Marketing is one of the most important aspects of any successful business venture, including photography. Not only must you get the word out that you have launched your photography company, but you have to work at creating a following. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Utilize social websites. Join Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social networking sites to spread the word about your work. Try to limit hardcore advertising pitches as this often turns off friends on your pages. Instead, opt to share friendly messages about recent photo shoots, thanking clients for allowing you to capture their memories. This provides a great opportunity to post some sneak peek photos from the shoot and advertise your work.

Create a website. A web presence is a must for any photographer. Surf online to find photography sites that impress you and make note of what you specifically like about your favorites. Hire a reputable website designer with proven capabilities or create the site yourself if you have the time and talent in this area. Remember, your website may be the first impression a potential client has of your photography services so don’t skimp. Keep it professional and appealing to the eye. You may only have a few seconds to impress a prospective customer.

Attend bridal expos. Wedding photography is big business so meeting brides and grooms is a must for a photographer who wants to land new gigs. Seek out shows in your region through bridal magazines and websites, then design a professional booth to showcase your work.

Develop relationships. Network with other vendors, such as resort managers, wedding planners, caterers, limousine drivers, florists and disc jockeys. These people will be speaking with brides, grooms and others planning events who might be in need of a photographer. Offer to share their business cards if they do the same for you. Just make sure the vendors you recommend provide the level of service you would expect as a customer.

Showcase your photography. Offer a restaurant owner a complimentary session in exchange for wall space to feature some of your finest photos. Enter your work in photo competitions and sign up for photography exhibits. Join your local Chamber of Commerce, then contribute some framed prints of area scenes to be displayed at your community’s visitor center.

Attend festivals. Create your own private exhibit by showing samples of your work at area festivals. Offer free bottles of water or an ice cold glass of lemonade to attract visitors to your booth. Hand out brochures and business cards, then request a name and an email address to stay in contact with your potential new clients.

Partner with schools. Get involved by volunteering at your child’s school, then seek opportunities to offer your photography services.

Advertise, advertise, advertise. The old saying, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like heck and advertise,” is still true today for any successful business. Consider both print and online advertising. Check newspapers in your area for special wedding guides and consider a regular advertisement on the social page. Be sure to advertise a couple months prior to Christmas when families are planning portrait sessions for holiday greetings and gifts.

Be creative and keep your eyes open for marketing opportunities to help grow your photography business.

A passion for photography and a need to generate some extra income are a fabulous combination. However, there is much more to starting a photography business than simply the ability to take a good picture. As with any business venture, getting organized and putting together a plan for success are essential.

Here are some tips to starting your own photography business:

• Choose a name. Many photographers have garnered much attention using their own name for their business, such as John Doe Photography. Others choose something catchy like Picture Perfect Photography or Snap! Go to your state’s corporations division website and search fictitious names to make sure the name you select is not already being used by someone else. Once you settle on a business name, register it with the state corporations office so no one else can take it! A small fee is typically required.

• Obtain a federal employer identification number (EIN). Many photographers work alone, but you still need this federal tax ID number to do business. It will be requested by your bank, state and local regulators and possibly some customers such as schools. It costs nothing to obtain and can be requested online at the IRS.gov website.

• Register your business. Each state has it’s own set of rules when it comes to registering, but these can all be found with your state’s corporations division. Before visiting this agency’s website, take some time to research the different types of corporations and decide how you would like to structure your business.

Check out this article on “Different Types of Corporations: Advantages / Disadvantages of Corporations” to help you decide. Many photographers choose to file as a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) to protect personal assets from business debt. Once you decide, most states allow you to file online as a corporation. A filing fee is required and varies by state.

• Obtain a local business license. Some counties or cities may require a business license. Check with your city hall or county licensing office to find out if one is required.

• Open a business account. Take your corporation papers and EIN (tax ID number) with you to set up a business checking account at your local bank.

• Register with your sales tax authority. Unfortunately, even photography is subject to state sales taxes. Be sure to register your business with your state’s Department of Revenue and you will be supplied with all the tools you need to file your sales taxes either monthly or quarterly, depending on your state’s guidelines. Many states allow you to pay theses taxes online.

• Set up a filing system. Keep track of receipts for meals, car expenses, mileage, customer orders, donations, and printing costs. You will thank yourself at the end of the year when you need deductions for your business.

• Advertise. Get your photography business noticed by advertising. More on this in “The Business of Photography: Marketing Your Company.”

• Set Some Goals. Decide where you want your photography business to be in one year, five years, and even 10 years. Put a plan together with realistic goals. Read your plan at least once a week to stay focused on achieving your business goals!

0-series Leica camera, which was made in 1923 as test product for the 35mm film market, sold for 2.16 million euros ($2.8 million) at the WestLicht Photographica Auction in Vienna on May 12, 2012. At present, it is the most expensive camera in the world that has ever been sold. Only 25 of the cameras were produced and 12 of them are now known to exist today.

There are many reasons why you would want to shoot something on a pure white background. Product shots for a catalog or for selling on eBay just look better that way. Another reason is stock photography where the editor will want to take the image and place it over a different background easily.

Despite any tutorials you have seen that explain how “easy” this is to do on the computer, it is anything but. It takes a lot of experience, an expensive plug-in, or a lot of slow, tedious work – or all three. Like most anything else related to photography, it is always best to get it right in the camera and avoid post-processing.

First, you need to understand what doesn’t work and why. You can’t put something in front of a white wall, take the shot, and expect the background to be white. It won’t be. Instead it will be some shade of gray. There are two reasons for this. One has to do with the way a camera exposes things. A camera, left to its own devices is always going to try and expose toward neutral gray. That is why a picture of snow will always look gray unless you compensate for the exposure. The second problem has to do with light fall-off. If you put the proper amount of light on the subject, there won’t be enough light on the background to turn it white. On the other hand, if you use enough light to make the background white, the subject would be way overexposed.

The solution is to use different light for the subject and background. This can be accomplished by several different means and using a variety of equipment. The method explained here will not use any special equipment, but simply a white background of your choice and studio lights. The white background can be a white wall for a large subject or a piece of poster board for small subjects. If you don’t have a white wall, you can get a white sheet and hang it over whatever wall is available.

It is possible to make this work with just two lights – one for the subject and one for the background. If the subject is very large, you will need at least two lights on the background. The main thing, is you have to pour a lot more light on the background than you do on the subject.

If you don’t have a light meter, it will require a bit of trial and error. First, move the subject away from the background a bit. How much? Well, it depends. Again, it may require some trial and error, but there are too problems you are trying to avoid by separating the subject and background. First, you don’t want any shadow from the subject hitting the background. This can also be altered by raising the light on the subject high enough so that the shadow falls away before it can affect the background. Second, you don’t want the light bouncing off the background to be so strong that it “wraps” around the subject causing a halo effect.

For now, ignore the background and light the subject. Whether you are using strobes, constant lighting, or a flash, work with the subject until you are happy with the lighting. Now that the main lighting is set, leave that alone and don’t change it except for minor tweaking.

Next, turn on your background light or lights. You want it to fill the visible area of the background that will show in the image. Take a picture again and look at the image in your LCD panel on the back of the camera. If your camera has something called highlight warnings (commonly called “blinkies”), turn that on. If the background is properly exposed, then the entire background will be blinking and the subject will look well exposed. Once you get to that point, you are done and you have a perfectly lit subject on a white background.

Most likely, it won’t be perfect on the first try. If the background still looks grey, keep turning up the lights a little at a time until you have white. If you reach a point where the lights are all the way up and it’s still not white, you will need to adjust the exposure in camera until the background goes white. Do this by using a larger aperture or increasing the ISO setting. If you need to adjust the exposure to get the background white, then you will need to turn down the light on the subject to keep from over exposing it. Keep tweaking the two lights until you have a perfectly lit subject and a perfectly white background. If you have a slight bit of gray around the edges, don’t worry about it as that is a quick fix in Photoshop using the eraser or dodge tool.

There are other methods of achieving this that use special backlit backgrounds and boxes. They will make it easier, but you will still need plenty of light and trial and error to accomplish the same thing. It is a worthwhile exercise to learn how to do it right “old school” before trying it with gadgets and spending more money.

I was enticed by the price and the slick looks of the inexpensive Meike LED Macro Ring Flash FC100, which I found on the internet for about $40. I decided to give it a try and see how it performs. Before rendering a verdict, let me list its specifications to give you an idea of what this device is capable of.

The Ring Flash attaches easily with the adaptor rings and could be used with many types of lenses. Mine has seven adapter rings with the diameters of 52, 55, 58, 62, 67, 72, and 77 millimeters and fits all my lenses. It is comprised of thirty-two LEDs (Light-emitting diodes) and the manual says that they produce an average color temperature of 5500k. You can also modify the power, i.e. intensity of light, of the LED by pressing the power adjustment buttons on the body of the flash. It works with four AA batteries.

This ring light has two modes – continuous light and flash mode. Be aware that there are many similar products that produce continuous light only and don’t have an actual flash mode. This is not a TTL flash so those of you who don’t feel comfortable going beyond the auto-mode may have problems with exposure. You need to set aperture and shutter speed manually because otherwise, in auto-mode, the camera will meter ambient lighting without taking into account the light produced by the LEDs, which will result in overexposure.

So, I needed a good lighting to freeze motion and, as you know, insects rarely sit still. A few tests with the new flash turned out to be rather disappointing. Although it is called a macro ring flash, the light effect is really weak and, in my opinion, is not sufficient for 1:1 macro photography, especially when you are shooting bugs from a distance with macro lenses with a medium to long focal length. With the addition of extension tubes the effect is even less significant.

Nevertheless, it is not a bad product for its price and you can still find a use for this flash. When shooting macro, you need to use it at a very close distance. Also, when you do object photography, it can provide an even illumination to your subjects without casting harsh shadows, but of course you should use additional light sources, too. In your portrait work it can add to your photographs an interesting halo effect around your subject when you shoot against a background. I’ve read somewhere that the ring flash was originally invented for dental photography, so you can definitely use it for that.

Nothing could be more fitting than the title “A Splash Of Rose” for this image by Anthony Chang, a student photographer with a brilliant eye for creating the unusual.

Armed with a glass rose, a plastic water bottle, a wok to catch the water and a white card for the background, Anthony got to work. He set up a small old monopod wrapped in bungee cords to hold it to light stands, then suspended the glass rose, adhering it with hot glue.

Anthony says he purchased the glass rose as a base from which to bounce water for the shot. He added food coloring to water to achieve the perfect colors, then utilized Photoshop to combine various photos and attain the final image. The green stem and leaves are made up of six photos and the flower itself is made up of 11 different photos, so it’s a 17-shot composite. Another note to mention is the fact that this photo was taken upside down, so the water looks like it’s flying upwards.

Set Up

As Anthony discusses, using strobe light to achieve this type of photography is critical. He chose two Nikon SB-800 and a Nikon SB-80DX speedlights from his arsenal of photographic equipment. “For this kind of photography, which involves liquids, it’s really important to freeze a fast moving action. “It has to be high speed photography and to top it off, none of the liquid on the photo has any motion blur to it. That’s because I froze the action with the flashes.”, Anthony says, “I shot in a dark room and the ambient was low enough that it didn’t affect the photo at all. Everything was lit just by the flashes.”

But it’s not as simple as just using a flash; it’s all about the settings. “The key thing that most people don’t really know about when doing this kind of work is flash duration,” Anthony explains. “The reason why I had all my flashes at 1/64 power is because, the lower the power, the faster your flash duration is, so you can freeze the action better. For my SB-800/80DX I know the flash duration is 1/32300 seconds at 1/64 power and that’s much faster than any camera’s shutter speed can go. Though if I reached say, 1/2 power, my flash duration is 1/1100 second which isn’t that fast for this kind of work. Simply put, lower power freezes action better.”

Anthony points out another secret to capturing these types of images is using a matching flash. “The Nikon SB-800 and SB-80DX are actually the same flash internally, but cosmetically different. It’s very important to use the same flash models and power for this work because every flash has a different flash duration. My SB-28 at 1/64 power has a flash duration of 1/28800 seconds, unlike my SB-800/80DX which has a duration of 1/32300 seconds. That difference in flash duration will cause a ghosting effect that is unwanted.”

Knowledge of Photoshop is also helpful when merging 17 photos together as Anthony did for this image. “I did it in two parts,” he explains, “one for the red and one for the green. I took the six best shots for the red and put them all in one Photoshop file. I selected all six photos and went to edit, then used Auto-Align Layers command, which automatically aligns layers based on similar content in different layers. This doesn’t always do a great job, but it sometimes works pretty well. If it’s off, you have to zoom in and fix it manually by nudging each layer up, down, left or right.”

“Once I did that, I picked out my base layer and then selected the other five layers, created a layer mask for each of them and revealed the parts I wanted from each photo, saved the result and did the same for the green part, that is, the stem. Once that was done I combined the two files together and there you go.”

Despite being a somewhat messy shoot, Anthony says he had a blast. “It was expensive with the $80 glass rose,” he remarks, adding, “I was pretty worried that it would fall and break during the shoot but, luckily, it didn’t.”

Take a look at other Anthony Chang’s photographs in his Flickr photostream or on his website.

Bigstock’s library reaches 10 million images and they giving away a Lytro camera to celebrate. In order to participate in the raffle you just need to download images from Bigstock’s collection.

Every image you download considered as an entry to win. The sweepstakes is going on now until February 15, 2012. Hurry up. Besides the grand Lytro Camera prize, the second prize winner will receive 250 Bigstock Credits valued at $339.

Also, the official rules state (in fine print) that it is possible to enter without downloading images by mailing a 3 1/2×5″ postcard with your full name, email address and postal address to Bigstock’s headquarters. Postcards must be received, of course, by February 15. There are no limits on the number of times you may enter. Must be 18 or older and a resident of the United States to enter.

It is not clear from the rules whether it is necessary to have an account at Bigstock for entering by mailing a card, but in any case it is free and easy to create one. The winner will be randomly selected and notified by email listed on the card or associated with the winning account.

To enter by sending a postcard, mail to: Attn: 10 Million Images Bigstock Sweepstakes 60 Broad Street, 30th Floor, New York, NY 10004. Don’t forget to mention your full name, email and postal address on the card. Good luck!

Many photographers approach shooting interiors as if they were in a studio or outside. But whether photographing models, landscapes or interiors, there is a methodology which needs to be learned. This article will address those techniques in order help you make better interior photographs.

It’s not as much about camera choice as the lens you shoot with. Good glass on a mediocre camera will take much better pictures than mediocre glass on a great camera. When choosing lenses, always buy the best quality you can afford. The other part of lens selection is focal length. For interior photography, you need a wide angle lens.

For interiors, you will want a lens in the 15-20mm range on a crop sensor camera and 20-25mm on a full frame. This will give you the widest angle you can get for those tight interior shots without getting the fish-eye look of ultra-wide angle lenses. While prime lenses (those that don’t zoom) may give slightly sharper images, a zoom gives you the greatest flexibility in framing your shot. This will help with composition.

Full frame sensor refers to cameras with approx. 24×36 mm sensor size. Crop sensor cameras use a smaller sensor, usually around 15mm x 22.5mm.

The next consideration in photography is tripod or hand held. While you can get away with hand holding the camera using studio strobes or bright daylight, for interior shots, you will want to utilize a good quality, sturdy tripod. Without setting up a lot of strobes and flashes, you will be using available light for interior shots and this means a slow shutter speed. If you use a tripod and learn how to meter the light, you can get great results with available light without the added expense and trouble of strobes. The other advantage to using a tripod is it makes you take the time to think through the framing and composition of the shot.

The final aspect of preparing for your interior shoot is the light. As with any photography, it’s all about the light. You may think that it doesn’t matter what the light outside is like since you are shooting inside, but that is not true. First, always shoot during the day if possible. Any light coming through the windows will help illuminate the scene and looks better than reflections on black night-time windows. Next, if you can, shoot on an overcast day to reduce harsh light and shadows. If not, try to shoot facing north as much as possible and mask the windows with sheers or even a thin bed sheet. The final consideration in lighting is turn on every lamp and light in the house. This will not only provide as much light as possible, but can give a nice warm glow to the interiors.

Note: Various light sources that emit light at different color temperatures may cause undesirable color cast.

It’s a good time of day; you have your wide angle lens on the camera which is firmly sitting on a tripod. You have turned on all the lights and are ready to shoot. What’s next? Like any other photograph, you need to choose your aperture and shutter speed. For interior shots, you should use aperture priority set at about f8 to f11 to get a good depth of field. With the aperture set, meter different parts of the room to determine a shutter speed that will give you a good exposure throughout the scene. Finally, bracket the shot. This means besides taking the picture at your chosen shutter speed, you should also take one slightly faster and another slightly slower. This will ensure that you have a good exposure on one of the three shots with tricky interior lighting.

Get a good lens and a steady tripod. Take your time with composition and meter the light and get great interior photographs.

Anyone can sell images through microstock agencies, and is free to take photos on any subject. But some photographers take it too far.

These images found on Shutterstock, one of the largest stock photo agencies, actually sold through their collection. All photos published below are used for display purposes only and belong to their rightful owners.

January 10, 2012 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Polaroid introduced the Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera – new point-and-shoot camera powered by Android OS.

The Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera features a high definition 16 megapixel camera with 3X optical zoom, 3.2 inch (8.13 centimeters) touch screen display and 32GB of memory via a microSD card.

The other special features of this camera include GPS for geo-tagging your shots and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or optional cellular data connectivity making uploads to photo sharing and image hosting websites or social networks as easy as the touch of a button.

And ofcourse, the constantly growing list of available photo editing applications for the Android platform makes it easy to enhance and edit photos or apply special effects on the fly.