Photo Business Help.

This entry was posted on 3/12/2008 6:39 PM and is filed under Techinicalities.

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time.

While I try to shoot as much as possible in the winter, I tend to spend a lot of time in the office working on fine-tuning our business and creating more efficient workflows.  This year Marcy and I have completed some exciting (he says with sarcasm) projects like upgrading our accounting software to Quickbooks and incorporating the business.  We also implemented Adobe Lightroom as our main image editor and library manager for new images in production (we still use Extensis Portolio for our main image catalog.)  Lightroom is actually proving to be a big time saver and is downright fun when it comes to creating slideshows and web galleries.

Another winter activity I've taken up is reading other photo blogs.  From a business standpoint, there are a few I thought I'd mention here as being worth reading on a regular basis if you are in photography as a long term career.  The first is Photo Business News and Forum, by John Harrington.  John is a very successful DC-area portrait photographer who by the looks of his blog, could easily be a professor of business at any major university.  In my opinion, every working photographer should read his posts and buy his book, "Best Business Practices for Photographers."

Next on the list is A Photo Editor, by Rob Haggart, former photography director at Men's Journal and Outside Magazine.  Almost all of Rob's posts are geared towards educating photographers and helping them succeed in their careers.  He is very generous with his time and ideas, especially for a guy who probably was bugged to extremes by every adventure and fashion photographer wannabe on Earth (myself included.)

Other blogs I check on regularly are Dan Heller's Photo Business Blog,  Photo District News's PDNPulse, and Marketing Photos with Mary Virginia Swanson.

Check them out - you'll definitely learn a few things.

Until next time...
-Jerry

        

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Comments

• 3/13/2008 9:39 PM rick wrote:
  First of all, I love what you are doing for the environment and your work is simply beautiful. I have featured your work on my new website, ilovephotoblogs.com, so when you have a free moment come check us out. Continued success with your work, and keep clicking.
  Reply to this
  1. 3/14/2008 8:29 AM Jerry Monkman wrote:
     Hi Rick,
     
     Thanks for the nice comment.  I'l definitely check out your blog soon.
     
     -Jerry
     
     Reply to this
• 3/14/2008 2:16 PM Bill Bogle, Jr. wrote:
  Jerry, I am at the NPPA Workshops Thursday to Saturday, and John Harrington did a two day workshop on Business Practices. It was very timely to see your comments, and he appreciated the unexpected plug. He does a great job, and as a lawyer and a photographer [one pays for the other], he is pretty much spot on with most of his comments
  
  Bill
  Reply to this
  1. 3/14/2008 3:43 PM Jerry Monkman wrote:
     Hi Bill,
     
     It's good to hear from you.  As I'm sure you're learning, if we all followed John's advice, photographers overall would be in a much more profitable situation.
     
     If you get a chance, can you give a little review of the courses you attend this weekend?  I'd love to hear it. 
     
     Thanks!
     -Jerry
     
     Reply to this
     1. 3/14/2008 9:00 PM Bill Bogle wrote:
        The NPPA [National Press Photographers Assn.] are meeting in Rochester this week. My daughter is a freshman at RIT and studying photojournalism. They have had three to four workshops each day, and have had courses on Photos hop CS3 [color correction, advanced], business practices, lighting, multimedia, slide shows with sound, videography, web optimization, and several others. They also did portfolio reviews for PJs, and did whole day workshops on Multimedia capture, edit and putting it up on the web. Multimedia seems to be the big buzz word for PJ, as they are asking all of the photographers to have other skills, such as audio capture and video, and to be the story tellers. Many papers are putting these features in their websites. There was a class even for management and photo editors on how to deal with the changing demands. RIT has been hosting it, and they have the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, with about 1,800 photo students. Of course, Nikon and Canon had all of their recent equipment to play with, and each did a complimentary cleaning [not the sensors though] and check up. Vendors had a trade show, such as Penn Camera with Think Tank and other items. Each day has been full, starting at 9 and ending way into the night. The best part is meeting others and finding out how others are doing it. We have basically taken over the Hyatt in Downtown, with almost all ballrooms and small rooms filed. Tomorrow is a day packed with guest speakers, Al Bello, Chris Usher, Gregory Heisler, Jacki Lynden, Kristen Ashburn, and Oliver Jobard will speak.
        
        The highlight for me so far has been a toss up of the advanced CS3 classes with Karl Kuntz of the Columbus Dispatch, showing many easy ways to quickly edit in CS3, and the business classes with John Harrington. John is very good, knowledgeable, and has a great presentation. His focus on rights, contracts, copyright, and proper negotiation is wonderful. He refers to his book often, which sounds like it should be part of every photographer's library. He saves you time setting things up and gives you tips on bidding a job. He also paired with William Foster [Gov. Schwarzenegger's official photographer], who did a whole workshop on web optimization and ranking. It was great to see some of the business side of things.
        
        Young and old are here, and everyone is learning. Check out the NPPA website, and the Northern Short Course features. They have put a good deal up on the web at www.Northernshortcourse.com.
        
        
        Bill Bogle, Jr.
        www.BoglePhoto.com
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