When it comes to business, Kristen Kalp doesn't clown around.

She is the author behind the outrageously astute BrandCamp Blog and also a photographer based in Philadelphia.

Circus Circus, her new offering in the form of a PDF, tackles the sometimes difficult task of communicating with one's potential business clients. It's more a workshop than an e-book, so come prepared to roll up your sleeves and get some elbow grease.

Circus Circus isn't just a bunch of copy that I've written so you can paste it into your website and hope for the best. That's like buying brownies from the bakery and eating 'em right up – eating brownies doesn't get you any closer to creating brownies.

In the 52-page book, Kalp, takes several irreverent swipes at conventional business writing books by presenting her material in both a concise and witty manner. She is comfortable engaging her audience from the get go. Just take a look at the table of contents:

Now, I don't know of anyone looking at that table of contents who will not want to read right through in one sitting. I did that, knowing full well that there might be parts where I would be asked to stop, write things down and then reflect.

The first challenging part of the book was coming up with a manifesto. To be honest, I am still not done with mine. Kalp says she took nearly five hours to complete her manifesto. What's so important about a manifesto? Well, it “establishes the sound of YOUR voice on your website or in your brochures.” That, in my opinion, is reason enough to keep chipping at it. I promise to share my manifesto when I feel it is ready for public consumption. What helps is Kalp's five-step process to craft that manifesto, each with vivid examples and a worksheet to practice on your own.

The part of Kalp's e-book that I found most fascinating was the “Fire-Breathing Show,” where words are used to convey features and benefits to clients. I know I struggle with this in my own copy, but this guide book shows you how to arrive at these personal and business characteristics, to help sell YOU to your clients.

Kalp also talks about offering your clients incentives (she calls them cotton-candy to stick to the circus metaphor), creating a one-line bio, how to respond to e-mails, crafting an elegant e-mail signature, writing a FAQ email, negotiating price objections and expressing yourself in blog posts.

And you can see that Kalp practices what she preaches. Take a look at her own photography website – Essential Imagery. Just about every part of it is eager to connect with the visitor. “Let's Have An Adventure! What kind?,” is an invitation to join her in something mysterious, yet cool. Her website exudes her down-to-earth, yet fun personality.

If you are a photographer, you can no longer just post great images on your site and expect your potential clients to be able to connect with you. You do have to write and express yourself. If you struggle with the written word, Kristen Kalp's Circus Circus is must-buy. She'll take you step by step (and it isn't in the least bit easy mind you) through the various parts of your site where you may want to tighten up your writing and engage your reader.

It's priced at $149 (and I bought my copy, by the way) so it isn't inexpensive. If you are looking to persuade your clients that you are worth what you charge for your services, then the value this e-book/guidebook/workbook is truly immense. Full disclosure, I get no financial commission for suggesting this book to you. If Kristen reads this review and feels like sharing a special promo code with us, I'll update this post so you can order the book within a specific time frame. Does that sound good to you?

Sound off below if you have already bought Circus Circus. What did you think of it? How far along are you on your manifesto? What portions of it have you already put into play for your business? Start the dialogue here. Let's talk!

Well, Kristen did respond to my request for a special promotional code to be used towards Circus Circus. At check out use “SESHU” and get $50 off. This is good only through April 5, 2011, so bust a move. Your final price will be $99. Nice!

Photo consultant Selina Maitreya discusses a rarely used approach in client sales meetings. Check it out in the video below.

Did you like Selina's business tip for photographers? Want to get more of these tips and for FREE? Selina offers a free 5 day video course, “Building the Ideal Professional Photography Business.”

In addition to that, Selina and 13 other experts will be presenting a FREE two-day online event on February 11 and 12, called Clarion Call. [aff] You do need to register to get access to these awesome speakers. Remember, it is FREE, so why wouldn't you sign up?

If you miss the live event, you can still order the recordings, which garner you a bunch of very cool bonuses.

What sales tip could you/would you share here with your peers? Please comment!

This is a guest blog post by Leon Sandoval, Colorati's CEO. While he may be a tad bit too modest to say so, based in Carlsbad, CA Leon and his team provide the very best post production services in the business and help make for some very happy photographers.

Greetings, Tiffinbox community!

When Seshu and I had a conversation about content for a video tutorial I knew without a doubt we had to talk about file naming. Clearly, it's one of the workflow elements that seems to cause photographers the most trouble. There are no standards or guidelines and we all seem to have learned by trial and error.

What I've seen is that people either abandon file naming altogether or get too fancy. And sometimes we see a combination of naming conventions within one event that simply do more harm than good.

Good file naming will help you do the following:

a) Sort your files by file name in any software on any computer and see the timeline as it took place in real life.

b) Easily find the files you are looking for. Speed and efficiency are key here, so having unique “tags” can help.

c) Achieve more consistent results in regards to White Balance, Exposure, Contrast and other aspects of your visual editing.

Will this tutorial answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems? Unlikely. My hope is that it gets you thinking. Hopefully you'll walk away with a couple of tips that set you on the right path to a creating a system that works well for you.

Enjoy this exclusive Tiffinbox video tutorial from your friends at Colorati!

This guest post is by David Macvicar. He and Sean McGrath are wedding photographers based in Nova Scotia, Canada. Storyboard is their bright idea.

Have you ever wanted layout photos like in the image below, but were absolutely defeated by the number of steps and amount of time required to make this happen?

I think the process goes something like this: Create a new image at the right size, open up each image, resize, drag, resize again, nudge image, etc. etc. Even with an action, you are still doing a number of steps that slow down your blogging workflow. Wouldn't it be fantastic if this process was completely automated and worked at the touch of a button, or a simple run of an action?

That's why we created a photoshop script called Storyboard. It makes blogging diptychs and multiple image layouts as easy as selecting the images and clicking a button. We built this tool for ourselves, because we didn't have time to do layouts the traditional way, but just loved the impact they have on a blog post.

So what exactly is Storyboard?

Storyboard is designed for photographers who blog their work and love to show numerous images which provide a sense of storytelling. Diptychs, triptychs and other combinations of images are perfect for telling a story from a wedding or a portrait session. It works with any blog size & color, any number of images, any combination of aspect ratios, and best of all it was designed with speed in mind. We wanted it to be as fast as possible to build image layouts for your blog.

Why use Storyboard?

We have heard from photographers who have resorted to a tonne of different ways to handle this situation – create actions that still require a lot of user input, photographers who have created InDesign documents with predefined layouts (who wants to jump between different applications!?) and a few other situations which were less than ideal. Other blogging actions often lock you into pre-determined blog sizes (900px, 750px, 600px to name a few) … what if your blog is a different size? What if your blog background features a different color? It's much better to have options than it is to be pigeon-holed into some other photographer's idea of how to blog. Since creating these layouts is a challenge and the brands and blogs of photographers all vary, we thought it was time to solve this problem and provide the best solution for blogtographers! With Storyboard it is possible to create an entire blog post worth of images in just a few minutes.

What does a storyboard look like?

Here is a basic example:

And here is something a bit more complex:

How can I configure Storyboard to work with my blog and workflow?

Storyboard is a simple script, but has a powerful configuration panel. Within a minute you can have it working specifically for your blog. Here are the parameters you can change to work with your blog:

– Set your blog width
– Set the space size between your images
– Change the background color to match your blog brand
– Run actions before your Storyboard saves (perfect for running web sharpening actions)
– Save your Storyboard's automatically and have them close out for quick workflow speed
– Choose your destination/save folder and filename
– Handy archive to folder feature moves images you have already used into a folder of your choice
– Visual re-ordering of your images in your Storyboard by seeing thumbnail order of your images (get the most visual impact by choosing the image order)
– Loop Mode: Storyboard will prompt you to keep making boards – the fastest way to create a blog post

Check out this video on how to configure Storyboard for your blog:

Availability

Storyboard is available at an introductory price of $54.99. Get your copy here and to learn more about Storyboard visit us on the web at http://www.storyboardrocks.com/

Win! Storyboard is generously offering ONE free license to a Tiffinbox subscriber. Here is how you may be able to win this awesome Photoshop Script.

1) Subscribe to the bi-monthly Tiffinbox newsletter

2) Tweet the following:

I just learned about an amazing new Photoshop Script for blogging @Storyboardrocks on @PicSeshu’s Tiffinbox.org Please RT!

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to mention your Twitter handle so that I can make sure you have done both. I need to see a minimum of 50 real, honest, entries before I can give this away on January 20, 2011.

David and Sean also want to mention that anyone can enter this contest. If you have previously purchased Storyboard, you can still enter and they will just refund you.

The Mystic Seminars run from January 6-9 and yes, that's in Mystic, Connecticut. Not terribly far from the famed aquarium, so you could really hit two birds with one stone, if fish is your thing. I assure you, that both will be fascinating, but the former will actually inspire your photography and may just make you more money in 2011.

So, my question to you is a simple one: are you attending the annual Mystic Seminars?

Here is the complete lineup of speakers:

Yervant, Jennifer Hudson, Jesh De Rox, Cliff Mautner, David Beckstead, Justine Ungaro, Michael Greenberg, Joseph Victor Stefanchik (JVS), Todd Laffler, Davina + Daniel, Chuck Arlund, Matt Mendelsohn, Sergio, Sean & Melanie McClellan, Angela Carson, John Edgar, Doug Gordon, Andrew “Fundy” Funderburg, Richard Esposito and of course Mystic Seminars' founder, Walter Van Dusen.

It's going to be quite a show. Some are well known names in the business. All of them have been around the block and know what's what in the industry. A few photographers on that list offer workshops and I have attended them (yes, on my own dime). Some, I can even claim to call my friends. But it isn't some freakish form of nepotism that makes me ask the question again: are you attending the annual Mystic Seminars?

If you have the usual gremlins asking, no, doubting your intentions for going to the Mystic Seminars this year, here are 5 reasons why you should attend this annual event:

1) You'll be inspired by what other photographers are doing – craft, vision and business.

2) If you consider yourself even a wee-bit shy, the seminar is a great place to break the ice and connect with other photographers. Think networking for referrals or 2nd shooter opportunities.

3) It will put the “social” back in social media. Do you follow some of the speakers I mentioned above on Twitter or Facebook? Well, there is no better opportunity than the seminars to step up and introduce yourself.

“Social media shouldn't replace being social in person. It should enhance it. Nothing beats face to face.” – Scott Stratten

4) Giving yourself the time to get out of the home-studio/cubicle for a few days to recharge your batteries is the sanest thing you will do for yourself and ultimately your business

5) It's at the very beginning of the year. What you are doing now and in the early part of the year for your business can make or break it.

If you are a wedding photographer or a portrait photographer, it just makes sense to register for this event. This year, the presentations will run over four days at the Mystic Marriott. Each of the photographers mentioned brings a completely different aesthetic to their approach. The diversity is intentional and I applaud Walter for bringing us a very well organized event year after year.

The cost for early-birds like me was $400. If you want to go now, it will be $600 and I say it's still worth it. If you can't make all 4 days, don't fret. Walter is offering day passes at a very reasonable $200, until TODAY or whenever they get sold out.

Yes, the event is in January. Brrr! Right? Well, thankfully the presentations are all going to be indoors. And I really have no excuse to miss it since this takes place right in my back yard (well, close to it).

So, who will I see at this year's Mystic Seminars? Sound off below. If I hear from a bunch of you, perhaps we can plan on doing dinner together? Let me know. I know it will be fun to connect with you all. Let's take this opportunity in early January to reinvigorate ourselves for what will be an incredible 2011 wedding and portrait season.