Greg French has a passion for learning and teaching technology. He is currently teaching Computer Repair and Network Technology classes for an ROP in Southern California. You can visit his site at: http://www.computerrepairtrainingplus.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_French

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When most photographers turn pro, they spend more time worrying about photography than business. And that’s a mistake. You have to think business first or you may be locked out of your photography studio.

To get it right – it starts like most things – by understanding your audience. Who do you want to reach? What kind of person is your target? What are their hobbies, habits and expectations? Most importantly, what do they expect from you?

Once you have identified your audience, understand what you want to accomplish. Know your strengths and weaknesses as well as what excites you. Build upon your own desires, not those of others. Show what you want to sell – not what you think you can sell. The secret is in providing products you want to sell to the people who want to buy them. This requires faith and patience. Faith that you will find an audience who appreciates what you do and patience as you mine and refine that audience for the sales you need to survive.

This is where strategy plays an important part in your career. If you haven’t properly identified WHO you want to reach, there’s no need to worry about the HOW.

Step one is deciding who you want to sell to. Step two is deciding what you want to sell. Step three is figuring out what your prospects want and look for a match.

When you figure out what you do best, and who wants that product, you have to develop a message that pushes your prospects to the products you want to create and sell. Messaging is part of the education process. The better you are at messaging, the less you’ll have to worry about your competition.

Study marketing and sales every day. This should be one of the first things you do regardless of your schedule.

Re-evaluate each and every step of your business. Ask yourself why you do what you do and whether or not that’s the best way to work. Decide if there’s anything at all you can do to improve. Be willing to do away with convention. And be absolutely sure to remove any challenge that stands between you and meeting your clients’ needs.

Focus on the client’s needs and NOT your own. If you can’t do this, you will fail. It’s just a matter of time.

Another hard core reality of the photo business is that you need to always be selling. Always. Even if it’s something as simple as including additional order forms or fliers with every order you deliver. Putting your message out there each time you deal with a customer increases the chance your pictures or services will sell to that client again someday.

Track your marketing efforts. Find out where your prospects are coming from. Find out how they found out about you. Make sure your message and branding are properly aligned and constantly re-evaluate who and where your audience is. This is such a critical step that it can be the difference between wild success and abject failure.

Remind your current customers of your unique selling points. Offer them discounts and specials to thank them for being a client.

Spend time talking to photography vendors each week to take the pulse of the industry. Find out from your printer which studios are doing well and ask what they are selling. Check with the local wedding coordinator to see who’s getting the most wedding bookings. Then analyze what that photographer is doing. Spending time every week at this will increase sales.

If you want to make a living as a professional photographer, understanding your potential customers and designing your business around their needs, wants and desires is 10 times more important than being a good photographer and 20 times more important than having the best camera.

Photography: olivetti

Nature has to be among the most popular of subjects for photography enthusiasts. Unlike a model, a tree on a hill doesn’t complain about the cold, a sunset will arrive exactly when you expect it to and you often need to do little more than point and shoot to capture all the beauty you can see. You don’t even have to go looking for it. A photogenic scene can strike you on the way home on the daily commute or during a stroll on a Sunday afternoon. That’s why the keenest photographers carry a camera with them wherever they go. It takes something special to create pictures as exceptional as Ansel Adams’s but a personal gallery of breathtaking nature photographs is something available to any photography enthusiast even as they’re still learning the ropes. The troubles begin when you want to sell them.

Because nature is such a popular topic and one relatively easy to do reasonably well, the supply of images is always huge while the demand is always minimal. Microstock companies, for example, consistently state that the subjects most required by buyers are business images. A search for “nature” on iStockPhoto however, turns up over 870,000 results; a search for “business” produces fewer than 330,000 photos.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no demand at all. Photographs that offer something unique will always find it easier to attract buyers. Even posting an exceptional image on Flickr can attract the attention of photo editors as Steve Jurvetson famously discovered when he uploaded a picture of an eagle chomping on a mouse’s head. The photo was printed in Maxim.

Café Owners Love Art

A more reliable sales channel for nature photographers is the art market—which also happens to be one of the toughest markets to crack. Gallery owners who rely on regular sales to pay the bills will be particularly choosy but there are other ways in. Cafes and restaurants are increasingly willing to display photos on their walls, are frequently undersubscribed and often pass the entire sales price to the photographer without taking a commission. Gallery owners will take half. One owner of a café franchise which was displaying images of underwater photography told us that his business provides wall space “because we love art.” Requests come from the photographers themselves—the café doesn’t seek exhibitors—but they only come occasionally and usually from young photographers. Although not as prestigious as a gallery opening, the exhibitions are usually interesting enough to pick up some local media attention—and sales with no expenses other than the cost of printing and framing.

Art fairs are another good outlet, attended by buyers on the lookout for attractive images to hang on their walls. Places are usually limited and expenses can be high though. You’ll need an exhibition tent to display your photos and a broad enough selection in a range of different prices to suit customers with different budgets. Results vary but it’s not unusual to walk away with four-figure profits and, if the fair is juried and your images good enough, a line on your resume interesting enough to attract the attention of a gallery owner in the future. Many gallery owners consider exhibiting at a juried art fair a sign that the photographer is ready for a more formal exhibition space.

Pick a Natural Niche

One way to generate lots of sales at an art fair is to make sure that your images match the theme of the fair. The Napa Wine and Crafts Fair, for example, is mainly attended by locals, and uses the local wine industry as its theme. According to Craig Smith, a spokesman for the event, “all things wine and wine-related do well.” Artists who exhibit at the juried show make an average of $1,500 to $2,000 in sales, he says.

That niching works well outside exhibition spaces too, whether those spaces are in cafes or at fairs. One of the most satisfying sales outlets for nature photographers is books but these tend to sell best when you’re pitching not just the quality of the photographers but the subjects they portray. John Fielder self-published a calendar showing Colorado landscapes in 1981, a venture that led him to create his own small publishing company. Altogether, he produced 39 books in 28 years, all but six them about his state. He also focused on environmental themes, relying on the publicity he would receive from conservation groups to help him promote the books. With environmentalism now a fashionable topic, it shouldn’t be too hard for a nature photographer to pick a theme that supports a position and wins press coverage.

Other photographers find that focusing on one animal—such as horses—that they know best allows them to specialize in a particular way of shooting, become known within their market, build up the connections that enable them to find subjects and win commissions… and indulge their love of photography with their passion for their subject.

Taking portraits for stable owners might not be quite as romantic as standing in a meadow shooting wild stallions, but in practice, equine photographers may well find themselves doing both. As Rachel Waller, a professional equine photographer, told us:

“I have been knee deep in mud, asleep with hay in my hair, made peace and now embrace the dust, been smack dab in the middle of  wild stallions fighting on the range, and stood in a field with a herd passing me at a thunderous speed (I can still feel the wind in my hair from that one!), up all night waiting on a foal birth to photograph and if I didn’t love horses, I wouldn’t have experienced any of  that or captured some of the most amazing moments in my life.”

For nature photographers, those amazing moments are always the best reason to pull out their cameras. If it’s hard to make a living out of photographer with even popular subjects such as weddings and portraits, it’s a real struggle to turn a love of the wild into work that can pay the mortgage. If you’re looking to supplement your income by doing something you love though, then what you see can bring you a little extra cash.

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While not all web worker are freelancers, a good portion of them are — and a freelance lifestyle is part of the appeal of working from home. The fact is, working as an independent contractor is not all wine and roses. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are some key facts people should consider before leaving more permanent work situations for the freelance world.

I spend a lot of time on this site talking directly or indirectly about why I love freelancing, or what makes it so great, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I want to take a break from my regularly scheduled gushing to point out some very serious pitfalls about working on your own. Many may seem like common sense, but it’s amazing how often it happens that people forget to consider these downsides when choosing to pursue this lifestyle.

Every Day Off Costs You Money

I remember paid vacation. I remember being irate at the fact that I’d only get two weeks out of the year, at best. And yet now, I’d love for someone to actually pay me money to take two weeks and not do any work. It seems like some kind of fantastical dream.

Now, when I want to take time off, I either have to do a lot of extra work before and after to make up for lost revenue, work while I’m away, or just write the time off as a loss. It’s not only a burden on finances, but it weighs on your mind, too, if you’re the conscientious type. As a result, letting go and truly relaxing can be harder when you’re responsible for every dime you take in.

Convincing People and Banks to Trust Your Money is Harder

Try getting a mortgage when you have to tell the bank that your income is wholly derived from contracts you have with various employers that range from temporary to semi-permanent, but all of which could potentially end without much warning. It’s not easy. Some institutions offer special considerations for freelancers, but for the most part, these deals come with strings attached.

Even negotiating with landlords in high-demand markets is a bit of a challenge. When the landlord or property management company holds all the cards, they choose tenants carefully, and getting an employment letter isn’t always possible for freelancers. Basically, be prepared for every one to second-guess your ability to generate income on a steady basis.

Taxation, Expenses and Insurance Are Completely DIY

If you’re not used to keeping track of your own finances and preparing for tax time completely on your own, it can be a huge surprise when the time does come. Most employers automatically deduct taxation from your wages, but with freelance work, you’re often paid the full amount with the expectation that you will pay taxes when they come due. That means it’s very rare to get a return on your taxes. Instead, you’ll usually end up owing a hefty sum.

Preparing for that is a simple matter of putting aside an amount in excess of what you estimate your taxes owed will be, but that’s easier said then done. Money on hand seems like it’s there to be spent, especially when unexpected costs arise. If you’re not careful, tax time could find you seriously lacking.

Add to that the fact that health insurance is pretty much up to you, and you can see how what seems like a sizable income can quickly become a subsistence wage. Factor in insurance, retirement savings, and tax when you’re calculating your overhead for freelancing before you embark upon a career as an independent.

Weigh the Good and the Bad

If you’re dissatisfied with your day job and thinking about leaving the rat race for freelancing, you may not want to hear about the downsides to making such a choice, but knowing just what you’re in for is key to making a sound decision you can live with. And if you have very good reasons for wanting to go it alone, chances are the cons won’t outweigh the pros anyway. They certainly don’t for me.

Have you considered the cons (as well as the pros) of taking on a freelance career?

Image by toolfan.hess from flickr

Many of the images that you take particularly cityscapes, like most portraits, can do with some spot fixing. I’ve been traveling through Europe a lot lately and because it’s considered almost de rigeur to smoke there, many of the photos that I have are littered with cigarette butts and assorted garbage.

And although you may not realize it, even small cigarette butts will detract from an image. A few minutes spent cleaning up an image can result in it having a way more polished look. Here are my top techniques for cleaning up litter and unsightly blemishes.

A word of advice before you begin: make a duplicate of the original image and work on this. Then you have the original image to look back at and see just how much improved the image is after the spot fixing is complete.

Spot Healing Brush

For simple spot fixes the Spot Healing Brush cannot be beaten. It doesn’t require you to make a selection of a source area to use for the fix so you can get to work fixing the image straight away.

Ensure your brush is large enough to cover the problem area but not any bigger – the idea is to spot fix just the problem area and to leave as much of the original image intact around it. Zoom in close to where the flaws are and paint over each flaw one at a time.

The Hand tool is useful here as you can press and hold the spacebar as you drag on the image to reposition and when you let go the mouse and spacebar the Spot Healing Brush will be still selected.

It can take five minutes or more to spot a really bad image, but the overall result will be significantly improved.

When you’re using the Spot Healing Brush tool, make sure that you have the Proximity Match option enabled, not Create Textures. Proximity match gives a better result with most spotting tasks.

Patch Tool

For larger jobs where, for example, the Spot Healing Brush won’t fix the problem because it’s too close to something with different texture or it’s such a large problem that it really needs a bigger solution, use the Patch Tool or the Clone Tool.

With the Patch Tool you make a selection around the area that is the problem, making sure that the Source option on the toolbar is selected. Now drag the marquee away to find an area to use as the fix. Sometimes you may need to apply this fix a couple of times, and you may need to clone around the edges of the area later on to improve the overall appearance and to add some texture back into the image.

Clone tool

To use the Clone Tool, select the tool, locate an area of the image that you want to clone from – this is your source image area – and Alt + Click (Option + Click on the Mac) on that area to sample it. Then start painting on the image – typically this works best if you click repeatedly rather than painting as painting tends to introduce repeated patterns into the fix which scream “Look! I tried to fix this in Photoshop!”

In Photoshop CS4, the Clone Tool has a preview so you can line things up neatly making it a very handy tool for fixing elements where there are lines or other things that need to be matched up in the fix.

You can also use the Clone Tool to add some texture back into areas that the patch tool has removed texture from even after the fix has been applied.

Healing Brush

The Healing Brush tool works similarly to the clone tool, but it has a healing ability built in so it’s a handy tool to use too.

With the Healing Brush tool you need to again Alt + Click (Option + Click on the Mac), to sample the area of the image to use as the fix, and then click over the area that needs fixing.

The healing aspect of this brush blends the solution over the problem so you could, for example, have quite a dark solution area in your brush, but when you paint over a lighter area to fix it, the fix will lighten as it is blended in.

In the example above we couldn’t use the Healing Brush to fix the water running out from under these plants as it would tend to want to blend in and darken the area being fixed when we need it to be lighter. In the case of the water, the clone tool is the best option because it lets us paint over the water area with lighter pixels without trying to blend in the result which would simply darken it again.

Take a good look

Once you’ve fixed the obvious problems take a good look at your image at 100% and see if there are things that are distracting to your eye that you may want to fix. These will generally be things that are lighter, brighter or in sharp focus as they are things our eyes are attracted to. If these are ugly and not really central to the image itself, then get rid of it. I removed some of the tree labels at this point.

To finish the image I added some color to the sky, adding some saturation and a curves adjustment and then cropped in a little closer.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Spot Fixing Images in Photoshop

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