-Day SEO Challenge first.

If you want to learn more, then sign up for her course, SEO for Photographers. She will be opening enrollment tomorrow with some special bonuses, after her one-hour special presentation in her Facebook group.

5-Day SEO Challenge

Go ahead and LIKE her page and you should see a notification for her 10 am presentation. Just as a teaser, here is Day 1 of her most recent SEO challenge:

Interviewing Galen

A few months back, I interviewed Galen. You'll learn in this short interview with why it's important for you to optimize your site and what she teaches in her course, SEO For Photographers:

Of the two websites that I own that are using the Squarespace platform, I have used what Galen Mooney has taught me through her course on Connecticut Headshots and have seen a great many more inquiries and bookings. These are subtle or drastic changes – something as simple as using a H1 tag on each page or using the right descriptions when uploading images.

While she doesn't say it, I will … it pays to sweat the details. And like I say in the interview above, you won't be breaking anything when making those changes. If you find yourself flustered, Galen's Facebook group is a wonderful place to visit and ask questions and compare notes.

If you have a Squarespace site, you would do well to start optimizing it using Galen's advice.

Clean and Calibrate Your Gear

Some six years ago, Wes Kauffman, president of Perfect Image, penned a post called, “Why Calibrating Your Camera’s Lenses Is A Must For All Photographers“.

One brave man commented: “This is one giant advert telling you to contact them to have you pay for the service.” That may well be the reaction of a photographer who knows his way around the AF Calibration feature on his or her camera, but for mere mortals like you and me, I would still want a professional to take care of my gear.

In fact, Wes clearly mentions this in his original article: “Calibrating your camera is something you can do yourself, some of my customers do, and some of my customers try. The truth is a qualified repair tech can do it faster, and probably more accurately. They will have the correct tools and more importantly the experience.”

Take Care Of Your Camera Equipment

So, I don't know about you, but when I hit a bit of a dip and experience the “slow season,” I don't sit there twiddling my thumbs and wonder if my gear is in tip top shape, I send my cameras and lenses to Perfect Image and get it cleaned and calibrated. I've used their services three or four times and I am a fan.

I must have said so at one of the last meetings and Wes pressed a short stack of postcards in my hand. These cards which I gladly distribute at photographer gatherings is a simple code that will save you $10 (and yes, make me $10 in the process).

Send Your Gear In February

Follow these steps to clean and calibrate your equipment and save $10:

1) Visit Perfect Image here
2) Use the code is: NEWFRIEND and my customer code which you must also use is: SB48677.

Now through February 28th, Perfect Image is hosting its annual “Cleaning & Calibration Special” where instead of paying $149, you pay $99, but with the code above for new customers of theirs, you get to save an additional $10.

Get Your Gear Back In Time

Listen, I get it, it's the “slow season” and every penny counts, right? So, jump on this opportunity to get your cameras and lenses cleaned and calibrated. You get to send in one body and two lenses of your choice but you can also send in additional camera bodies and lenses for a modest extra charge.

Wouldn't you want to start your season assured that your gear isn't going to let you down? I know I would.

For those of you who feel this post is a little too promotional in tone, rest assured I'm abiding by FTC guidelines by telling you that the codes mentioned above provides me with a small commission that helps me maintain this website for the greater good of all photographers. Ultimately, you make the decision to either use or accept the carefully curated offers mentioned here.