Photography Other Archives - Shutter Buggs

Top 10 Educational Photography Podcasts That Will Inspire You

Annabella Dean — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 02:23:16 +0000

There is an amazing wealth of knowledge and education on internet that can be accessed for free, if you know where to look…

In this blog post I’m going to reveal the best photography podcasts that you should be listening too and learning from to not only improve your photography, but also the skills you require to become a professional photographer and successful business owner.

1. ) The Art Of Photography

Category: General Photography
Host: Ted Forbes / iTunes / Website

The Art Of Photography is an in-depth video podcast which covers a wide range of photographic topics.

Ted Forbes does an amazing job of distilling artistic concepts, styles and techniques used by famous and not so famous photographers into meaningful, bit size pieces of digestible content that will inspire the future artistic direction and style of your photography.

2. ) Photo Biz Xposed

Category: Business & Marketing
Host: Andrew Hellmich / iTunes / Website

The Photo Biz Xposed is an interview based podcast that aims to highlight how successful wedding and portrait photographers continue to thrive in today’s fragile digital economy.

Australian photographer and host Andrew Hellmich focuses on extracting actionable advice from his guests targeted around creating a profitable photography business.

3. ) Improve Photography

Category: General Photography
Host: Jim Harmer / iTunes / Website

The Improve Photography podcast is predominantly for enthusiasts but also caters to professional photographers who want to learn everything there is to learn about photography.

Jim Harmer works hard at making each podcast episode unique with industry news, expert interviews and Q&A sessions for listeners of the show.

4. ) Tog Tools

Category: Business & Marketing
Host: Stephen & Jess Robertson / iTunes / Website

The Tog Tools podcast specialises in interviewing other experts within the photographic industry, exploring important topics relevant to building a successful photography business.

Hosted by Stephen and Jess Robertson experienced photographers from Southern California ask pertinent questions which achieve direct, measured answers from their podcast guests.

5. ) Tips From The Top Floor

Category: General Photography
Host: Chris Marquardt / iTunes / Website

Tips from the Top Floor is a weekly show about photography. It is brought to you by photographic mythbuster Chris Marquardt. When he’s not on a commercial assignment, Chris focuses on educating photographers through his podcast, workshops and apps.

6. ) Sprouting Photographer

Category: Business & Marketing
Host: Bryan Caporicci / iTunes / Website

The Sprouting Photographer podcast aims at teaching how to achieve success as a professional photographer through sustainable business practices.

Bryan Caporicci a wedding and portrait photographer based out of Fonthill, Canada is the founder and host of the Sprouting Photographer podcast which continues to grow and has become a wonderful resource for aspiring photographers.

7. ) Photography Marketing Masters

Category: Business & Marketing
Host: Nigel Merrick / iTunes / Website

Photography Marketing Masters is a podcast created by Nigel Merrick for professional photographers who are looking for motivation, inspiration and practical advice.

Each podcast episode Nigel interviews an experienced photographer or expert marketer who share the strategies and tactics that they used on their journey to building a successful career.

8. ) Martin Bailey Photography

Category: General Photography
Host: Martin Bailey / iTunes / Website

The Martin Bailey Photography podcast is the perfect mix of art, technique, interviews, gear reviews and travelogue style episodes.

As you’ve probably guessed, it’s host is Martin Bailey a nature and wildlife photographer who is based in Tokyo, Japan. Martin’s passion for photography and his desire to share his knowledge with the world is contagious.

9. ) Fulltime Photographer

Category: Business & Marketing
Host: Josh Rossi / iTunes / Website

If you’re interested in learning how to turn your passion for photography into a full time job then this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Josh Rossi a professional photographer who specialises in commercial and advertising photography. Josh’s insights and interviews with other experts in the photographic industry will leave you full of ideas on how to grow your photography business.

10. ) Fro Knows Photo

Category: General Photography
Host: Jared Polin / iTunes / Website

The Fro Knows Photo podcast is hosted by Jared Polin an eccentric photographer who loves to discuss all things photography.

From Nikon to Canon cameras, lenses and accessories for your camera bag. Jared shares useful tips, tricks, reviews and personal views that will feed the photographer within.

The post Top 10 Educational Photography Podcasts That Will Inspire You appeared first on Shutter Buggs.

Top 10 Professional Photography Tools

Annabella Dean — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 02:49:42 +0000

In this article I’m going to reveal the photography tools that myself and other professional photographers have successfully used to become not only better photographers, but also to become better business owners.

Obviously there are hundreds if not thousands of different tools on the market that you can use to get the job done, but what I hope is that this list is insightful whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional.

Due to the nature of this article, I unfortunately can’t go into great detail on how to use each specific tool, but I’ll do my best to be as descriptive as possible for you. If you would like more information regarding any of the photography tools listed in this guide please visit the respective links that accompany each tool.

If you come across any tools that you think should be included in this guide please reach out and let me know. Alright, let’s get going!

1. On-Camera Flash Diffuser

One of my secrets for capturing beautiful even lighting that enhances skins tones without emphasising wrinkles or blemishes is to attach a diffuser to my portable flash unit.

Flash diffusers help distribute light evenly and are relatively in expensive. You can pick up a variety of different flash diffusers for a couple of dollars.

I personally prefer flash diffusers that are made out of materials just like the ones demonstrated in this photograph, but you can pick up ones made from plastic also.

A downside of the plastic diffusers are that most are made to fit a particular flash unit which doesn’t allow for much flexibility compared to a material diffuser which will fit most on-camera flash units.

I choose to use my on-camera flash as a fill-light which really produces beautiful results for wedding and portraiture photography.

Here are good examples of inexpensive flash diffusers:

2. Custom Lighting Solutions

At some stage in your career as a photographer you’ll come across a project or assignment that requires custom lighting and for most photographers who specialize in product, wedding or portrait photography wouldn’t be able to survive without a portable and robust set of suitable lighting equipment.

There are numerous combinations of lights and accessories on the market and you don’t necessarily need to choose the most expensive brands to get the job done.

It’s our job as a photographer to sometime improvise in order to create and capture the lighting required which can often involve using items that we may never have thought of in the first place.

Below is a short list of reasonably price portable studio lighting kits that you might find of interest:

3. Studio Backgrounds

Studio backgrounds are great and can be used in so many situations from general portraiture right through to videography. If you choose to go down the road of owning your very own background and a support system please take the time to consider your options.

Backgrounds can come in several different types from paper which is cheap and tends to need to be replace compared to that of material which is more durable.

The three most popular styles of backgrounds for photography I’ve found to be are white, black and green screen. White and black are very versatile for all forms of photography, where as a green screen can be used to easy add artificial digital backgrounds which can be very popular with customers.

Make sure you consider the needs of your business prior to investing in background and support system:

4. Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop

As a photographer you would be extremely hard done by if you didn’t have access to Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop for editing your photographs.

It’s no secret that Photoshop has been at the core of every successful photographer for a very long time and for good reason. In this new digital age it is essential to be able to control every aspect of an image file in order to achieve our desired outcome.

Adobe now offers a variety of different software packages to suit everyones needs, but from the perspective of a professional photographer avoid purchasing Adobe Photoshop Elements which is essentially a watered down version of Photoshop without all the bells and whistles. But with that said Elements is continually evolving and as Photoshops feature sets grow, so will Elements.

For further information checkout some of the resources below:

Adobe Photoshop Family

5. Advanced Presets, Actions & Plugins

Essential to any photographers editing workflow within Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop are presets, actions and plugins. These that can be used to improve productivity by automating repetitive workflow processes that occur in the day to day life of a professional photographer.

Presets, actions and plugins can perform a variety of useful tasks from the creation color effects, black and white tones, sepia tones, high dynamic range or HDR effects, photo retouching, background extraction etc. inevitably saving you time and money.

There are lots of great plugins made by all sorts of companies and photographers in the marketplace, but just remember if you can afford an advanced plugin for your digital workflow you can always create your very own through presets and actions.

It’s not very difficult to do, however it does require a little bit of know how to set them up. But once you have set up one preset or action you can easily replicated it without any trouble.

Here are a few plugins that I have found quite useful over the years:

6. Color Management Charts & Software

Consistency in photography as a professional is extremely important if you want to be successful. At stage in your photographic journey achieving consistent color throughout your digital workflow will become a priority.

Color management is the process of managing the conversion of color from different devices such as your digital camera, flatbed scanner, Computer Monitor, Photographic Printer and Papers just to name a few.

One tool I highly recommend you have in your camera kit is an 18% gray card and a color chart which can be included in photographs as a reference point to not only adjust your white balance, but also match specific skin tones and colors.

Color charts and color management tools that you might find useful:

7. Professional Printer or Photographic Lab?

How you choose to display your photographs is a very important aspect of your work and printing in general can be a very expensive exercise. Essentially when it comes to making a decision about how you would like you photos printed you primarily how to options.

The first is to invest in your very own large format color inkjet printer, inks and paper along with the education needed to be able to run your new printer efficiently.

For most this option is out of reach and in reality isn’t always a viable option. The question you should ask yourself is… do you want to take more photographs or print more images?

If you want to take more photographs which is where most of your money will be made, I recommend investing in a small to medium size inkjet printer such as Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Inkjet Large Format Printer – 17” for proofing requirements and then choose a good professional photographic lab for handling the majority of your printing.

Professional photographic labs have a great selection of papers and a quick turn around which is often more economical then trying to do it all by yourself.

8. Catalogue of High Quality Products

One of the easiest ways to grow your photography business is by being able to deliver an extensive range of products and services to your customers. Now you might be thinking that this will make the buying process more complex which is simply not true when implemented correctly.

By offering something that compliments an existing product or service you are providing, you can easily increase the average investment a customer makes in your business.

Here are examples of additional products you could add to your existing product catalogue:

Different Photographic Paper Types: (Matt, Gloss, Metallic, Fujiflex etc.)
Fine Art Prints
Canvas Prints
Acrylic Mounts
Professional Framing
Photo Albums & Photo Books
Calendars, Diaries, Greeting Cards, Novelty Items etc.

9. Professional Looking Websites That Sells

In an industry that has expanded so fast since the introduction of digital cameras, it’s become extremely hard to standout from the crowd and attract new customers.

Without a doubt one of the most important elements of running a photography based business or any business for matter in todays online economy is the ability to be able to sell your products and services online through your very own website.

Building your own photography website doesn’t have to be difficult and you don’t need to know any HTML to get this done quickly and easily. Below you’ll find a short list of services that can easily make you a website with ecommerce capabilities for selling your photos online.

Resources & Tools you might find useful:

10. Professional DSLR Video Stabilizer Mounts

Advancements in digital camera technology have now enable photographers to be able to capture high definition video all from within their DSLR. Video production is a great additional to your existing services as a photographer, especially if you shot weddings.

With one or two simple additions to your camera kit you’re able to record videos like a professional in no time at all.

For video you’ll need to think about getting a DSLR stabilizer or shoulder mount, a decent microphone for recording high quality audio and potentially a portable LED Light that you can mount to your digital camera.

These three tools will make a huge difference to the quality of the video you’ll be able to capture and improve the variety of environments under which you’ll be able to record.

Once again there are a wide range of DSLR video accessories available and below I included a few inexpensive examples to get your started.

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