This week, Scott Wyden Kivowitz kicked things off by providing eight ways to amplify your photography website. Then, Kevin Ames reviewed the GoPro Hero8 Black, while Bryan Esler told us how to utilize stars, color labels and other metadata with Excire Foto.
Lauri Novak walked us through how to best choose our sessions for the virtual Adobe MAX conference and finally, Jemma Pollari gave us three ways to cope with distracting photography locations.
Eight ways to amplify your photography website - There are countless things you can do to a website which can amplify its effectiveness. Today I want to share eight of those methods with you, so you can bring your photography website to a new level. Compact menu One of the first things people see when they visit your website is the menu. Due to the nature of a menu, and how many pages your website might have, it’s too easy to complicate your menu. It can get cluttered super fast. Take a few minutes to analyze your menu’s top level. Meaning, what people see at first. Don’t worry about sub-menu items yet (the items that show when you hover over a top-level item). Reduce the clutter. Compact your menu to the most important pages on your site. The ones you need your visitors to visit. The ones that are most likely to make you money or get you leads. Easy searching People like to search for things, and sometimes people don’t make that easy to do. Add a search bar, or search button somewhere that is clearly visible. For example, put in your header next to your menu. If your website does not have that feature then put it in your footer or in a sidebar. Beautiful portfolio This is probably the absolute most important thing on a photography website. Without a beautiful portfolio, it’s unlikely people will hire you or buy from you. Pick 25 or fewer photos to include in your portfolio. Only your best from the genre you photograph. Display it in the most modern style available to you. Like mosaic or tiled galleries. Ensure that it looks perfect on desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile devices. If you run a WordPress website, pick up NextGEN Pro to display your photographs with stunning gallery types. Use it to also proof your photos and sell your photos to clients. Win-win! Consistent branding Branding is one of the most underutilized things I see photographers implementing. And it’s the one subtle thing that has a huge impact. You need your band to match in everything you do. Whether it’s the custom shirt you wear, a hat, business card, postcard, website and even social media. Your logo, fonts and colors all need to stay consistent across the various media formats. Lots of social proof Word of mouth can be the best selling tool for your photography business. Hopefully, you are gathering reviews through email, maybe a video, and definitely with local citations from Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp and others. You should include testimonials throughout your website and make them visual enough that they stand out. Include your photos of your clients with their testimonials. Embed reviews from services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. If you run a WordPress website, check out WP Business Reviews as a plugin that can aggregate reviews from multiple platforms in a consistent way. Easy contacting You have to make it easy for people to contact you. Roadblocks will reduce your leads, and reduce your paying clients. A clear and common layout for a contact page is as follows. On the left side, including an actual email address, a phone number and an address. On the right side, a contact form. That way, no matter what, people have some way to get in touch with you. Clear pricing Not everyone puts pricing on their website. In some industries, like wedding photography, it’s very common to avoid it. But for others, like headshots and branding, it’s important to keep it all upfront. In fact, by doing so, you completely remove the chances of uninterested people from contacting you. If you fit in the genre where you would be sharing your pricing, make sure it’s very clear. Your pricing is big, and everything included in your pricing is in a simple bullet list. Educational blog content You might hate blogging. I get it. But you know what? It can be a huge asset to converting customers. Don’t just post random photos on your blog. Get a strategy in place. Educate your visitors, teach them about your business and how to prepare for sessions. Tell them why they need photos and how they can use the photos. The list can go on. To get an idea on how to build a successful lead generation system that starts with your blog, check out my course on lead generation for photographers. What’s next for your website? I just shared a bunch of valuable things you can do to your website which will amplify it, and make it stand above your local competition. I hope that you take these things and run with them. If you have questions, comments or your own suggestions, let me know. Be sure to check out my roundup of the best WordPress plugins for photographers that can help you further amplify your photography website.
GoPro Hero8 Black takes action to a new level - The GoPro Hero8 Black is the newest action cam from GoPro. I have used GoPro Hero 3s and 4s on projects, and this one is a marked improvement. It has made time-lapse movies of construction and wrapping a truck in custom graphics, as well as recorded empty streets during the early days of the pandemic. I received this one from B&H for writing this review. Hero8 sports a new waterproof door GoPro has made the waterproof housing I used with my Hero3 and Hero 4 cams obsolete on the GoPro Hero8. It goes into the water right out of the box to a depth of 33 feet (10 meters). The change that makes this possible is a waterproof door on the left side of the camera. Behind it is the battery and microSD card slot along with the USB-C charging port. There is a bright touch screen on the back for composing shots and controlling the camera with on-screen presets and shortcuts. The Hero8 can also livestream 1080p video to Facebook and YouTube using the super versatile GoPro app. The built-in microphone provides high-fidelity audio recording. Software features include TimeWarp 2.0, SuperPhoto and improved HDR give better results than in previous versions. LiveBurst offers the option of a 90-frame 4K video or a 1.5 second before and after burst when you hit the shutter. Voice control lets the camera get going when it hears “GoPro, turn on” or start shooting with the “GoPro, take a picture” command. Night Lapse works in 4K, 2.7K at 1440p or 1080p frame sizes to capture better low light video. Hero8 mounting fingers New on the Hero8’s bottom are two recessed fingers that fold out for mounting the camera to existing GoPro accessories. It’s a great design that makes the camera smooth, sleek and complete by not needing a skeleton or a waterproof housing that was required previously to mount the camera. There are a couple of small drawbacks to them. First, a fingernail is needed to open them. These fingers are not as easy to fit into the slots of GoPro’s line of mounting accessories. Time-lapse machine I mainly use GoPros for time-lapse photography on construction projects. I put the Hero8 to work during the filming of a how-to video for a local company. The Hero8 ran constantly during the weeklong installation of a new bathroom and shower. I used still frames from the Hero8 to complete scenes that my regular camera could not capture. It’s also a lot of fun to see this painstaking work speed along. This less than 30-second clip is from a video I produced for a client. It shows how Hero8 video can be cropped to HD. It then zooms out to show the full 4K captured by the GoPro. I used an iPad charger to power the Hero8 during the 4-day shoot. When I am making time-lapse photography with GoPros, I always provide either household current or high capacity batteries that can keep it going for a full 10 to 14-hour workday. Wrapping a truck Unlike the time-lapses I have made with a Hero4, the Hero8 actually creates an MP4 movie rather than individual JPEG frames that have to be animated later in editing software. This video shows part of the process of wrapping a truck in printed graphics from precise cleaning of the exterior to adding the graphics to finishing in 50 seconds. The whole process took a 10-hour day. Pandemic in slow motion I built a rig to mount the Hero8 to the window of my car. I set the GoPro to 240 frames per second with HyperSmooth 2.0 image stabilization engaged and went for a drive along some normally busy storefronts. This video is very smooth and full of detail. At 240 fps, it takes a minute and a half to drive about a quarter of a block and pull into a parking space just beyond the SUV in the left of the frame below. GoPro cameras are well known for the ease of mounting them practically anywhere. For this slow motion with image stabilization video, I used a pair of Platypods bolted together with washers between them so they would fit on either side of my car’s passenger side window. I used one of Platypod’s grip pads between the plates and the glass to keep it solidly attached. The Hero8 is rugged, but I don’t think it would survive a falling from my car traveling at speed. Here’s a look the mount and Hero8. The GoPro Hero8 Black is about as perfect an action cam at a great price as you are likely to find. The screen on the back makes Hero8 a handheld still or motion camera without extra accessories. Its down-to-33-feet waterproofing lets it go on adventures in any weather, crossing rivers or just recording the kids running through the sprinklers. Hero8 continues the innovation and reliability I have come to expect from GoPro cameras.
Filter by stars and color labels with Excire Foto - Excire Foto is quickly becoming my favorite new tool for organizing my photos. As someone who has multiple catalogs spread out across different programs — it’s pretty easy to see why. Excire Foto lets me add any photo to it, meaning I can search across catalogs, programs … even different hard drives. And while Excire Foto is great for searching by keyword and finding similar or people-oriented photos, it also has one more huge superpower that’s saved me a ton of time. The ability to filter by star rating and color label. How Excire Foto helps with culling You might not think this is a big deal, but I assure you it is. No matter what program I’m using — Capture One or Lightroom Classic — I always assign a color label to those images I choose to edit further. And when I need to give my clients a quick top 10 for social media usage, that’s where my star ratings come into play. The beauty of Excire Foto is I can easily assign those colors and star ratings in Excire Foto. Then they’ll be automatically transferred to the program I edit in. This means that using Excire Foto as a culling tool can be really powerful. On the opposite end, if I add a supported color label or star rating in any other program, I can then tell Excire Foto to sync its metadata — meaning those additions or changes come through there, too. Filtering by stars and color labels You can assign stars or color labels using the same colors Lightroom Classic uses — 0-5 for stars, and 6-9 for color labels. You can also hover over a photo in the grid view and assign it there, or by opening the photo in single view and using the toolbar at the top. Once you’ve done that, it’s easy to filter by stars, color labels and even flags. In grid view, just hit Show toolbar at the top. You’ll be presented with a number of different filtering options to choose from. Don’t forget to store and load Once you’re done making changes and adding stars and color labels, be sure to go to Photo > Store metadata in Excire Foto. Then, depending on the program you’re using, you’ll want to load the revised metadata. Here are a few program-specific instructions and limitations: Capture One: Supported fully; go to Image > Load Metadata to update. Lightroom Classic: Supported fully; go to Metadata > Read Metadata to update. Lightroom: Supported partially; will read metadata from Excire Foto that’s added prior to import. Lightroom does not support color labels. Luminar: Not supported; Luminar cannot load or store metadata like stars or color labels in imported photos. Stars, colors and the power of artificial intelligence I’ve had several times where I have a client come back to me six, nine months down the road and ask for a specific photo again. Or a different angle that I hadn’t originally sent them. Likewise, I sometimes like to dig through my archives for the best of the best. And Excire Foto helps me with both of those. After I’m done editing a photo, I always give it a blue color label. And if it’s a photo I’m really happy with, I give it a 5-star rating. This is perfect for finding photos for uploading to social media or my online portfolio down the line, as I don’t have to sort through thousands of photos or remember where I had something stored. As you can see, Excire Foto just simply makes my life as a photographer way easier. It lets me focus more on my craft, and less on the organizational front. For a limited time, you can save an additional 10% on Excire Foto when you use the code ExcireFoto!
How to choose your Adobe MAX sessions - This will be my second year attending the Adobe MAX conference. Once again, it will be held virtually, but there are so many interesting and informative sessions that it will be nice to have access to the recordings as well as watching live. At first, it can appear to be overwhelming with all of the information offered. So, how do you go about choosing your Adobe MAX schedule when there are 10 tracks and more than 350 sessions? Adobe MAX general categories Once you register you’ll be taken to your dashboard, which is where you’ll see your schedule after you’ve chosen the sessions you want to attend. From your dashboard, you’ll see the Open Catalog link. This is where you’ll find the session catalog. They’ve made finding sessions on specific topics very easy. You can choose from general categories and narrow it down from there. Type: Choose from Keynote, Lab and/or Session Product: These range from Acrobat to XD Track: Tracks offered in 3D/AR, creativity, education, graphic design and several others. Technical Level: Choose the level of learning you need or are comfortable with Audience: Courses that are geared toward a certain audience and what their roles may be in jobs Category: Here you’ll find How-To, Inspiration, Mobile, Remote Work and a few other categories Day: Choose which day you’re available to attend sessions and only see those sessions Within each of these categories, you’ll see more choices. If you have specific products, business practices or certain software you want to learn more about you’ll be able to find sessions on those products, too. Photography-related courses I’m excited about a few photography-related courses in particular. Adobe Principal Worldwide Creative Cloud Evangelist, Terry White is always a good bet for great information. This year he’s teaching the Transforming Images Anywhere with Photoshop session. In this session, you’ll learn how to: Create and edit images on your desktop or mobile device Use powerful selection tools, layer masks and blending modes Sync your images to the cloud Share your finished work from your mobile devices Kristina Sherk, Retoucher and Photoshop educator will be leading a session on Retouching made easier with neural filters in Photoshop. She will demonstrate the powerful Adobe Sensei AI technology and how it can save you time in your retouching. Photoshop educator, Dave Cross will be helping out those who are still learning Adobe Photoshop by teaching the Introduction to Photoshop session. He will help you gain a solid understanding of Photoshop basics in a lab-like session that you can follow along. Mat Hayward, Senior Adobe Stock Contributor Evangelist, Adobe will be sharing a case study. This session will explore: How three successful stock artists pivot to incorporate timely events and themes Which stock images sold best — and why Lessons you can apply to your own portfolio as you create images in response to cultural change Where to start at Adobe MAX My suggestion is to start by choosing the Keynote. This will be the first look at the latest and greatest that Adobe has to offer. From there I would check on which day or days you are available to attend, that way you won’t be choosing sessions you can’t watch. Then head to the product section and choose which products you are interested in learning more about. If you’re only interested in a certain aspect and want to choose sessions specific to a particular topic such as photography, social media, graphic design, etc. check out the Track section and sort sessions by which track is relevant to what you want to focus on learning. If you’re a beginner you may choose to sort your options by the Beginner sessions. Maybe you’re Advanced and want to sort out the beginner courses. It really makes it easy to narrow down and choose what sessions will benefit you the most. There might be certain speakers presenting that you just don’t want to miss. Under the speaker list, you can search by name, pull up the speaker bio and also find out all the courses that a particular person is presenting and choose your sessions that way. Organized schedule After you’ve gone through and selected all the sessions you want to take part in, you can click on Your Schedule and easily see all of the sessions you’ve chosen by day and time. Now you can just sit back, relax and wait for the learning to start. Note that Adobe MAX registration requires an Adobe ID. You’ll need to register with your primary Creative Cloud account email, or you can create a new Adobe ID when you register.
Three ways to cope with a distracting photo location - What do you do when you are stuck in a cluttered, ugly or distracting photo location for a lifestyle portrait session? Maybe it’s the only space you can photograph your bride and groom in a running-out-of-time fragment of the wedding day. Or, perhaps you can’t change angles because you’ll lose your perfect light. Maybe it’s an in-home family session, and the home is just, well, “lived in.” Whatever the reason, here are three quick strategies you can use to still capture beautiful photos. Screen out a distracting background with a prismatic filter I love my Fractal Filters, not only for the cool lighting effects I can achieve but because they make a really handy screen. Piles of chairs, agricultural equipment, you name it: With careful positioning, you can block out whatever you want. Use a long lens and as wide an aperture as you can, and move the filter around until you like what you see. You can get the original Fractal Filters here or there is a Nisha variation available here. Shoot tight on your subjects Oldest trick in the book, maybe, but it works! Shoot tight and crop out whatever’s not working. Done! Turn it black and white to help remove distracting elements This works really well when the background is filled with brightly colored clutter. Household stuff, brightly painted walls, construction workers, traffic cones, street signs, parked cars … whatever it is, turning off the color focuses the eye back onto what matters: Your subjects. Bonus tip: If all else fails, Photoshop is your friend If you can’t get it right in camera, remove it in post. Editing out an offending background is a reliable last resort — albeit a time-consuming one. I took the below photos in a front garden, and the light and greenery were beautiful. But there were two huge, brightly colored rubbish bins — and a speedboat — in the background every time I shot into the sun. I had no choice but to clone them out — I couldn’t change the angle because I would have lost the light effect I was trying to achieve. When it comes down to it, your subject and the moment are what really matters. If it’s the only shot you can get, then don’t worry if the background isn’t perfect. The memory is what matters!
