PixelatedImage Blog

This one’s primarily aimed at those who’ve picked up the camera as not only a means of making a life but of making a living. I’m not going to powder-coat this for you – it’s tough out there. I get email after email from college students, all of them looking the same-ish

Dear Mr. duChemin (that part always creeps me out), I am a college student and now in my final year have decided that you have the perfect job EVER and I want to do it too. Please tell me how I can do this so I can travel the world and take photographs and become fabulously wealthy with very little effort.

Ok, they aren’t quite like that. But some of them come close and I never quite know how to answer. I want to be encouraging; I think they’re right, I do have the best job ever and I don’t for a moment take it for granted. But if you’ve been around these parts for long you know it took me a long and winding road to get here. Lots of ups, downs, victories and defeats. I could be brutally honest but while I want to disabuse people of the notion that this is an easily-gained fairy tale life, I also don’t want to discourage them from fighting to live their dream. Anyways, I’ve been thinking about this stuff this weekend and this is one of the things I keep coming back to.

You need to do an inventory and become very aware of what’s in stock and on offer. Approached as Brand You, the questions are: What makes you unique? What differentiates you from other photographers? What unique spot in the marketplace do you occupy? These questions then get answered by asking yourself other clarifying questions, all of them aimed at identifying your inventory.

What do you love?
Love kids? Generally we shoot best that which we love best. And spending your days shooting things you love is a great way to make a living, it can energize you, prolong your sanity, and improve the quality of your creative work. Better work, marketed right, can mean better prices.

What Past Experiences Have You Had?
If you’ve done a PhD in Marine Biology you’re uniquely poised to be a marine or conservation photographer. Expertise is not only profoundly saleable but it likely points towards a deeper passion. When stacked against another photographer who shoots food you have a distinct advantage if you spent years as a chef in Paris, and that advantage makes you more saleable than the photographer who just shoots food for the money.

What are you good at?
I love writing. Writing is not photography. But writing about photography allows me to give back to the industry, establish an area of expertise, and develop another area where I can both express myself, work in and for the industry, and contribute to my income. It might not be writing for you. It might be re-touching or composite work. It might be video work. Live lecturing. Cleaning sensors. Multiple income streams can free you to be choosier about your work and gives you a fighting chance when the bottom drops out of one thing. It also provides an outlet for creatives with short attention spans, allowing them give their best work without getting drained.

Alternately, why not look at things in reverse. So long as you’re looking at the shelves and counting your inventory, where are the empty spaces? What are the areas you don’t like, the areas you’ve experienced the least amount of success or creative satisfaction? Those empty shelves likely mean one of two things – an absence of passion or an absence of talent or skill.  You’ve got two choices in this regard; use that knowledge to define the gigs you don’t want so you can focus on your strenghts, or put your energies into shoring up the weak spots and stocking those particular shelves.

The truth is, there are hundreds of thousands of photographers out there, skilled and otherwise. It is not generally your singular ability to wield a camera and pick an f-stop that clients want, it is your unique passion, individual vision and style, and your unique skillset, that will determine which clients find a match in which photographer. Knowing the ongoing state of your inventory, selling that particular stock, and doing something about the empty shelves, these make it all significantly easier to put your craft on offer in the marketplace.  Hitting a dry spot? Just starting out? Close shop for an afternoon and do some inventory. It’s easier to sell what you know you have.

As a follow-up to last week’s series on blogging for photographers, here’s a list of the blogs I look to as a standard. They’re mostly personal blogs with solid traffic, unique voices and good content. A number of you sent suggestions that included your own blog and I encourage everyone to go back to the comments on that post HERE – to see more suggestions both in regards to blogs and to hosting and blog platforms. Some excellent reader feedback there. So please don’t take offense if your blog isn’t in the list below, this is a pretty cursory list of solid, more established blogs that I hope will inspire you as you build your own blogs to reflect your purpose and passion. Being on this list means something, but not being on it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hope that makes sense.

M.D. Welch – http://www.depth-of-field.com/blog/

Scott Kelby – http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

Matt Brandon – http://www.thedigitaltrekker.com/blog/

Gavin Gough – http://www.gavingough.com/blog

Joe McNally – http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/

Moose Peterson -http://www.moosenewsblog.com/

Chase Jarvis – http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Strobist – http://strobist.blogspot.com/

Tewfic El-Sawy – http://thetravelphotographer.blogspot.com/

Drew Gardner – http://photography-thedarkart.blogspot.com/

Bruce Percy – http://www.brucepercy.com/blog/

Zack Arias – http://www.zarias.com/

David Nightingale – http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/index.php

Kirk Tuck – http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

Jessica Claire – http://www.jessicaclaire.net/

Jasmine Star – http://www.jasminestarblog.com/

Guy Tal – http://guytal.com/wordpress/

Kathleen Connally – http://www.durhamtownship.com/

Dane Sanders – http://blog.danesanders.com/

Did I miss someone that you think is an absolute must-have on the list? Doesn’t surprise me. The Internets are a big place. Drop it into the comments.

As far as hosting goes I want to plug ETWebHosting again. (Click here to go to their WordPress hosting page) They also own DomainSmarty, so the process of registering your name and hosting it are seemless – I don’t like complications and doing it all in one place with a company that has brilliant customer service is my kind of service. The company is owned by my buddy, we’ve travelled around the world together, he’s photographer friendly, and unlike most of the companies I’ve dealt with or heard horror stories about, his company doesn’t speak geek to us mere mortals.  If you’re a pro, or plan to be, having a dedicated name for  your blog – like, for example, Moose Peterson’s MooseNewsBlog.com – is way better than moosepeterson.blogspot.com – it’s just one step closer to projecting a fully professional image. Of course there are exceptions. David Hobby’s Strobist site is as plain jane as it gets and the name is still strobist.blogspot.com, but his content is so good and so well known that it trumps other considerations.

I also want to encourage you to spread the word about your blog. If you take the time to write consistently, then take the time to publicize it. Connect to others, share the love, get on Twitter and direct traffic to your great content and images.

If I can answer questions related to blogging as a photographer, I’d love to. I know that some of the other readers will have some excellent feedback to, so drop the questions into the comments and together we’ll do what we can to get you blogging and doing it well. Now take a moment and visit a few of the sites above.

So if I didn’t dissuade you from blogging yesterday, and the lame photo above doesn’t turn you off, here’s a few suggestions for plunging headlong into blogging. Taylor Davidson left a comment on Tuesday’s post citing anecdotal evidence that many blogs don’t make it past the 3 month mark. Don’t let this happen to you. This is a short list, and it applies to long-term bloggers looking to breathe new life into their blog with an overhaul as much as it does to new bloggers.

1. Don’t let the name fool you, blogging is just writing. You are self-publishing a daily or weekly column, nothing more. So unless you’ve got a photoblog with no words, bone up on your writing skills.

2. Content Is King. Seriously. In fact it’s more like Grand Emperor. Unless you are a celebrity to whom people are drawn like desperate flies, people will come for what you write. If you’re hysterically funny, many will overlook what you write and come for how you write it. But most of you will draw an audience based purely on content. You must have something to say. And unless you lead a profoundly interesting life, or a boring one about which you write incredibly well, people simply won’t show up to read it. Unless it’s your mother and I’m betting even she has limits.

3. Skip the freebie webhosts, like Blogger, and go straight to WordPress.com or WordPress.org. Just save yourself the grief and do it right the first time. I wish I had. I reserve a special place of loathing for Blogger. Typepad is fine, but you pay for it so might as well go straight to WordPress. WordPress.com is a paid and hosted kind of deal, WordPress.org is free for the downloading, but you need to install it on your server and update yourself, so there’s a certain degree of geekdom required. If you’re looking for great hosting, I can’t recommend ETWebHosting strongly enough. Sure, you can get free hosting out there but you get what you pay for. I’ve been using ETWebHosting for years and their reliability and customer service is fantastic. If all you want to do is get a blog up and running, then spend the few dollars/month and get a WordPress.com blog.

4. Find a name you can live with for a long time. Getting the word out and the momentum going is tough work and will take you time to build a readership. Blogs are spread virally, so once your URL is out there it’s best if you can let it do its thing without changing it up.

5. Find a niche. Not everyone needs one, but it helps. Strobist is a great example. Another way of looking at it: play to your strengths. If what you most want to do is post a combination of images and narratives and leave off with the gear talk, do it. If you want to focus solely on macro photography, do it. Follow your expertise or your passion.

6. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s just a blog for gosh sakes. Enjoy it. Know your audience but write what you want to write – it’s your blog, not theirs.

7. Be consistent. If you want consistent and growing readership, and not all people have that as a goal, then writing consistently is important. Doesn’t have to be everyday, but if you decide to post every Wednesday, make sure you show up or your readers won’t. But make sure you have something to say. Better to post actual content people care about and only post once a week, than to post junk every day.

8. Use social media to support your blog. If you’re already on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to let those people know when you post to your blog. This draws in people from that outer circle of your immediate circle of friends, people that otherwise wouldn’t know about your blog.

9. Interact. Part of the payoff of blogging is meeting new people, making connections, and expanding your world. Reply to comments, link to others, and in general keep the love flowing.

10. This one’s yours. Got a suggestion for successful blogging, specifically for photographers, then this is your spot. Actually the comments are your spot, so consider this symbolic.

For tomorrow’s post I’d love to assemble a list of photographers who are blogging and really doing it well. Could be a blog like mine with lots of words and opinion, could be strictly a photoblog like David Nightingale’s Chromasia, but if you’ve got a favourite, throw it into the comments and I’ll compile them.

Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of blogging, and while I gave you three pretty compelling reasons, I’m pretty sure that what I gave you was a short list. But given all these benefits, is blogging a tool you should be spending time on?

I think so. But what shape that takes is different for everyone. I love to write. It’s not usually a chore for me to sit down and communicate. If anything I tend to over-communicate at times. But some of you don’t like writing. Perhaps with time you’ll get better at it and grow to love it. But some of you, well ya know I love you and so this might be hard for you to hear – heck, it’s hard for me to say-  well, you just might want to do a photo blog and speak through your images instead. Look, if you stink at writing in the same way I stink at math, why put yourself – and your readers – through it? Do what you love and do what you’re good at and if writing ain’t either, find something that is. Or don’t, that’s just my two cents worth. But if you’re an exceptional photographer and your writing is simply lousy, then you’re doing a disservice to you work and misrepresenting yourself. If you insist on writing, then find an editor to work with, someone who will respect your voice and polish your writing so it is aligned with the quality of your work. By the way, if this is the route you choose, I have more respect for you than you know, because this is not the path of least resistance and it shows real commitment. Good on ya.

Writing is not the only way to create content on a blog. You could do audio or video podcasts, or simply post an image daily. But closing your eyes to the fact that your work and your words are at odds with each other isn’t going to make that go away. Again, fine if you’re a hobbyist, I suppose, but if you’re a working pro, or aspire to be, then your words and your work need to compliment and support each other and, ultimately, support the goals you have for your blog.

What is missing in the discussion of photographers and blogging is often a rationale. Doing it because everyone else is doing it is a rationale but not one that’s very helpful. So many blogging photographers have no intended audience whatsoever. None. Their design, content, and writing style suggests strongly that they’re just puttin’ it out there in hopes the someone, anyone, will read it. If you’re a hobbyist, then more power to ya, an unfocused blog is groovy. But for aspiring professionals the very first questions you must ask and from which all your content decisions must be made are Why am I doing this? Who am I writing this for?

If you know the answer to that, then you can make sound choices about what should and should not be part of your blog. If your audience is potential clients then long Photoshop tutorials and discussions about your last assignment that blew up in your face and left you frustrated are probably poor content choices. They won’t read them. They shouldn’t read them. If your audience is other photographers because you’re a trainer, lecturer, author, workshop leader, etc, then these are exactly the things your intended audience might get strong value from.

I know I beat this horse so much there ain’t much left of him, but what you do – particularily in the professional arena – will be better served if it is informed first by why you do it. The Why will determine the What and the How. Oddly, so many people seem to be asking “Should I blog?” and fewer are asking “Why should I blog?” Both good questions, but the second one interests me much more.

I did an interview with Frederick Van Johnson of TWIP last week. Easily the most fun I’ve had doing an interview in the last 15 or so years, and there have been some real doozies. One of the questions he asked me was about blogging and while I can’t recall the exact question, or my reply for that matter, it’s had me thinking.

Q: Should photographers blog?
A: Depends.

This is a little like asking if architects should use telephones. Taken the wrong way it’s a bit on the far side of non-sequitor. On the other hand, if the architect needs to make a phone call the telephone will be a much better tool – assuming he uses it right – than, say, a turnip. Of course the question Fred was implying was: are there benefits to blogging that photographers who abstain from this social media might be missing? And the answer is a resounding Yes! Clearly if you’re reading this you see value in the blog as a form of communication. If you didn’t you’d be doing something else with your time. Possibly even out making photographs.

I did a post months back called You Definitely Should(n’t) Blog and followed that one up with Blogging Tips for Photographers so I won’t repeat it again. If you’re interested in this topic, by all means go back and read those two articles.

I just want to follow up because Fred’s question got me thinking and I haven’t been able to shake it. So forget all the rational reasons and let me give you three more that are a little more experiential. Used well, with some skill and intention, using a blog as a form of social networking and promotion can bring gifts you never expected.

1. My best friends in the photographic world have come through my blog.
I have a circle of friends that I am every day grateful for, and most of them came through this blog. They are now people, many of them, that I’ve met in person, travelled with, taught with, photographed with, and shared meals with. If it all fell apart tomorrow I’ve made lifelong friends. If my blog had done nothing more than that, this would be enough.

2. My best client has come through my blog.
Two and a half years ago I got an email out of the blue from someone who’d been reading my blog, lurking in the background for months. One minute I had no idea she was even out there, the next minute I had an email on my desk asking if I’d be interested in a high-profile assignment in a couple countries in Africa. I wasn’t angling for work, I wasn’t writing for clients. But something in the way I wrote and the common interests and values we seemed to share made her think I was the photographer she wanted. We still work together and that account is both my largest and my most enjoyable.

3. My best opportunities have come through my blog.
Every one of the best opportunities I have had over the last three years, including my book, have come as a result of conversations that were initiated on, or because of, my blog. Without exception. I have booked lectures, workshops, and writing assignments solely from this blog.

I love blogging. I get more personal and professional satisfaction out of the time I spend on this thing, and on the blogs of others photographers, than I ever imagined. The blog can be a powerful, career-building tool, when wielded right. If you’ve ever wondered if blogging had any benefits for a photographer, and if the three benefits I listed above didn’t seal the deal, read the article I mentionned at the top of the post – You Definitely Should(n’t) Blog

This week I want to talk about blogging as photographers. If you have questions or ideas for topics you’d love to see covered, leave a comment. I have a couple ideas but as is often the case I’m kind of just launching the ship into these waters this week without a solid course set. It’s just more, uh, organic that way. If you’ve seen your own blog bring you solid benefits or have some wisdom to share, leave it the comments and share the love. Tomorrow we’ll talk about why you just might wanna leave this whole thing alone.

If you’ve been around these bloggy parts for even a few weeks you’ll know that I’ve been wrestling with the whole 2.0 world. The social networking world which these days revolves around Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc. At times this wrestling has been more like a death match and more than once I’ve been left gasping for air and ready to give in. I haven’t because I think it’s worth the trouble to figure this stuff out.

Right now I am up to my neck in social networking, affiliate accounts, and things like AmazonConnect. My book comes out in 6 weeks and I want to get things in place to really do a proper job of promoting it. So I have a reason for all this frantic social networking stuff. But so do many of you.

Social networking, Web 2.0, whatever you call it, is nothing more than a set of tools. For some of you it’s a set of toys and you’re content to litter the information superhighway with details about your cat or your breakfast. I guess that’s ok, too. But the business applications for these tools are immense if you (1) use them with intent and (2) use them well. Not easy.

So, let’s talk Twitter. I use it because it can be whatever you want it to be. It can be a chat room, a newswire, a polling service, a micro-blog. It can be a tool to connect you to more people faster, and give you opportunities to go deeper. But it’s not magic. You gotta learn to use it. Here’s what I’ve learned after a couple weeks of living and breathing this stuff.

1. Be Relevant. For the love of all things good, PLEASE ask yourself this one question before tweeting: Who Cares? Seriously. If the answer is limited to you and your cat, keep it to yourself. If you’re micro-blogging as a professional then stupid tweets about absolutely nothing will only dilute the way I think about you. Perception is reality and if you’re Twittering makes you look vapid and silly, sorry, you’ve just become vapid and silly.

2. Know Your Audience. Who are you talking to? Professional photographers? Amateurs? All photographers? This guides what you say and how you say it.

3. Be Yourself. But be a carefully edited version of yourself. What you say on the Twittersphere and the rest of the internet ripples a long way. You can’t control where it goes or how it gets used, only what you say. So be mindful. Careers have crashed and burned.

4. Be Community-Minded. If you are looking to be a leader within a community you have to interact with, and serve, that community. Web 2.0 is fueled by reciprocity. For every person that follows you, follow them (unless numbers don’t matter to you). For every tweet you throw out to the Twittersphere, comment or respond to another. Re-Tweet.

5. Know The Limits And Move Past Them. Twitter can only do so much. It’s like an internet dating site. You find the girl, you chat with the girl, but if you don’t graduate from the online service to a face-to-face encounter, y’ain’t dating. Twitter is great for meeting and chatting, but you can’t live life at 140 characters all the time. Don’t be afraid to take it further. I’ve already had coffee with folks I’ve met on Twitter, in fact I have one tomorrow morning. And the more conversations you have, the more opportunities you find.

6. Get a Reader, like TweetDeck, to make heads or tails of Twitter and keep your head above water. What it took me a while to understand is that Twitter is a reciprocal numbers thing. If part of your goal is more followers, then you need to follow more people. But no one can keep track of all this noise, so Tweetdeck allows you to create columns for favourites, and groups. So I’ve got one just for photography in which I place the folks who generate actual content. Keeps me sane. Not everyone wants numbers, but I’m experimenting with something so that’s part of my goal. Tweetdeck allows me to do that and remain sane. Without Tweetdeck I’d have jumped ship.

7. Repeat The Tweet. I don’t do this, but probably should. If you want your tweets to reach the most peeps (what the heck kind of language is this new technology encouraging?) then you need to repeat your tweets a few times a day. I guess I’m I just don’t care that much because this seems like too much work. But if you’ve got something important to say repeat it, and ask people to RT.

8. Remember Your Purpose. If your purpose is to direct people to your blog, then do that – intentionally point people to new posts, but consider this: if you come off as too self-promotional, as more of a taker than a giver, the community to which you appeal is likely to be smaller than if you also point to great related content on other blogs. If your purpose is just to make a name for yourself then the usual rules of celebrity management/leverage apply, but here’s another: be a fan, not just a celebrity. The more you point people to others, the more valuable you are to others. People like folks who are givers.

9. Extend Your Brand. If I go to your Twitter page will I find your logo? Do you have a great avatar? Your web 2.0 activities are marketing activities, little chances to say Here’s Who I Am! The usual rules apply – be creative, consistent, and congruent with your brand and core values.

10. Please Control Yourself. You need to update Twitter a dozen times every hour? Seriously? Do you know that makes me want to poke my eye out with a fork? Remember tip #1 – Be Relevant – but please, be relevant IN MODERATION. The more you say the less impact each thing you say will have. More signal, less noise. Please.

Got a great tip for using Twitter as a photographer? Comments are open.

When I launched this month’s main giveaway I was pretty hard on Flickr. I said some cruel things. Feelings got hurt. And then I felt bad, joined Flickr to put my money where my mouth was, and guess what? Still hate it. But it has its uses. I’m not sure how people can do it, must have more time than me. For a million reasons I can understand people using – and loving – Flickr. Just not for use as a portfolio.

So to that end we ponied up and made this month’s Giveaway a copy of Evrium’s Professional Fluid Galleries. I’m pleased to announce that the winner is Jakob Swartz Sorenson. But everyone else can have a coupon for $50 off if you email me soonishly. The coupon expires April 15, 2009 – so it’s a limited time offer. Email me if you want one.

Assuming you have any professional aspirations – and not all photographers do, that’s OK – a portfolio is not the depository of every image you’ve ever shot. It’s a piece of visual communication designed to communicate certain things about you and your visual style to others, usually prospective clients. It’s a professional tool. As such:

A portfolio should be built to communicate to your specific audience. If you’re looking to book wedding work, a portfolio with a bunch of images from the airshow is a step in the wrong direction. Want wedding work, show the clients your best wedding work. People want to hire people who are experts in their area, not the guy who shoots everything.

A portfolio should be created to visually support your style and brand. Your marketing should be consistent and it should be all you, baby. Your vision and your passion direct it.

A portfolio should be – and this is where I need to go back to my own and do an overhaul – your absolute best foot forward. Don’t show alternate frames or the ones that just have personal meaning to you – put those in your Flickr account and keep the portfolio lean. How lean? That’s up to you. Leaner than mine, I think.

One of the best things you can do to fine-tune your portfolio is bring in a new set of eyes. Eyes that are not attached to your images, eyes you respect. Ask those eyes to look at your portfolio and do an edit.

Have a great weekend, shoot something you love. And if you have time left over this weekend, don’t forget to calibrate your monitor and back up your images.

Found this very amusing. The “You Can’t Afford Bad Photography” line is fantastic. Remember all that talk about selling benefits, not features? (See THIS post) Anyways, this ad nails it. And it’s funny. And probably true, though I suspect the logic is off a little. This is almost enough to persuade me to join the PPABC.

A few comments rolled in after yesterday’s post about the Fluid Galleries Giveaway asking about generating traffic to your website. Fluid Galleries or any strictly Flash-based site left without any kind of modifications has some limitations, one of the biggest of which is the difficulty – nay, the impossibility – of it being easily indexed by search engines like Google.

Now, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a field of expertise all on its own, as is the art/science of traffic generation. So think of this as a sketch book with some ideas I’ve scraped out of the jet-lag addled recesses of my mind, and not so much as a guide or comprehensive list.

First. The WHY. Ask yourself why you want to generate traffic. If it’s just to inflate your stats, then write things like “Keira Knightly naked” and BOOM! the stats for this post just went up. But do I really want that traffic? They won’t be clients, they likely aren’t photographers interested in being part of a learning community. They’ll probably never buy my books. Unless I promise to include photographs of Keira Knightly naked. See, stats just went up again. But why? In all likelihood you don’t want traffic, you want specific traffic. (Although even the random stuff that comes in helps your Google ratings.)

If you have site like Fluid Galleries you’d be best to either place it within HTML frames – I know it can be done but don’t know how. Or to precede the flash-based site with a HTML splash page with enough text saying the right things, that Google will pick it up.  These days, as the iPhone gains prominence, and flash sites won’t (yet) play nice with the iPhone, a small HTML gallery is a good idea anyways. So what are the right things your page should be saying? Depends on who you want to attract but starting with who you are, what you do, where you do it and why, is a good start.

Beyond that, here’s the magic secret everyone wants and I won’t ask you to join a club or learn a secret handshake to learn it: there is no magic secret. The web works simply – the more you are out there, the more people are talking about you, the more people are pointing back to you, the more Google will recognize you, the better your visibility, and the more people will find you talk about you, point back to you, and the on and on. It’s a spiraling vortex of cause and effect.

So what do I do to be sure I am visible?

1. Great content. Or at least consistent content. There’s no point getting people here if there’s no reason for them to stay. One of my goals is to create a community of like-minded people with whom I can share what this industry, and this craft, has so richly given me. If you’re slick and have no content or are overly self-promoting, people sense that and move along quickly.

2. Interact. This is where all you Flickr-holics are right about the value of Flickr. It’s a chance to interact. But when you do so, leave (a) an impression and (b) a paper trail. Make sure you let people know where to find you off-site, lead them back to your website or your blog.

3. Create a signature that’s memorable, consistent, and full of the kind of information that you want Google to pick up and index, along with a text link back to your site or blog. On the most basic level that could be: David duChemin, Vancouver-based Humanitarian and Travel Photographer. Visual stories told from the heart. http://www.pixelatedimage.com – The more you leave these calling cards, the more your name and the words in that line of text will get linked with your URL. Be specific. If you want people to look at your portfolio, link them there. If you want people to read your blog, link them there instead.

4. Comment on other people’s blogs. Your tone of voice, your contribution, and your presence on multiple blogs of the same kind will begin to draw traffic comprised of the same kind of people. This is a good argument for not being a jerk, and for remembering that while “on the internet no body knows you’re a dog” they sure know if you’re an idiot. I think Taylor Davidson said that. And that brings me to my next point.

5. Share the love like it’s going outta style. Cause it is. The internets are full to bustin’ of self-promoting takers and if you’re a giver you shine like gold in a pile of coal. Ok, lame metaphor, I was trying to be dramatic. So give great content and link, link, link. Make it your mission to connect people to other people who are creating great content.

6. Contribute. Scott Kelby has guest blogs every Wednesday. This Wednesday it was Tim Montoani (see what I did there?) I read his blog, liked his words and his voice and went to his site and then to his blog. I guarantee I’m not the only one. His traffic went up and many of us will put him on our blogrolls. If you have something to say, say it, but don’t confine yourself to your own blog or website – offer to create content for others and introduce others to your readers/viewers as well. Competitive people won’t find this easy. It’s counter-intuitive. But it works.

7. Consider joining a portal site like Viisual.com

8. Join industry-specific photography communities like the Travel Photographers Network, and be active. Post images, leave valuable comments, and make sure everything you leave behind points back to you with a text-based URL (see #3)

9. Mix and match with conventional marketing methods. Want to get more studio photographers to your blog about studio photography because a year from now you’re releasing a book and you need to do some legwork? Send a postcard to 500 of the top studio photographers in the country inviting them to visit your website, read your blog, and consider contributing articles to increase their visibility.

10. Investigate web 2.0 phenomena like Twitter and be open to new technologies, new ways of connecting. Twitter might not be for you, heck I’m not even sure it’s really for me yet. But I know it’s already driving people to my blog. So can Flickr and Facebook and Digg and all those other social networking tools. But not MySpace. That’s so last year. Don’t get too loyal to any of them because the life of these tools is often measured in months and not years.

OK, that’s my top ten off the top of my head. What’s your strategy?

Leave a comment, share the love – but be sure to read #3 again. Comments without a signature of some sort will be docked ten percent and you’ll be held back during recess to sharpen pencils.

You’ll be please to know I’ve stopped the navel-gazing in which I was stuck yesterday. Or at least I’ve opted to keep it to myself for now. I’ve got the loan of a 4×5 field camera to play with and if that doesn’t either satisy my need to jump the rut or send me back to digital with my tail between my legs in a hurry, nothing will.   So, onward.

I know not everyone agrees with me on this, and I’m cool with that. Different strokes, different folks, etc. BUT since it’s my blog and y’all don’t come here to hear me prevaricate…ahem…Flickr is a horrible thing to do to your photographs. I know, I know, you love Flickr, but before you go all 2.0 on me, hear me out.

Flickr is a great place to connect, a super-duper place even to find sycophantic people who will tell you everything you want to hear about how good your images are. Some of you need that encouragement and, God bless ya, you’ll find it there. Some of us desperately need to be told our images suck and need work. If you’re 5 years old, you should be PRAISED for creating a drawing of a house with a sun on top, regardless of the purple cat. Heck, BECAUSE of the purple cat. But if you’re 25 and you’re still drawing like that, the folks still praising you as the next Robert Bateman aren’t helping. You see that alot on Flickr. Some of us need it. Most should be seeking critics, not fanboys. Myself included. But that’s a digression.

Flickr is ugly, ugly, ugly. And while it has it’s uses, it is not the place to be showing your photographs to the world. Photography is a visual medium. Aesthetics matter. Your work deserves much, much better than the trailer park bulletin board (not that there’s anything wrong with trailers, parks, or bulletin boards, per se) – they deserve a gallery. A space that has been designed for showing the world your art, making it the hero. I guarantee the image that I passed over on Flickr would at least beg my eye for a second chance if it was hung on a stark white wall. (I’m not saying Flickr has no value, it does indeed. But you pick the right tool for the right job and if you’re looking to (1) showcase your images or (b) get truly constructive image critique, there are much better tools than Flickr. That’s all)

Why am I preaching this particular sermon? Because I want to love your photographs. I want to look at them – stare at them – and hear your intention, the thing that moved you to say “hey, look at that,” in  a powerful enough way that you captured it in a frame and now compell me to look at it too. I can’t do that on Flickr or a crappy website. But I can do it on a website created, not for interaction and Web 2.0 – but for showing and looking at images.

There is alot of great software out there for this very thing. Some frighteningly expensive, some not so much. The one I use is Evrium’s Fluid Galleries and the good folks at Evrium have ponied up for this month’s giveaway. They’re giving away a Fluid Galleries Professional Package to one luck winner, chosen through a random draw. But wait! There’s more! For everyone who does not win, but who enters, there is a $50 discount coupon code. For sheer simplicity of building a good-looking, Flash-based gallery, Fluid Galleries is fantastic. Yup, lots of other good ones out there too and I don’t have a bad word to say about most of them, but this is the one I chose and the one that’s sharing the love with you. Matt Brandon uses them. Gavin Gough uses them. I use them. If you use them to, there’s a chance we’ll let you into the cult. A slim chance, but a hope springs eternal right? Whatever you chose, I urge you to put your best work somewhere that dignifies it, gives it it’s best shot at speaking to me.

A couple resources to check out. First, PhotoShelter did some great research about creating websites and online portfolios that don’t suck – check it out, and download a pdf, HERE on the Photoshelter Blog. Second, the Fluid Gallery Website is HERE. Lastly, if you’re sold on fleeing from Flickr but need to do it on a shoestring, check out the Lightroom Gallery templates from the Turning Gate HERE, including a great one for quick iPhone portfolios.

Ok, same rules as always. Winner must leave a comment with their name and email address in the name and email fields. No email, no name, no prize. I’ll draw for this in a couple weeks when the mood hits. Those that don’t win will be able to email me for a $50 discount coupon, but I suggest you go to Evrium.com and sign up for their free newsletter and try to win your software first. They do a monthly photo contest – no rights grabbing, no wierdness, and the winner gets free software. Who couldn’t love that? And don’t forget I’ve still got three copies of Joe McNally’s new book, the Hotshoe Diaries to give away just as soon as they’re off the press – enter HERE.