Yes…I know we’re all artists to some extent (some more than others) and we all have our own little quirks and such, but it doesn’t suit you well to dress like a starving artist (whether it’s true or not) when you’re trying to pull in business.  This is true whether you’re a weekend warrior, a photojournalist, an artist, or a full time wedding photographer.

Your vision as an artist should help to determine how you dress when you’re meeting with potential clients, agents, art buyers, or shooting a wedding.

We live in a world where perception is everything.  You work in an industry where beauty, vision, or style is what you’re trying to sell.

Rock'n'Roll Star wannabe

The simple truth, is that no one really wants to buy photography from someone who isn’t successful and can’t sell their own beauty and style.

Marketers and advertisers know that people buy from winners.  This is key advice you should pick up on as you are actually a marketer of your photographic services and goods.

Do your best to look like a winner and you’ll have much more success in your chosen field.

If you’re a wedding photographer it would do you well to dress the part.  That may mean anything from a suit to expensive jeans and a stellar shirt for meeting with clients or on shoots.  As an art photographer you may have a quirky or brooding style but either can be dressed up with some minor tweaking when you’ve finally landed a meeting with a gallery owner or have a big show.  The classic little black dress for women can be dressed up or down for almost any occasion.

There are too many variables to go into great detail about how to dress for success as a photographer in your given situation but there’s at least one good tip if you’re struggling with this thought.

Everyone knows someone who has a great sense of style.  It would be well worth your time to take this person to lunch/coffee and ask for their advice.  Maybe they could take you shopping and actually work as a style guru for you.  Allow them access to your cl0set to help you put together outfits and ensembles with the clothes you already have.

As a last resort, when you can’t find someone who’s style and/or opinion you trust, look through magazines that deal with style.  There are tons of them that will help you work within your budget.

Bonus tip: Black almost always works for artists.  It also happens to be quite flattering and slimming for almost everyone!

How do you dress for success?

Photograph Rock’n'Roll Star wannabe by razrez

Your Photo Tips may have won a Golden Retrevo Award from the fine folks at Retrevo but I only accept it in your honor.

It’s all of you who come here daily, twitter the posts, comment on the blog, and post the articles to facebook and digg (amongst other places) that deserve the award.

Thank you very much for showing up to our humble little website.

Instead I’ll spend most of the day curled in a ball watching TV and looking at photo books.

Curious…what do you do when you’re not well?  I’m hard pressed to come up with anything neat or smart photography related to suggest for when you’re ill.  Perhaps it’s because my brain seems to be working at half capacity?

Maybe I’ll just spend a little time on Flickr at our wonderful Flickr Group (see how I managed to get a plug in there?).

Open discussion: What do YOU do when you’re ill?  Is it photography related at all?

behind bars by Dean MacKay can be purchased at DiscoveredArtists online gallery for $175 as an 18″x12″

Images without Borders is an opportunity for you to purchase some great artwork with proceeds going to a good cause.

The future of photography is bright indeed. I love to see young, raw, talented photographers do their thing.

Love this photograph from Cdl Creative.

In the Photoblogosphere

Rosh has a fantastic post over at New Media Photographer with Sixty-six ways to promote your blog. If you’re marketing your photography or blog then this is a must read.

If you love black and white photography as much as I love black and white photography then you’ll enjoy Black and White Vision at Motivation.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget what photography is really all about. Stop! You are NOT a Photographer will help remind you.

Congrats are in order to one of my favorite photography bloggers Ciao, Chessa!

10 Photography Goals for 2010 – In case you needed some inspiration to get the year going. It’s not too late to put together your own set of goals BTW.

Digital Darkroom

How to fake a panorama in Adobe Photoshop Elements – Simple but effective.

Ever let someone else drive your car? How about letting someone else edit your photos? It’s interesting to see how others can interpret your original vision and put their own vision into it.

Your Photo Tips news

Not a whole lot of news really. We’re still working on the new design and am hoping to roll it out soon. It’s been a long time coming and we’re just hashing out details. Of course we ran into a couple of snags and messed up code here and there, it happens, but we’re pretty close (I think).

Enjoy your weekend.

Jaden Eastwood's 3rd Birhday

One of my kiddos had her birthday in December (poor thing) and the other has one coming in March. When I look back at some of my old birthday party pictures they’re not that great. Better than most (my father was a pretty good with a camera back in the day) but there’s much to be desired. I’m willing to bet if you look back at yours you’ll feel the same.

It’s not just about creating great photographs…more about preserving memories in a clear and concise fashion.

What I most enjoyed about my birthday parties when I was a child are the memories of playing with my buddies. I don’t really remember what they look like at that age. We have the traditional pics of everyone sitting at a table with a cake and candles and nobody is looking at the camera. They’re all looking at me. While this “accurately” captures the moment, I just don’t feel it “accurately” captures the memory.

Do your kid or grandchild a favor and capture the whole party as an event where everyone is the star. To your kiddo, on that magical day, it’s not about presents or cake, it’s about friendship and fun!

Why not set up an impromptu “photo studio” in a corner or out of the way spot. If you’re indoors you’ll want to find a spot next to a window to get some nicely diffused window light.  If you’re outdoors the sky’s the limit!

Shiny Happy Birthday Girl

A solid bed-sheet or poster-board will make a nice background for some fun closeups of all of the child’s friends.

Think “wedding photographer” on a small scale. Get a nice shot of the birthday cake and some of the decorations.

Happy Birthday!

Don’t forget action shots of the kiddos running around and the birthday child opening presents.

Later you can put all of the different elements together in a small booklet or scrapbook that truly captures the fun memories of a young child’s birthday party!

Photographs:

Jaden Eastwood’s 3rd Birthday by JeramieLu.com

Shiny Happy Birthday Girl by Pink Sherbet Photography

Happy Birthday! by .neha.

Taking Wing

Taking Wing by Scottwdw

Find more from Scottwdw at his blog Views Infinitum

SAN FRANCISCO – Jan. 26, 2010 – liveBooks, Inc., (www.livebooks.com) the leading provider of award-winning websites that allow creative professionals to promote and manage their businesses online, today announced the launch of a new liveBooks-powered website for photographic self-portraitist Natalie Dybisz (www.missaniela.com), the brain and body behind the Flickr-famed Miss Aniela brand.

Strikingly stunning with an eye for surreal photography and a nose for business, 23-year-old Dybisz is a worldwide Web sensation who has partnered with liveBooks to elevate her photography brand — and her business — to a new tier of professionalism and ingenuity.

“I was in search of a new platform and I liked the simplistic, slick and lightweight feel of liveBooks’ sites,” said Dybisz. “They satisfied my identity graphically and, probably most importantly, their editSuite allows me to easily update my site whenever I want. I also like how the company is so tapped into the photo community – I really get the sense that they know what photographers need and want.”

Since launching her original website in 2007, the Miss Aniela brand has attracted approximately 2,000 visitors per day. It is evident that Dybisz has a strong online following, but just how she became a prominent online figure — and a self-portrait photographer — is an interesting tale.

Boredom, a compact camera with a 10-second timer and a shortage of friends to pose for photos, led then 21-year-old Dybisz to star in her own self-portraits. After a few photo shoots, she began sharing her photos with the Flickr community under the profile name “Miss Aniela”.

“I was self-taught, but the Flickr community took a liking to me and encouraged me to continue to share my work,” Dybisz said. “I did just that, and before I knew it, I had interest from a local gallery who wanted to feature my photos.”

In the first six months of being on Flickr, her profile received more than one million views. Soon after, her Flickr popularity landed her on the cover of American Photo magazine. Today, she has expanded beyond the Flickrverse to become a bustling entrepreneur. Miss Aniela is now the brand behind several international exhibitions, frequent speaking engagements with prominent names like Microsoft, and interest from book publishers and documentary producers.

With an escalating number of business endeavors, Dybisz can better streamline business operations and market her brand with the functionality of her liveBooks-powered website, allowing her to continue building the pervasive Miss Aniela brand — a brand distilled by her creative persona, nurtured by social media and powered by technology.

To view her new website, visit www.missaniela.com. For more information about liveBooks, visit www.liveBooks.com.

About liveBooks
liveBooks, Inc. provides award-winning websites that serve as a business hub to help professionals in creative industries like photography, graphic design and interior design save time, promote their businesses and make more money. The company works with an extensive ecosystem of advisors, partners and consultants to deliver unrivalled products, services, partner applications and customer experiences through the powerful combination of small-business acumen, award-winning designs, a scalable platform and extensible architecture. liveBooks is committed to customer success through design leadership, business integrity and its belief in the power of image and creativity to enable social change.

Somewhere in the mid-1870s almost everyone had had some sort of exposure to photography.  Certainly everyone in modern society had been photographed or, at the very least, had seen photographs.  Many had even thought of taking up photography as a craft.  There were, of course, limitations.  The technical skill and large quantity of equipment needed for the collodion wet-plate process kept early hobbyists at bay, much like the price and technical skill of digital photography did only a handful of years ago.

Revolution and evolution tend to change things.

Enter a man named George Eastman.  Sound familiar?  Eastman gets most of the credit for popularizing photography.  He started out the same as every other photographer back in 1877 using the wet-plate process.

“It seemed,” he said, “that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load,”

While many people before him had experimented with roll film it was his ingenuity that brought forth the equipment to manufacture film on a mass basis.  Result?  Eastman’s American Film which was a roll of paper coated with a thin gelatin emulsion that, when stripped from the opaque paper backing, would provide a negative that light could shine through for making prints.  Because many photographers had trouble with this method the film was usually sent back to Eastman’s company for processing.

At first there wasn’t much attention paid to this new process aside from rumblings amongst photographers.  You still needed expensive and heavy view cameras for taking pictures.

In 1888 Eastman introduced the Kodak camera.  It was inexpensive, light, and simple to operate.  The Kodak came loaded with 100 exposures and when you used it up you sent it back to Eastman’s company for processing.  The developed and printed photographs were returned to the owner along with the original camera loaded with another 100 exposures.

The roll-film Kodak became an international sensation almost overnight.

Hannibal Goodwin soon invented a truly modern foll film (transparent, flexible plastic, sturdy, and without a paper support) and a new photographic era begun.

George Eastman and The Eastman Kodak Company were able to see, very early on, who their main users would be and they directed their advertising accordingly.

“A collection of these pictures may be made to furnish a pictorial history of life as it is lived by the owner, that will grow more valuable every day that passes.”

Silk and Pearls 03 by Lachlan Burrell is available at DiscoveredArtists as 10″x15″ for $100.00.

Last week FeatureShoot did a theme Friday for dog lovers.  This week they must have felt compelled to give out a shout to all the cat lovers with some great photographs of Kitty Cats.  Almost makes me want to get one.

There’s a great article at ADIDAP on photographer Lara Zankoul.  I’m really digging these photographer of the week write ups.  Great stuff.

In the Photoblogosphere

Rosh, over at New Media Photographer, has a great article up on The Modern Photographer.  Are you a modern photographer?

If you’re having trouble understanding color space conversion I suggest heading over to Digital Picture Zone and reading Color Space Conversion For Digital Photographers.

It can be hard to be a professional photographer and finding the time to take pictures of YOUR OWN daily life.  I know I had that same struggle when I was doing weddings and portraits for a living.  Sometimes, the last thing you want to do is pick up that camera for fun!  Here’s some inspiration to remind you why you became a photographer in the first place.

I wish I had stores like this where I live.

There’s a new blog, Light and Colour on Canvas, by veteran photography blogger Niels Henriksen on photography and art.  I’m betting it’s gonna be worth your time to visit, say hi, and subscribe.

Remember that it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing you can always find something beautiful to photograph.

A fellow photography blogger and long time friend of this blog is sick.  Please take some time out to visit Richard’s Images and read about what’s going on and wish him well.  Richard is a great photographer, great blogger, and also happens to be, normally, in good health.  Get well soon buddy.

The People of Haiti need our Help.

That is all for this week.  Carry on!