It’s tough all over — the economy, that is. And so I thought I would share with you how my friend Linda Al-Khoury, a photographer in Amman, Jordan, is making a go of it despite her country’s weak market for freelance photography. Her answer, put simply, has been to diversify.

When she moved back to Amman after earning her degree in Lebanon, Linda set out as a freelancer. Within a few months, she decided that the income simply wouldn’t be enough to pay the bills. So she chose to open a studio to teach the craft — and joy — of photography to others.

A Hub of Activity

Her center, Darat Al Tasweer, offers photography classes for all levels. It has emerged as a hub for students, aspiring photographers, and photography lovers throughout the region.

But Linda’s center is more than a smart business decision. It is important to the future of photography in a country that recently witnessed the closure of the only faculty course teaching the subject.

Linda’s belief is that by spreading awareness and appreciation of the trade, she will create a stronger market for professional photography in the region over the long term.

A photo by Linda Al-Khoury of her center in Amman, Jordan.

An Inspiring Entrepreneur

From my experiences there, Jordan is a land rich in entrepreneurial women. Linda is one of the best examples of this.

She is committed. She is passionate. And she is working toward goals designed to benefit not only herself, but also her profession and her homeland.

Self-portrait by Linda.

Visiting Linda this past January, I learned of her newest adventure: the first photographic magazine in Arabic, for the Arabic world, featuring the work of various established pros in the region. It’s the latest salvo in Linda’s campaign to build a strong and enduring market for professional photography in Jordan.

And she does all this while continuing to work as a freelance commercial photographer.

If Linda can do it in Amman, you can do it where you are, too. I don’t mean you should open a studio for teaching photography classes (unless that’s something you want to do).

What I mean is that there are creative paths out there you can take with your photography, even in this economy. Just dream them — and then do them.

Fifth in a series.

In this series, we are discussing the importance of creating a photography marketing plan and the steps in that process. In this installment, we cover the SWOT analysis — an exercise in which you assess your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, and Opportunities, as well as the Threats you face in the marketplace.

If you’ve ever taken a business course, you’ve probably heard of a SWOT analysis. While they are more often associated with business plans than marketing plans, they are critical to developing your marketing strategy.

The SWOT Components

Let’s take a look at each of the four parts of SWOT:

• Strengths. These are the things that make you stand out. What are the tools/weapons in your arsenal? Was your training exceptional? Is your equipment top of the line? Do you have years of experience? Has your life outside of photography added something to your work?

  A wedding photographer might write: “I have shot weddings of all sizes at every major event venue in the Boston area, so when a couple chooses me, they know what they’re getting — and that unwanted surprises will be kept to a minimum. My experience means my clients have one less thing to worry about.”

• Weaknesses. The worst move you can make as a business owner is to ignore your weaknesses. Instead, you should admit them, embrace them — and then conquer them. I like to call weaknesses “growing edges,” because they are the places your organization has the most room to improve.

  An advertising photographer might describe her weaknesses this way: “I enjoy shooting for ads but I sometimes have difficulty taking direction from art directors, and this has cost me agency relationships in the past. I also tend to become uncomfortable in crowds, which makes it a challenge for me to network for new business.”

• Opportunities. These are the areas where your company has the most potential for growth. Is there an untapped market that you have a unique opportunity to serve? Are you the only one offering a particular product or service? Do you do something better than anyone else?

  An editorial photographer might write: “More and more media outlets are looking to integrate video into their Web sites. Since I have video training, enjoy shooting video, and own a Canon 5D Mark II, I can deliver high-quality stills and video at a competitive price, offering added value for clients.”

• Threats. These are the competitors, trends, and other factors that are working against your organization. As with your weaknesses, it is important to be honest with yourself. Threats are not necessarily bad things; they simply have to be addressed. In my business, for example, I feel threatened by “Shoot & Scoot” photographers — but it doesn’t stop me from keeping my prices high and offering a premium product.

  A corporate photographer might describe his biggest threat this way: “More and more of my clients are slashing their annual report budgets or even dispensing with annual reports altogether, both because of the poor economy and the trend toward online communication. Assuming this continues, I’ll need to find a way to replace this portion of my income.”

Market with Self-Knowledge

A SWOT analysis can be performed in a couple of intense hours — particularly if you involve your friends and associates in the process. Once you have performed your analysis, start using what you’ve learned on your Web site and in your marketing materials.

Make a big deal of your strengths. Compensate for your weaknesses. Exploit your opportunities. Overcome your threats. This kind of self-knowledge is the key to successful marketing.

Next: determining target markets

I sent a tweet out the other day asking, “What do people think about portfolio reviews that cost £250?”

I couldn’t fit it all within Twitter’s 140 character limit, but I was specifically referring to an event where photographers could have their books reviewed in 20 minute meetings with three different photography agents.

Such an event is certainly worthwhile for those hosting it — 20 minutes per review x 10 experts x 8 hours = £60,000 in revenue for the day. But is it worth it to those who pay to attend?

“Agents You Just Never Can Get Hold Of”

A few Twitter friends responded that paid portfolio reviews are worthwhile and help a lot of people. Others — including a couple of experienced reviewers — informed me that these events are hit and miss, largely due to the process, which can cause fatigue and rapid photo-blindness among reviewers.

Most respondents were as shocked about the price, and cynical about the value, of such reviews as I was.

To be clear, I believe that having your work honestly reviewed by someone whose opinion you trust is valuable and worthwhile. For example, the two reviewers who responded to my tweet would be among my prime targets for insightful critical input.

But pricey events like this one pitch themselves differently — offering you a chance to meet “agents you just never can get hold of.”

And what is the value of meeting people like this, exactly?

These people are not going to publish your book. You’re not paying to meet Dewi Lewis, Chris Boot or Michael Mack.

They are not going to publish your work in their magazine. You’re not meeting Jon Levy, Phil Bicker or Kathy Ryan.

Nor are they going to commission you. You are paying to meet prospective business partners — collaborators.

So is paying for their attention the best way to begin such a relationship?

Looking for Talent — or a Quick Buck?

Let’s look at this from the reviewers’ point of view. They are advertised as people that “you just never can get hold of.” Well, why is that?

Presumably, it’s because they’re not taking on new talent.

Even assuming they are very busy people, if they are taking on talent, then finding that talent should be a priority for them. It is, after all, their primary source of income (other than appearance fees), right?

So are they really going to select this new talent from the pool of people willing to pay them simply to look at their portfolios?

I doubt it.

Photographers, think about this for a moment. Would you pay three different real estate agents to come to your house and decide whether they want to sell it? Would you pay three different lawyers to see if one of them is willing to take on your case?

So why would you pay such a high fee to meet a few agents?

I would argue that you shouldn’t.

Here’s an interview I conducted with ex-agent Bree Seeley on what to look for — and what to look out for — when seeking an agent. (The podcast is here.)

Let me know what you think of it — I’m considering pricing it at £249.

Meanwhile, if you do meet the agent of your dreams at one of these events, I hope they will at least refund your £250 out of their first commission slice.

Fourth in a series.

In this series, we are exploring the creation of a marketing plan for photographers. We have already covered the executive summary and mission statement. In this installment, we discuss the importance of setting goals, and how they relate to marketing.

Much has been written about goal-setting. Almost anyone will tell you the importance of having a destination in sight before you set off. Who would pull out of their driveway for a vacation without knowing where they are going?

The same is true for our day-to-day work as photographers. Who would shoot a wedding without thinking about which images are needed for the album? Who would shoot a product without thinking about what the client needs and how the image will be used? How can you shoot an image without thinking about the final framing? Almost every action is performed with a goal in mind.

Six Types of Goals

In marketing plans, goal statements set your direction. They should not simply be “to do” lists; they should reflect long-term plans that require hard work to achieve. If your goal statement reads like a checklist, you may want to consider setting larger goals.

There are several kinds of goals. While you don’t need to have goals in every category, setting multiple, complementary objectives gives depth to your planning — much like shooting with multiple lights creates more depth and interest.

Here are six types of goals to think about:

1. Financial goals. In business, this is the bottom line — so even if you think of yourself as an artist first and a businessperson second, your goal-setting should start with money matters. How much money do you need to make for your business to be successful? How soon do you need to make it? At what rate do you want to bill your services?
2. Non-financial goals. In photography terms, if your financial goals are your main light, the non-financial goals should be the kicker and highlight that give your image personality. Yes, we all want to make money, but what are the parameters you set for your business? Do you want to make enough income from weddings that you can spend 20 percent of your time pursuing personal projects, or doing pro-bono work for environmental causes?
3. Short-term goals. These are your most immediate concerns, so it’s OK if this part of your goal statement looks like a “to do” list. These day-to-day or week-to-week objectives serve as incremental steps toward your longer-term goals.
4. Mid-range goals. These require a little more work and are achieved in multiple steps or by achieving smaller goals first. Think six months to one year.
5. Long-term goals. Ah, the dreaded “career” goals. You may find the prospect of setting long-term goals for yourself intimidating, but they are critical to building a successful business that will last five years, 10 years or more. Don’t stress out too much over getting everything just right, though; as John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “In the long run, we are all dead.”
6. Wild goals. After you’ve done all this serious thinking, it’s OK to have a little fun, too. Write down some of your wildest dreams. For example, maybe you’d like to open a small wedding boutique in the Midwest — with the dream of eventually becoming the photographer that A-list Hollywood celebrities call upon for their nuptials. It may never happen, but it will stretch you to think about what Hollywood photographers do and to learn from their styles — which will benefit your local clients. And who knows? Maybe it will happen. Nothing is impossible for those who dare to dream.

Work Toward Your Goals

Once you’ve set goals for your business, the trick is to remember to work toward them. That may sound obvious, but the sad fact is that too many of us write our goals down, then get caught up in our day-to-day activities and forget about them. Don’t set goals just to set them aside.

Begin thinking about how you are going to put your goals into practice. For example, if your objective is to turn photography from a hobby into your primary source income in three years, how are you going to do that? How much income per year will that require? How many assignments per year, at what fee level, will you have to earn?

It’s also smart to share your objectives with others. Sharing your goals makes you accountable for them. It can be a reality check, too; if your plan is to make a million dollars shooting sheep in the suburbs of Santa Fe next year, you’ll probably need to expand your scope. Share your goals with your family, as well as with your friends in the industry.

Finally, make sure your goals are measurable. It is not enough to say, “I want to make a lot of money.” How much do you want to make, and how soon do you want to make it? If your goals are not measurable, how will you know when you accomplish them?

Next: the SWOT analysis

It’s been a long time since I was a teenager, and I don’t know how teenagers decorate their bedrooms these days. But back in the 1960s, we had a pretty universal style: cover the walls with as many black-light posters as you could afford and beg your parents to buy you a black light for your birthday.

Most of us had to settle for screw-in incandescent bulbs, but a few of my friends had huge four-foot fluorescent fixtures — and they enjoyed a very elite social status because of it.

Recently, black lights have been enjoying a rebirth in popularity and I couldn’t be happier; I only wish I’d kept all of those cool posters!

How Black Lights Work

Black lights work by filtering most visible light and emitting only long-wave ultraviolet light. Things that glow under black light are called black-light reactive.

There a lot of natural things that react brilliantly to black light, including: certain minerals (fluorite, calcite, wernerite and more), petroleum jelly, tonic water, Mr. Clean, and even live scorpions. (Yes, if you lose a life scorpion in your house a black light is the way to find it.)

You can also buy things that are specifically designed to react, including paints, balloons, soap bubbles and jewelry, as well as lipstick and body paint should you wish to shoot some haunting portraits.

Retailers like Spencer’s and Blacklight.com sell tons of fun things to photograph. Look around hardware and toy stores for likely subjects, too; anything that is labeled “fluorescent” (spray paints, highlighters, sticky notes, etc.) is likely to glow.

It’s also fun to experiment with random objects, because until you place them in front of a black light, you never know how they will react. While shooting with black light in my kitchen recently, for example, I noticed a label on a bottle of olive oil glowing like crazy.

Shooting with Black Light

To take photos under black light, all that you’ll need are an inexpensive black-light fixture, some objects that react to black light, and (preferably) a tripod, since exposures tend to be very long.

I bought an 18″ model Blacklight Fixture with Bulb 18″ and a 24″ American DJ Black 24 BLB 2 FT Blacklight and Fixture, and both work great.

Making the exposures is just a matter of shutting off all room lights and placing your subjects close enough to the light so that they glow intensely. Surprisingly, most digital cameras meter black light quite well (remove the UV filter over your lens), and my exposures were generally around 1/8 second at ISO 200 with the lens wide open. Without a tripod, you could boost up the ISO and probably shoot handheld.

Incidentally, you can shoot entire rooms this way — especially if you line the walls with posters — but you’ll probably get the most brilliant results from shooting close-ups of very reactive objects.

The butterflies and dragonflies here, for example, were just unfinished wooden objects that I found in the local crafts store. I decorated them with a combination of spray and brush-on black-light reactive paints.

Black-light photography is fun, creative and experimental. And if you’re too young to remember the ’60s yourself, that’s OK; you can get started by asking your parents if they have any old Jimi Hendrix posters stashed away in the attic.

Many people want to erect a firewall between art and commerce, between creative acts and financial transactions. The implication is that people who create art are somehow debased by being forced to sell their art in order to survive (and make more art). If you are a creative professional, I’m willing to bet that selling is the least favorite part of your business.

In fact, many creative professionals — when they reach an elevated stage in their career — hire an artist’s representative, or rep, to handle the sales aspect of their business. On the client side, advertising agencies employ art buyers to negotiate with reps, removing sales entirely from the interaction between, say, the art director and the photographer who has been selected for the assignment.

Sales Can Be Learned

Until you reach the stage in your career when an established rep is willing to take you on, you are probably going to handle most of the sales for your business yourself. And while some people certainly seem more well suited to sales than others, the process of selling can be learned — you don’t have to be a born salesperson.

The resource I found most useful for learning about sales is The Photographer’s Guide to Marketing & Self-Promotion, by Maria Piscopo (Allworth Press). This book has chapters on advertising, direct-mail marketing, public relations, creating effective promotion pieces, using the Internet, and, of course, selling.

Sales is what happens after you’ve done all your market research. You’ve identified your target clients, qualified them as buyers, and now you’re ready to make that essential person-to-person contact that is at the heart of sales.

Sales Is a Process

Sales is a process, and like any process, it can be broken down into its component steps. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should have a well-defined goal for each step of the process. Although there are many sales methods, here’s the one I learned, which has five steps: approach, presentation, overcoming objections, close, and follow-up.

Approach

The approach is how you make the initial contact with your target client. Cold calling and send-aheads are two common methods often used by creative professionals. These two methods both have the same goal: getting your portfolio seen by your target client. This can take the form of a personal appointment or a drop-off portfolio review.

Cold calling involves making an initial, or cold, contact with a qualified buyer — someone who uses the type of work you do and has the power to give you an assignment. Traditionally this has been done by telephone, although e-mail might also be an option if you are willing to overlook some obvious drawbacks — your e-mail message might be classified as “junk,” both literally and figuratively, and you have no immediate way of knowing if your message has gotten through.

A send-ahead is a printed piece showcasing your work, such as an oversized postcard. An effective way to use send-aheads is to mail a limited number of them and include a handwritten note saying you intend to call in a few days to arrange a portfolio showing. Obviously, you need to keep track of your send-aheads and actually make the calls! You could also use the send-ahead to direct someone to your Web site, through which your target client could get in touch with you.

Presentation

The presentation is the heart-and-soul of sales, a chance for you to impress your target client with your work, your ideas, and your winning personality. If possible, you should try to control all aspects of the presentation from start to finish.

Tell the person you will be meeting with exactly how long you expect the presentation to take — this shows you are aware of time constraints and will help your target client feel comfortable giving up part of their busy day to meet with you.

Try to arrange the portfolio showing in a neutral setting, such as a conference room. This will help minimize distractions and keep your target client focused on you and your work; it will also put the two of you on a somewhat equal footing.

Know what you are going to say, when to say it, and when to be quiet and let your work speak for itself. Have questions prepared to ask your target client, to show that you are interested in what they do and are enthusiastic about working with them.

Above all, stress the benefits of working with you — how you will solve particular problems for your target client and their company. Make it a win-win proposition. And remember, your goal is a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.

Overcoming Objections

Objections are hurdles you must jump over in order to make a sale. If your target customer raises no objections about working with you, it may be because they have no real interest in your work and no intention of giving you an assignment. This is not good! It means all you’ve done is entertain them for a few minutes — surely not your goal for a successful sales presentation.

On the other hand, if the person you are presenting to raises objections, this may mean they are seriously considering you for an assignment — provided you can jump over the hurdles they’ve set up. Often, objections are about need and competency. Here’s a chance for you to ask open-ended questions — who, what, when, how, why — in order to get more information and overcome the objections.

Your target client may not have a current need for your service. Fine. Try questions like “When do most of your needs arise over the course of the year?” and “How do you meet your needs when things get busy?” They probably already have other creative professionals who handle the bulk of their assignments. “Great, but what do you do if they’re already booked, on vacation, or sick?” This may remind them of a previous situation where they needed a freelancer on short notice and had problems finding a competent person.

They may be happy with their established pool of freelancers and may not be looking for anyone new. This is one I heard over and over again, and the perfect response comes from a friend who spent many years selling high-tech equipment in Silicon Valley — “That’s fine, but if there is one thing you could change about your current freelancers, what would it be?” This could open the door to a discussion which might reveal that they are not as happy as they thought.

Objections may involve questioning your competency to handle certain types of assignments. “What type of work are you not seeing in my portfolio that you would need to see in order to work with me?” Once you get the answer to that question, you can offer to create additional portfolio pieces and get them to your target client ASAP. Are they doubting your experience, your creativity, your ability to handle complex productions? You should have answers ready for all of those potential objections.

In fact, some sales experts advise raising objections yourself, if you don’t hear any coming from your target client — this is a way to keep the conversation going. “I understand you may already have people you work with, but what if…?” “You may be wondering about my ability to handle a complex production, but just last month I….”

Get in the habit of listening closely to your target client and watching their body language — there may be hidden, or unvoiced, objections that need to be overcome before you can progress to the next step, which is the close.

Close

In traditional sales, there is something called the hard close, which is designed to force the prospective buyer to, in effect, cook or get off the stove. “Which color would you like, red or blue?” is an example of a hard close; “How will you be paying today?” is another. In our industry, the hard close is not usually effective, for two reasons.

First, instead of selling tangible products, we instead usually license the rights to intellectual property for specific usages — so the traditional hard close often does not apply. Second, there may not be a specific assignment in the offing, especially if you are the one who instigated the meeting.

So, you most likely will need to resort to a soft close, which basically means agreeing on the next step in the relationship. However, just because you are using a soft close, don’t forget to ask for the sale — otherwise, your target client may think you don’t want to work with them.

You could say, “I’d really like to work with you in the future when an appropriate project comes up, so how should we stay in touch? I can put you on my mailing list, send out an e-mail reminder every six weeks, or come back in a few months from now to show new work — which works best for you?” If you use this type of close, you’ll probably leave the sales presentation with a concrete action plan.

Follow-Up

Whatever you’ve agreed to do to further the relationship, make sure you do it! In other words, don’t promise what you can’t deliver. It would be a shame to come all this way, only to lose a potential client because you forgot to send out a mailer or create some new pieces for your portfolio.

Sales is a process — you need to take the long view and have patience. It seems like hard work, and it is. But making the sale, i.e., getting the assignment, is strong positive reinforcement.

Anybody out there with sales experiences — the good, the bad, and the ugly? I’d love to hear from you!

Third in a series.

Now that you have completed an initial draft of your executive summary, your next step in developing your photography marketing plan is to craft a mission statement. The mission statement is the single most important piece of information about your company. It answers a deceptively simple question: What do you promise to be as a business?

Lighthouse in a Storm

Your photography business is only as good as the promises it keeps. And the first step to keeping promises as a business owner is to write them down — and keep them simple.

The most effective mission statements are brief but powerful. Some companies write lengthy ones, full of business speak and industry jargon, but that misses the point. You want a statement that you — and your employees, as your company grows — can commit to memory, and take to heart.

Your mission statement should be timeless — as applicable in five years as it is the day you write it. Don’t get caught up in your quarterly or even yearly goals in creating it.

As a business owner, a mission statement can serve as a lighthouse in the stormy seas of commerce. On your bad days, going back to your statement can remind you of why you started a business in the first place. On days when you are struggling with creative difficulties, your statement can remind you of what you enjoy shooting, or why you shoot it that way.

It also keeps you from going astray in your daily decisions. If you choose to donate to a cause, for example, does the cause mesh with your mission statement? If you raise your prices or change how you do business, is your decision consistent with your mission — your promise to customers?

Aspirational, But Attainable

Writing a good mission statement takes time and effort. Generally, each word is chosen specifically for its meaning. It should be something attainable, but never easy to achieve. It should be motivational and inspirational to those within your organization, and to your customers as well.

Generally, a mission statement should answer three questions:

1. What are the needs or opportunities that we exist to address? What is our purpose?
2. What are we doing to address those needs? What is the business of our organization?
3. What principles or beliefs guide our work? What are our values?

Sample Mission Statements

Here are a few mission statements for photography businesses that I found online. I like some better than others, but I hope they’ll spur your thinking and encourage you to create your own:

Seize the Photo Photography

Seize the Photo Photography provides expressive, artistic photographic services, tailored to each client, for those with a discerning taste for quality photography. We believe in creating dynamic, comfortable photography sessions that allow the client to relax and reveal his or her true personality. We also value individuality and understand that each client’s photographic style will be different, making us passionate about getting to know each person.

Kelly Weaver Photography

We promise to photograph you with passion and professionalism. We promise to be loving, warm, conscientious and energetic. Our hope is to have a personal connection with every client.

Firefly Studios

Firefly Studios will provide top quality photographs at a fair and reasonable price for corporate and editorial clients for use in their annual reports, brochures and publications. All clients will receive the highest level of attention, devotion and commitment. We will conduct ourselves in a professional manner and represent our client’s best interests within the limits of our professional responsibilty. We will protect our client’s proprietary information and respect the privacy and property rights of our subjects.

A Thousand Words Photography

As to photography: “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” (Diane Arbus). As to business: “Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share, and sought advantage over no one.” (Robert Brault).

Don’t Just Write It — Use It

After you have prepared your mission statement, the secret is to start using it. Post it somewhere you will see it every day. Put stickers on your monitors. Hang it above your door. Put it on a tag on your camera bag. Remind yourself of it and live it.

Let your clients know about it, too. If your mission statement is written well and used in advertising — business cards, flyers, letters, catalogs, Web site — it will attract clients.

And as an added bonus, the clients it attracts will be those you want to do business with, because they agree with your mission.

Next: setting goals

David Weintraub’s most recent Black Star Rising column, “Notes from the VisCom Classroom: Teaching Software,” laid out a list of 18 different software products currently taught to visual communications students at his university, ranging from Photoshop to GarageBand.

David posed a number of insightful questions in his piece, including one that particularly resonated with me: “Should we be teaching software at all?”

I won’t go so far as to say that software shouldn’t be taught in college. But I do think the balance has tilted toward too much focus on technical proficiencies and too little on core skills, such as the development of vision and storytelling ability.

Photoshop Over Photography

Over the past 20 years, I frequently have worked with young photographers, including those still in college and those fresh out of college. The experience has been just as rewarding as working with some of the biggest names in the field.

That’s why, even with all the portfolios that come across my desk, I still take the time to review the work of students. You just never know who’s going to walk through the door next.

Unfortunately, in recent years I’ve been disappointed in the portfolios of young photographers more often than I would like. Even as we see more students graduating in photography than ever before (too many, one could argue, given the size and relative growth of the industry), I am getting fewer and fewer portfolios that show a critical vision — that offer real visual opinions.

Too much of what I see today represents style over substance, Photoshop over photography. The craft and vision that animates great photography is rarely visible, an occasional glimmer amid the software masterpieces.

Vision Should Come First

I can only speak for myself. But personally, when I hire a photographer for an editorial assignment, I look for someone who can bring opinion and insight to a project.

I want someone who understands how to tell a story. I want someone who can explore a project to its fullest degree. And I want someone who has outstanding vision.

I do not look for someone who can jazz up an otherwise banal and soulless image with computer effects.

Now, I would never go so far as to say that software skills are unimportant. They are. So are business management and marketing skills, for that matter.

But I place none of these at the core of what it is to be a photographer.

Too much focus on software in college — like having to master 12, or 15, or 18 different software products — can lead to a steady stream of newly minted photographers who can’t shoot the forest for the trees.

Second in a series.

Although the executive summary is the first section of your photography marketing plan, you could make an argument that it’s the last part you should write. The executive summary answers the basic questions about your photography business; if you haven’t given these a lot of thought, staring at a blank piece of paper (or a mercilessly blinking cursor) can be a little overwhelming.

So if you want to move on to the other parts of your marketing plan and come back to the summary, that’s fine. But your best bet is to write something down and then revisit it from time to time as you draft the rest of your plan.

The Five Ws

To start your summary, let’s look at the kind of questions this section should answer. We can organize these in terms of the Five Ws (and one H):

• Who. Who makes up your business; it is a team or just you? What skills, traits, training, or experience do you have that are going to convince someone to hire you? What makes you special?
• What. What does your company do? What makes it different from the thousands of other photography businesses in your geographic area? What do you like to shoot? Do you have a specialty?
• When. When are you available? When do you do your work? When did you start in this business?
• Where. Where do you do business — on site, in a studio or both? Where can clients meet you? Where can your work be found — a neighborhood gallery, a Web site?
• How. How do you do things? How do you serve your clients? How do you package and sell your work? How can you be contacted?
• Why. Why did you get into this business? Why would a client choose you over someone else? Why do you do things the way you do?

Sample Executive Summary

Once you’ve thought about these questions, you’re in a position to take your first stab at an executive summary. Here’s a brief sample summary that might spur you along:

John and Jane Doe Photography provides award-winning documentary wedding photography for couples in the Chicago area. This marketing plan sets out our company’s goals, target markets, competitive hurdles, and specific plans for growing our business and sustaining that growth over the long term.

John and Jane Doe are uniquely suited to serve the growing market for photojournalistic wedding photography, having both served as staff photographers for metropolitan newspapers in Illinois and elsewhere. As a couple that has been married for 12 years, they cherish the memories of their own wedding day and are passionate about using their talents to share this joy with others.

Do you see all we’ve learned about John and Jane Doe Photography in two paragraphs? We know who they are, what they do, why they’re good at it, and what motivates them.

Rhyme and Reason

Why is this exercise important? Ultimately, everything you put out to promote yourself should be an extension of your executive summary, and answer one or more of the Five Ws questions.

If it doesn’t, there is no reason for you to bother.

You use Twitter and Facebook — great. But if all you post about is what you eat for dinner, why should a client care? Yes, it puts a human face on your business and there is something to be said for that. But it doesn’t set you apart.

You have a blog — great. But if all you do is post images, you’re not capitalizing on the opportunity to explain who you are and what you’re about professionally. Use your blog to answer client questions, for example, underscoring your areas of expertise and commitment to service.

Answer the Five Ws of your business in everything you do.

Next: the mission statement

The working professional and the weekend hobbyist are both affected by the recession. Most of the photographers I know are spending more time evaluating their needs and comparison shopping than ever before. It’s important to ensure your money is wisely spent.

But while it may seem smart to buy less expensive equipment when times are tough, I’ve learned the hard way that cheaper products can cost you more in the long run.

Losing Shots Costs Money

What’s more important than price is reliability. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever had was buying a cheap flash and hoping it would do what I needed.

On my first booking after the purchase, I learned my lesson. The flash took a long time to recycle and the ready light lit long before the flash reached full power.

I lost money that day — by not getting the shots I could have acquired had I used a better brand.

Now, I have Nikon and Metz flashes in my kit. But I also keep the more costly “cheaper” one as a reminder.

Buy It Once

Years ago, I was shopping with a friend for a CD player. I was worried about my household budget, so I picked up the least expensive model in the electronics store.

It was on sale for an unbelievably low price.

As I hefted the box toward the counter, I looked at my friend and he looked back at me, tut-tutting and rolling his eyes.

He offered a piece of advice that has stayed with me:

“Buy it once.”

Having not heard the expression before, my brow furrowed in confusion as I made headlong toward the checkout counter.

A Different Kind of Instant Gratification

My friend then went on to explain what he meant:

“Almost every time you buy something, you have a choice between buying a cheap item or a more expensive one,” he said. “Your natural impulse may be to spend less to save money — even though you may know, deep down inside, that the cheap product won’t last as long.

“It’s a form of instant gratification — no different from making an extravagant, unnecessary purchase. Only in this case, you are choosing the gratification of saving a few dollars today over the smarter decision to buy quality.”

I put down the CD player. My friend was right.

When I thought back on many of my past purchases, I realized that the life cycle of my “bargains” often was about half (or less) that of higher-quality products. Double that bargain price, and suddenly it’s not such a great deal after all.

But the price of purchasing lower-quality photographic equipment goes beyond your out-of-pocket costs.

There is the cost of missed shots. There is the cost of disappointed clients. And ultimately, there is the damage that your field failures wreak on your confidence and enthusiasm.

So the next time you are shopping and want to be frugal, think about the long-term costs — and buy it once.

In this month’s “Ask the Photo Business Coach,” I answer the following question submitted by a Black Star Rising reader: “If you were starting from scratch, how would you find your first five photography clients?”

In June 2009, Canon unveiled the first legitimate HD DSLR for video when they released the manual control firmware update for the Canon 5D Mark II. This manual exposure, manual control video camera had a sensor that was larger than 35mm film, recorded at a 35+ mb/s bit rate, and used some of the best lenses ever made. It promised to open a new world for professional video capture.

Since then, the major manufacturers have been racing to develop video integrations. Chances are, the camera you have now or the one you will buy next will have a video function.

More Than a Gimmick

As a filmmaker, the Canon 5D Mark II has been transformational for me. I am now able to bring a level of production quality and portability for a price that has never before been available.

My production costs have been slashed. More importantly, I now possess a high-end imaging system that allows me to explore creatively material that before I would have avoided — because I couldn’t have pulled off the look I wanted at the budget provided.

For professional photographers, the impact is not yet as clear. Is it a revolutionary change or just a flash in the pan?

The good news for photographers is that video doesn’t have to be gimmick. With just a few concepts and pieces of equipment, you can turn your camera’s video capabilities into an extra stream of income for your business.

“Building” Your Camera

One of the first things you might have noticed if you have played around with video on a HD DSLR is that you don’t get high level results out of the box.

Everyone is talking about how great the video looks — but when you fire up the camera, the dreaded jello effect, shaky video, or poor composition can reduce your video to a YouTube monstrosity. This is because to get professional results with this camera, you must treat it as an image-capturing component and begin to think about your process in a few new dimensions.

In the film world, we always “build” the camera around the central imager, adding things like viewfinders, tripods, follow focus, or a mattebox. On a HD DSLR, building a rig around it could be as easy as using a fluid-head tripod or as complex as a rail-based camera support system such as the ones shown at left or in the brief video below.

New Ways of Shooting

As a photographer, you already know composition, iris, and focal length — but now you must re-learn things like shutter speed and manual focus, and learn for the first time frame rate and sound.

Shutter speed in the video world means the amount of time per second each frame is exposed. Consequently, as with stills, the longer each frame is exposed the more light is let in. This is not to be confused with the frame rate, which is the number of times per second the image is recorded onto your card.

For the best results, the shutter should be set at multiples of the frame rate and obviously cannot be any lower than the actual frame rate. For the most pleasing results, a number that is twice the speed of the shutter is ideal.

For example, in the 5D Mark II the frame rate is set at 30FPS, so for best results the shutter should be set at 60 or at most 125. Any lower than 60 and the image will tend to blur when in motion; any higher than 125 and the moving image will resemble a hyper-realistic action movie, capturing any action in a high level of sharpness. (This complex concept is explained in better detail here.)

Sound, the Final Frontier

Sound is the final frontier for most photographers learning video, because it is not comparable to anything they’ve done before.

Currently, only Nikon gives HD DSLR owners a reasonable choice in sound recording in the camera. Most Nikon models allow users to select three different input level settings, which must be set before recording. This is far superior to Canon’s poorly thought out automatic volume AGC input, which determines the level it deems acceptable and adjusts it in real time.

The best professional sound option is a portable sound recorder such as the Zoom H4n, which can be mounted onto the camera hot shoe, or a second video camera that records sounds in a more traditional manner. (Gary S. Chapman’s image below shows a 5D Mark II rigged for sound.)

Added Value for Clients

Even with these basic tools and concepts, you should be able to shoot acceptable video that a client can use. So, how can you capitalize on your new potential as a photographer/videographer?

My recommendation is to look at what you already do and begin to think about how video could apply.

If you are a stock photographer, next time you shoot a package try recording some of the action live; in most cases you can sell these videos in the same place you already sell your photos. If you are a travel photographer, tell your clients about your new ability to record quick videos for their Web site or blog.

Whatever the specific opportunities may be for you, a professional who can do double duty with an HD DSLR can deliver more value to clients. And in today’s economy, that’s more important than ever.

Other than the 50-year Canon vs. Nikon holy war, nothing incenses opposing factions in photography circles like the debate over RAW vs. JPEG recording formats.

Why does this topic provide such great fodder for argument? As with most barstool discussions, it’s because there’s no right answer. Neither format is inherently superior to the other; it’s all a matter of how you work and how involved you want to be with image editing.

Most professional photographers favor RAW today, but it’s taken me years to finally join the club. I now shoot RAW almost exclusively — so I thought I’d explain how and why I came to my decision.

Convenience vs. Control

Whenever you take a photograph in the JPEG format, regardless of how you have the camera set up or what mode you’re in, the camera processes your image before you see it. Color saturation and sharpness are enhanced automatically, for example — making your images look as finished as possible right out of the camera.

For a lot of photographers (and photographic situations), this is a good thing. If you just want to drop your card off at the local CVS to be printed, this will vastly improve the quality and “prettiness” factor of your images.

The price you pay for that convenience, however, is that the camera has taken a certain amount of creative control away from you.

You can choose to set the white balance to “cloudy day,” for instance, to warm up shots on a cloudy day — but you are stuck with that white balance. You are also stuck, to a degree, with the exposure that was set when you shot the photo.

In many cases, this isn’t that big a deal. The larger problem is that, in order to keep files as small and manageable as possible and to keep your camera cranking out images as quickly as you can press the shutter button, the camera also compresses those images.

That’s what JPEG is — a compression scenario that shrinks images by tossing out similar pixels before you’ve even seen them. JPEG is known as a “lossy” format, because it loses information during processing.

Lossy vs. Lossless

RAW images, by contrast, are recorded with virtually no behind-the-scenes enhancement. The image that comes out of the camera is almost exactly as you shot it.

In this way, a RAW image is more like a film negative. All of the information is there for you to alter as you see fit in editing, just as you would interpret a negative in the traditional darkroom.

Nothing is lost or left behind in translation. Every pixel that was exposed is maintained, and nothing is compressed. Thus, RAW is referred to as a “lossless” format.

Where RAW really gets interesting, and quite useful, is during the pre-editing process. Whenever you upload and open a RAW file, you first go through a “conversion” step that enables you to change some key things like exposure, white balance, tint, contrast and saturation — and to do so on a very detailed level.

In terms of exposure, for example, you can be off several stops in-camera and actually change the exposure during editing. You’re not just making a curves or levels adjustment, as you can do with a JPEG file; you’re actually changing the exposure. You can also adjust the white balance in any way you like.

If you weren’t sure whether you wanted the image to be warm or cool, for example, or for the dominant light source to be tungsten or daylight, no problem. You can make that decision after the fact.

You can also adjust the hue/saturation/luminosity of each individual color before you even begin to edit the image — quite amazing. And you can pre-adjust curves in the conversion process (though to be honest, I do all of my real curves work in Photoshop after conversion.)

What Won Me Over

It was largely the ability to change the exposure and white balance that won me over. Also, my good friend and one of the world’s premier food photographers, Jon Van Gorder, convinced me that by not tossing away duplicate pixels and by editing in 16 bits instead of 8 bits (another RAW feature), the quality of my images would vastly improve.

I tried it for a few weeks, and he was right. Once I switched to RAW, my images were radically better. I also exercised greater care in my editing; I understood more about what I was doing and why.

Are there downsides to shooting RAW? Yes, but for me they are relatively minor.

For one, RAW files take up huge amounts of both card space and hard drive space. But memory prices have plummeted so much that this is no longer a concern to me. You can buy a terabyte hard drive now for a few hundred dollars — unimaginable when I started shooting digitally.

Shooting RAW does slow you down a bit, because it takes the camera longer to transfer the images from the buffer to your memory card. And there is that extra step in processing to go through as well.

So is RAW better for you? That depends on the type of work you do, the level of quality you demand from your images, how much time you want to spend editing them, and how many memory cards you’re willing to own. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re wrong to shoot JPEG if the balance for you tips in that direction.

But if RAW sounds appealing to you, try it. Once you do, you could find yourself evangelizing in no time.

Every year, it seems to get harder and harder to make a living as a photographer. And yet every year, more and more people purchase DSLRs with the intention of doing just that.

So I figured it might be helpful to provide a reality check for those who are wondering when the big money is going to start rolling in.

Here are 25 clues it’s time to give up on your photography career:

1. You still can’t get a picture accepted by iStockphoto after maxing out your credit cards on gear.
2. Your contest entry in the “feline” category, captured during a thrilling photo safari on the plains of the Serengeti, loses out to a picture of a cat napping on a sofa.
3. When your studio is burglarized, all your photo gear is taken along with the picture frames and mattes — but your photos are mysteriously left behind.
4. Upon hearing you’re covering the local beauty pageant, the suddenly camera-shy contestants scramble to revoke their model releases.
5. Your photos always run big in publications — not because they’re great images, but because the editor needs a long caption to explain what the picture is about.
6. Brides gladly pay extra to remove your watermark from their pictures.
7. When you travel abroad with your camera, street urchins pay you to not take their pictures.
8. After scanning your portfolio, the organizers of the workshop you want to attend inform you they are fully booked — even though the venue is the Rose Bowl.
9. Your unretouched images are frequently featured at PhotoshopDisasters.com.
10. A memory card of 64GB is not enough when you’re shooting jpegs for an hour-long assignment.
11. Facebook doesn’t use your uploaded images, even though your privacy settings are set for everyone to view.
12. A kid with a cellphone nails a picture of the Loch Ness Monster while you stand there chimping by the lake.
13. Despite shelling out big bucks for the latest vibration reduction or image stabilization lenses, your pictures are still fuzzy when you shoot in broad daylight on program mode.
14. You’re not sure if it’s possible to disable autofocus, red eye reduction, auto white balance and program and still take a picture.
15. You think “depth of field” refers to the depth the local humane society requires you to bury your pet.
16. You spend thousands of dollars attending workshops to master a certain effect, only to find out there is now a Photoshop filter or plug-in that achieves that same look.
17. Every time you get a color space mismatch warning in Photoshop, you think it’s asking you to change your clothes.
18. You don’t realize you can almost fake the bokeh of a lens using Photoshop’s Gaussian blur filter.
19. Adobe relents and gives you a full refund — on the condition that its tech support staff never has to deal with you again.
20. Your competition does better with a chroma key backdrop than you can with lighting gear and models on location.
21. Whenever you order 20 x 30 prints from the local photo finishing lab, they call you because they assume there’s been a mistake.
22. Your spam filter captures more solicitations for photography workshops than Viagra prescriptions.
23. Your spouse books another photographer to do her portrait — and it’s not a boudoir session intended as a gift.
24. The biggest fan of your online portfolio, who is currently incarcerated, obsesses over your geotags.
25. Clients ask you if facial-recognition software is included with the package they bought — and they’re not being sarcastic.

First in a series.

There is no shortage of marketing guidance for photographers on the Web today. “How to Use Social Media.” “How to Use SEO.” “How to Use Trade Shows.” “How to Use Business Cards.” “How to Write ‘How to’ Posts.” The list is endless.

But all this information isn’t worth much if you don’t have a plan. And by that I don’t mean some vague goal of becoming the next Nachtwey or Leibovitz. I mean a formal marketing plan.

Marketing Plan Components

It is often said that failing to plan is planning to fail — or, for the alliterative among us, proper prior planning prevents pitifully poor performance. A marketing plan is a dynamic document that acts as a guideline for all of your marketing efforts. As such, it’s a valuable tool for avoiding “pitifully poor performance.”

The elements of a standard marketing plan include:

• Executive summary
• Mission statement
• Goals
• SWOT analysis
• Target markets
• Marketing mix – product
• Marketing mix – place
• Marketing mix – promotion
• Marketing mix – price

Approaching the Market

Before setting out to create a marketing plan, you must first decide how you wish to approach the marketplace. There are four basic approaches to choose from:

• Product orientation. This means you will focus on marketing your unique capabilities, rather than adapting to the needs or desires of the marketplace. This is a “Field of Dreams” approach: if you build it, they will come. As a photographer, you are going to offer something special — and because it is special, people will want it.
• Sales orientation. Here the focus is on the sales technique; people will buy your product if you sell it in the right way. As a photographer, you are going to rely on your personality or sales abilities to convince your client that they need you. Billy Mays illustrated this approach perfectly.
• Market orientation. Your focus is on the consumer. What do potential buyers of your product want or need? As a photographer, you are stepping back and looking at your target customers. Is there an opportunity for a high-end wedding photographer in your geographic area — or do you need to be sensitive to price?
• Social marketing orientation. Here you highlight your efforts to serve the community, with the expectation that consumers will appreciate this — and reward you with their business. If you donate time to Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, or convince people you are Earth-friendly, clients will like what you are doing and use your services. Prime examples of this are Method soaps and cleaners and Honda Prius.

Upon selecting one of these orientations, a photographer can begin to plan a marketing strategy.

The Product Life Cycle

Another overarching point to keep in mind is the product life cycle. Every product or service goes through its rise and fall, from introduction, through growth and maturity, and into decline. The goal of the business is to ride the wave of maturity for as long as possible.

Knowing where your photography business stands in its life cycle can help with your marketing decision-making. For example, if you are just starting out, you must first define and establish yourself. You can’t get by with the “because you’ve always known me approach” that a mature photographer can.

A mature photography business, on the other hand, can forestall decline by introducing a new service to play the “revolutionary” card and jump-start sales.

Your marketing plan doesn’t have to be a thick, gray document. If you aren’t a fan of sentences and paragraphs, you can do it in simple bullet points. Or you can do it on a big whiteboard and allow it to be dynamic within your organization.

The important thing is that you do it. Take the time to give serious thought to what you are really about — and how to sell that to a client. Then you can start worrying about social media, SEO, trade shows and the rest.

Next: the executive summary

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about software — specifically, about how much software we are currently teaching our students.

At the end of last semester, I sent around an e-mail asking about software in our curriculum to the other faculty members in the Visual Communications sequence here at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications. And just last week, the issue of teaching software came up at a meeting of the entire journalism and mass communications faculty, which had been called to discuss revamping our curriculum.

Before I share with you the list of software we use, I’d like to discuss the role software plays in a modern journalism and mass communications curriculum. In other words — just as with any other course content — what do students need to know, and why do they need to know it?

At the end of this column, I’ll discuss some alternative learning models — different ways students can get the information they need to succeed, not just in school but in the business and professional worlds.

My Daring Leap Into Technology

Clearly, being a citizen of our highly technological society demands a knowledge of software — at least a basic skill level and a knowledge of what the software can and cannot do.

When I first started writing for Photo District News in the 1980s, I would write my stories on a typewriter, cut and paste paragraphs (literally) if the material needed rearranging, and then mail or fax the finished article to the magazine’s New York office.

I remember visiting another writer who had invested in a word processor — not quite a computer, but an electronic typewriter with a screen on which you could see your work and make changes and corrections. I thought this was terrific — just what I needed — and I was actually on my way to a store in San Francisco to buy one when I got a page (how high-tech!) from a fellow photographer wanting some information.

I dashed into the nearest phone booth to answer the page and told my photographer friend where I was headed and what I was about to buy.

“Don’t do it,” he said. “Buy a computer instead.”

Hmmm, I thought. He’s a smart, tech-savvy guy — maybe I should take his advice. A day or so later, I was the proud owner of an IBM-XT clone, purchased from Whole Earth Access in Berkeley.

There it was on my office desk, screen aglow, dot-matrix printer switched on and ready, 20 MB hard drive whirring contentedly.

One problem, though. No one at the store had told me anything about software, and I was too dumb to ask.

So there the machine sat for two or three days, until I learned how to install my first program, called PC-Write. Then it was off to the races.

Photo District News soon put all its writers on an e-mail system, so we could send our stories electronically. Eventually, I automated my writing and photography business, adding FileMaker and Quicken, and also waded into digital imaging with Photoshop. Today, the Applications folder on my MacBook Pro contains about 100 items and weighs in at just under 17 gigabytes. Progress, I guess.

Learning Outcomes and Software

Our journalism and mass communications faculty recently agreed on a set of learning outcomes for our students that reflect the changes taking place in the professional world of journalism and mass communications, while still remaining faithful to the ideals of a research university. Two of these learning outcomes directly intersect with technology and therefore need to be considered in any discussion of teaching software.

Here are the key features of these two learning outcomes: information gathering and information presentation, including production and editing of all forms of mass media content.

Given these learning outcomes, we can establish two criteria for teaching software: 1) the software we teach should meet at least one of the learning outcomes, and 2) not incorporating a particular piece of software into our curriculum would negatively impact a student’s ability to achieve one or more of the learning outcomes.

Obviously, as computer programs proliferate and also become more powerful, teachers face a challenge: with a fixed number of classroom hours in which to present course content, software is increasingly eating up more and more hours. By necessity, this means that other essential course content must be compressed, rearranged, or modified to fit in the semester.

Of course, in many cases our students learn software hand in hand with mastering other aspects of the course — software and other course content are presented as a unified whole. But in some cases, the software must be mastered before students can immerse themselves in the rest of the course or succeed in a higher-level course.

The Software List

Here, then, is a list of the software currently being taught in our Visual Communications sequence, in alphabetical order:

• Audacity (free audio editing and recording program)
• Bridge
• Celtx (free preproduction system for film, video, and multimedia)
• Dreamweaver
• DVD Studio Pro
• Final Cut Pro
• Flash
• GarageBand
• iDVD
• Illustrator
• iMovie
• InDesign
• Motion
• Photoshop
• QuarkXPress
• SoundSlides
• Soundtrack Pro
• WordPress

As you can see, most of these 18 programs are related to information gathering and information presentation — in a visual context. In our sequence, we offer the following regular courses:

• Introduction to Visual Communications (survey course required of all journalism and mass communications students)
• Photovisual Communications (beginning point-and-shoot photography course)
• Graphics for Visual Communications (design and production for print and onscreen media)
• Informational Graphics for the Mass Media
• Advanced Photovisual Communications (digital photography course with SLR cameras)
• Advanced Visual Communications (capstone course featuring both print and online portfolio development)

In addition to these regular courses, we are currently also offering special-topics courses on entrepreneurship for freelancers and videography for mass communications.

Some of these courses are more intensively software-dependent than others. For example, the capstone portfolio course, as you would expect, requires students to master about half a dozen different programs.

But even in the Introduction to Visual Communications, we give our students a series of design assignments requiring proficiency in InDesign; they also work in small groups to create a short video using iMovie. Not only are we expecting more software learning from our students — as instructors, we are spending more and more of our time keeping up with an ever-expanding set of features, as manufacturers bring updates of their software to market at a seemingly accelerated pace.

Software Solutions

Although we didn’t come up with any answers at our faculty meeting, we did begin asking what I believe are the right questions. First, should we be in the business of teaching software at all? Are there other ways students can become proficient in required programs, such as through online learning provided by our faculty or by a commercial vendor such as lynda.com?

Could we reasonably expect students in visual communications to own — and know how to use — basic visual programs such as those in the Adobe Creative Suite, just as we expect our writing students to own and know how to use Microsoft Word? How would we test for proficiency?

With more and more software being taught, how can we provide enough computers and lab time for our students? Would software requirements make our program less flexible (and therefore less attractive) at a time when our school’s educational philosophy seems to be moving toward more flexibility and choice?

Finally, which software programs do our students absolutely need to master in order to get jobs in the mass media?

These are just some of the issues surrounding the teaching of software in a university setting today. If you have experience wrestling with these issues —or some ideas about how to pin them to the mat — I’d love to hear from you!

When I go out in public to shoot, people often approach me and ask questions. Many times the initial query is about my camera or lens. From there, however, the conversation can go anywhere and, invariably, the individual will share a personal anecdote or pose a question based on their own experiences.

Since I’ve already revealed to you that I’m an introvert by nature, you might think I would attempt to avoid such encounters. On the contrary, I’ve found that I’ve gained as much wisdom from these exchanges as I’ve imparted.

An Impromptu Tutorial

One Fourth of July evening, I set up a Mamiya 645 (film) on a tripod and waited for the local fireworks display to begin. As others in the crowd passed the time until the sparks flew, a number of them gathered around me to ask questions.

“Are you shooting for a newspaper?”

“What kind of camera is that?”

I noticed, as the people gathered, that some in the crowd became my protectors. They took it upon themselves to create a circle around me and my tripod, keeping others from bumping it or tripping over it as they passed.

This happened as if by magic — nobody said anything.

I got some good images that night and removed the film from the camera’s film holder. But I had to wait for the crowd to clear before going home.

That’s when one of my self-appointed protectors asked me how to shoot fireworks. He had a new camera and had wanted to bring it to the display, but he didn’t know where to begin.

An impromptu tutorial and question-and-answer session ensued. And somewhere along the way, the conversation began helping me, too.

As I thought through the answers I was providing this gentleman, I realized I would need to make some changes in one of my upcoming shoots.

Learning from Unlikely Sources

That’s the moment when the teacher becomes a student. The Socratic questions, in this dialogue, sparked some ideas and techniques I hadn’t considered, or had tucked in the recesses of my mind.

Even though I was holding court, so to speak, I was also learning something. That’s why these opportunities are golden — and should never simply be dismissed as a nuisance or inconvenience.

Obviously, you can find news and tutorials all over the Internet. You can go to trade shows with some of the best teachers available, and you can take courses in person or online.

But furthering your photographic education is not always through books, seminars and workshops. It can also come from the most unlikely sources — such as a chance conversation with a stranger.

Anyone with a DSLR and a Web site can present themselves as a professional photographer today. So how can you, as a prospective photography client, separate the contenders from the pretenders?

Here are eight questions to ask yourself before hiring a photographer for an assignment — be it a corporate shoot, an editorial assignment, a portrait, a wedding or other event.

1. Does he present himself as a professional?

You don’t want a photographer showing up to your event looking like Animal from “Lou Grant.” A good photographer blends in and becomes part of the scenery. Someone who stands out like a sore thumb will make subjects uncomfortable. You want someone who has enough sense to show up dressed properly for the event he is covering.

2. Has she done a shoot like this before?

While it’s OK to hire a generalist rather than a specialist, make sure the photographer has a background in the type of work you need done. You don’t want to be a photographer’s first wedding, first CEO portrait, or first fashion shoot. No matter how talented the photographer, there is no substitute for experience.

3. Do you like his portfolio?

Even when a photographer has a strong reputation, if you do not like his portfolio you will probably not like the work he does for you. The photographer has a certain style he has developed over the years, which is reflected in his portfolio. Asking him to shoot a radically different style is a recipe for disaster. Can a capable photographer attempt to replicate any image you show him? Yes. Will it be as good as when the photographer shoots his preferred style? No.

4. Does she ask you questions that illustrate her preparedness?

A good photographer will usually ask you as many questions as you ask her. She should query you about the venue, the type of shoot, the kind of photographs you’re looking for. And she should ask to scout the location if she isn’t already familiar with it. She should be concerned about sunlight or available light at the location at the chosen time of day, among other issues.

5. Does he emphasize getting the shoot right — or his post-processing prowess instead?

Many photographers brush off legitimate concerns about a shoot by saying they can “fix it in post-processing.” The reality is, nothing can replace getting the image right at capture. Can the photographer deliver images that are color correct, with the background not shifting to a weird color cast or being totally black? Can he deliver images where the whites are not blown or the blacks blocked up? Probe him on his technical expertise to find out.

6. Does she have the proper equipment?

Does the photographer have backup cameras in the event one camera breaks? Does she have a backup for that, even if it means shooting film? I was covering the Peachtree Road race in Atlanta several years ago and had two Nikon bodies fail. I finished the shoot with my Leica and still had photos run on the front page of our paper and move on the national wires. Lenses break, too, and a true professional has a range of lenses that overlap in coverage so she can always get the shot. Does she have the necessary lighting equipment to get the look you need? Does she carry extra batteries and memory cards? Don’t be afraid to ask.

7. Do his references check out?

First of all, make sure he has references. And not just any references — clients who have hired him to do similar assignments. Then, call those references and ask questions: Were they happy with the work? Was it delivered on time? Was the photographer reliable, even when facing unexpected difficulties? Would they hire the photographer again? Don’t skip this due diligence, or you may end up regretting it.

8. Can you afford the price?

While we all operate within budgets, a photographer’s price doesn’t matter until you know he can get the job done. Then, hire the best photographer you can afford. In many cases when clients hire photographers, they are asking them to capture moments that will never take place again. Don’t shortchange yourself by hiring someone you’re not sure about.

As I looked through my viewfinder to shoot a group of railway passengers at China’s Guangzhou Railway Station, I suddenly felt a cold splash of water on my neck.

Rain! Where was my umbrella — and the photographer/assistant who was supposed to be holding it over me and my gear?

I turned to find him standing under the collapsible canopy by himself. He had failed to notice my situation, as he was too busy ogling a group of female office workers splashing past us.

Year of the Tiger

I was in Guangzhou to shoot a series of pictures about railway passengers as they began their journey home for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

It is estimated by the Chinese government that there will be over 2 billion rail journeys during the 40-day holiday period. Many of these travelers are workers from the villages, and this is their only opportunity to get home to see their families.

According to the Chinese horoscope, it is the Year of the Tiger. People born under this sign can be extremely short-tempered and come into conflict with other people, especially those in authority.

With my wet feet, rain-splashed head, and men in uniforms — green, gray or blue, depending on their ranking — telling me what I couldn’t photograph, I was beginning to act like I was born in the Year of the Tiger.

Rain or Shine

Before I left for this assignment, the woman organizing the shoot for me said, “It’s raining heavily and you won’t be able to take any pictures.”

When I arrived in Guangzhou, my assistant told me, “You are not allowed on the railway platform and you won’t be able to work outside because it’s raining.”

Some of my favorite pictures have been taken in adverse weather conditions. An Australian farmer walking through a freak red dust storm, an English missionary boating down a tributary of the Amazon River in torrential rain, and Iranians skiing in a heavy snowstorm are a few that spring to mind.

So on this shoot I forgot about the bad weather and concentrated on taking pictures. I ended up with very wet feet from standing in pools of water as I slipped sideways and skipped backwards looking for interesting photographs.

As we know, if you are on assignment, no matter what the state of the weather, pictures still have to be produced. It’s always possible to go back to the hotel after the assignment and get dry — but it’s not always possible to wait for more pleasant weather conditions.

So I sloshed around in the rain looking for “the picture” — while my assistant clung to my umbrella, stayed dry and watched the girls go by.

All photos © Michael Coyne.

One of the leading explanations for the disappearance of the Neanderthals was that they could not adapt their tools to the new conditions surrounding them. They stubbornly (or stupidly, considering their limited brain capacity) continued to use the ones they had. Then, they vanished.

There are those in the industry today who fear photography is dying. Actually, it is doing just fine — better than fine. Photography is experiencing a tsunami of interest and demand. Indeed, there are more than 50 billion images on Flickr, PhotoBucket, ImageShack and Facebook — and more cameras on the streets than at any time in history.

Prehistory Repeats Itself

And what is the photo industry’s response to what should be an unprecedented opportunity? It stands there with its umbrella turned inside out, fretting about the wind.

The pro photographer says he can’t make a living anymore.

The photo editor says she has lost her budget (if she hasn’t already been laid off).

Magazines, as they die in print, try to replicate their old models online. (The fact that it’s demonstrably not working doesn’t seem to deter them.)

Photo agencies try to hang onto the slippery slope of declining revenue by agreeing to cut fees in hopes there is a trampoline at the bottom of the hill. (There isn’t.)

Photographers still shoot the same thing, the same way, for a clientele that is shrinking, both in size and resources. They desperately cling to old formulas that they hope will resurface some day.

Everyone is playing the waiting game, hoping that as they continue their worrying, some savior will appear with the magic solution.

In the meantime, they are all guilty of killing photography by undervaluing it.

From the publishing CFOs convinced that by cutting their photo departments they will reverse their circulation declines, to the photo agency executives who believe that by cutting prices they will cheat Chapter 11, to the photographers smiling when they receive commission checks for 11 cents, there seems to be no shortage of Neanderthals these days.

We are seeing prehistory repeat itself.

A Painful Carnage

Armed with the blunt instruments awarded by their MBA programs, a steady stream of industry executives have tried to adapt photography to their tools — price cuts, subscription models, and so on — rather than developing new ways to succeed.

Like a bunch of irresponsible farmers, they are creating their own dustbowl.

Most of this is driven by fear. Fear of change, fear of losing, fear of even trying. Too many in our industry seem to believe that, on the other side of change, they will find only chaos, death and emptiness.

No — that is what awaits on this side of change.

Before we know it, the landscape of photography will have been completely transformed. It’s going to be a painful carnage — and for some, it has already started.

The first to go will be those who fear.

In a previous Black Star Rising post, I discussed overcoming self-doubt in client negotiations by tapping into a reservoir of confidence — the one you have earned by developing your talents as a photographer.

But an awareness of your technical abilities can only carry you so far. As photographers, we also face other challenges where our doubts and anxieties can undermine our success.

For me, one of these has been directing people on a set or in portrait situations.

I’m an introvert by nature. I abhor crowds. If I need to confront someone, I prefer e-mail if I can get away with it.

So to effectively handle the “people” part of my job, I have to remind myself of some advice I was given many years ago — back when I was an apprentice magician.

The Magician’s Apprentice

As a high school student, I studied magic. I liked manipulating cards and coins — and making things disappear, of course.

After practicing my tricks long and hard, I decided to join a magicians’ trade group. Part of the initiation was presenting a 15 minute show to the group’s members.

So, on a Saturday evening, I walked on stage and did my act.

I stunk.

Oh, the magic worked well enough — but my stage presence was awful. Almost in tears, I retired to the back of the room, while the membership continued with the initiations.

As I sat on a bar stool feeling sorry for myself, a diminutive gentleman named Joseph White climbed onto the stool next to me and started a conversation. He told me very candidly the areas of my act that needed work. He gave me advice on how to improve my body language and interaction with the audience.

Then he said something that has stayed with me.

He recommended that before my next performance, I should mentally throw a switch to the “on” position, gather myself and take possession of the stage.

“When you are on stage,” Mr. White said, “you should own it.”

Owning The Stage

To this day, when I’m working as a photographer, I’m “on.” I own the stage.

I focus on being assertive, on being efficient, and on acquiring the deliverables. I know I must speak up and, if necessary, project my voice and attitude to those around me.

Whether on a set, at a portrait sitting or at a wedding, you can only succeed if you are able to take control and master the situation. During a wedding, for instance, when shooting the family images, it’s your responsibility to “call the shots,” literally. With shot list in hand, you must move people around to make the most pleasing pictures.

If you don’t project a commanding presence (without being rude or arrogant), that part of the event will take longer and you will dampen the overall mood — particularly as it relates to you. Things will only get worse when you move on to the reception, where if you don’t assert yourself, the attendees simply won’t pay attention to you.

If you, like me, are an introvert, this may be all a performance — turning on an “on” switch. But it’s a critical part of your job.

Many photographers start out with lofty goals. The budding artist wants to be an original — to immortalize something unique with his or her camera.

These beginners soon learn that there are very few “secret” locations that have not been captured in photographs (particularly now that a camera is part of most everyone’s mobile phone). For some, this realization makes them not want to step outside or hold a camera up to their eye, because everything they see has been photographed so many times before.

Of course, to become an artist, you need to use your camera. It’s how you learn all those pesky dials, knobs and buttons. And it’s how you develop, through years of practice, a style that is uniquely your own.

It’s how you become an original.

A Disturbing Trend

What I find disturbing, though, is that some beginning photographers don’t seem to value originality.

In fact, they don’t even understand the difference between learning photography and creating photography. They think that snapping a shutter is what photography is about.

Today there are elaborate workshops where you pay big bucks and an instructor arranges the models, the props, and the lights. The teacher does everything except for the final click.

It’s the equivalent of painting by numbers.

Such workshops are available in every genre imaginable today. If you fancy yourself a wildlife photographer, you can go on an African photo safari. If you want to shoot for men’s magazines, you can attend gatherings of scantily clad women — assembled for your instruction in glamour photography.

Don’t own any gear but you’re in Zion National Park? No problem.

There are schools there where you can rent the equipment — and then be driven to a location where you can see the tell-tale impressions made by previous tripod legs. Just stick your own tripod in the same place and start clicking.

All of this is well and good — as long as students know that these exercises are for instruction, or even just for fun. They do not represent original work.

But since I started teaching a few years ago, I’ve noticed that many students don’t see the distinction. To many young people, the “artist” is now simply the person who trips the shutter on the camera.

Recently, I noticed that one of my former students was using a picture taken during a demo I set up in class to promote his portrait photography business.

Making matters worse, the ex-student had handed the model, a fellow classmate, some paperwork and said to her, “If you sign this model release, I’ll give you the original file.”

The model had posed as a favor to the class. Now, she was being asked to sign a model release — and the ex-student was presenting the shot of her that I set up as his original work.

Path to Originality

Performing artists learn first by imitating others and then by creating their own interpretation of “old material.” Photographers are no different; finding a picture you like and emulating it is a great way to learn.

This approach, over time, can lead to the development of your own, original style.

But never treat mimicking others or shooting a picture set up for you as an end in itself. That’s not photography; it’s the mechanical act of snapping a shutter.

In today’s world of Internet publishing and streaming media, photographers are increasingly expected to practice multiple disciplines — namely, to provide both still and moving images from an event. Of course, I understand the desire for video, and I appreciate that it has its place.

But nothing can replace the power of a well-executed still shot.

We live in a period that is saturated with imagery. When I think of the images that are seared in my memory, however, almost all of them are individual moments captured in time.

Did you know that many of the most famous images in the history of photography had video counterparts? The videos in many cases still exist, but have been forgotten over the years.

Images of War

Take Iwo Jima, for instance. Joe Rosenthal’s immortal 1945 image of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag on Mount Suribachi has inspired war bond drives, memorials — and movies, from “Sands of Iwo Jima” to “Flags of Our Fathers.”

AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's famous photo (source: National Archives and Records Administration).

But what has become of the video of the event? Well, you can still find it on YouTube, but that’s about the extent of its legacy.

That’s not the only example. During the Vietnam War, this image by Eddie Adams, showing Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a prisoner in the street, symbolized the chaos and brutality of war.

The video of the execution, while brutal, did not embed itself into the public consciousness in the same way.

As Susan Moeller, author of Shooting War, has said of Adams’ image:

It was an image that was filmed by a TV camera crew, by one of the network crews, and there was a slice of that footage that appeared on the news that evening. But the still images lingered in the memory … they were seared into people’s brains in a way that television just couldn’t be.

Nick Ut’s photograph of a little girl, naked and crying as she runs from her village after a napalm strike, is another image from Vietnam that lingers in our collective memories.

The video of the event, while tragic, does not.

Frozen in Time

In these cases, as with so many others, the still images take fleeting moments and give them a sense of permanence and meaning.

On video, they seem like fleeting moments in the endless parade of fleeting moments we are exposed to every day.

Video can provide more information about an event, in the form of sound and motion. It can provide a better sense of “being there,” too.

But the power of a moment frozen in time is lost — and that remains the power of the still image.

Whenever I buy a new camera, I have a tendency to leave it sealed in the box and eye it warily for a few days — or even a few weeks — before I take it out to play.

Even though I’ve owned dozens of cameras in my life, I still find myself somewhat intimidated when there’s a new addition. As familiar as I am with what most camera features do and the new surprises I can expect to find, there’s still that awkward “new gizmo” hump I have to get over.

Over the years, I’ve developed a list of tips for making the process go faster, which I share with the photography classes I teach. See if these help you, too.

1. DO read your camera’s manual. It’s one of the few books that was written expressly for the camera that you own. Also, see if there is a Magic Lantern Guide published for your camera — they’re much better written and well illustrated. Keep your camera with you as you read and find each control or feature as you read about it.
2. DO read all of the menu screens. Granted, some menus are kind of obtuse, but the menus are the dashboard of your camera and the more familiar you are with the menu choices — and sub-choices — the faster you can custom-set your camera to a particular situation.
3. DO take your manual with you when you’re out shooting. If you’re out on a Sunday afternoon cruising for snaps and you encounter a question about camera controls, you don’t want to wait until you get home to find the answers. Keep the manual in a plastic zipper bag.
4. DO take lots of pictures. Photography, like any craft, is a learn-by-doing process. The more photos you take, the more comfortable you’ll feel with your new camera — and the more likely you are to experiment.
5. DON’T, however, shoot carelessly. Take the time to think about each photograph that you take; think quality, not quantity.
6. DO feel free to leave the camera in the Program or Auto exposure mode while you’re getting used to it. Better to shoot pictures right away than to avoid the camera because you’re intimidated by its complexities. Lots of pros, including me, use the program mode regularly.
7. DON’T be afraid to experiment with all of the controls. Try out different exposure modes and see what happens. Search for and play with unusual modes like flash exposure compensation. Again, just read the manual and have fun. Short of dropping it on concrete, you can’t hurt the camera. There’s a reset button (see your manual) to take you back to all of the default settings if you get hopelessly tangled.
8. DO print your pictures frequently so that you can see your mistakes and successes more clearly. There’s nothing like seeing a nice 8 x 10 of a great shot to boost your confidence (or, if the shot’s not so great, to show you your technique flaws).
9. DON’T live in a creative vacuum. Join a photo-sharing community, see what other photographers are doing creatively, and get advice from those who own the same camera.

Happy shooting!

If you remember buying your first DSLR, you probably can also recall your thoughts and the research you did. You can graze the Internet, find most anything about any camera and read reviews before making a decision.

After finally making up your mind and paying for the camera, you wait for the delivery. Until the camera arrives, you have difficulty concentrating on anything else, except for package tracking.

There is a moment or two, between paying for the camera and taking delivery, when you wonder whether you made the right choice. Then, the camera arrives and, after taking it out of the box, you examine all the knobs, dials and menus.

The Honeymoon

The first phase of ownership lasts but a brief time — only a few weeks. You become acclimated to the placement of the controls and the fit of the camera to your hands. Initially, you shoot for the pleasure of photography and also to test the new addition.

As you meet other photographers and peers, you describe to them the merits of your new baby — shutter speed quick enough to capture a Higgs boson and video capture quality to make James Cameron proud — and everything you are planning to to do with the camera.

That’s on the outside. The inner photographer uses these facts and hyperbole to validate their purchase.

Cohabitation

Once you’ve used the camera for a while, it becomes an extension of you. All of the controls are right where you expect them to be, and the camera’s performance (hopefully) meets your expectations.

It’s here where you really determine whether this new camera is worth the money you spent. If your results show a smidgen of improvement over what you’ve done in the past, you attribute it to the new camera, of course.

You don’t consider that your personal photographic expertise might be improving, too.

On the other hand, maybe the images don’t show an improvement — and experimenting with advanced features consistently produces unacceptable pictures. You blame the camera. Sure, you saw examples when researching the purchase, but your images don’t compare.

That &%*#@ camera! All the advertising was just hype.

Could it be your failure to understand and learn how to use these new features? No, of course not. It’s the camera.

It’s always easier to blame the object and not yourself. If you ever hit your thumb with a hammer, it’s always “that &%*#@ hammer!”

Dissolution

Things have changed and you are ready to consider something newer — maybe somewhat more shapely or with added features. You are face to face with temptation; comparing a recently released camera’s sexy new features to yours produces a sense of seduction.

You step back and try to think rationally: Do you really need those new features? This is more tricky than it appears.

If your current photography has a clear and present need that gear might address, then, of course, the new camera must be considered. On the other hand, the lure of a new camera’s abilities can outweigh any sense of moderation.

In justifying the purchase, are you painting targets around arrows?

For some of us, spending money on a new DSLR is an expensive treat. For others, it’s purely a business decision. Either way, sometimes you just want a new camera — and that may be the only rationale you need.

Black Star Rising reader Richard Cave sent us the following question:

Being a U.K. freelancer, if I as a U.K. resident put my pictures on the Web, do I need to register my images with the U.S. Copyright Office? The reason I ask is that we are no longer local, but now global.

Good question, Richard. Most countries offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions that have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions.

Both the U.S. and U.K. are members of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Under the Berne Convention, which the U.S. joined in 1989, photographers are not required to include a copyright notice (e.g., © 2006 John Doe) with their images. This is because the Berne Convention prohibits formal requirements that affect the “exercise and enjoyment” of the copyright.

U.S. law, however, still provides certain advantages for use of a copyright notice. For example, the use of a notice can defeat a defense of “innocent infringement.”

If your photos are taken in a country that is a signatory to the Berne Convention, you do not have to register your photos with the U.S. Copyright Office before filing a lawsuit in the U.S. for copyright infringement.

Benefits of Registering

Practically speaking, photographers in the U.K. and other countries may still wish to register their photos in the U.S., however.

The reason is that when a copyright is registered either before infringement or within three months of first publication, the photographer becomes entitled to statutory damages. This can significantly impact the viability of filing suit.

When you are not eligible for statutory damages, you may recover only “actual damages” for the infringement. Courts usually calculate actual damages based on your normal license fees and/or industry standard licensing fees. You also may recover the profits the infringer made from the infringement, if they aren’t too speculative.

By contrast, when you are entitled to statutory damages, you may be awarded up to $150,000 per work for willful infringements. Legal fees and costs also may be recovered from the infringer.

Because lawyers and lawsuits are expensive, it rarely is worth filing a lawsuit when you are eligible only for actual damages. It dramatically increases the incentive to pursue an infringement when statutory damages are available.

If your photos are first published in the United States or in a country with which the U.S. has a copyright treaty, they may be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Also, if you are a citizen of or reside in a country that has a copyright treaty with the U.S., then you can register your photos with the U.S. Copyright Office.

In general, a photographer who desires copyright protection for his or her images in a particular country should first determine the extent of protection available to works of foreign authors in that country. If possible, this should be done before the work is published anywhere, because protection may depend on the facts existing at the time of first publication.

All unpublished photos, regardless of the nationality of the photographer, are protected in the United States. However, there are some countries that offer little or no copyright protection to any foreign works.

Check with an attorney to learn the best way to protect your work and to discuss your options when you are infringed.

In my previous two columns on financial planning, I discussed three tools that should be part of any business plan — the break-even analysis, the profit/loss forecast and the cash-flow projection. Now it’s time to consider a fourth essential tool: the capital spending plan.

To start a new business or expand an existing one, you will probably need to invest in some big-ticket items such as cameras, computers and related hardware, software, office furniture, and such. These are generally called “capital items” to distinguish them from other things your business needs to operate on a day-to-day basis, such as office supplies, insurance, utilities, and the professional services of lawyers and accountants.

Such day-to-day expenses are considered fixed costs if they are recurring and are not dependent on specific projects. Expenses related to specific projects — such as travel, meals, and assistants — are considered costs of the sale, or variable costs. Capital items, on the other hand, are things your business buys infrequently, generally either at the time of start-up, when you need to expand your line of products and/or services, or when items wear out and need to be replaced.

Capital items are generally expected to be in use for more than one year. For tax purposes, expenses for capital items, called “capital expenses,” are usually treated differently from regular expenses, as we will learn.

Capital Spending Plan

The first step in creating your capital spending plan is to write down all the costs you think you will incur to start or expand your business.

Treat this as a brainstorming exercise — write everything down, and then go back over your list to see which items are essential and directly related to your start-up goals. Which items do you absolutely need to get your business up and running? Which can wait until you begin to make a profit? Which can you do without? Which can you obtain on an as-needed basis, either by renting or borrowing?

Once you have whittled down your list to the essential items, it’s time to start checking sources and prices. Are any of these items something you already own, which can be converted to a business asset? Do you need to buy new equipment, or can you make do with used? Are you better off finding local vendors with whom you can establish an ongoing relationship, or are you willing to forgo that in exchange for low, low Internet pricing?

Once you have determined a price for each capital item, compute the grand total of all essential items, and then add an extra 10 to 20 percent as a line item called “Contingency.” This ensures that you will have enough money in your capital spending plan to cover price hikes, errors in estimating, and unanticipated needs.

Be sure also to keep track of start-up and organizational costs you have already incurred in preparation for launching your business — such as advertising, consulting fees, travel, and so forth — because these may be deductible expenses.

Initial Working Capital

Many small businesses take a year or more after starting up to become profitable — that’s just the nature of small business. In addition to having money to invest in capital items, you’ll also need money, or initial working capital, to tide you over until your balance sheet shows green instead of red ink.

Where will all this money come from? Although you may hope to secure a juicy bank loan or find an “angel investor,” the fact is that most small businesses rely on money from the business owners themselves to provide the required start-up capital, usually in the form of savings or personal debt (credit cards, second mortgage, line of credit).

You may also need to work for someone else, either full or part time, while you save enough to begin gradually working for yourself. Family members and friends may also be sources of funding, but be sure to draw up a written agreement specifying the terms of any such loan or investment.

Having a solid business plan is certainly one requirement of obtaining any sort of outside funding for your business. You should be aware that banks and other traditional lenders are often reluctant to fund small business start-ups, especially in this tight economy.

A key factor in getting a loan is being able to demonstrate the ability to repay it — and this is hard without a proven track record of profitability and positive cash flow. The U.S. Small Business Administration has useful information about various loan programs for start-up and existing small businesses on its Web site.

Tax Consequences

Because capital items are those that remain useful for your business for more than one year, the IRS wants you to deduct a pro-rated portion of each item’s value in a given tax year, a process called “depreciation.”

The IRS assigns an expected lifespan to various classes of business assets. In other words, if a capital item is considered by the IRS to last five years, then you are allowed to deduct one-fifth of its cost, starting in the year the item was placed in service.

For example, in January 2006 my business spent $3,686 for new computer equipment, which is considered to have a useful life of five years. My accountant decided to use the straight-line method of depreciation, which simply divides the cost of the equipment by its useful life. Thus I was entitled to deduct $737 from my business income for tax year 2006, and I can continue to deduct the same amount through tax year 2010.

In certain cases, you can deduct the entire cost of a capital item in a single tax year — this is called “expensing” a business asset, rather than depreciating it. You should confer with your accountant, tax preparer, or CPA to determine which method is best for your individual circumstances.

Remember that business assets are ones generally considered to be owned 100 percent by your business. If you use an asset, such as a computer, for both business and personal use, you are not entitled to a full deduction. The IRS maintains a Web site for small businesses that is both helpful and easy to use.

Good Luck!

I hope the three columns I’ve written on financial planning have been useful. I have been using this material in a course I am teaching at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Called “Freelancing for Creative Professionals,” the course covers all important aspects of starting and operating a successful small business. A link to the course syllabus is on my faculty Web page.

As I continue to teach this course, I may find more useful information, which I am happy to share with you. I also look forward to hearing from you on any business-related topics — let’s keep the conversation going!

I’ve used cameras for most of my life, and I have really enjoyed what photography has brought me. This science and art requires attention to detail and ongoing maintenance. If you are serious about what you do, you probably spend many hours taking care of your gear. We know it’s important to keep dust off of our lenses and sensor, because any foreign matter degrades the quality of the image.

Recently, I noticed I was having some problems driving at night. Automobile headlights created a glare that made it difficult to see the road. I had also become quite light sensitive, to the point where even house lamps were difficult to look at. My night vision, which at one time was almost cat-like, now lacked contrast and detail.

As a photographer, I saw all of these changes in terms of cameras and lenses — and also from the perspective of an auto-hypochondriac.

A Feeling of Impending Doom

Yes, I suffer from “auto-hypochondria.” That is, whenever I’m driving my automobile, I tend to absently scratch or rub my neck or shoulders and find something I hadn’t felt before. Immediately, I believe it’s a death sentence.

More often or not, it’s an ingrown hair, a mosquito bite or other benign item. But there’s always a panicked minute or two when I feel impending doom.

So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that upon realizing I had vision problems, my mind went directly to macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and other sight-stealing diseases. Any one of those could mean the end of my love affair with photography.

I went to my eye doctor and shared my concerns. After an extensive series of tests, including dilation, he revealed his diagnosis: posterior subcapsular cataracts.

“Thank God!” I said with relief.

Like Sandpaper to the Lens

I was fortunate. Cataracts can be “fixed,” usually by removing the lens and replacing it with a plastic or silicon lens. So, while having cataracts is not good, it’s a darn sight better than degenerating vision, leading to blindness or worse.

The type of cataract I have is much like someone took sandpaper to the rear of my lens. Light hits that area and scatters; hence the automotive headlight glare. The cataract also reduces contrast, compresses the dynamic range and affects acuity.

My doctor told me that sometimes cataracts can be slightly yellow. Besides the light-scattering effect and reduction in night vision, I could have had the equivalent of a built-in yellow filter. This would have affected my personal “white balance” and impacted my editing and overall color judgment. In my case, however, this wasn’t a problem.

But my cataracts do affect my ability to look through the viewfinder, chimp the LCD and evaluate lighting. I have to dial down the LCD (both camera and computer), as the brightness increases glare and tires my eyes quicker.

Cataracts can manifest due to environmental conditions (chemical, ultraviolet or radiation), trauma, injury to the eye or even genetics. Age is also a factor. Most of us will get them, if we live long enough.

My doctor said there wasn’t any rush to replace my lenses, but that when I was ready, I would need to make an appointment with an opthamologist and have surgery.

I scheduled the appointment the next day.

I admit to being a gearhead. I love tech toys, and that includes not only photography gear but also computers and mobile phones. So you can imagine how excited I was about Apple’s big announcement on Wednesday: the unveiling of the iPad.

I followed the Apple keynote on Engadget, where they pulled images from Steve Jobs’ presentation into their live feed. One image in particular caught my attention: Jobs was browsing the Web on his nifty new tablet, when the infamous blue cube appeared where you would normally see Flash display.

My first thought was “No! How could they leave out Flash support for the iPad?”

I realize that the iPhone doesn’t do Flash, either, but on that small screen it wasn’t an issue. With the iPad’s bigger screen, wouldn’t Flash support be a natural?

And then it hit me. It’s part of Jobs’ grand plan — one that, among its other virtues, just might save photography.

A Man with a Plan

All the tech blogs are complaining about the iPad’s lack of Flash. They complain about not being able to watch interactive content on Web sites. No video streams, no slideshows, no animations.

I don’t think this represents a hole in the product. I believe it’s a hole in our understanding of Jobs’ long-term vision.

Let’s go back a few years, to the introduction of the iPod. At the time, most music was being downloaded illegally — and free. It took time for the iTunes Store to heave Napster into the dustbin of Web history.

But it happened. Now, a rational model that requires people to pay to download music is in place. This model has more recently been extended to television shows, movies, and mobile phone apps.

Basically, Apple has made it so easy to buy content that consumers actually like doing it.

The Last Frontier

So, what is the last frontier for free content on the Web?

Editorial.

It’s no secret that free content is killing the newspaper business and devaluing the work of photographers. How much are your photos worth? How much does it cost to Google a photo, right click and save to desktop?

Now, here’s how Jobs is planning to be our savior:

Apple has a wonderful, intuitive platform for distributing paid content. In fact, the App Store already offers subscription-based payment if the content provider chooses that option — perfect for newspapers and magazines.

But how does Apple get you to pay for content that you’re currently getting for free? Among other things, by not supporting Flash.

This means that to browse interactive content on the Web, you’ll have to buy an app in the iTunes Store to get your daily dose of news. The New York Times has already announced support for the iPad, and you can be sure it will charge for its content.

I see more and more media outlets moving to Apple’s distribution model over time. If they know what’s good for them, they will do it quickly and with enthusiasm.

The transition to a paid model for editorial content won’t happen overnight. But when Napster was all the rage, the pundits said people would never pay for music again. Now they do.

So it may be with editorial content — including photography. We just have to make sure that, as photographers, we negotiate our fair share of the revenues that a new, paid model would generate.

Every time you pick up your camera, you have the potential to perform a revolutionary act.

Photography should be a kick in the establishment, a cure for the commonplace, a powerful explosion of new ideas.

Photography should be an act of defiance against banality and conformity. It should be as violent to the mind as a thousand thunderstorms. It should rip apart the accepted social fabric. It should be a declaration of war on everything we take for granted and accept as obvious.

It should point, accuse, denounce — and solve. All in one frame.

A Window Blasted Open

Photography should incessantly question reality with the passion of a martyr. It should make our leaders fear it, our priests condemn it. It should know no frontiers, no borders, and no cultural identity. It should have the same impact east of Bangkok and south of Lima.

Photography should be lifted high and proud by those who wish to change the world. It should be a constant complaint — and a constant demand for reform and social progress.

It should beg for perfection, over and over, pointing out every little detail of injustice, abuse, destruction and greed. It should rattle every misconception and drive every glib rationalization into pathetic silence.

Photography should haunt you in your sleep, follow you all day and make you feel naked.

Photography should not be a cozy, familiar blanket that keeps you warm on a cold winter night. Photography, instead, should be the act of removing the blanket suddenly — exposing you to the freezing winds.

It should be a window blasted open.

Chairs of Indifference

Too much of what we see today in photography is a sea of banality, repetition and dullness. It is status quo and no more. A long, straight road of boring, predigested concepts.

Like frozen dinners on an assembly line, today’s images wait to be reheated. Millions and millions of photographs form a constant stream that passes by at a low buzz, so that we hardly even notice anymore.

We can blame the commercial stock photography industry, I suppose, for making us forget what powerful tools our cameras can be. Slowly, the reign of the medium has taken over.

“Medium,” as in medium quality, medium content, medium effect. Photography has become an industry of expectedness, where passion and spontaneity are replaced by technocrats shooting bullet points.

So blame the industry. But let’s save at least a little blame for photographers, too.

It’s time to make images that shove people out of their chairs of indifference again. It’s time to make people rethink everything they ever took for granted. It’s time to create photographs that make those who view them want to change their whole lives.

Am I asking too much of you?

Then exactly how much less should I expect?