So how can you, as a one man sports outfit, market your sports photography to parents and family of the athletes? I was as recently as this year faced with this problem, and the solution actually came to me from the craziest of places. Senior Portrait photographers.

The Ah Hah! Moment

One of the trends I have seen (in my state anyways) is to create these magazines for your senior clients. It’s nothing too fancy, essentially it’s just an album in magazine form. But the kids love these things, they absolutely eat them up. So I thought to myself, why not try and capture that excitement about being in a magazine and harness that to promote my sports work as well.

So I put together a magazine featuring images from the local high school softball team. Again, it’s nothing too extravagant. Mostly it is just a collection of images, some small and some large to sort of preview the season that I captured for them. I offered the parents the ability to pre-order the magazine for $15 or pay the full price of $20 once it was complete – with the caveat that %25 of the profits would go back to the school athletic program.

Parents who ordered the magazine were also more inclined to purchase more prints from the season as well. They would see images from the magazine and want to order prints of them. Needless to say not only did I make a fair bit of money from the magazine sales, but I also boosted my print sales in the process.

I now have parents and coaches from other areas nearby wanting me to come and cover their teams and to create magazines of their seasons as well. I would consider this experiment a success, wouldn’t you? The key is not thinking of the magazine as a product, think of it as marketing that you are getting paid for. Essentially it is an extravagant business card, that people are paying you for – why would you pass that up.

So where do I make the magazine?

I just designed layout with the help of these templates that I purchased from an area senior photographer. All I had to do was design a cover, select the images, and lay them out in photoshop.

I had the magazine hosted and printed through HP Mag Cloud. HP Mag Cloud is a great service, not only are they incredibly cheap but they also host a page for your magazine on their site. So you can – if you want – direct parents to that page and have HP print the magazine and ship it directly to the client. So you don’t have to preorder hundreds of copies and hope you sell them all, you can just sell them one at a time. You can also choose your own markup, so if you feel like you should charge more than I am you are certainly able to do so.

In Closing

This is a great way to market your sports work and increase your exposure. These kids are excited about the magazine and show it to everyone they know. So with the help of some well-placed branding everyone they show will know your name and your website. So stop toiling trying to get noticed, give this a try. It worked for me, and it could very well work for you.

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Volcanic Vortices

Bruce Omori is a photographer based in Hilo, Hawaii, and one of his images earned the Windland Smith Rice International Award and will be displayed in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History beginning in June.

Bruce describes his winning photo (top):

“On an early morning shoot at the Waikupanaha ocean entry, lava from the Kilauea volcano poured into the sea. This created a huge escape of steam, and as it rose, multiple vortices began spinning off of the huge plume.  A vortex or two is a pretty rare sight—but when one after another kept forming, my fumbling with the lenses turned into a panicked rush to switch my telephoto to wide angle lens to capture this awesome scene of seven vortices in a row.”

Bursting Fourth

Textures

Bruce’s work is nothing short of spectacular. He works with his friend and business partner Tom Kuali’i and together they own the ‘Extreme Exposure Fine Art Gallery’ in Hilo, Hawaii. As a team, their work has been featured in various magazines, newspapers, and websites such as National Geographic, Time Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, and many others.

Bruce has been an enthusiast photographer since childhood, and after quitting his job in corporate America and moving back to his home town of Hilo where he re-discovered his passion for photography he began shooting the natural landscape around him full-time.

So much of photography is about following one’s passions.  Passion, creative vision, and technical know-how will take you a long way.  All of this takes work, so be inspired to wake up early, travel near and far, and persevere in adverse conditions.

The Birth of a Beach

Temporary Solitude

Bruce share’s this anecdote:

About two weeks prior to capturing those vortices, as Tom and I were hiking back from shooting the lava, I looked up to see more than a dozen vortices in a row, nicely positioned and backlit by the morning sun.  Having seen these dissipate after a few seconds, I thought there was no chance in capturing the scene, as all my gear was nicely packed away in my backpack.  After drooling over the scene for about 30 seconds, I realized an eternity had passed and started tearing my gear out of the pack…  of course, it was futile effort, as the vortices had long disappeared by the time I had my tripod setup.  I felt sick to my stomach, as I had missed a once-in-a-lifetime shot.  Every day I’d wake up thinking about that missed shot!  Two weeks later, I had my second chance!  Lesson learned:  Expect the unexpected…  so you don’t have to count on second chances for that once-in-a-lifetime shot!

Visit Bruce and Tom’s Extreme Exposure Fine Art Gallery.

Learn more about the Windland Smith Rice award at Nature’s Best Photography and Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Work hard, and follow your heart!

Did you enjoy Bruce’s images? Which ones are your favorite, and why?  We’d love to hear your comments below, and be sure to drop a kind word for Bruce and his team!

Fiery Elegance

Terra . . . not so Firma

The Beach Factory

All photographs are Copyright Bruce Omori and were used with permission.

The post Bruce Omori wins International Photography Award with ‘Volcanic Vortices’ appeared first on Free Photography Tips Tutorials Reviews and Wordpress Themes.

Regardless, I came across this very well done tutorial on doing star trail photography from Tony Northrup. Its promoting his book, so take that into mind – but the tutorial itself was very helpful to me when I was looking to learn more about shooting star trails. In the video Tony goes from how to choose good nights to shoot the stars all the way to how to process them. You can check it out below.

The post Shoot for the Stars: a Star Trail Tutorial from Tony Northrup appeared first on Free Photography Tips Tutorials Reviews and Wordpress Themes.

The package includes the Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-84 3.5-4.5G, Nikkor 70-300 4.5-5.6G, A 32GB SD card, and more. You can learn more about the package or purchase it from B&H on their website.

That’s not all either. B&H has another great deal on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 with a M.ZUIKO 17mm 1.8 lens. This is a limited edition package now available for $100 off for a total of $1,399. You can get yours here.

Finally, the last deal is the one that I am personally going to take advantage of, Sony 64GB Class 10 SD cards. Normally $53, now available for only $36. You can get that deal here.

The post Save a Lot of Money – Awesome Deals Now Available at B&H appeared first on Free Photography Tips Tutorials Reviews and Wordpress Themes.

Light Painting Images

Jason’s Background

My name is Jason D. Page and I discovered light painting in late 2004. I was out on a full moon night shooting long exposure seascapes when I accidentally bumped my camera. When I saw the light streak going across the sky that the moon had left from that bump, it was my epiphany. From that moment on I was a light painter.

“My hope is that my work will provide the viewer a temporary escape by inspiring their faith, imagination, and creativity. Every one of my images has a story and I want my work to provoke the viewer’s imagination to create the story that goes with the image they are witnessing. I would like to say thank you to the light painting community and especially to light painting pioneers Dean Chamberlain and Vicki DaSilva for their continued support and inspiration.”

The Video

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