Delaware President
George Singleton gsingleton@SEPPAonline.com
1st Vice-President Kevin Jiminez kjiminez@SEPPAonline.com
*** Harry Markel
2nd Vice-President Secretary-Treasurer
District of Columbia
*** Carly Glazierl Dorrie Pilot
Mary Fisk-Taylor mfisktaylor@SEPPAonline.com Janet Boschker jboschker@SEPPAonline.com
Salon Exhibition Chair jamie@jhayes.com
Florida
*** Cindy Strickland Jackson Koontz
Jamie Hayes
S out he r n E x p o su re
S outher n Exposure magazine is an online publication of SEPPA and is published monthly. Editor Vic tor ia Kelly vkelly@SEPPAonline.com 919.818.0726 Ad S ales & Business M anager R ick Gibbons ExecutiveDirec tor@SEPPAonline.com 336.687.1943
Georgia
Maryland
Mississippi/Alabama
*** Danny Spears Wendy Lenox
*** Lidia Miller
*** Gil Brady Sue Elam
North Carolina
*** Rose Mary Cheek Loretta Byrd
South Carolina
*** David Junker Patty Hallman
Tennessee
*** Dorma Tabisz Barbara White
Ar ticle & Ad Submissions 5th of ever y month OnLine Publication 20th to 29th of each month SEPPA 3710 Nor th M ain Street H igh Point, NC 27265 336.687.1943 Acce pt a nce o f a d ver t isin g d o es n o t ca r r y wit h it e ndo rsem ent by t h e p u b lish er. Opinions expressed by S o u t h er n Exp o su re or a ny of its a u t h o rs d o es n o t n ecessa r ily re fle c t t h e p o sit io n s o f t h e S ou the a ster n Pro fe ssio n a l Ph o to gra p h ers Asso ciati o n . Asso ciat io n fin a n cia l in fo r m at io n ava i la b le u p o n req u est.
Virginia
West Virginia
*** Stephanie Adams Robert Holman
*** Brent Kepner Will Price
*** state president SEPPA representative
Delaware
Mississippi/Alabama
District of Columbia
North Carolina
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Florida
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www.fpponline.org
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Georgia
Tennessee
www.gppa.com
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www.delawarephotographers.com
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SEPPA is a regional affiliate of the Professional Photographers of America and hosts an annual District Image Judging. To learn more about PPA, click HERE.
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June 12-15, 2016 Daytona Beach Visit www.fpponline.org for more information and to register.
2016 Lamarr School 4-Day Classes Registration Opens March 1, 2016 www.lamarrschool.com Contact John Herrel at (803) 420-3660 for more Info
Class Dates: September 18-22, 2016 Location: Columbia, SC
Register March 1st - April 30th - $499 Register May 1-August 31st - $599 Installment Payment Plans Available
Tim Kelly
Joe Glyda
Lori Unruh Jeff Poole
Creating and Marketing Today’s Fine Art Portraiture
Commercial Photography
The Complete Wedding Workshop
The Lamarr Williamson School of Photography is a PPA Affiliate School.
Building a Better Portfolio: How to Make the Web Work Better for You Holly Harris, PhotoBiz Content Strategist If you want to be found online, having a portfolio site isn’t just a good idea – it’s a necessity. To land new clients, you need a space to show off your work. And the first thing a prospective client will do is check out your website. But too many photographers make the same mistake. They upload a few gorgeous images, put their phone number on the bottom and expect to get business overnight. Later, they’re shocked that their site isn’t landing any new customers. Why? Well, unless you’re already a big name photographer (or have a huge offline referral network), that’s not going to work. Your images may be brilliant, but can new customers find your website in search engines? Do you have enough content to keep visitors interested? Is your site easy to navigate? Do your images match the kind of business you want to attract? These are the questions that decide if your site fails or flourishes. It’s not hard to build a great looking portfolio website that actually helps you land more customers. We do it every day! Here’s what we tell our clients to do to create a portfolio website that works.
Craft solid content for your site What goes on a great portfolio website? Stellar images, of course. But what most people forget about are the words that should also go onto their site. And those words are the most important part of a high-performing website. Here’s why. When people need anything, 9 times out of 10 they turn to search engines first. A bride-to-be searching for wedding photographers will inevitably turn to Google or Bing. Now, search engines don’t magically know what your business is about. You have to tell Google that you’re an award-winning photographer. That you live in Miami. That your name is Steve Harper and you specialize in outdoor weddings. These words need to be on your website before Google will serve up your site to someone specifically looking for these keywords. So let’s think about that portfolio site with the good images and phone number. Why did it fall flat? You guessed it. Google is blind. All those nice images mean zip to their ranking algorithm. Not only that, but your customers want to know more about you! How long have you been shooting? What are you like as a person? Will they enjoy working with you? What is your pricing structure? Let’s build some better pages that not only boost your search ranking, but also help customers decide to hire you as a photographer.
Build A Better Home Page Make sure that even if a visitor sees only your home page they know everything they need to know. Choose a handful of images that reflect your main type of work (or the work you’d like to attract). Beef up your home page with a few short sentences about you, your work, and your business. End with a strong Call to Action to contact you – or better yet, embed a form right on the page. Never leave a customer with a dead end.
Write Your About Me Page Your “About Me” page is one of the most important pages on your site. Customers don’t want to book some faceless photographer – they want to get to know you! Start by talking about your business and what differentiates you as a photographer. Share what drives you, what your passions are. Include a picture of yourself, and don’t be afraid to show off your personality! It doesn’t have to be all business. Talk about your family, your dog, or even your favorite pair of jeans you always wear when shooting. These things may seem trivial, but a little personality can make someone feel like they know you before your first face-to-face conversation.
Boost Your Contact Page Too often, contact pages are flimsy and uninviting. Encourage visitors to get in touch by including a variety of ways to reach you. Start with your phone number and email and embed a contact form on the page. If you have a physical location (like a studio), post your address and hours, too. A map is also helpful for customers attempting to navigate to your location. Last but not least, include an image of yourself, your studio, or your signature style of work! Never be boring, even on your contact page.
Let’s Talk About Blogging Blogging adds tons of relevant searchable text to your site. It also keeps readers engaged and provides heaps of shareable material to use on social media. Give sneak peeks into your favorite sessions. Promote sales. Share your experience and insight with the world. You’ll add credibility to your brand and bring in more visitors through search engines than your website can do alone.
Update as often as you feel comfortable with. Whether it’s once a week or once a month, pick a regular schedule and stick to it.
Focus On Your “Bread And Butter” Most photographers do more than one kind of photography. But what is your bread and butter? What pays the bills? What do you want to do most? Websites that give equal weight to several kinds of photography often struggle because it confuses visitors and search engines. Think about it. If someone is searching for a newborn photographer – but sees boudoir images on your site – they'll probably keep looking. At least for someone who appears to specialize in newborn photography. So what can you do? Separate your industries. At a minimum, group different kinds of photography into their own pages and galleries. Make sure your home page clearly expresses your signature style of photography. That will help to draw in your preferred audience and keep your site tidy. Advanced website builders can also consider making subsites for their many areas of photography. What works for landing newborn sessions won’t necessarily work for boudoir! With subsites, you have more freedom to customize the look and content according to your target audience.
Choose Your Images Wisely Now that your content is up and in the right place, let’s talk about images. It can be difficult to pare your body of (frankly genius) work into just a few photos to show on your website. But you gotta. Too many images can cause long load times and overwhelm visitors. Plus, we find that visitors usually only stick around to see
about the first 10 or so images in a gallery. There’s no need to load up a page with hundreds of photos that only a few people will see. Choose 3-8 of your best “bread and butter” images for your home page. And for galleries, select around 20 images. That’s enough to show off your skills and keep loading times trim. Remember to keep your types of photography separate! (Newborns and boudoir don’t mix.) In addition to making sure galleries are the right size, it’s important to keep images fresh and up to date. Update your galleries a few times a year to keep your work current. This is also good for search engines – Google loves it when you update your site! (This is partly why regular blogging is so effective for SEO.)
But beyond getting Google points, you can also share updates on social media to drive even more visitors to your website.
So if you can’t decide between your reams of images, don’t despair! Keep in mind that you can (and should!) change up your galleries often to keep content fresh and exciting. ——— Feeling more confident about building a site that grows your business? When you write compelling content, organize your site, and show your bread and butter work, you make it easy for visitors to find you online and close the sale. If you need any help or advice on website design, SEO, or marketing, we invite you to give us a call at 866-463-7620. Or find us online at PhotoBiz.com. We love helping you grow your business!
PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION: WHY BOTHER? Christine Walsh-Newton, M. Photog., Cr., CPP, EA-ASP Wow, can you believe it? Here we are, on the cusp of summertime; outdoor weddings, baseball leagues and International Photographic Competition. I wish you all heaps and tons of luck with your cases and hope you are all awarded appropriately for your efforts with merits and loans. I chat a lot about competition. A lot. And in all of that chatting, I meet quite a few people that want to argue about it. “Why bother?” I am asked.
I’m constantly challenged with examples of how competition sucked for individuals, how they were screwed by a judge, or by a rule, or by a score averaging, or by a low score. Or how they got cheated out of a trophy. I get it. It didn’t work for you. That time. That judging. That image. That doesn’t mean that competition isn’t good for anyone else. It’s not my goal to drag you kicking and screaming into the judging room. If you don’t want to play, that’s all fine and good, but for the love of all that is holy, please step aside and let that curious young photographer behind you ask her question about how she can improve her photography through competition. Sometimes I meet folks with a pretty big chip on their shoulders about competition. That just makes me sad. Generally that attitude is tied in with winning trophies and awards and being part of a “clique.” Or with not winning trophies and awards or being part of a a “clique.” And that makes me really sad. Awards are fine. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have them. Those who excel should certainly be rewarded for their efforts. But, I’m going to be honest with you – when I hear someone promote photographic competition because “you might win an award/trophy!” - I cringe inside. Yes, you might. More than likely, you might not. Especially, if it’s your first time. And please don’t make that your last time. A lot of the angst I hear comes from folks that entered one competition and walked away empty-handed. There’s an expectation that all effort will be met with reward. And generally, it will. But, probably not in the way you’d like. Most folks concentrate on the tangible rewards. The trophies, medallions, certificates. Cool and heady stuff, for sure, but when these rewards are lacking, we often overlook the intangibles.
Lessons.
THIS is why you bother.
We get lessons.
Peace, love & merit scores,
When I think back to my first competition in 2009, I think about those images that tanked. The ones that make me cringe...
Christine
The one I thought for sure was my strongest. The one that I cried over because it only scored a 72. It was the one that taught me not to put a client with black hair on a black background without some form of separation light. Oh. Yeah. And there was the one of the young Italian girl that made me swoon it was so romantic. I was shocked at the 74. That was the one that taught me that using Portraiture on clients with red undertones in their hair will cause the hair to be softened and that the retouching should be masked off of hair. Oh, and the eyes, the eyelashes, the lips, the nose edge and the teeth, too. And while you’re at it, reduce that opacity. ::cringe:: You know what I mean? THIS is why you bother. We get lessons. And knowledge. And power. To raise the bar. To be better. To improve as photographers. To excel as artists. To be inspired by those that have already succeeded and to inspire those who perceive our efforts as measures of success, compared to their own.
Business.”
Christine is a portrait photographer and owner of Gallery C in Dover, Ohio. She is a co-author of “The Daily Book of Photography” and authors “Wootness: The Big Girl and Guy’s Guide to Starting a Photography
Visit her blog at www.wootness.net
Find us on Facebook: SEPPAonline
TimeSave Hack #1: Crafting Often-Used Emails Victoria Kelly
In the business class that I teach for emerging professional photographers I always instruct them to schedule everything. One of the questions I get most, though, is how to calculate what their time is worth. Saving a few minutes for website instructions may not seem like much, but when you are starting out or are a seasoned veteran, every minute counts! This month I’m going to share with you my TimeSave Hack #1. -----------------------I photograph sports at the private school where I am on staff teaching photography and yearbook to 8th graders. Over the course of the school year I will photograph ten different teams with a plethora of kids on each. My profit margin on these sports pics is very low. But it keeps my name in front of the parents so the solution I have come up with is to put all the sports on a website and the parents can order if they choose. There’s no time chasing down a parent who forgot the checkbook, or the child with a missing order form. The website instructions are sent out in the parent newsletter at the beginning of the school year--you would think that would be that, right? Not so. I usually get fifteen or twenty requests for login instructions for the sports website. I don’t mind tell-
ing you that spending time crafting the email, then sending it to the parent doesn’t really work into my productivity. So I devised a solution that virtually cuts the time in half and I end up being in my happy place. I set up a Word document with generic website instructions that would work for any type of website: sports, weddings and executive headshots to name a few and it sits on my desktop. When I get a request for the website login, I copy the Word doc, paste it into the email and I’m done. Now…in all honesty, this little time saver doesn’t sound like much…but a few minutes saved wherever you can save them adds up!
Log into my website at www.victoriakellyphotography.com and choose “Blog” from the left sidebar. Once you’re on the blog, choose “Client Viewing” from the top menu choices. Once the dialog box appears, you’ll key in your email and the access code that is shown below, noting that all letters are in lowercase. If your website has multiple galleries, you’ll move between them by choosing the “Gallery” tab on the right side of the page and selecting the images you wish to view. Keep in mind that these are RAW images---nothing has been color-balanced or pushed through our post-session processing. Let me know if you have questions. I am just an email or text away! ~Victoria Access code: horgan2016