Ten Best Photographer Tips
Top Ten Best Photographer Tips to Finish 2013
Because I use Adobe products this top ten list will involve some discussion of their products. If you use other editing software you'll know what to do based on past work. Also since this is a large body of work, start with the listed items you feel you are most behind on and get done what you can in priority order.
1: Review Downloaded Photos
When you download to Adobe Bridge or Lightroom you make decisions to keep, star or delete photos. If you have any albums you haven't finished you'll want to finish assigning them to albums with names you can easily locate. Now is the time to dedicate to organizing, using the star system, naming and saving in respective drives either internal or external and deleting the ones you will never share or print.
2: Review Albums for Format Conversion
Over the past year you have shot and downloaded photos and converted them from JPG or RAW to DNG or PSD or JPG, or you left them in either format. If you have a system for formatting image files to a particular format, you may want to double check to see if you have any abandoned files that need further work.This can shorten the time needed in the future and get it behind you.
3: External Drive Needs
If you do a lot of shoots, like most of us, you'll want to see if your external drives are reaching their full state. How full is too full? I don't go past 80% and that includes partitions. And unlike many I don't use large hard disk drives, even though I do backup my photos, I fear losing large quantities of them on the large Terabyte hard drives. Let's assume you have a system for backing up, and you get really busy. Suddenly a few days or a few weeks later you realize you haven't backed up your image files and your drive fails. It's a guaranteed thing, that 99% of all drives will fail eventually but drives also work harder when they have a full load to access. Thus my 80% rule.They are inexpensive to add and easy to format. This might also be a good time, if you have image files that you sell to think about RAID 1 storage.
4: Christmas is Coming
Yah I know it's far too early to begin thinking about this but when I entered and saw that they already had a tree up with lights in mid September, it got me to thinking. If you do prints, note cards, calendars or t-shirts, mugs and mouse pads, this might be a good time to begin your Holiday List for family, friends and clients. Waiting till the last minute usually means a not-so-well-thought-out store gift. At the very least take a look at starting your list now so you'll be able get the work done without the rush when we should be enjoying the Season, not fretting over a rushed schedule.
5: Total Gear Cleanup
I recently wrote a short post on cleaning your gear but to sum it up you are looking at taking out all of your gear, camera bodies, lenses, filters, Speedlites, tripods etc, and doing a total clean, from the bottom up, including the sensors and something I forgot in my post, your camera bags.
6: Your Lightroom or Office
The last time I looked around my office, I thought to myself, I simply have to get this place re-organized. And to be completely honest just writing this article is helping to motivate myself. I found several hard drives, CF cards without the color circles I like to put on them when they are full, 2 camera back packs, an Android tablet which needs to be tossed, and unmatted/unframed prints I need to follow up on. Unless you are really good at staying organized you no doubt need to spend an hour or more putting gear away and finishing up details.
7: Paperwork and Supplies
There comes a day when ordering when you run out simply isn't going to cut it anymore. I keep a full stock of printing paper types, extra ink, spare Cf cards and cleaning swipes, along with keeping a constant count on my business cards on hand in case of an invite to a artist's show or calls from clients who may want me to mail them a few cards for friends or business associates they can hand out. Model releases should always be ready to grab and take along on a shoot. Keep up on your Bio, for uploading to websites or for mailings if you do such mailings.
8: Social Goals and Promotion
This is a subject I find difficult to advise on as we all have different approaches and feelings about how much time we should be spending and how much effort we need to dedicate to this area. I spend precious little time on FB and Twitter or G+. I spend much more time shooting and writing for this blog, 'Shooting Outside', than I do any reaching for social recognition. Time will be the judge if I have chosen correctly but there's plenty of coaching if you want better advice than I can offer. One I like, and perhaps because he is less pushy about spending money in doing so is The Abundant Artist's owner Cory Huff. But I do believe that by gaining a following on whatever sites you select, you can over time tap into their connections if you stay in touch through some means of fairly constant contact. For me it is my blog, as 77% of all internet users read blogs. For you it may be by uploading photos, participating in a photography blog, communication with artists locally or events to display your work. The best advice I could give is persistence, stay the course.
9: Research Who Your Buyers Are
I am making the assumption that most all of us are at least partially interested in selling the photography we shoot, so if you are not one, then let number 9 slide off your list. Buyers of your art are also buyers of others art too, and it is up to you to find out how you can discover if you can produce art that causes your work to stand out in a buyer's mind or memory. I will admit this is by far the most difficult goal I have found to achieve, but just the motion of trying to find out will gain insight into how to better reach your goals of selling your work. Initially you might want to set a goal with a certain buyer in mind; do you want to shoot hi-school portraits, weddings, sports, corporate profiles, musical events, or do you want to aim at editorial photography? Are you aiming to sell to magazines, online websites or art in your local area? This will begin the process of identifying your strongest buyers. At least start this before the year ends and you'll be a step closer to finding how to best approach your buyers by next years end.
10: Locate Reading Sources
Unless you know everything you personally need to know about your photography skills and methods, it is important to seek out educational information. It's not that the ability to produce a good even a great photo changes much. But reviewing forgotten or unused skills, or techniques through another eye can make for great inspiration. I have a few suggestions, and if you know of one or two that inspire or inform you that you'd like to share, leave them in the Comments section below. Here are 4 of sites I frequently visit, I have many others but you'll discover them as you search them.
- Tim Grey Info and education
- Weebly Website you create, ultra simple, free to $8/mo
- Photo Forums, sharing, classifieds, galleries, articles
- The Digital Picture News and reviews
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