For the past few years I’ve been telling my students who are new to digital photography, to use Picnik.com if they need to edit their jpgs photos. Picnik is full featured yet simple and intuitive. A perfect fit for beginners.

But Picnik is closing on April 19th, 2012!

Yikes. Now what should you use?

There are a few alternatives for editing images online and in this post I’m going to do a mini review of iPiccy.com and Photoshop.com. Read on, and watch the video here to see what I think of each of these online image editing programs.

Best Photoshop.com features

• Well it’s simple and doesn’t have a lot of features! That’s what I really like about it.
• I like the online gallery space you get with your account. This is great for sharing holiday and event photos with friends and family. I have a friend who went traveling with 5 friends and they can all see and share her photos easily. You can get a free or paid version of Photoshop.com.
• I love that it has an iPad and Android app to go along with it called Photoshop Express. I use this app when traveling as it allows me to upload to my online gallery, or to Flickr and Facebook personal and business pages. Yes, and your iPad opens RAW files, so that’s a bonus for me as I only shoot camera RAW files.
• Lots of sharing options built right in: Facebook, Flickr, Picassa, PhotoBucket

What I don’t like about Photoshop.com

• No histogram! But I’m fussy that way. I like to have a histogram for reference because you never know if the brightness of your screen is accurate.
• Again, because of the nature of the product, if your computer screen is not colour calibrated, you don’t really know if the corrections you’re making will look good on another computer screen – but the colour on iPads is pretty good, so you’re safe if you use the Photoshop Express app.

Best iPiccy.com features

You can find iPiccy's histogram under Levels in the Editor section.

• It looks and works very much like Picnik.com so if you’re used to Picnik you will feel right at home in iPiccy.com.
• It has a histogram, but you need to know where to look for it. See the graphic above. Sorry, I neglected to mention this in the video.
• The ability to apply a filter or effect to a specific area of your photo. For example you could make your photo black and white, but then bring back some of the colour in parts of it.
• Multiple un-dos and re-dos. You can undo something you did a few edits back if you change your mind.
• The full screen view. The site header is small and doesn’t waste any screen real estate.
• You can remove backgrounds and make them transparent and save as PNG really easily with the Painter feature. (You can’t do that in iPhoto!)

What I don’t like about iPiccy.com

• Nothing! It’s great!

Summary

• Online image editing is great if you are just starting out
• Start with Photoshop.com and then work your way up to iPiccy if you are a total newbie. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself with all the features of iPiccy.
• If you have a Mac and use iPhoto, you probably won’t need either of these programs. But if you’re away from your computer or traveling, you could probably use them.
• To remove a background from your image super easily – use iPiccy.com, otherwise you’ll need something like Photoshop Elements.
• Keep in mind that iPiccy.com is still in BETA release. I expect they’ll start charging for premium features like Picnik did, but it’s a great program, so I think well worth trying.

p.s.

When you’re ready to move to the next level and start shooting and editing raw files, check out this course I have created for you.

HTML

A long time ago in a head space far far away, a photographer was trying to get a good looking website to showcase her images. She took an HTML course and hand coded her first website which was a gallery of her stock photos. It looked okay. It was a website after all. At the time not many photographers were able to make their own websites, so she was ahead of the curve. Her clients loved it too. Every time she did a photo shoot she was able to add a special gallery page just for them.

Dreamweaver to the rescue

Then she bought Dreamweaver and had a whole new set of tools to work with. She learned more about tables, frames, cell padding, cell spacing, adding objects, div tags, embedding HTML code snippets, and made an even better website to show her photos. But, it still looked a little amateurish. She really didn’t have any idea about colour pallets or column widths. She didn’t know how to add a blog into that basic website, and she got a lot of spam because her email address wasn’t in a contact form. By then all the “big” photographers were starting to get custom made Flash websites built. But, she couldn’t afford the $3000+ price tag for one of those so she just tried to make do.

Along came Blogger

A couple years after that she started teaching and also using Blogger.com, a free blogging platform. It was like typing into a Word document, as it had all those familiar looking tools in the interface. It was a whole new way of working. It got her lots of Google juice, seeing as Google owned Blogger. She did okay with that and used it mostly to give out notices and quick photo tutorials to her students. But, she couldn’t really get a photo gallery page and a blog post in the same place. She also thought it was kind of clunky to have a separate website and blog, and felt that they should all be under the same roof.

WordPress was cooler

After Blogger she discovered WordPress.com, which was another free blogging software platform which was also easy to use as typing into a Word file. She even got a custom domain name for her new WP blog. WordPress allowed her to have pages and blog posts in the same place. So she could have pages that were permanent, and write about current things in the blog posts and people would be able to see both without having to go to another website. Then she discovered that she wasn’t allowed to use either of these free blogging platforms to sell stuff. She also learned that they could shut her down at any time if they felt she was in violation of their terms of service. That was a risk she couldn’t take, especially as she was shifting her focus to photography training services.

Meeting Pamela Wilson

Pamela and this photographer met in an online course called Teaching Sells. Noticing how talented Pamela was, the photographer read everything Pamela wrote on her Big Brand System blog, and followed her design tutorials to the letter. She still had that old html Dreamweaver website kicking around, and she used Pamela’s tutorials to make it look better.

But something was missing

Pamela was using a different type of WordPress platform. It was still free, but it was called self hosted WordPress and it was available at wordpress.org. The photographer contacted her web hosting company and they installed WordPress for nothing, and with that her new website was born.

But it was still a plain old generic design. It needed something to spice it up! It needed Pamela’s touch.

Too shy to ask

After many weeks of being too shy to ask, the photographer finally contacted Pamela and asked if she would create a custom header for her new WordPress enabled website. Pamela immediately said yes! PHEW. The photographer was elated. But before she even started to create the header, Pamela interviewed the photographer to ask her some very important questions like:

• What was she in business to do?
• Was she a photographer or a teacher?
• Did she sell products or services?
• Who was her target market?
• What was the goal of her website?
• What kinds of colours did she like?
• And many important questions like that.

Embarrassingly, it was the first time the photographer had ever really answered those questions definitively. Sure she’d thought about those answers before, but had never told anyone the answers out loud.

That meeting with Pamela was one of the most important steps the photographer had ever taken in her business.

Tagline for clarity

Pamela also came up with some tagline ideas for the photographer. A tagline is a short phrase or sentence that summarizes what your business does. That was really important because the photographer’s business name didn’t really describe that.

Final chapter

Over the next two years the photographer fine tuned the answers to all those questions and now runs a successful business teaching people how to take better pictures. She still occasionally shoots for corporate clients, and now enjoys digital video production too.

The history of websites is like the history of this photographer’s business

• HTML – a business in it’s infancy cobbling together bits and pieces of the code
• Dreamweaver – a business that wants to grow and get more professional in some sort of framework
• Blogger and WordPress.com – a business that wants to communicate with customers better by giving regular updates
• WordPress.org self hosted – a business that uses modern marketing and communication tools that showcase audio, photos and videos, and can be used to teach and sell services, and integrate with social media channels

So, who is this mystery photographer?

Well you probably guessed that it’s yours truly! Yup I’m the one who spent 10 years struggling to get a professional looking website out there.

And why did I write this long winded story?

You can skip all those years and steps I had to take, and go right into designing and setting up your website using Pamela Wilson and Wendy Cholbi’s Site Setup Kit. The kit has all the parts you need, and the instructions on how to do it yourself right from the start the way you want, with you in total control. No hiring of a web designer or programmer necessary.

As a matter of fact, I asked Pamela to sit down with me and tell me all about Site Setup Kit in an exclusive interview! Watch below:

If you’ve still got one of those old fashioned websites, or are using a free platform, now is the time to take your website to the next level.

Site Setup Kit will get you there faster than it took to write my story

Have a look at the free webinar here that Pamela and Wendy have put together. You can choose a time to watch that suits you best. You’re going to learn a lot about modern websites and how you can catapult your photography from looking so-so to looking highly professional.

If you have any questions about the Site Setup Kit, just ask in the comments

I have purchased the kit myself so I can tell you a little more about it too. But really, you should just watch the interview I did with Pamela or sign up for their webinar because Pamela and Wendy are much better at explaining what they do than I am!

3 Valuable Tips to Take Better Pictures

In this video you are going to learn 3 valuable elements that will help you Take Better Pictures. There are of course hundreds of valuable tips, to learn about digital photography, but these three main areas are a good place to start. If you are fairly new to digital photography watch the video. If you have any comments or questions, let me know. I’d be happy to help.

The three elements are:

• Properly setting up your digital camera
• Composition
• Light

1. Setting up your digital camera

Digital cameras have TOO many menus, but the most important ones are File Size, File quality, ISO, White Balance and learning to read and interpret the histogram. These are the most important functions you need to understand to get you on the right path to taking better pictures with your digital camera.

2. Composition

This is the easiest non-technical way to make your pictures better. Good composition is the strongest way of seeing – Edward Weston coined that. If you have good composition in your photos, people will be drawn to your photos and want to look at them.

3. Light

Light is the paint of photographers. It has quality, quantity and direction. Often it’s the light that makes us notice that something has “picture taking” potential. Imagine sunsets, and how window light falls on your subject, and how backlit subjects look so dramatic.

If you can develop your sense of “seeing” light, you’ll improve your pictures.

A lot of people start taking pictures in really hard lighting situations and they get defeated early. They spend their time indoors. Start using outdoor natural light. Leave the flash off until you have trained your eye to see the natural light in the world around you. You might find that you don’t need a flash as often as you think.

Learn about these essential topics more in-depth by signing up for my free e-course and start learning from ImageMaven today:

Take Better Pictures starting today! Do all those digital camera menus have you scratching your head? Sign up for my free e-course for 10 free photo lessons and learn how to set up your digital camera, and learn about basic lighting and composition too.Sign up here . . .

I’ve shot a ton of corporate events where the client specifically asked for candids. Now there are candids and there are candids.

This article covers what to do when shooting people at events and parties, and some advice for introverts who take party pictures.

A lot of people don’t like having their picture taken, especially at a business or fund raising function. They are deep in conversations, they are networking, and they don’t want to be disturbed. More than once I’ve gotten the evil glare of someone that meant, “Don’t even think about it!”

Groups of two or three people standing works well. In this shot a bounce flash was used, which also softens the harsh light from the flash and eliminates red eye.

My best technique is to circulate through the party quickly and early

I chat people up, and tell them I won’t take much of their time if they just give me a quick pose and a smile. I tell them I’m giving them a chance to look their best. If they protest, I tell them I’ve been hired for the event and that the photos will be used for company purposes only. People may want to know who you are and who you represent, as there may be media photographers covering the same event as you.

If you approach people in this friendly and business-like way they usually can’t say no. Most people do not want to seem impolite. In the case of a family reunion or wedding, people are usually a little more willing to be photographed. You can have a bit more fun with the shy ones at a non-business event too.

When you act as a voyeur and just grab shots of people talking or eating, you don't get the best results. In this case it would have been better to say "hey ladies, how about a little smile for the camera"

Don’t be a voyeur

Engaging people this way is better than just snatching photos with a long lens of people standing around talking. That’s what usually raises eyebrows and gets you stern looks. Act professionally, and you’ll get hired again.

Shots of large rooms of people really don't tell much. It's much more interesting to go up and meet people, have a quick chat and then take a shot or two.

Here are some more useful tips on shooting candids:

• Don’t take photos of people shoving food into their mouth or when their mouth is open. They’ll hate you for it.
• Groups of 2 or 3 work best and make a nice horizontal
• Crop tightly, head and shoulders are enough
• If people are standing they look better than if they’re sitting
• Step back a bit and use a longer focal length as opposed to being a foot away from people and using a wide angle lens. Distortion is unkind to people’s faces.
• Overall room shots are less successful unless your client is a party planner and they want room shots. Don’t bother.
• Using flash: I set my camera on f5.6 @ 1/60 second to catch some ambient light and keep the people in focus from front to back, but your settings may be different.
• Sometimes Program or Auto mode uses an ultra slow shutter speed, so you get too much ambient light and the people move or you get camera shake
• Also, using an ultra slow shutter speed makes white balance hard to set as the light is usually mixed
• Use the bounce flash to negate red-eye. Bounced light is also less harsh than direct flash.
• If you don’t have a bounce card built into your flash, make one out of white card or plastic and attach it to your flash with an elastic band.
• High ISO is okay, but 400 ISO is usually the highest I need to use.
• You’re capturing moments not fine artwork, and the chances of something being enlarged past the size of a standard letter page is pretty rare.
• Make a web gallery for your client so they can pass it on to the event guests. You can charge for this service too.
• Only show the best shots from the party on the web gallery or to your client.
• Delete the closed eyes shots and ones when people just look downright awful.

When you shoot groups, try to set people at different levels so they aren't all standing in a row.

Group shots

Sometimes you get asked to do large group shots at parties. Group shots are one of the hardest things to organize and shoot, especially indoors with limited lighting and when people are in party mode.

• If possible, try to get your group outside
• Look for an area where you can get people on different levels as opposed to standing all in a row
• Use a small f-stop for your group, so you’ll get more people in focus. Try f16 or smaller.
• Use fill flash outdoors to even-out the light and fill in the shadows

Here’s what I shoot with at parties and events:

• Canon 5D
• 24-70mm 2.8 lens with the lens hood attached
• Canon 580 EX Flash with the bounce card up
• Keep extra flash batteries on hand if it’s a big event

Even introverts can be party photographers

Getting good event candids is fun and easy if done right, and you can make some good money at it too. I’m an introvert, so it took me a bit of practice to just go up and talk to people. But one thing I’ve learned, is that people usually like to talk about cameras and that’s something I can speak easily about.

The camera also acts like a crutch or a friend, and when there is nothing else to do you can always adjust the dials and make yourself look like you are doing something highly technical and important.

On some cameras in Program mode, the shutter speed the camera chooses is too slow for hand holding and too slow for your subjects too. Even though a flash was used in this shot, the ambient light takes over the scene.

Practice at your next family event

I started taking event photos when I was a teenager at my family reunions. I had a huge extended family that lived on the other side of the country from me. I wanted to remember all my cousins and aunts and uncles, so I started shooting the reunions. It was great practice. Years later when my grandparents had their 60th wedding anniversary, they specifically asked me to take the party photos and all the group shots too.

Do you have any of your own tips for getting good candid photos? Go ahead and share them in the comments.

You’re back home, and now your iPad is full!

So you’ve had your iPad for a few months and perhaps gone on a few trips with it. If you’re like me and shoot exclusively raw photos and use the iPad as an archive, then chances are your iPad is full. If you’re not quite there yet, and are still preparing for a vacation with your iPad, read this post to learn about some good apps to take along with you.

You want your vacation photo archive transferred to your computer

I was recently faced with the task of getting my archived photos off the iPad and onto my Mac computer. To my delight, I found several free and easy ways to do this. Watch the video to see what I did using Aperture, iPhoto and Lightroom.

This works with lots of different software, not just the ones I showed in the video.

If you use any of the following software, you don’t need any fancy apps to do this for free:

• iPhoto
• Aperture 3.0
• Lightroom 3.0
• Photoshop CS5 – using Bridge
• Photoshop Elements 9 – using the Organizer

I’ve tested all these apps myself. This may also work in earlier versions of the software.

I didn't demonstrate importing from Photoshop in the video, but it's super easy too. Just do it through Bridge, the same way you import your photos from memory cards.

All you need to do is go to the Get Photos from Camera (or similar) menu of each of software and the iPad will show up like a memory card or a tethered camera.

Windows

To be fair, I haven’t tried this on a Windows machine. So, if you use Windows I have a feeling that it will be just as simple, at least if you use Lightroom, Photoshop and Elements. Please, let me know!

If you make a YouTube video response (to my video at the top of this post) about how to do this in Windows, I’ll feature it here too.

Do you like YouTube?

Help me out and subscribe to my YouTube channel right now, and “like” some of my videos. Thanks!

What is ISO?

ISO is the sensitivity of your sensor to light. The ISO number you use depends on the amount of light in the scene you are photographing. The more light you have to work with the lower you can set your ISO.

ISO numbers typically range from 100 to 6400 in most newer cameras. A few cameras go down to 80 ISO and some go as high as 25,000+ ISO!

One of the biggest benefits of digital photography is that you can change your ISO from one photo to the next. Back in the film days, you would have to choose your film according to the ISO, and then all your photos would have to be taken at that same ISO. That made taking photos in various lighting conditions tricky.

Guidelines to choosing the best ISO setting

On a bright and sunny day there is a lot of light so you can use a lower ISO setting. On a cloudy day there is less light, so you must increase your ISO. Indoor photos have even less light and if you don’t want to use a flash, you can bump up the ISO to compensate for the low light.

• 100 or 200 ISO for sunny and bright daylight
• 400 ISO for cloudy days, or indoors for window light portraits
• 800 ISO for indoors without a flash
• 1600+ ISO for really low light situations – that school play your kid is in

The trade off to shooting in really low light situations

You won’t miss a low light shot again! But, there is a trade off. As ISO numbers go up, so does the noise in your photos. Here is the proof:

Look at the difference between 80 and 1600 ISO in these photos.

Notice how much smoother the 80 ISO photo looks. The 1600 ISO photo shows lots of noise. You can really notice it in the darker areas.

Why not just use Automatic ISO?

If you don’t understand the manual settings and you’re in a hurry, sure go ahead and use Auto ISO. But I recommend you keep an eye on the noise factor in your photos.

Like the video says, do some tests with your camera. Figure out your noise tolerance. If Auto ISO is taking you to high levels of noise, it might be best if you learn how to use the manual settings.

Smaller sensors = More noise

You will notice ISO noise more in smaller sensor cameras, like point and shoots. My full frame dSLR camera hardly has any noise at super high ISO levels. But my small point and shoot gets unbearable noisy above 400 ISO. So for me, Auto ISO isn’t an option with my small camera.

Works for video too

A lot of you are shooting video now, and the same rules apply for video ISO settings. Whether you shoot video with your dSLR or a handy cam, you’ll need to keep your eye on the noise. The smaller the video camera, the more noise you’ll get at high ISO.

What’s your tolerance?

Let me know in the comments what your ISO tolerance is.

Take Better Pictures starting today! For more about ISO and other digital camera settings, sign up for my e-course today. You’ll learn how to set up your digital camera, and learn about basic lighting and composition too. Click here for all the details

Before and after. Watch the video to see how to do this in 3 minutes or less.

One of the most powerful things about shooting raw photographs is that you can juice up your landscapes really quickly. This video shows you how I went from the original photo on the left to the juicy landscape on the right using Adobe Camera Raw.

How to juice up this landscape photo in Camera Raw:

• The original photo was severely underexposed so I extended my histogram by moving the Exposure slider to the right.
• I corrected the White Balance using a pre-set to make it more neutral, but you can do custom white balance too.
• I increased the Blacks in the photo
• I added Contrast using the Tone Curve
• I added 75 points of Vibrance – This made the most impact on the juiciness of the photo.
• I used the graduated filter to darken the top half of the photo which made the clouds stand out better against the blue sky

This technique can be used exactly the same way in Adobe Lightroom. If you have Photoshop Elements you can do most of it except the tone curve and the graduated filter. Apple’s Aperture has similar controls for tweaking raw files.

Works best with:

In my experience, this technique works best with photos that have been taken on a sunny day. If there are clouds in the sky it also helps to make your landscape photos less boring.

What do you do to enhance your landscape photos? Let me know in the comments.

Learn the techniques pros use! In this course you will learn how to shoot camera raw files, and do basic raw image editing using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, which is a reasonably priced and reasonably powerful image editing program.Start this course today . . .

As you probably know, the back of your camera preview is not reliable for checking the brightness of your photo. It is better to use the histogram. My last post showed you the histogram in action, and this tutorial will show you how to correct the brightness in your photos using exposure compensation.

Watch this video tutorial to learn how to use the exposure compensation feature on your digital camera.

Look for the plus minus button on your camera to adjust your exposure compensation

What to do if the histogram on your photo doesn’t look quite right:

• First locate the exposure compensation button on your camera
• You might have to crack open your camera user manual to find out where the +/- button is for your particular camera model
• Get into picture taking mode. You can’t correct a photo that’s already been taken. You’ll have to do that in image editing.
• Practice moving the dial from (+) plus  to (-) minus and back again, but remember to leave it at (0) zero when you’re done messing around
• Take a test shot using Program Mode, Aperture Priority Mode, or Shutter Priority Mode.
• Most cameras don’t let you use exposure compensation when you’re in Full Auto (green square of death) mode.
• Check the histogram
• You might have to press the display or info button when you’re in playback mode to see the histogram
• If it’s low, as in doesn’t go all the way to the right side, then it means your photo is under-exposed and you need to ADD light.
• If you need to add light, move the exposure compensation to +1 and take another picture of the same scene.
• Repeat until you get your histogram looking just right
• If it’s climbing the right side of the graph, then it means your photo is over-exposed, and you need to remove some light from your scene
• Remove light by moving the exposure compensation to -1, and take another picture of the scene
• Repeat until you get your histogram looking just right

Do this every time you take a photo

This seems like a long involved process, but you will learn to do it automatically once you are comfortable with all the buttons. Plus, you will save a whole lot of time in image editing. Once you know how to do this you will never worry about badly exposed photos again!

Do you use exposure compensation? Let me know in the comments.

Learn basic camera optics, plus creative uses of depth of field and shutter speed.This is a follow-up course to my free lessons. This 5-week photography course is taught online so you can study in the comfort of your own home at a time that’s right for you.Learn more about this course . . .

People often approach digital photography rather sloppily, thinking they can fix everything in editing, but that takes time.

Every time you take a photo it’s a good practice to check your histogram to make sure your photo is not under or over-exposed. Then you can correct it in camera instead of in photo editing. This will save many of your photos, especially if you shoot jpgs. This can save you tons of time too!

The left side of the histogram represents the dark areas of your photo, the right side the bright areas, and the midtones in the centre.

How to fix the histogram if it’s not looking good

If the histogram is showing that your photo is over or under-exposed, you can use your camera’s exposure compensation feature to correct it. You don’t even need to know much about f-stops and shutter speeds to do it.

All cameras have exposure compensation features built in. Just look for the +/- button. When you press it, a scale with a range of -2 to +2 comes up. You can add or remove light using this scale. Each full increment is one Ev.

If your histogram does not go all the way across to the right of the graph, then you have an under-exposed photo. In that case you will need to add some light, or some exposure to it. You can do this by changing your f-stops and/or shutter speed manually, or you can use the exposure compensation feature and add light using the + (plus) numbers.

If your histogram shows over-exposure, or too much light and the graph is climbing the wall on the right side, then you need to remove some light from the scene. In general if only one channel is over-exposed, you usually have enough detail left to work with the file. For example: When you shoot a sunset, the red channel is typically overexposed, but the green and blue are fine.

To remove light from the over-exposed photo you can adjust your f-stops or shutter speed manually, or you can use the exposure compensation feature and remove light using the – (minus) numbers on the scale.

Do you check your histogram after every shot?

If you are shooting several photos in a row in the same lighting conditions, then you just have to check at the start of the sequence and maybe do a spot check once in awhile. I’m so used to checking the histogram all the time, that it has become an automatic thing for me. You might notice other photographers doing it too.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this topic, please let me know in the comments.

Learn basic camera optics, plus creative uses of depth of field and shutter speed.This is a  follow-up course to my free lessons. This 5-week photography course is taught online so you can study in the comfort of your own home at a time that’s right for you.Learn more about this course . . .

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1. Determine your fees
2. Determine your expenses

I’ve written about pricing your photography  and going pro in the past, but I want to share two more resources with you to help you determine what you need to charge in order to make a decent living, have enough money to replenish your photography equipment, and do other things like:

• take holidays
• send your kids to college,
• pay rent/buy a house
• get a car
• and save for retirement

Photography service fees

Karyn Greenstreet of Passion for Business used to be a professional photographer, and now helps entrepreneurs “create the business they want and deserve.” She’s got a ton of resources for all types of businesses, not just photography. I’ve been reading Karyn’s blog for awhile now and she’s always got great stuff.

Karyn writes about service fees in this article. I really like how she lays out the topic of fee options. As a photographer you need to work out how you will charge for your services and it’s important to do this before you take on too many photo assignments.

Will you charge:

• by the hour?
• the session?
• the project?

Will you charge usage or photo licensing fees? For some type of work, like advertising and corporate work, this is the norm. For weddings and family portraits, not usually.

I’m fully aware of how excited you get when someone wants to pay you for photos.

It’s a dream come true. When you first starting taking pictures, getting hired sometimes happens by accident, so you are totally unprepared. You start off by practically giving your stuff away. The last thing on your mind is, “Will this photo gig make me enough profit to send my kids to college?”

Maybe you’ve done a few jobs like that. Every photographer has. The mistake of course, is continuing along that path without ever really sitting down and crunching the numbers. Many photographers I know, have never really done that. And it’s not as simple as seeing what other photographers in your market change.

Determine your true expenses

Many people have the impression that digital photography is cheap to produce, especially people that already own digital cameras. I faced this challenge many times myself when dealing with corporate clients.

Maybe you have that same impression yourself. I mean, let’s fact it, once you have your camera, you just start taking pictures and ka-ching $$, money starts flowing into your bank account. Right? Wrong!

Your work doesn’t end when you press the shutter

But you probably already know that. Don’t forget about what happens after you click the shutter. Typically, you’re going to spend several hours per shoot in front of a computer doing tasks like:

• organizing
• keywording
• editing
• retouching
• sizing
• saving
• sending finished files to the photo lab
• sending finished files to the cloud
• creating a web gallery with your files

Screen shot of the Cost of Doing Business Calculator

Cost of doing business

So you’ve got some ideas of fees you want to charge. But will those fees be enough to keep your business sustainable over the long term?

Maybe it’s time you determined your actual operating expenses based on how much money you want to make. A great resource for this is the cost of doing business calculator which was put out by the NPPA a few years ago. Plunk some numbers into the form and see what you come up with. Juggle things around a bit too. Sometimes even just looking at the form and seeing all those categories is enough to make wanna-be-pro photographers head for the hills.

Did I scare you?

All too often we go into business, especially a creative business without understanding what we have to charge and how much it costs to do client work. Sometime we even supplement our photography business by having a full time job. These two resources should get you started on the right track to at least start thinking about it! I hope I haven’t scared you away.

What sort of challenges do you face when it comes to photography pricing?

Let me know in the comments.