Photography Information About Freelance Photographers by Bobby D Strunk

I thought that I could share some photography information about freelance photography. The life style of a freelance photographer can be a dream come true for a lot of photographers. You have the luxury of working for yourself and you get to pick your own hours, plus you get to photograph what you have a passion for. With the right photography information just about anybody that has the desire to get paid to take photos can do so.

One way that someone could get started in freelance photography is to start out part-time. A lot of photographers begin this way. When you start to make money with your photography you should reinvest some of your earnings back into your business. You may be needing new equipment or more knowledge about freelance photography. Any investment that you would make should increase your profits considerably. There is always something new to learn in any photography, I think that for this reason so many people are drawn to freelance photography.

One week you may be shooting photos for your stock photography and the next week you can be shooting a wedding. You could even be taking some pictures for a magazine or travel publication.
Freelance photographers are simply photographers that are self-employed. They create images that are sold as individual images or as collections. The photographer will sell there work to publications, individuals or organizations.

Freelance photographers are usually people that choose to work independently, also these people are people that are creative in nature and they have the ability to capture unique moments and expressions with there camera.

One of the most important tools of the freelance photographer is there portfolio. The portfolio is almost as important as the camera. This is how people will see your work and decide if you are the photographer that they need for the type of photography they have in mind. Even if you have not sold any of your work you will need to get your portfolio together. Start out by putting your best work together and add to it as you go. You can find plenty of photography information that will show you how to put together an impressive portfolio.

Being able to start Shutterbug-Photobiz was a dream come true for me. I'm an internet marketer that can use my love for photography to make a very nice living for myself. Shutterbug-Photobiz has also giving me a great way to help others take hold of their future and live the life that they desire. You can visit at http://www.shutterbugphotobiz.com/ and enter our camera give-away and also get the free photography information that can help you get to where you want to be.

Top 10 Tips For Better Vacation Photos From Travel Writers and Photographers

The Society of American Travel Writers (SATW), the world's largest organization of professional travel journalists and photographers, recently polled its members to come up with the "Top 10″ tips to help travelers take better vacation photos.

"With digital cameras, it has never been easier or cheaper to take top quality vacation photos," states SATW president and broadcast travel journalist, Bea Broda. "However, there are still some things that travelers can do to help them come back with stunning images of their vacation," she said.

Listed in order of votes with comments from SATW writers and photographers, the "Top 10″ tips for better travel photos are:

1. Shoot photos early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., the sun is overhead and the light is flat. Shooting in early morning and late afternoon will add more color and shadows to your photos, giving more definition to the subject.

"Although morning and late afternoon are considered the best light for making photographs, some exceptions apply. In the Caribbean, for instance, to capture the water at its most electric aquamarine, shoot the seascape from on high, preferably at noon."– Patricia Borns, maritime and travel writer/photographer

2. Move in close to your subject for impact (too far back and your photo can be too busy). Get close, and then get closer! Fill the frame with your subject.

"Use your camera to record details you would like to remember later such as street signs, place names and menus." — Shelly Steig, freelance writer and photographer

3. Don't shoot every photo at eyelevel. Don't be afraid to get low to the ground or climb up to get a better vantage point.

"Shooting a scene at other than eyelevel can add drama or perspective to an otherwise static setting. Even if you can't peer through the lens, hold your camera overhead or at waist level and experiment."– David Swanson, freelance travel writer/photographer

Carry a rubber mouse pad in your camera bag. It will make it easier on your knees and clothing whenever you kneel down for a low camera angle." — Michele & Tom Grimm, photographers and authors

4. Pay attention to details and distractions in the back of the photo or behind the heads of your subjects. Frequently, a telephone pole or tree is sticking up behind your subject. Move around until there are fewer distractions in the background.

"Don't rely on your zoom lens to compose your images. You have two feet. Move about for the best angle and composition." — Dennis Cox, travel photographer, director of Photo Explorer Tours

5. Shoot lots of photos and edit and erase at night. Digital space is cheap. Shoot in the highest res possible.

"Bracket your exposures and remember that if the light is low, you can increase your ISO (the equivalent of being able to change film speed) for every shot."– Catherine Watson, freelance travel writer

6. Always show a sense of place as to where you are. If in the tropics, frame the photo with palm trees; if in the mountains, frame it with pine trees.

"On cloudy, dreary days, try to include bright colors such as red (a person's jacket, an umbrella, a sign) in the photo, since reds, oranges, yellows and fuchsias can make a washed-out rainy scene pop with liveliness."– Susan Farlow, freelance travel writer

7. Shoot important subjects from several different angles and vantage points and with different lens and at different exposures. Take an overall wide shot, a medium range shot and a close up detail shot. Check your photos on site to make sure you have your shot.

"When shooting with a slow shutter speed and no tripod, shoot three quick frames in a row, making a better chance one will come out sharp." — Michael Ventura, freelance travel photographer

"Remember to shoot verticals as well as horizontal shots. Verticals work best for covers or full single pages." — Susan Farlow, freelance travel writer

8. Wait before you click! Wait for the clouds to clear, the truck to move away from the front of the cathedral or other distractions to pass.

"Look around you and see what's happening. If a child with a red balloon is coming around the corner, wait until she runs into your frame."– Mary Love, freelance travel photographer and writer

9. Put local people in your photos. Ask permission first and try not to pose them. Put people in your photos to give a sense of size and scale.

"Learn the phrase for ‘Smile, please' in the language of the place where you are traveling, and smile before, during and after you click the shutter." — Maxine Cass, freelance travel photographer

"After photographing a local, turn your digital camera around and show the image to your subject. Everybody is happy to see what a great photo you just took." — Annette Thompson, associate travel and livings editor, Southern Living

10. Use fill-flash, even outdoors, to "fill-in" shadows.

"Sometimes you don't have the option of waiting for the right light. The fill flash will light up a person's face and remove shadows when the sun is overhead."– Laurie D. Borman, editorial director, Rand McNally
The Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) is a non-profit professional association that works to promote responsible travel journalism and to provide professional support for its members, including travel journalists, photographers, editors, electronic media, film lecturers, television and film producers, and public relations representatives from the travel industry.

For more information on the Society of American Travel Writers, visit http://www.satw.org/

Free SEO Toolkit for Photographers

PhotoShelter today released the first comprehensive, free guide to getting photography websites listed on search engines and achieving top results with search engine optimization (SEO). The PhotoShelter SEO Toolkit is essential internet marketing guidance for serious photographers looking to grow their businesses online. It can be used by photographers to understand, plan, and carry out a complete SEO effort. The toolkit can be requested here: http://pa.photoshelter.com/mkt/seo-kit-for-photographers. PhotoShelter also today released an SEO Grader tool - an exclusive feature that scans photographers' websites and rates their progress along 30+ factors within PhotoShelter that can be customized to improve search engine rankings.

The free PhotoShelter SEO Toolkit includes several multimedia components. The primary content is PhotoShelter's SEO Cookbook - a 30-page, step-by-step e-book covering every tactic, on and off the photographer's web page, that can be employed to garner better search engine results. The Toolkit also includes video tutorials and downloadable worksheets to assist photographers in optimizing their websites. No technical experience is required to benefit from the expert advice assembled in the Toolkit.

Photography Workflow - Pre-Production For New Photographers by Murray Edwards

Okay - you have decided to do some work as a stock photographer. We have talked about what you believe to be a good topic or specialization, compared Royalty-Free versus Rights-Managed licensing and discussed the proper releases that may be required. Now let's talk about your workflow. We will need to address both pre and post production, so let's get started.

Pre-Production - "Be prepared" is the Boy Scouts motto, so you should be prepared for whatever might throw you a curve while performing a photo shoot. In many cases, as a freelance stock photographer, you will be shooting on spec, so make sure that you have camera equipment in your vehicle at all times. You never know when a situation will arise that creates an opportunity for a unique image, it would be a shame to miss it. Once traveling in central Alabama, a F3 tornado hit 5 miles from my location. I was one of the first photojournalist to capture the aftermath. Many of those images, were used by area news agencies and three were licensed and published in textbooks.

Here is an idea of the equipment I carry on a normal road trip: Three digital bodies, four lenses of various sizes, flash, batteries, ten compact flash memory modules, rain suit, tripod, monopod, batteries, protective rain shields for gear, gps, light meter, cleaning kit, batteries, releases, portable hard drive and a laptop. By the way, did I mention batteries? You can never have enough batteries. I would also suggest that you get insurance, some homeowners policies may cover your equipment, however, there are companies that will provide policies that not only protect you against thief, they will also cover damage to gear.

Now you are ready to go, you've got camera in hand, selected the correct white balance and exposure and you are ready to make that first shot. Here is your first decision what format do you shoot? RAW, JPEG or TIFF - make this decision wisely, for this will determine how the post-production proceeds once you get back to the comfort of home or hotel. RAW is the natural format used by each camera manufacturer and will provide the most image information. You will not be able to store as many images per module, but the additional benefits it provides in post-production far out way any drawbacks. Everyone is familiar with JPEGs and in most cases this is the format of choice for amateurs, since nearly any image viewer allows you see what you shot without any conversion. You will be able to shoot and store many more images per module, but image quality will suffer as you save and re-save the image in post. The third most poplar format is TIFF. Like RAW, the TIFF format provides a much larger file, so once again, the image count per memory module will be reduced, however TIFF is a loss-less format, good benefits when you start working with the image, but as in JPEG you will lose some adjustment freedoms that you get in shooting RAW.

So when it really counts, shoot RAW, if you are just shooting for practice or experimenting, the JPEG format will work fine.

I'm going to make an assumption here. Most people starting out do not have more than one camera and that is the case, I would like to make a suggestion. Make sure you have numerous memory modules with you. They have gotten rather affordable, so the out of pocket expense will not be to great. Here's where I'm gong with this. When on a shoot, I always have two completely outfitted cameras and will take similar images of the same subject on both cameras. Why? As reliable as these modules are, they do fail. If you have everything on one module, then you have lost all the work you have put in for that project. If you have multiple modules, then you can split your work across multiple chips, thus protecting all that hard work. It only takes a moment to do a switch out and it could save you pain, agony and money should a failure occur. Just keep track of your, naming nomenclature when you transfer the files over to your system, so you won't overwrite an image.

What do you now that you have taken all these photographs? We will discuss this in the next article.

Murray Edwards is a freelance photojournalist covering the Southern United States.
Website: http://www.freelancephotog.com/
Portfolio: http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/murrayed

ASMP Provides Photographers with Free Education Resource

Eugene H. Mopsik, Executive Director of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) announced that the association has developed new education tools for the industry which are now available free of charge. All interested photographers now have access to the ASMP daily blog as well as the popular and acclaimed Strictly Business 2 series covering topics such as copyright, pricing, negotiating, and building a photography business. ASMP, the premier trade association with more than 7,000 photographers who create images primarily for publication, is a leader in providing business education for professional photographers.

According to Mopsik, "ASMP has created these resources to provide a forum for training in critically important skills and fostering new ideas. Our goal is to continue to support the needs of photographers at all career stages, and to build an informed and savvy professional photography community."

"We are very excited to be able to present videos on topics which are vital to photographers," said Susan Carr, ASMP Education Coordinator. "In addition, we will have featured daily blog posts and links to relevant on-line resources. Our future plans include instructional podcasts and a calendar of ASMP's programs - making this the 'go to' business resource for photographers."

Contributors to the video lecture series include ASMP members Richard Kelly, Judy Herrmann, Blake Discher, Leslie Burns-Dell'Acqua and Carr. The videos also have interviews with preeminent member photographers Barbara Bordnick, Paul Elledge, Steve Grubman, Chase Jarvis, Lou Jones, and Paul Lerner. The videos can be viewed at www.ASMP.org/strictlybusiness.

Clive Barker masters another creative medium… Photography

Visionary. Fantasist. Author. Poet. Painter. Photographer. No one word is adequate to describe Clive Barker, who for more than twenty-five years has expanded the reaches of human imagination as a novelist, director, screenwriter, dramatist and artist.

An inveterate seeker, Barker traverses between styles with ease, from lucid dreamscapes to visceral horror to existential drama to pan-sexual erotica. Barker also has a hand in a range of projects that reflect his grasp of the creative potential in contemporary media. Some arise from his own literary terrain; others are evolving out of his uniquely progressive production company Seraphim Films, whose most recent release, The Midnight Meat Train, garnered high praise from fans and critics alike.

Barker's photography combines narrative imagery, symbolism of ancient and modern cultures, eroticism, religious iconography, vibrant color and dramatic lighting. He demonstrates his intelligence and talent in creating work that is provocative, disturbing, erotic and titillating. Few will be able to view these images and not be stirred – some may be offended, some provoked, some stimulated and others frightened. But for those captivated few that are capable of looking deep into each image and even deeper into themselves, they will discover Barker's wicked genius, unique and original vision of man.

Barker shot 60,000 photographs for a series of books and various media all celebrating the nude male; his vision putting a fantastical edge into the images, transporting his subjects (Barker abhors the word 'model') into a world of dreamscapes and demons. The first volume is to be called Imagining Man. A large exhibition in Los Angeles, featuring hundreds of Barker's photographs, is planned for the autumn of 2009.

Four images were recently previewed at the 10th anniversary show Dirty Detroit an international erotic art exhibition last month. The photographs sold out. View Clive Barker's photos.

ABOUT CLIVE BARKER

Barker's past achievements are as eclectic as his current slate. In 1998 he executive produced Bill Condon's God's and Monster's, which garnered three Academy Award nominations, wining the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The following year, Barker joined such illustrious authors as Gabriel Marquez, Annie Dillard and Aldous Huxley when his collection of literary works was put into the Perennial line at HarperCollins Publishers. At the same time, HarperCollins published The Essential Clive Barker, a seven hundred-page anthology of selected fiction, with an introduction by Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City).

At its core, Barker's work has always shown an unswerving commitment to spinning a good yarn. He began his odyssey in the London theatre; scripting original plays for the nomadic theatre group he founded, The Dog Company. These works include "The History of the Devil," "Frankenstein in Love" and "Crazyface," and were published in two compendiums entitled Incarnations and Forms of Heaven. They still consistently appear in productions, usually by non-profit or university companies, all over the world. [CONT]

Realizing that a career in writing highly imaginative but immensely challenging plays wasn't going to support
him, Barker turned his hand to writing intensely visual horror stories. They were published in six volumes, and their contents have provided the raw material for several immensely popular movies, including The Midnight Meat Train, Candyman, and the soon-to-be-released Dread.

In 1987, Barker took on a whole new challenge by adopting his novella The Hellbound Heart and turning it into a film he could make for a tiny sum of money. It was called Hellraiser, and it was to become a cult classic, spawning eight sequels, several lines of comic books, and an array of merchandise which elevated the demonic torturer Pinhead to a figure now recognized worldwide. It was followed in 1990 by Nightbreed, which Barker adapted and directed from his novella "Cabal." Here, in a prophetic reworking of horror's conventions, Barker turned the monsters into tragic outcasts, prefiguring the same devices later used by Tim Burton and those paid homage to his style.

But it was his debut novel, The Damnation Game – a modern reworking of the Faust myth – that really put Barker on the literary map and widened his growing international audience, bridging the gap between popular genre writing and the work of British literary figures, such as J.G. Ballard, who was, with Stephen King, an early champion of Barker's taboo-busting, sexy, yet sophisticated and electrifying prose.

As a writer, Barker persisted in defying expectation winning a new generation of fans with such best-selling fantasies as: Weaveworld, Imajica, Everville; The Thief of Always; Sacrament, and Galilee, and Coldheart Canyon. The first in his most ambitious project to date -- the Abarat series -- was published in October 2002, to resounding critical acclaim, and is currently published in 42 languages. A five-volume series, Abarat will eventually be a million-word journey into the fantastical with over one thousand oil paintings by the author. Next on the Abarat horizon is Abarat III: Absolute Midnight, waiting to delight readers across the world in 2010.

As much a visualist as a wordsmith, Barker frequently turns to the canvas to fuel his imagination. He has had hugely successful exhibitions across America, and his neo-expressionist paintings have been showcased in three large format books: Clive Barker, Illustrator, volumes I & II, and Visions of Heaven and Hell.

What gives Barker's work its strength bringing audiences across the world back to his alchemical cosmos over and over again is his passion: for colour, for words, for life; and his belief in the collective unconscious, its power to inspire, terrify and ultimately heal.

Copyright Registry Benefits ASMP Members

The Copyright Registry will provide free upgraded participation in the registry for members in good standing of the The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP).

ASMP members can use The Copyright Registry at C-Registry.us to display their contact information, to link each image to its official registration at the U.S. Copyright Office, and to connect potential licensors to the e-commerce or licensing process of the photographer or their agent for each image. The registry also locates online uses of duplicates of each photographer’s images.

With a single click of a browser bookmark, The Copyright Registry enables users to find the copyright owner of images and other content from any web site, regardless of language. This is useful for publishers and other users who want to do a reasonable search for the copyright owner of content. The Copyright Registry reduces the risk that a photograph might be mistaken for an “orphaned work”, which is a creative work for which the creator or copyright holder might be unknown or known, but who cannot be located. By using The Copyright Registry to find owners of images that are thought to be orphaned, users create sales leads for creators and owners who have identified their copyright claim in The Copyright Registry.

At C-Registry.us, photographers can also add the Veripixel copyright notice to their images, a visible mark that announces that an image is copyrighted and enables a link to information in The Copyright Registry.

This free upgrade for ASMP members, which includes the ability to prevent changes by locking records and to access bulk user functions, can be initiated from within the members only login area at ASMP.org. Founded in 1944, ASMP is the leader in promoting photographers' rights, providing education in better business practices, producing business publications for photographers, and helping to connect purchasers with professional photographers. ASMP has 39 chapters across the country and more than 7,000 members, including many of the world's foremost photographers.

The Copyright Registry launched its beta web site in 2008 in anticipation of passage of an Orphan Works Act by the U.S. Congress. The registry provides easy public access to ownership claims by creators and rights holders of specific creative works, as well as general advocacy and education on the importance of copyright.