“The Fairest of Them All” Enchanting Photo Frame Place Card Holder “The Fairest of Them All” Enchanting Photo Frame Place Card Holder – With her elegant beauty and gracious heart, Snow White was the first to show us that true love lasts forever. Thank your guests from the bottom of your heart with our black [...]
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“The Difference a Kiss Can Make” Frosted-Glass Photo Coasters “The Difference a Kiss Can Make” Frosted-Glass Photo Coasters – True love turned Tiana into a princess, and all it took was a single, heartfelt kiss. Your own fairy tale begins with a single kiss on a very special day just for you and your prince. [...]
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Hey photo friends,
Catherine Hall is the host of TWiT Photo — an online photography show — and she recently emailed regarding TwiT Photo’s quest for the hottest emerging photographer.
Per the contest website:
You will have the rare opportunity to get your work in front of a prestigious judging panel made up of five past TWiT Photo guests, including Art Wolfe, Colby Brown, Tamara Lackey, Frank Doorhof and Zack Arias. Simply submit a portfolio of images based on a coherent theme to your favorite social media platform (choose from Google+, Facebook, 500px or Flickr).
Reward
The contest winner will be our guest on a Winter 2011/2012 episode of TWiT Photo and will be featured on the TWiT blog and Catherine Hall Studios blog. Two honorable mentions, including a selection of their work, will be featured in an article on Catherine Hall Studios blog, promoted through Catherine Hall Studios’ Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts, and mentioned on TWiT Photo.
Timeline
Deadline for submission: Nov. 22, 2011, at 11.59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (GMT – 7.00) (no exceptions)
Winner announcement: Dec. 6, 2011, on TWiT Photo and Catherine Hall Studios blog.
Submission Guideline
Entries must be from emerging photographers with 5 years or less professional experience who earn less than 51% percent of their total income from their photography career. To enter, submit a portfolio of 15-20 images based on a cohesive body of work that is a strong representation of your visual style.
More information about this can be found on Catherine Hall’s blog post – http://www.catherinehall.net/blog/2011/10/25/twit-photo-guest-quest/
Share with your friends! And submit yourself!
Sincerely,
Lawrence Chan
P.S. Catherine Hall is sweeter than honey, so don’t use stage fright as an excuse not to submit.
P.P.S. Happy Halloween! Here’s a photo from a cafe on Degraves Street, Melbourne … cafe society!
One of my favorite television shows is Iron Chef with Alton Brown. It’s a food competition between Iron Chefs (resident chefs) and challenger chefs over a themed secret ingredient, which is revealed in the beginning.
Judges determine the winner by scoring entrees on taste, plating (design and looks of presentation) and originality. Looks (plating) is worth 25%.
We live in a visual world. Before food even hits our palette, we taste it with our eyes. This is why visual real estate is so important.
Facebook Page Photo Banner
Facebook’s Pages allow you to have a cool photo strip across your wall. It’s one of the first things you will see when landing there. It looks almost like a billboard.
Normally, it contains random cropped images from your most recent upload. No problem. Just follow these steps.
Create Images
Facebook crops images. And it’s quite annoying. But, I’ve painstakingly made guide lines in Photoshop where the images are cropped, so that you will have the perfect photo strip.
Plus, I don’t want to upload small thumbnails like 97×68 pixels. If people click on the thumbnails, I want nice big pictures!
You can download my templates here. I’ve made rounded corners and square corners for your choosing.
Upload Images
Create a new photo gallery and call it whatever you want. I named mine “Photo Strip.” Upload the images and the most recent will appear in your photo strip.
You do not have control over the ordering of the images, so don’t try to make it a consistent image unless they can be linked like Lysol. No matter how you order the thumbnails, they’re linked by the blue ribbon.
And if you ever upload new images or are tagged in some, you could always hide photos by rolling over the image and hitting the “x.” You can always undo this action in your Admin dashboard.
My suggestion is to upload one image from each of your top five portfolio shoots. Each image will have a call to action.
Call to Action
Once users click on an image, add some blurb about the photo shoot and a link to an expanded blog post. Remember to add “http://” in front of your blog post link, so that it’s clickable. For example –
June 30, 2011 – Bulldog Fashionista
I love it when pets are personified with clothing. Recently, I photographed the most…
[link to bulldog photo shoot blog post]
What to do next…
Let’s recap the steps.
- Determine your 5 portfolio shoots.
- Use the templates here and create giant thumbnails.
- Upload your images to your Facebook Page.
- Add various call to action links.
- Post your Page link on my Facebook Wall, so that others could admire and get inspiration.
- Share this blog post with others with Twitter, Facebook and +1 buttons below.
Thanks and have a nice day,
Lawrence Chan
P.S. I recently ran out of straws for my iced coffees, so I used a Red Vine. Awesome!
P.P.S. I got a nice email from Eric Fung about my psychology to pricing e-book that I wanted to share 
P.P.P.S. Are you celebrating July 4th? If so, how?
In 2009, I was at Skip’s Summer School helping a friend, Candice Cunningham, setup a booth. When everything was completed, I decided to sit in on the lectures.
To my surprise, a photographer I revered was an arm’s length away. Naturally, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you Kenny Kim?”
After introductions, he invited me to have Starbucks on him. Caramel Frappuccino on a hot summer day? More reason to play hooky.
Fast forward a couple of years and lots of sushi lunches, Kenny Kim publishes two books.
When he told me about his second book, I almost couldn’t believe it. Please understand that his first book was already amazing, so outdoing himself was not an easy feat. And as consistent as his amicable character, he did it again.
| New Book |
Old Book |
Digital Wedding Photography | Photo Workshop
While his first book emphasized poses and how a wedding day unfolds, his second book Digital Wedding Photography | Photo Workshop expounds on equipment used, lighting, composition, delivery of goods and etc.
The following is an image from the book coupled with a caption denoting external lighting settings, exposure time, lens used and so forth.
I enjoyed reading his perspective behind every photo illustrated in the book. As photographers, we all think different things during a shoot – lighting, backgrounds, distractions…
As for me, I think about what flavor that evening’s cake will be. Click. Click. Move it, move it, let’s hurry to cake!
All in all, if I had to rate it on a standard 5-star system, I’d give it a 6.
Good job, Kenny!
Lawrence Chan
P.S. My favorite cake is chocolate.
P.P.S. Another book I’m reading is Water For Elephants….so good.
P.P.P.S. New article just posted – 3 Reasons Why Selling is is Making More!
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I almost can’t believe that one month has passed since SXSW Interactive. For those who don’t know what that is, SXSW is an annual convention in Austin, TX that debuts new technologies, music and film interests.
I attended the Interactive (technology) section. This is where the newest ideas and technologies are shared. It was quite a fascinating experience!
On the trade show days, I perused the convention with curiosity. (This was my first time). Not that I was even trying, people gave me goodies, t-shirts, samples, and mounds of other stuff I probably won’t use.
Anyway, about 30 minutes in, I saw a red booth with a Justin Bieber cardboard cutout sporting a min.us t-shirt. It sure made me do a double take.
They had a pretty catchy tag line, “photo sharing so easy, our moms could do it.”
Well, later learning that the founders of this startup were students from MIT, Harvard or some other prestigious U’s, I’d really hope that their “moms could do it.” A little skeptical at first, I asked them to demonstrate.
Too Easy
And golly gosh, it was easy. A little bit too easy. You don’t even need to register, which is rare nowadays. No special Sliverlight or Flash plugins required; all HTML5. You could drag a photo right onto the website and it’ll start uploading.
Multi-File Gallery
Then they demonstrated uploading a full gallery of images…same easy peasy approach. Full HTML5 upload statuses. Dang!
AND, you could send a .zip file of all of the photos afterward.
They also provide private URLs that you could share. If you want to customize your URL, you need only register for free.
Photo Gallery Slider
After all of the images are uploaded, it automatically creates a beautiful gallery that you can view and share (even individual image URLs). This is such an easy and quick way to share photos – even album design drafts, etc. Sure beats FTP…
Registered Users
If you register, you can have metrics to see number of views and all that jazz.
Framework
Aside from photos, you could also share songs and videos! The only limitation is 50MB per file. The goal is to prevent the site being used to pirate movies.
On the bright side, how often are our photographs over 50MB each? Unlikely. The other limitation is the gallery limit is 50 photos. I think the reason for this is for the .zip archiving limit.
Anyway, check out min.us – @mindotus! And watch their intro video on the front page.
Hope you all enjoy this gem,
Lawrence Chan
P.S. I tested it on someone’s mom…worked like a charm.
P.P.S. Some time this week, I will be doing a one day sale on my psychology of pricing e-book. After that, the price goes up. Make sure that you’re on the mailing list!
Tofurious | Professional Photographer Blog Themes | Wedding Photography Tips | Free Downloads
Wedding reception photo booths are a wonderful way to entertain guests and capture precious memories at your wedding reception. You’ll get great pictures that will give you a neat behind-the-scenes look at your own wedding, or you can use the photos as wedding favors that your guests can take home.
When choosing a wedding photo booth, a couple of considerations are to just rent a photo booth from a local rental company or set one up yourself. Wedding photo booths available for rent will always be the best solution and allow the guests to print out their pictures instantly and take them home. Keep in mind, this option can be expensive, so you may want to consider setting up your own wedding photo booth or discussing it with your photographer.
Always find what the limitations are to the wedding photo booth rental. Several companies have a limit for the amount of pictures that can be taken or the number of hours you can have the booth on site. Ask about the delivery and pick-up details as well and whether they supply staff to man the booth.
When locating a wedding photo booth, try to place it in an area of the reception where it will not interfere with other events at the wedding. I always suggest near the bar area…that way your guests will see it and want to take advantage of it…and let’s face it …some of the shy guests may all of a sudden have some liquid courage to get involved. Make sure it’s easily accessible, but out of the way of the way of most of the action and the service staff.
Say Cheese!!!!!!!!
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