Last January I ran into my friend Stephanie Carson at Sitwell’s, a popular university area coffee shop here in Cincinnati. Stephanie is a very successful wedding photographer in the region (view her website here and fun blog here) and she’d just wrapped up her 2007 obligations and would soon be off to Europe for a few weeks. We promised to …

In this, part 2 of 2 (part 1 may be found here), I offer how my photo studio (Daylight Photo) evaluated our market and how we created our current niche in photography.
As mentioned last week, we photograph a variety of assignments, from food to people to product. The area we promote and most actively pursue, though, is industrial photography. How …

Do you have a photographic specialty?

We’ve been talking about the hurdles of entering the world of professional photography over on the prophotolife discussion forums. It’s easy to fall in love with photography (it’s safe to say we’ve all done it, right?) and at some point many of us consider making photography a career, part- or full-time. I’ve written a bunch …

If you started with prophotolife at the very beginning you might remember that one of the specific reasons I started this blog was to help young photo assistants / aspiring photographers. Some of the earliest entries here were on the subject of starting out as a photo assistant. Tonight I’ve compiled nine of those assisting entries into a downloadable PDF …

Aspiring professional and enthusiast photographers work hard to find their own particular style, a visual look that sets them apart from the crowd. Your style is like your own personal signature and it may revolve around the use of a particular lens, color palette, camera or post-production technique. Or it may be the way you communicate with your subject …

How to get your work published
Many photographers aspire to have their images published in magazines and books. There’s a lot of competition for this type of work but with a plan and dedication you can make it a reality.

As a teenager I wanted to be a photographer for motorcycle magazines. By the age of thirty I had fulfilled that dream, …

thirty seven s…
volume 1 2006
By Jim Talkington

Book Preview

In 2006 I started a photo blog and decided to publish a photo a day. There was a definite purpose to this. No, it wasn’t so much to get my work seen by a bunch of people, it was so I would commit to creating new work. …

Last week we looked at what charging a fair value means to photographers, particularly those just starting out.

So what happens when you start your business, you’ve calculated your cost of doing business, but people just aren’t willing to pay what you need to survive? Should you take these jobs anyway? Last week we looked at value as it relates …

“Can you talk about pricing vs. what the market will bear? For example in the “Pricing Photography” book you link to , they insist that you charge at least your daily overhead, well that’s fine, but will the client be willing to pay for that? This is especially relevant to a starting business like myself. More established photogs have higher …

This video is another response to a reader question: how do I make a portfolio? This was planned as a quick video but that just didn’t do the topic justice. It was better to roll the camera just a bit longer, I thought, and here’s the result.
While the internet is primarily used for initial review of a portfolio, most commercial …