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Event photography seems simple enough: Your job is to take photos of a special occasion. Where it gets tricky is in reflecting the actual experience from the participant’s perspective, whether it’s a professional conference for business owners, a product launch cocktail hour, or a wedding’s late-night dance party. Of course, the basic lighting techniques still apply for every event—adjusting shutter speed, aperture, and ISO for correct exposure—but utilizing the advanced lighting techniques listed below can take your event photography from pretty good to print-worthy.
As part of your pre-shoot preparation, think about the vibe and location of the event itself, as well as who the participants are, then plan some shots accordingly. For example, formal events (trade shows, conferences, business meetings, speaking events) might require crisp, clean images that reflect the scene as accurately as possible, while more personal events (weddings, family reunions, cocktail parties) might allow for an artistic approach and more experimentation. Communicate with your client about their expectations, and how your photographic style and vision for the event will fit.
The sun, windows, streetlights, tabletop candles, colorful strobes, a stage spotlight, lamps, sparklers, neon signs, and overhead lights can all be used on their own to create interesting exposures. Look up images of the venue and talk to the client about what ambient light sources there will be, and have an idea of how you might utilize each of them.
One important advanced lighting technique is knowing how to balance artificial lighting with the ambient lighting of any given scene. For a sunset cocktail hour, you might use a soft flash to highlight people having a good time while preserving the rich colors of the sky in the background. A live concert might require direct flash on the lead singer to freeze her jumping in mid-air, but with a slow enough shutter speed to include stage lighting that highlights her bandmates.
There are countless options when it comes to supplemental lighting for event photography, but what’s most important is thinking through what the pace and location of the event will be, then picking out appropriate equipment for the event. Will you have an assistant to operate an off-camera flash, or are you on your own? Is the event fast-paced with unmissable moments, or is it a bit slower with more time to set shots up and play with lighting?
In addition to those factors, make sure you have full mastery over whatever lighting equipment you’re using. Event photography is all about real people (not models!) experiencing one-of-a-kind moments, so you’ve gotta be ready and have all your settings dialed for those split-second opportunities.
Pro-tip: Once you have the external flashes, practice photographing friends in a space similar to the event so you are ready for the big day.
One advanced lighting technique for event photography is to utilize multiple external flashes to provide a key light and fill lights for specific exposures. Knowing how your flashes can work together to layer the light in a frame will take your imagery to the next level. Here are a few things to consider with artificial lighting:
With event photography, you have the benefit of being present for a special time in a person’s life—after all, it’s an event that stands out so much from daily life it warrants hiring a photographer! You’re there to document the people, the place, and the moments in a cohesive way that reflects the feeling, meaning, and importance of it all, beyond simply taking photos. Event photography is a great example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Great event photography captures the essence of the experience, not just the facts.
Here are a few last ideas to try: silhouetting people against a bright background (look for interesting body positions), using a slow shutter speed for motion blur in the background with a flash to freeze the action of the subject, and painting with light (slow shutter speed + moving light source) to highlight a place setting or write something meaningful (like a wedding date + the couple’s initials). Be creative and think outside the box for how you can use advanced lighting techniques, and you’ll create images your event photography clients will cherish for years to come.
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We’re always looking for new ways to power the business of photography. In the coming year, there are six key areas we’re focusing on that should give you and your business some jet fuel. Here’s what to look forward to in 2024 and 2025:
We consistently hear that capitalizing on recency and emotion is key to maximizing sales after a photo event. That’s why we’re planning to offer additional ways for you to upload and deliver faster. Whether it’s utilizing new technology like our recent integration with Fujifilm that allows you to upload to SmugMug straight from your camera, or improving the efficiency of your post-shoot workflow, our goal is to help you get your photos in front of your clients as fast as possible.
Marketing is more than just getting people in the front door (or to your homepage), and we’ve got some exciting developments in the works to help you keep your customers coming back for more. First on that list is our recent addition to the shopping experience: When your customers leave an unpurchased item in their shopping cart, we’ve built a helpful reminder email that’s currently driving up to 30% more sales. Next up: we’re working on solutions to increase your average order value (AOV) and let you engage more consistently with customers before, during, and after their shoot.
It’s hard to go anywhere these days without engaging in or overhearing a conversation about AI. Its rapid development is causing this exciting new technology to become foundational in our everyday lives. AI has many relevant applications in the photography world. One very clear example is in image recognition. As a customer arriving at a photo gallery with hundreds, sometimes thousands of images, finding the photos they’re most interested in can be a challenge. That’s why we’re planning new ways to help your customers quickly take advantage of AI and image recognition to find their photos in seconds, which leads to more sales for you.
We’ve already made some large strides in this area in the past year with a modern update to the product selection flow, improving your customer’s access to Packages and Gallery Downloads, providing the ability to purchase Packages on mobile devices, and partnering with a new print lab, Fujifilm. Planned future updates include support for even faster payment for customers via Apple Pay and Google Pay.
It should come as no surprise that in the world of photography, digital is now king. This doesn’t just refer to cameras - digital downloads are far-and-away the most popular purchase option now as customers seek more flexible ways to buy and share photos. Digital files present ease of sharing, flexibility for printing, and a low footprint way to preserve memories for a lifetime. Knowing this, there are a number of ways we plan to improve the experience related to the fulfillment of downloads. When someone downloads a photo from you, it should be easy and fast, no matter what device they’re on.
Understanding sales data can be crucial for growing your business. With over 20 years of sales data and experience under our belt, we plan to provide you more comprehensive insights. The goal is to empower you to make informed decisions, invest wisely in your business, identify profitable niches and optimize pricing strategies - all to ensure you maximize your revenue.
There is a balance for most photographers when it comes to selling photos while protecting their brand and photo aesthetic. Since your gorgeous images speak for themselves, it’s up to you to make sure the words you use on your portfolio website are speaking to a wide range of audiences.
While art patrons and loyal followers may want all the details about your photos—like inspiration, location, and how you Got the Shot—some consumers passing by may simply be looking for a perfect piece of art for their home or office. This second audience is often overlooked, and connecting with them is what we’ll be talking about today.
Photography shoppers often know which room of their home or office they want to decorate, but they may not be sure what to put there. Fortunately, you know just where your photos will look their best. By tweaking your gallery names (or creating specific, purpose-built galleries), you can guide customers to help streamline their decision-making—and ensure they get your best work for their needs.
For example, you could build galleries by room and function in the household: “Kitchen Compliments,” “Office Decor,” “Living Room Centerpieces,” etc.. As a bonus, you can even subdivide these by types of decor to give you an SEO boost and refine customer choices even further. (e.g. yourdomain.com/kitchens/farmhouse or yourdomain.com/kitchens/modern.)
Want to lead with aesthetics? Easy! Just swap the order and group your galleries first by style, then by room. Either way, you’ll be guiding your customers to the gold.
Once your customers arrive at a chosen photo, don’t stop there! Hit them with the power of words one more time by providing a tailor-made description of the photo and setting: “With this photo on your kitchen wall, you’ll practically hear the crash of waves and feel like you’re on vacation every morning.”
Many photo website builders like ours here at SmugMug allow for unique descriptions for categories, galleries, and individual photos—not to mention easy tagging for simple search. If you’re not already a customer, click here to try us for free.
Does your photography fit best in the documentary or adventure category? If so, your albums might be better suited to include straight-forward titles and descriptions, like the Who What and Where. We know getting creative with naming can be fun, but it’s important to remember your audience, and if you shoot strictly landscape, it might be smart to stick to location titles to better help your customers find what they’re looking for. It’s also a good way for potential customers to find you! For more information on clever ways to help customers find you using words, check out our guide to SEO for photographers.
Looking for some new ways to raise funds to support your camp facility and campers? Below you’ll find a few unique ways to keep campers engaged year-round, bring in additional revenue through the activities they already enjoy, and reach new potential campers and parents without breaking the bank on marketing.
Here are three ways to make money 365 days a year for your summer camp through photography:
Camping is about comradery, learning, and self-discovery. Help your campers remember the fun they had last summer while getting them excited about coming back next year.
When you use a photography platform like SmugMug, you’re able to create unlimited private and public photo galleries. This means your camp can create themed folders by cabin, club, theme, age groupings, and the season or year the camper attended.
From here your campers can upload their favorite memories to share with their friends and family back home. Parents can also buy digital downloads, prints, and countless keepsakes to cherish their campers’ summer memories.
Another great way to earn off-season revenue is to offer photo editing courses and workshops to campers throughout the year. With SmugMug’s unlimited photo storage, campers can easily upload their edited photos to galleries to show off their skills.
Contests and challenges are also a fun and easy way to get your campers excited. Put on a holiday-themed photo contest or create photo challenges for your campers, asking them to utilize an editing or shooting technique you taught in a course. Then you can offer the submitted photos in your camp’s SmugMug print shop for proud parents to buy.
For off-season camp revenue, sales are a no-brainer. Boost print and fun photo gift purchases by running a sale or two throughout the year. Make sure to have one around the holidays – it’s when most parents are looking for easy and thoughtful gift ideas.
By offering special discounts and promotions during key times of the year, you can turn heartwarming moments into lasting keepsakes. Remember to create a sense of urgency with limited-time sales: you can drive more revenue while keeping the camp spirit alive all year long. SmugMug makes it easy to manage these sales and offers a seamless purchasing experience, ensuring that your campers' memories are treasured forever.
The options are endless for ways you can use photography to make more money for your camp, especially during the offseason. You only need a bit of creativity—and a photo hosting, storage, and photo selling solution like SmugMug. Click here to try us free today.
Renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said your first 10,000 pictures are your worst, but we gathered a few tips from pro photographers to make the journey to honing your craft a little quicker.
Here are the top tips from pro photographers:
Without delving into details about optics and light paths, your lens has a sharpest point within its aperture range. The largest and smallest ends of that range are the softest, and f/8—which is in the middle—is where you’ll most often get the sharpest images. This does vary by lens, so we recommend shooting some test shots to find your lens’ sweet spot. Once you’ve got that dialed in, experiment at different apertures to see how each f-stop affects your image.
In the world of photography, you have probably heard a lot about getting the image right straight out of camera, or SOOC. And there’s wisdom to that thinking. You don’t want to “fix it in post” if you can save yourself time by getting the shot right in-frame. But cropping your photo after the fact to create a better, stronger composition is a quick and easy way to improve an image after it’s taken.
Maybe there was a fence in your way that prevented you from getting closer to the shot, or perhaps you were capturing a split-second street shot and didn’t have time to change your lens. Either way, it’s your artistic decision to improve a composition with a little post-process cropping. And unless you tell someone you cropped, no one will ever know! Consider it a trade secret.
Pro Tip: You don’t have to crop your photos before you upload them to SmugMug. Use built-in photo tools to crop your images, or copy a photo and crop the copy so you can compare it to the original and see which you like best.
You don’t have to own the gear to shoot with the gear. Can’t afford to drop $16K on an 800mm lens to shoot the next game? No problem: pay a pittance to rent one for the time you need, then send it back and call it a job well done. This is also a great way to test out new gear you might be considering for your full-time kit. Not sure if that 85mm f/1.2 is worth the extra dough? Rent it and try it out. A small upfront investment can save you a big financial headache down the line.
While getting photos right SOOC (straight out of the camera) is good practice, it’s rare that a photo looks better unedited than edited. Even a perfectly-lit, powerfully-composed photo can benefit from a few finishing tweaks to the white balance and saturation to make it pop—especially if you shoot in RAW. Think that sunset shot couldn’t get any better? Give it a boost in post and see what happens.
Pro Tip: You’ve got color effects available in SmugMug's photo tools. Or you can take your editing a step further with Lightroom and publish the results directly to SmugMug without ever leaving the program.
Backlit subject? High-contrast sunset? White dress, red wall? These scenarios (and countless more) can throw a wrench into your shoot, but you can still capture the photos you want with practice. Study hard, stay inspired, experiment, and make mistakes—lots of mistakes. Then learn how to fix them. Try using a fill light for that backlit subject. Experiment with a neutral-density filter during that sunset. Move your model or your lights farther away from that red wall. Discovering what doesn’t work will help you learn what does work, and will result in better photos—and technique—in the future.
Pro Tip: You’re not alone! Chances are another photographer out there has run into the same challenge you have. If you’re struggling to find a solution, don’t hesitate to consult the Internet for answers. SmugMug also has some great resources in the Development Lab.
If you find yourself glued to your camera seven days a week, it might be time to shake up your photography-pricing game.
Whether you're snapping shots at events, welcoming clients into your studio, or selling your art, the eternal question remains: How much should you charge, and when should you change your rates? And when you do decide to tweak your pricing, how do you figure out the magic number?
Here are five telltale signs it's time to adjust your photography prices (up or down!), along with some advice on how much to adjust them and how to break the news to your clients.
If your calendar's bursting at the seams, it's a surefire sign you're the go-to photographer in town—or beyond. And if you're having to turn clients away, that's your cue to start thinking about raising your rates.
It can be difficult to increase prices immediately, so send an email to past clients and current leads to give them a heads-up that your rates are about to change. You can also post to your social-media accounts to let people book holidays or occasions in advance.
When it comes to how much to adjust your prices, let demand be your guide. If you have a large waitlist, consider a higher amount, such as 50%. If your waitlist is shorter or you have a regular influx of leads, try a lower amount: 20% for a trickle of new leads, or 35% if you're swimming in inquiries. You can always increase later if your calendar stays booked.
Pro tip: Don’t panic if a few clients complain. Even if a handful jump ship, remember that a 20% price increase means more cash in your pocket and more time to savor that work–life balance.
If you’ve noticed print sales are slowing and seasonal spikes are down, it may be a good time to think about reducing prices. But that isn’t your only option.
Try creating a photo package where people save 20% if they buy multiple prints or sizes. If you have an email list, try sending a custom deal to previous customers and share new photos you think will sell. These short-term fixes can help tide you over until demand picks back up.
If you discover your market is saturated, a price reduction may be the solution while you expand your reach to new customers or open shop in another market or niche. Don’t panic! Every photographer hits a dry spell now and then.
Costs to run a business can always increase—sometimes unexpectedly. A landlord could increase your rent. Gear breaks. Clients demand new trends that require new equipment.
If you’re scared to do an increase across the board, start small. Try selecting only a couple of offerings or tossing in a few add-ons to sweeten the deal, like bonus prints or limited-edition backdrops. Or change up your portrait sessions with some fun props. Not only will it add value to each session, it can also make you a trendsetter in your market.
Pro tip: When adding bonus prints, focus on lower-cost items that clients perceive as high value, such as upgrading the print size or material type. Metal, wood, and acrylic prints all offer an extra special touch to meaningful photos.
Getting featured in glossy mags? Picking up steam on social media? That extra boost to your brand can mean big money.
Before you increase your prices, update your portfolio to feature the images that took off and brought you recognition. You’ll also want to reference them on your homepage and potentially add an “as seen in” section with logos. Remind folks that you're the mastermind behind the trend—and why they should be booking you.
Pro tip: If your photos are being featured across the web, ask site editors if they can link your art or name to your portfolio. Not only will this help potential clients find you more easily, it can also help boost your search-engine optimization.
The biggest sign it’s time to increase the price of your photography services is when you’re overworked, facing burnout, and notice everyone else is priced above you.
To figure out your fair market value, start by scoping out the competition. Check out what other photographers in your league are charging, factoring in everything from experience to turnaround times:
Now pick a price that's in the middle of the pack—or maybe a bit higher. You’ll be making more per session, so even if a few clients leave you’ll still be making the same or more as you were—and you’ll have reclaimed a part of your life.
Knowing when to change your photography pricing is half the battle. Knowing by how much and if it should be permanent is the next. Once you recognize the signs, the rest becomes easy.
Sports photography isn’t easy. Often done on a speculative basis, success only comes with a great marketing plan, a solid business plan, and a lot of hard work before, during, and after the game. We gathered a few tips to help make the process from shot to sale easier.
Face. Contact. Action. Ball. These are the elements of a great sports photograph. Your ability to get the shot—in sports photography more than any other field—requires more than “f/8 and be there.” Equipment matters since you very likely won’t be able to control the light. Here are a few recommendations:
1. Know your sport.
The ability to anticipate where the action will be, to predict the drama by understanding the rules and rulings, to be prepared for the ecstasy and agony of the competitors are what will set you apart as a sports photographer.
2. Fill your frame with action.
Minimize distracting backgrounds. Choose the right depth of field. Make sure the play or the player is your subject. Shoot tight, crop tighter.
3. Pick the right shutter speed.
In general, you’ll want to freeze the action, so your shutter will need to be fast. If motion blur is desirable to help convey the story or set the mood, a slower shutter speed may work, but you’ll still need to ensure your shutter speed is fast enough to prevent camera shake.
Pro tip: Your shutter speed needs to be greater than the focal length of the lens. Try shooting in burst mode to ensure you don’t miss any of the action. Using strobes? Balance the flash power against flash duration to freeze the action.
4. Get accreditation and/or permission to shoot the sport.
Meet the sports director for the school or club, the president of the booster club, or the director of the league and get their blessing to photograph their players. You should know their needs (yearbook photos, website photos, championship photos, team photos, etc.) and be prepared to include these shots in exchange for the right to photograph the game/league/tournament.
You probably aren’t expecting to head out, take a bunch of game-day photos, and put them up for sale. While you're perfecting your shooting technique, you should also be putting together a strong business and marketing plan, including building your brand name and recognition, your customer base, and your portfolio.
Marketing.
At the stadium.
After the game.
We hope these steps outline an easy strategy to get you started on your way to success in sports photography. Have any tips of your own to share?
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