marcphotography

<p>ed, when you shoot later in the day do you put the sun behind you or the subject?<br>

Matt, I really dont have any control over the time of day when shooting weddings. I can only suggest good times for pictures to them. <br>

If the sun is lower in the sky do you prefer to use it as a key light or a seperation/hair light placed behind the subject? If you use it as the main light how do you deal with squinting?</p>

 

<p>I have to admit. I am terrified of the sun and I dont know how to work with direct sunlight when photographing groups. If it comes out from the clouds, I start freaking out. <br>

This past weekend in particular. We went to a park with the bridal party and the sun was out with no clouds. There was no shade and I dont have anything big enough to make my own shade for an entire bridal party. The only thing I can think of is the shadow filled, contrasty, squinty mess of pictures that I would get.<br>

I see that some people say to put the sun behind you, but then everyone starts squinting and depending on how high the sun is in the sky, I get shadows in the eyes. <br>

If I try to put the sun behind them it works well most of the time (if I dont get lens flare). But then the background gets blown out since I am exposing for the shaded area of the subjects. I could hardly use fill flash unless I brough my studio equipment out with me so what do I do?</p>

<p>Greg, I am a little confused on your comment on my photo. The photo was not posed at all, it was during the ceremony. Also, what do you mean when you say she isn't 2 years old? I never said she was.</p>

<p>Makes sense with a larger camera that you cant easily move around I guess. The reason I asked is because I am opeing a studio in my area and I just didint understand what the big deal was with everyone and their gigantic studio supports. It almost seems to me like it would be more limiting than helpful unless you wanted to get a shot from up high.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>I have seen the big camera stands that most studios use but I cannot figure out what the point of them is. Can someone give me a good reason to have one? It is not like you are going to take many ambient light photos requiring a long shutter speed in a studio so why would you need a large studio stand?</p>

<p>Bribery works best :-) The groom got the flower girl to come down the isle by luring her with rolos.<br>

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3415/3525390192_86046a5815_o.jpg" alt="" width="466" height="700" /></p>

<p>A bit boring but it looks good in a technical sense. Maybe a bit more clarity/local contrast to make it pop out. For some reason the ribbon seems a little distracing to me but I wouldn't have noticed it if I was looking at a group of images from the wedding. It is just because I was staring at it for 1 minute.</p>

<p>Charles, Amen to that. I have the same feeling about Twitter.</p>

<p>Cathy and David, how long have you had your website/blog up and running? Do you have any idea what your numbers looked like about a year after going online?</p>

<p>Ken, <br>

Your situation and visitor count sounds about exactly the same as mine. I am opening a studio next month and hope to see a good increase in business and site visitors. <br>

Does anyone have experience with seeing the effect of a storefront space on their business?</p>

<p>I am just curious about how many visitors everyone gets per day on average the their website. Unique visitors, not page loads. Thanks. </p>

<p>I guess I am just wondering if I should be going more towards the expensive prints route or if most people see past the cheap sessions and look at print prices as well.<br>

I do seniors and wedding photography mainly. My wedding photography clients are probably completely different from their targeted market so I am not too worried about that. The seniors are the ones that we are in the same market for. Mainly since our location is so close to the high schools in the area.<br>

Our packages have longer sessions with prints included and they have cheaper sessions without anything included. Do most people take the extras into consideration or should I be doing more barebone packages to make the price look more appealing?</p>

<p>I am having a difficult time trying to figure out an improved pricing structure before we open our new studio. The problem is that our competition near by has fairly cheap packages but I think they make most of their money off from ridiculously expensive prints. <br>

I dont really want to go that route becuase I think it is kind of corny and "Sears portait studio" like to do that. You think your getting a good deal until they blow you away with print prices.<br>

Do you think that people will realize that they are better off using our services in the long run or do most people just choose based on the session fee?<br>

Also, I know this answer will vary quite a bit but what do you consider a reasonable print price for a 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10?</p>

<p>Cathy, I am not sure what you mean when you say that the links need to be better placed. Can you elaborate? I dont really have a whole lot I can change on that part of my page since it is part of a template.<br>

Also, did you look to see what is included in the package for $600? it isnt much. Anyways, we are evaluating our pricing right now since we are opening a storefront studio in our area. We may raise our prices some.</p>

<p>"Please don't think that people select other photographers because they charge less"<br>

Not true at all. When we looked for a photographer for our wedding, there were people we liked more, but we went with the one we chose because they charged less. You may have a completely different customer base than me. Maybe you have the people that tell you that they found cheaper photographers but they HAD to have you no matter what the price. That doesent mean everony is like that.<br>

I do prefer to show prices on my site. Most of the people I know would close out of a site after seeing you dont list your prices. Its way too much of a pain to call every photographer you potentially like. Same thing with cars. I dont call if there is no price on the car. <br>

But like I said before, my client base is probably completely different from yours. What works for you may not work for me.</p>

<p>I honestly dont think google is near as smart as everyone thinks. People always say not to stuff keywords into your page either. But look at the same persons page as I was describing above. How much more can you stuff Grand Rapids and Photographer in one page? <br>

Doesent look like a penalty to me.</p>

<p>If you search "GRAND RAPIDS PHOTOGRAPHERS" which is my targeted keyword, the top person on the results uses the link farm technique. DeYoung Photography. If you look at some of her backlinks almost all of them are links from "link farms". How is that a penalty?</p>

<p>backlinks</p>

<p>If you search google for "find a photographer near you" you can see several websites that have a page dedicated to photographer links in different states. I have seen a few different lists like this and I was wondering how people are able to join them? Does anyone know? I have e-mailed a few of the people that have it on their pages but I dont get a response. </p>

<p>I am having some trouble with getting the blog to load faster. I tried the WP Super Cache plugin for Wordpress so hopefully that will do something.</p>

<p>Phil, dont worry, our splash slideshow changes almost every month because I get sick of seeing the same pictures all the time.</p>

<p>LOL! oops. It wasnt like that for very long becuase we just changed it from saying Enter Site. Thanks for pointing that out. Kinda Embarrasing.</p>

<p>Mike. What are you saying? Should I change to link words to enter the site. What should I change them too?</p>

<p>Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions and comments. I appreciate the feedback</p>

<p>Geoff, You have a good point with the splash screen but to be honest, I really need it for some SEO since flash doesent do well with search engines. Scroll down on the splash page and you will see my reason.</p>

<p>Do you mean the flash site? I cleared my cache and it only took about 5 seconds to load if not less. <br>

If a person is that impatient I guess I would consider it a good tactic on my part since I dont really want clients that are that impatient anyways.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.marc-photography.net">Marc Photography</a></p>

<p>Sorry. </p>