Connect With Online Digital Photo Communities

Online communities are a way to build relationships and trust. As photographers, we have an amazing tool for this arena at their disposal, images. Images are very powerful and can generate large amounts of interest. If your have a portfolio of images that share a theme or unique value, from creative talent to amazing viewpoints, share them online to start a following of your own branding.

We put together a list of image social sites where you can add images, socialize online, communicate within groups or just show off your images. To ensure that you generate interest toward your brand or style of images, modify your profile to include information about you and your website. Be sure and add your interaction by providing insight through comments on image postings. Connections are made, with a little interaction, you will see how establishing online relations will build a better following.

JPG shares with the visitor’s images and stories. Themed selections separate images into sorted groupings. JPG has a cool feature for working multiple shots and combining text that adds a story to your images.

Flickr is the king of image communities. Large amounts of digital images flow onto Flickr everyday. Flickr allows you to start your own themed group where you can specify what is allowed. Imagine if you had a group with only red squares. Make it unique and they will follow.

Photobucket – one of the most popular image hosting services around, favorite amongst MySpace users. Group albums, to let you collaborate together with friends and families in a single group album of photos and videos. Built-in searching to find the latest and best photos, images and videos to suit your mood, or entertain your friends in Photobucket’s huge online library.

SlideShare – SlideShare is a content sharing site where you can host and display presentations. SlideShare is the best way to share and find presentations. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar. Embed slideshows into your own blog or website and join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Photography – 10 Things I’m Reading About

I surf online a lot. So I thought I’d share with you some of the things I look through – things you might find interesting too.

10. Film … or digital? I posted on this just a few days ago, and found this another interesting read on the same topic. Read Brian Auer’s Is Film Dead? I especially found his poll interesting – 57 percent (at the time I looked at the results) found using film to be a steady or growing trend. Wow.

9. As a photographer you have to put your photos online, right? Why not on a social site.  (I’ll be there soon.) In the mean time, check out this photo of Dubai in the fog.

8. Do you worry about theft of your photos if you put them online? Start with this great post on How Every Flickr Photo Ended Up on Sale This Weekend.

7. If you haven’t had enough on  the theft of photos topic, follow this continuing discussion by Photrade.

6. For an endless list of everything photography, head over to Alltop. Alltop helps you learn all you can about individual topics – like photography.

5. What do you do with all of your digital images while you’re on the road?  Read Peter Carey’s advice for Digital Photo Storage On the Road. I’ll add one other tip. When we traveled for weddings, we would carry plenty of memory cards with us. But if we were going to travel for awhile, we would also burn a set of CD/DVD’s and mail them back to our office. You can also upload them to your backup system, via your laptop.

4. I know everyone has an opinion on Flickr, but you  can’t deny you can find some incredible images there. Take a look at these photos of the Tour de France.

3. So you wanna be a studio photographer? Why not make your own backgrounds. We’ve made a few ourselves in the past, and still use them today for certain shoots. Take a look at How To Make a Background for Studio Photography.

2. If you haven’t seen the Red One, take a look. I’ve been talking about it with a few local photographers lately. (Check out their service policy at the bottom – I love it!)

1. A photo site used to help bring awareness to important issues around the world – how cool. Photography can be so powerful. Take a look at The Homeless Photographer. Then plan on some time browsing through the other images.

Providing new ideas to your photography business and information on how to start a photography business. Stay up to date with our photography newsletter which provides tips on your photography studio.

Photographer Website – 10 Reasons Why 10 Pages Aren’t Enough

Did you know the standard small business website has 10 pages of content, and will never grow beyond those 10 pages? Yet the number one way to reach your prospects and potential buyers is through content.

A standard 10 page website is a great place to start, but don’t stop there. It’s time to build, and create a site that attracts clients to you. Consider these 10 reasons to continue building on to your website.

1. Depth. People like investigating, and being able to discover more resources. Multiple pages allow people to drill in deeper to your site. Cover a topic in 500 to 1000 words per page; then offer your reader the chance to move to another page for even more information.

2. Resource. What makes your site valuable? People bookmark sites that have a variety of benefits and solutions. Think of how you can generate the desire to have people come back into your site again and again. Then add those pages to your site. Keep people coming back because you offer more than your competition.

3. Power. A powerful site lets people take action. What can you do to direct people to your pages that allow people to take action? Always start with your end in mind. Do you want them to sign up for a free report? Or do you want them to fill out a form for more information?

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Photography website update

When was the last time your photography website was update. Is is time to look into a new style but you were afraid of the cost. Do you have a photography website designed in flash and want to update it? Not a problem. We found a perfect solution to your needs. Photography website templates are easy to modify and look professional and cutting edge. Check out the different styles available:

Photography Websites
Wedding Photography Website
Flash Websites

Or, if you have a blog and want to update it”

WordPress Blog Templates

Keep your look fresh to bring your clients back again and again.

Add a Slide Show to you Photography Blog

If you want to add a slide show to your site or blog then Slide might work for you. Check out the site and see how easy you can add a show to your latest post – http://www.slide.com/

Providing new ideas to your photography business and information on how to start a photography business. Stay up to date with our photography newsletter which provides tips on your photography studio.

Modernize your photography studio’s website without the expenditure

Time passes quickly and what was new is now aged and dated. How is your photography business website? Keeping your site updated is an important process in running your photography studio. While it is nice to have a photography site up showing off your work, if not updated, this site becomes stale. Website face-lifts are a great way to provide an easy update. If you want a rapid way to modernize without a huge expenditure, photography business template websites and photography studio template websites are quick to modify and very inexpensive.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Update your wedding photography website with templates

Now is the perfect time to update your current wedding photography look and website. With the ease of pre-made website templates any photography business can change the studios look quickly. Imagine any visitor on your wedding photography site and the next day there is a completely updated website. It can be that easy. The cost of some photography website templates can be under $25 and unique website designs will increase the cost to $500 to $1000. If you have an Internet presence then it should be your goal to show your clients how professional your wedding photography studio is. Take a look at just a few of the offering that we found at thetemplatecafe.com

Photography Website – Identifying Color Choices

Identifying Color Choices

Consider adding color to your photography business website. When you first design your website, you usually choose a theme and build from there. The colors of your logo are a great place to start. But what if your just beginning, and you don’t really have official colors chosen? Great! Then you can begin to play around with different themes, and continue to work until a design and color combination looks pleasing to you.

Colors have so many different meanings. The best way to design is to choose colors that you are comfortable with. And choose colors that will appease your customers, and motivate them into buying from you.

Did you know men favor blue, and women favor red? A mix between the two – the color purple – is an excellent choice to solidify both. Green is a very strong, old world color. That’s why you see banks and financial companies use green. Primary colors are stronger than pastels. And children relate to purple more than any other color. Guess that’s why Barney is purple!

Consider your target audience when selecting your website colors. Who is your primary viewer? What do you want them to do on your website? Then build your color scheme around those desires. And add color throughout your site when you want your viewers to take action. Adding red to your site can be a great motivator.

Red

1. Energy * Strength * Danger * Determination * Power * Passion * Desire * Love
2. Red is a very passionate and extreme color. It should be used to highlight key points. It should be used to stimulate people into an action – such as a Buy Now button.

Orange

1. Enthusiasm * Happiness * Creativity * Attraction * Success * Encouragement
2. Orange combines the energy of red, and the happiness of yellow. Orange has high visibility and can be used to attract attention to certain parts of your site.

Yellow

1. Energy * Joy * Happiness * Intellect * Cheerfulness * Attention
2. Yellow attracts attention. It has a very warming effect. It is a lighthearted color, and can be used effectively for highlighting important points.

Green

1. Growth * Harmony * Freshness * Fertility * Safety * Nature * Stability * Endurance
2. Green is a color of safety and of stability. Green is a good color for money related sites. It is a good color for showing movement and directing people through a site, as green means go.

Blue

1. Depth * Stability * Intelligence * Confidence * Faith * Truth * Loyalty * Trust
2. Blue is a masculine color, used to show precision and intellect. It is a calming color.

Purple

1. Royalty * Power * Nobility * Luxury * Ambition * Wisdom * Dignity * Mystery
2. Purple is feminine, and is a preferred color of children.

White

1. Light * Goodness * Purity * Innocence * Perfection * Safety * Cleanliness
2. White is associated with coolness and cleanliness, and can add a sense of simplicity to high tech subjects.

Black

1. Formality * Power * Elegance * Death * Evil * Mystery * Elegance * Prestige
2. Black can give the perspective of strength and depth. Black is a difficult background color choice, but is very effective when displaying photographs.

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

How A Sitemap Can Boost Your Photography Webites’ Value

A basic photography website with just a few pages may be easy to get into the search engines. But what happens when you have a lot of pages, with a lot of content, and links buried deep within the pages? Can the search engines still adequately find your information?

Not always. Depending on a variety of things, including coding structure, sometimes a search engine misses portions of your pages, thus eliminating its ultimate effectiveness. So how do you make your pages search engine friendly? With a sitemap. A sitemap, if designed correctly, will be a valuable resource to both your visitors, and to the search engines.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a tool that provides both your visitors and the search engines with the overall organization of your website. It reflects the way a visitor would intuitively work through your website, and provides a logical flow through the pages. A good site map will:

* Show an easy to follow overview of your site

* Provide text links to every page of your site

* Provide a clear pathway for the search engines to follow

* Quickly provide a pathway for visitors to follow to get to your content

* Provide overviews of your information

Why do you need one?

Think of your sitemap as you would a table of contents in a book. It provides the headings and subheadings of the main points of your site, and provides an easy way to navigate through the information. For a search engine, it provides a quick way to follow the content, and make the determination of new items. For a visitor, it provides them with a quick resource to get back on track in case they aren’t sure of their next move.

You will typically find a sitemap linked to the photography websites’ home page. This allows easy access to the search engines, and puts the information at the beginning of your site for ease of your visitors. If your site is small, you may wish to put every page on your sitemap. Larger sites should not. Let’s say you sell pens. In one model, you sell 12 colors of the same pen, and every color has its own unique page for ordering purposes. You would want to site map the main page that showcases the pen, but leave off the 12 additional pages for each color. Be careful of using your sitemap as a link farm; you don’t want the search engines to see a never-ending list and assume you are a link farm.

And when you make changes to your site, don’t forget your sitemap. It’s an important piece to your structure. Keeping it up to date will ensure the ultimate success of your photography website.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Got Photography Website Blues?

Your website is an important piece of your business should have a very professional appearance. Many photographers are tech savvy with their ability to produce well-designed, well-navigated photography studio websites.

If you don’t have the capability or time for doing a website design for your own studio, looking at website templates may be an option for you. Website templates are ready-made professionally designed websites for the Internet that provide a high-quality web presence and easy to modify with your content. Templates are available in standard HTML language of design, as well as popular flash format to display your web content and photography portfolio. Templates will have the some limitations of the expansion, but for the cost, offer a great solution to many studios. These templates are fully customizable, and available for immediate download.

Designs usually have layered Photoshop files for easy customization, as well as HTML layouts, so that you can open them in your favorite Web program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You don’t have to wait for your web designer to start from scratch on your design.

As studio owners, we have many responsibilities to worry about and our specialty should be our photography. Here’s a resource that you can check out the latest in photography website designs and see the catalogue of professionally designed templates.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.