The Business of Photography

April 5, 2013

Make An Impression

The 11 secrets to creating a successful online photo portfolio

By Grover Sanschagrin
How is your portfolio website like a car door? Give up? At PhotoShelter, we like to use this analogy to explain how people perceive the experience of interacting with a website in ways that you may not realize or expect. It’s common for car shoppers to slam a car door and make judgments about the car based on the sound the door makes. In many... Read more
February 20, 2013

Click On The Dotted Line

From model releases to job contracts, know how to use electronic signatures to get the most benefit for your work

By Samuel Lewis
Technological advancements are being made in photography at such a tremendous pace that it’s often difficult to keep up. Increasingly, letters and faxes seem downright antiquated, having given way to email and text messaging. Even the act of entering into a contract has changed. The days of the parties to a contract meeting for the purpose of... Read more
January 3, 2013

Case Study: Producing A Successful Estimate

Craig Oppenheimer of Wonderful Machine walks us through the details of a winning job bid for a restaurant’s photo shoot

By Craig Oppenheimer Of Wonderful Machine
As a producer at Wonderful Machine, I work with photographers around the world on a daily basis to help them connect with clients and estimate projects both big and small. One of our members recently asked me to help him compile an estimate for a shoot with an agency working for a steadily growing restaurant chain. The photographer was a food and lifestyle... Read more
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October 16, 2012

Arbitration Friend or Foe?

As a professional photographer, should you beware of alternative dispute resolution

By Samuel Lewis
If there’s one aspect of contracts frequently misunderstood or rarely given due consideration, it’s provisions relating to dispute resolution, and specifically, the increasingly common use of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures of mediation and arbitration. Those who fail to fully appreciate the relative advantages and disadvantages... Read more
October 4, 2012

Social Media & ­­­­­Copyright

Navigating the potential pitfalls of having your work circulating in social media

By Jim Goldstein
In the past several years, social-media websites and their everyday use have been rapidly evolving. Through it all, copyright protection has been a constant concern for creatives of all types, but particularly photographers. In my prior article "Social-Media Marketing Essentials," I covered a variety of topics surrounding social-media marketing,... Read more
August 21, 2012

The Pinterest Conundrum

Photographers struggle to determine whether Pinterest is a marketing savior or a copyright nightmare

By William Sawalich
Like so many commercial photographers, I’m always looking for new ways to market my work. We’re browbeaten constantly by the knowledge that we must use whatever technological advantages we can to reach out to new customers and engage with an audience that may be interested in paying for our work. New methods for marketing spring up like... Read more
August 10, 2012

Vision To Visuals: Wakhan Journeys

An ethereal version of Afghanistan

By Baldev Duggal
Shut your eyes for a moment and imagine Afghanistan. What do you see? There’s a high probability that you picture a rough mountain terrain, Taliban fighters with guns, military bases or explosions. Our brains form these subliminal visual associations through the onslaught of aggressive imagery that accompanies news headlines that have unfortunately... Read more
August 8, 2012

Social-Media Marketing Essentials

How you can balance the need to be on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media to build your business without letting them take over your life

By Jim Goldstein
Odds are, the last time you spoke with a fellow photographer, it came up. Not photography itself, business finances or gear, but marketing—social-media marketing, to be specific. Whether you call it by this term or not, it’s what you were discussing, and it more than likely centered around the topics of using Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and/or... Read more
June 12, 2012

Stealing Inspiration

Where’s the line between inspiration, plagiarism and copyright infringement?

By Samuel Lewis
Every now and again, I find myself explaining photographic techniques to younger photographers. Recently, one of these conversations prompted me to recall a few of the photographers who helped me gain an understanding of those techniques and even the context in which I learned them. Often, those skills were learned as a result of seeing how other photographers... Read more
June 1, 2012

Vision To Visuals: Full Circle

Serendipity brought William John Kennedy’s 50-year-old images back to Duggal

By Baldev Duggal
In the 50 years since founding Duggal, there are very few business decisions I regret, save for one: As a young entrepreneur in the early ’60s, when my photo lab was just starting to become popular with artists, I provided photo capture and enlargement services to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, among other artists. At one point, Andy Warhol’s... Read more