That is what image design is all about: being inventive in not only what you include in the frame, but how you place it in the frame and what tricks you use to emphasize certain aspects of the subject.

Here are 10 tips for creating more dynamic and interesting photos. If you apply just a few of these to your images, you’ll see immediate improvement in the “wow” factor of your photos.

1. Use selective focus. If you can’t simplify a subject by moving it (or moving yourself), you can toss a background out of focus by using a slightly longer lens and a wide aperture.

2. Play with subject placement. It’s human nature to try to center subjects in the viewfinder (after all, that’s where the focusing indicators are), but break the habit. Place subjects high or low, or radically to the left or right, and you’ll add an element of power and surprise to your pictures.

3. Simplify. If a viewer has to ask what it is you were taking a picture of, you’ve blown the opportunity. Pare down each composition to its bare essentials. Less is always more.

4. Move closer. One quick way to simplify any subject is to move closer to it. We tend to concentrate so hard on what is in the viewfinder that we think it’s larger than it is. As long as you’re not standing on the end of a dock, try taking a step closer even when you think you’re close enough.

5. Use unexpected angles. Because we usually view the world from eye level and straight ahead, that’s how most of us compose pictures. Instead, try to imagine how a cat might see the world looking up at a rose bush instead of down at it. Kneel down on the ground, hop up on a porch or walk around behind a subject and shoot it from behind. The element of surprise is a wickedly powerful design tool.

6. Use a plain background. Busy or chaotic backgrounds confuse the viewer about what you’re trying to shoot. If you’re photographing a subject that you can move, such as a person, find a plain background like a brick wall to simplify the shot. Or circle the subject looking for a more plain backdrop.

7. Vary your formats. Just because your camera was designed in the horizontal doesn’t mean you have to always hold it that way! Turn the camera vertical and try to think as a photojournalist — always looking for the great vertical shot for the cover of the magazine! Many subjects work well in either format, so take the time to shoot both and decide later which works best.

8. Create a sense of depth. Use leading lines (or “linear perspective,” as it’s called) to draw the viewer’s eye into the scene. Roads, lines of trees, telephone wires — anything that pulls the eye deeper into the scene will create a sense of distance and also lure the eye into exploring within the frame

9. Use a frame within a frame. Landscape photographers often use frames within frames to focus attention on a particular part of a scene (using a stone archway to frame a garden, for example), and it’s a very effective technique. But frames can also be used with other subjects, such as portraits—framing a shot of a farmer by shooting out at him from inside his barn, for instance. Frames are also an excellent way to hide distracting surroundings.

10. Create a sense of balance. Most photographic compositions contain a variety of “strong” subjects (dark or large objects, for instance) as well as some “weaker” ones (the sky, open lawns, etc.). Finding a balance between these so that one doesn’t dominate the other is a delicate but important aspect of image design. Try using large areas of light sand, for instance, to balance a large dark rock formation on a beach, or use a large area of sunset sky to balance off the weight of a large sailboat in silhouette.

Telephoto vs. Wide-Angle Lenses

Most people choose a telephoto lens when they want their subject to appear closer to the camera. These same people choose a wide-angle lens so they can “get it all in” the picture, usually a landscape picture.

Professional photographers take a different approach. A pro picks a lens based on what that tool will allow him to do. It is the same for a professional carpenter; he picks a tool to carry out a specific task.

A telephoto lens and a wide-angle lens help us to tell the same story in different ways. The choice of which lens is like a writer choosing which words to use. It depends on what needs to be said.

A telephoto lens not only brings subjects closer to the viewer; it makes objects in the photograph appear closer together than in reality. A wide-angle lens does the opposite. Objects appear farther apart than in reality.

The Power of the Wide-Angle Lens

One of the most creative, powerful uses of a wide-angle lens is when you are especially close to someone. It allows the viewer to see not only the subject, but the subject’s environment as well.

By using our feet and not just our zoom lenses to approach our subjects, we are able to make “environmental” portraits. We can show what they look like, where they are and/or what they are doing. It is now easy for our viewers to relate to our subjects. The photo carries a great deal of information.

I love to show where someone works and what he or she does for a living. When I’m up close, the subject is predominant and not a little speck in the middle of a photo.

I can have the person pause whatever they are doing and just casually look at the camera and, if I time it just right, I can show them at ease with a pleasant expression. Being so close, the photo becomes personal with the viewer because I became personal with the subject. You can’t communicate what you do not experience with the camera.

Why is a wide-angle photo usually better when you are closer to the subject? Because it gives you the feeling of being there.

Dealing with Distortion

There are a couple of problems to be aware of in working with wide-angles very close to a subject.

First, it is difficult to use a wide-angle lens in tight without distortion of people and the surroundings. The wider the lens, the more pronounced this problem. A moderately wide lens like a 28 mm is much easier to use than an extreme wide-angle like a 20 mm or wider. Of course, the wider lenses seem to help with creativity –- when used correctly.

We’ve all seen shots where the walls look as if they are falling forward or backward or the clock on the wall is an oval instead of a circle. This type of distortion, converging lines, can be used for good, but rarely; the general rule is to avoid these distortions. Practice helps.

Keep the subject out of the corners of the picture to avoid bending their head or body out of shape. Keep them out of the center as well, since this creates a negative tension (unless that’s what you want). Using the super wide-angle lenses is a real balancing act. Nothing is cut and dried in creative work and that’s why two photographers can cover the same story and their pictures will be nothing alike.

Too Close for Comfort

Another challenge with up close and personal wide-angle shots has nothing to do with technical issues. Being this close physically to your subject can be awkward for both of you.

To avoid this “in your face” quandary, tell your subjects what you are going to do up front, and get their permission before you move in for the shot. A funny thing happens when you do this — they usually get a little excited, are cooperative and feel like they are a part of the making of the photograph rather than just the subject.

Using a telephoto lens, you can make a great head and shoulders portrait with good perspective, but it can be too selective, too narrow a view, to tell a story about a person. Working close to people with wide-angle lenses tells their story in an intimate and personal way.

You may not be witness to such iconic moments in history, but there’s no reason you can’t use your camera to tell powerful stories. All it takes is a ready camera and an awareness of those interesting vignettes in life that happen around us every day.

All You Need Is Love

I took this photo of the famous “Love” sculpture, for example, while walking in Manhattan one afternoon. As I approached the statue I saw this young couple (on the right) posing for a friend with a camera, then I noticed the homeless person sleeping on the sculpture. It seemed like such a vast contrast in how people were relating to the sculpture: to one it was a romantic venue, to the other, a bed. To the left, businessmen were passing by, seemingly oblivious to the contrast in life experiences happening a few feet away from them.

The whole event happened so quickly that I didn’t even have time to put the camera to my eye; I simply aimed the camera from the hip and fired two quick frames. The photo was later used in my book The Joy of Digital Photography and has gotten a lot of comments from readers. Of course, some people who look at the shot only notice the sculpture, which astounds me! I guess they are like the businessmen: completely jaded to human moments in the city.

Your Audience Awaits

Telling stories with your camera is great fun, and whether or not you are a professional photojournalist, you can share your stories with the world through your own Web site or Flickr photostream. In fact, you have almost as much of a potential audience through photo-sharing sites as Eisenstaedt or Adams did via the front pages of newspapers and magazines in previous generations.

Editors, Publicists, Wedding Couples and More

Here are some examples of different customers and their (often unspoken) needs:

• A newspaper photo editor is looking for photographs that adequately support a story and will, ultimately, help sell more newspapers which, in turn, will boost advertising revenue.
• A bride and groom are looking for a photographer who can capture the essence of their wedding day in a way that is flattering to all those concerned. The photographer is expected to work quickly, discreetly, and to recognize that there is only one chance to get this right. The wedding couple wants photographs that would not look out of place in a society magazine. They also want someone who can get the 95-year-old, grouchy grandmother to actually look like she is enjoying herself.
• A publicist is looking for a photographer who can make the client look good — but without it being too obvious. They want someone who understands what would add value to the perception of their client, someone who does not have to be told to include logos and brand names in as many shots as possible. They want a photographer who will automatically edit out the frowning shots in favor of the happy, smiling pictures.
• A magazine editor is looking for a photographer who has a firm understanding of the magazine’s style, someone who knows what is currently the topic du jour for the area that the magazine covers (travel, food, interior design, whatever), and can suggest and produce compelling stories on time and within budget.
• A corporate communications manager is looking for a photographer who can interact professionally with a company’s executives, for portrait, annual report, or event-related photography. The manager wants someone who doesn’t need a lot of direction to plan and execute a successful shoot — but who can also stay in the background and allow the manager to take all the credit. If you can get the project completed under budget, so much the better.

Different Customers, Different Portfolios

Once you understand your range of potential customers, it’s a good idea to put together a different portfolio for different prospects. Yes, I know this should be a no-brainer, but you might be surprised by how many photographers fail to appreciate this. Even I forget sometimes.

A few years ago, I was contacted by a PR firm on the East Coast to discuss the shooting of a big event at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Negotiations were moving along well, until the PDF portfolio that they downloaded from my Web site was circulated for approval.

I received a concerned call. The CEO of the PR firm was Jewish. The portfolio that they had downloaded included pictures of KKK and Nazi-related events. I was asked if I had any leanings in that direction. It took a carefully worded teleconference to assure them that this work was part of my photojournalism career only, and in no way reflected personal prejudices on my part.

I’ve found that a nice “in” on corporate assignments is a portfolio of celebrities or VIPs that you may have shot in the past. It seems silly, but it really does make a difference to some clients when they can say that the photographer who shot portraits for their company’s annual report is the same photographer who shot Donald Trump or Steve Jobs.

Knowing Your Customer Differentiates You

Over the years I have been contacted by people wanting me to shoot weddings, seminars, marketing events, portraits, magazine features, images for books and many other assignments. In each case, I took the time to understand what was truly important to the prospective customer.

The desire for high-quality photography is a given; otherwise, they would not have called or e-mailed me. But what differentiates me from my competition is the time I spend exploring what else the prospect needs.

Maybe they have too many things to do and not enough time. Perhaps they are short on budget and need someone who can do a great job with less. Or maybe they have taken over from a predecessor in a corporate role who really messed things up, and now the pressure is on them to do a better job.

As the freelance market becomes saturated with former staff photographers, differentiation is a must. Understanding your customers’ unspoken needs can set you apart from the pack.

Non-Essential Costs

The first places that photo agencies and image buyers will cut are so-called non-essential costs. Trade shows, reunions, festivals, awards — all will see a dramatic drop in attendance. Already, National Geographic in the United States and PICTA in Germany have been canceled. Two reasons for this: they will not find sponsors and they will not be able to book enough presence.

More shows will follow. The ones probably hurt most will be photojournalism shows, as on both sides of the market, creators and users, there is no more money. Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan will certainly will see a huge decline in its attendance, especially from U.S. participants, as the cost of attending is rising every year, with no tangible return. Others, like PACA, or even CEPIC, will be greatly impacted for the same reasons.

The only shows that might survive are the ones that get image buyers and sellers together, like Picturehouse. But the attendance might be only local, as everyone else will continue to save on travel costs.

Bean Counters Rule

When times get tough, companies tend to rely on their finance departments for help. Thus, creative management is replaced by bean-counting management. For some unknown reason (also known as the turtle reaction), companies no longer look at what will make them more money, but rather what will save them money.

This will accelerate the adoption of subscription-based licensing, as it makes it easier for everyone to manage and budget. Agencies working only with freelance photographers on a commission basis will try to follow — until they realize it is cost-prohibitive. Which will be too late.

Smart businesses will see this as an opportunity, as failing agencies will hit the market for a bargain price. Some will be great opportunities; other will be rotten fruit. Either way, there will be more consolidation.

All image buyers will rush to budget photography. If you thought microstock did well in 2008, just wait until 2009. No one will care so much about great photography, or at least not enough to matter. Any image with a good price will do the job. Since more freelance photographers will hit the market after being laid off their staff jobs, the supply will not be lacking.

Even the Paparazzi Will Suffer

Even assignment and wedding photography will be hurt. First, because companies will reduce their marketing dollars and not spend them on a professional CEO headshot (especially since the husband of the marketing VP is unemployed and has this cool Canon 5D Mark II he bought before being laid off). Others will be happy to do assignment work for free if they can keep the licensing rights. Ex-newspaper staffers will join the growing ranks of wedding photographers and will depress prices.

There is also the looming SAG strike. The SAG is the Screen Actors Guild, and every single movie star is a member. About 75 percent of SAG’s membership is already out of work, so they couldn’t care less if they went on strike. That would create havoc on the editorial celebrity world, one of the last healthy places for photography.

No more premieres, no more red carpet, no more award shows. Some photo agencies only cover those. It would be a catastrophic blow to them. Others might push their photographers into the street to chase the celebrities, doubling the already overwhelming number of paparazzi in the streets. Besides the fights among them, accidents with celebrities will happen and laws will pass. It is already an oversaturated market, so prices there, as elsewhere, will plummet.

In other words, there are no safe havens. I’m afraid 2009 is not a pretty picture for the photo industry.

1. Generate your own ideas. The best photographers and often the most successful ones generate their own photographic ideas and make them a reality. Don’t wait for the phone to ring. Make your idea a reality. Then, get out there and sell it. As a photojournalist, I generated self-assigned photo stories and then marketed them to publications that were interested in that subject matter.

2. Create your own beat. Photographers today have the opportunity to create their own beats and become known for certain kinds of photography. By focusing on a niche, a photographer can also benefit from a specific revenue stream associated with that niche.

3. Plan it out for the year. Make a plan for 2009. Decide what it is you want to accomplish and how you’re going to accomplish it. A plan is the best way to make sure this time next year your business and your photography is still moving forward.

4. Prioritize financial security. Photography attracts people who prioritize other things in life above money. But to be a professional, you must place a priority on financial security. Whatever kind of photography you do, you can only do it if you have the financial security to do it.

5. Embrace technology. Technological innovation has put professional photographers in a unique position. We are no longer dependent on a second or third party to promote, market or sell our work. Embrace technology and its many platforms (like blogs), and you will be in a better position to survive and flourish.

The Memory Jogger

If you have your subjects turn and look at the camera and say “cheese,” there is a good chance you enjoy making photos mainly for your personal use. You’re what I call a “memory jogger” photographer.

You enjoy creating photo albums so you can revisit these moments in time and record your family history. Earlier in my career, when I managed one-hour photo labs, I saw some incredibly well-done photography that fit into this category. The best photos captured the expressions of family and friends, but were not so tight that you couldn’t see the setting. You could see the people close to the camera with the location in the background easily identifiable.

Abstract Photographers

Another category is the abstract photographer. Abstract photography is like an instrumental composition with no words — and generally, viewers’ responses are wide-ranging. Ansel Adams is one of the most prominent abstract photographers. His photos create a mood and tone rather than deliver a specific message.

Elliott Porter, another giant in the genre of abstract photography, saw beauty in his subjects where a photojournalist might not. When asked (by a photo editor for a news magazine) what he would do if he came upon a stream polluted and covered with oil, Porter said, “I could not help but show the beauty of it regardless of the tragedy.”

In some abstract photographs the subject is recognizable, yet others may be so bizarre there is no subject recognition at all. The common theme for these types of photographers is creating a striking image. A specific message is not the purpose.

Communications Photographers

Then there’s communications photography. The goal is to deliver a precise message. Many techniques used by the abstract photographer are employed, but the message is the thing.

Some communications photographers are conceptual in approach. Their work is thematic. The theme may be as simple as illustrating an intangible — say hot or cold, or “going green.” Their photos communicate an idea.

Another kind of communications photographer is the photojournalist. Life magazine was one of the first places Americans were exposed to photojournalism. These photographers deliver a message, but beyond the message, they are pursuing truth. They want to tell the subject’s story accurately in order to obtain a response from the viewer — to make those seeing the photos take action.

In between the conceptual photographer and the photojournalist are many breeds of photographers who are concerned with capturing a message and having the audience engaged with it. Some photographers can move easily between these approaches. One day they may be covering a news event for a wire service (photojournalism), and the next day shooting an annual report or recruiting guide for a college.

Doing What You Love

What do these different styles have in common? The finest photographers shoot what they love most. This enjoyment usually means they have invested time into their subjects and know them well.

Understanding these classifications can help clients identify the best photographer for their projects. If you have a message you need communicated, you shouldn’t hire a snap-shooter or an abstract photographer, for example. They can fill the “holes” where the pictures are to go, but they won’t necessarily deliver images that express your message to your audience.

I am always eager to see what my students write, particularly at the end of the semester. We cover so many topics—using the camera, Photoshop basics, composition and design, lighting, photographing people, storytelling with pictures, and creating an audio slide show. Which of these proved most rewarding for my students?

The Communicative Power of Photographs

Because I teach in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, the course, called Photovisual Communications, is designed to emphasize the communicative power of photographs. Some of my students became interested in photography in high school by taking a class or working on their school newspaper. For many, however, this is their first formal photography course. So before they can fly, they need to learn how to walk.

We spend a lot of time going over the principles of photography—but I also work with my students one-on-one, as they browse through their take and choose which images to submit for each assignment. Finally, we come back to the principles of photography when we do our critiques. By this time, I hope, most of the students are comfortable enough with the concepts being illustrated by the assignment—different types of perspective or lighting, for example—that they can contribute something useful to the critique. I also hope they see a positive effect on the quality of their photographs.

What My Students Wrote

So, for this column, I’d like to share with you some of the things my students wrote. I’ll begin with a student who, at the beginning of the semester, said he was “horrible” at photography—his goal was “to learn a ton about what makes a great photo.” For his final project, this same student wrote about various things that captured his interest during the semester—lighting, Photoshop, and how to reveal the subject’s personality in a portrait. But he settled on camera position as the most important concept, especially when photographing people.

I am always trying to get my students to understand the difference between “taking” a snapshot and “making” a photograph. Snapshots are generally taken at eye level, producing the same perspective with which most of us view the world on a daily basis. By changing the camera position—worm’s-eye view, bird’s-eye view—a photographer can create visual interest by offering viewers a new perspective on a familiar scene.

My student also correctly pointed out that camera position can also help define the psychological relationship between viewer and subject—is the viewer looking down on a cowering subject, or is the subject towering powerfully over the viewer?

Another student, who had worked on her high-school newspaper, wrote that she loved photography for both its storytelling and artistic aspects. “I’d like to make pictures that not only tell a story, but also tell it in a tasteful and artistic way—while still being journalistic.”

By the end of the semester, this student expanded her focus to include all aspects of photographing people. But she also found a common thread in all people pictures—the importance of lighting. She learned the difference between hard and soft lighting and how to achieve each kind.

Soft lighting, she wrote, is well suited for glamour photography, giving the skin “a smooth, even tone.” Hard lighting, on the other hand, is appropriate for people “with distinct, interesting faces that are best shown with all of their characteristic creases.” With lighting skills under her belt, my student will be ready to photograph anyone from Kate Moss to Clint Eastwood.

Pictures for the Wall

A third student wrote initially about being nervous because she knew so little about photography. So she plunged right in, experimenting with her camera’s settings, changing camera position, and using different light sources. Her goal for the semester was to “walk away from this class with some pictures that I’d be proud to hang on my wall.”

For her final project, this student chose to illustrate some of the design elements of composition mentioned in our required text, “The Joy of Digital Photography,” by Jeff Wignall. Among these are balance, rule of thirds, sense of scale, depth illusion, framing, leading lines, and repetition. Clearly, this student—whatever career path she travels—has nothing to be nervous about when it comes to understanding the principles of good photography.

Now listen to another student discuss her goals for the course: “I am currently a visual communications major and very interested in photojournalism and how pictures make stories come alive.” One of our assignments during the semester is to create a photo essay using only three pictures. The students find this both challenging and rewarding. They need an establishing shot, an action shot, and a concluding shot. No pictures can be wasted—if you have two establishing shots, for example, your essay comes up short. This requires a high level of concept development, planning, and execution.

Here’s that same student at the end of the semester, describing why the photo essay was the most important concept she learned: “I never knew that three simple photographs could tell a story….This assignment was one of the most challenging I have had to shoot. It allowed me to step out of my comfort zone, along with convincing me to try new techniques. This assignment made me realize how important every photograph that we shoot is—because a photograph is powerful and can be used to tell a story.”

Summing It All Up

Finally, I’m going to have one of my students wrap things up by letting her describe her goals for the semester, written way back on Sept. 7, 2008:

I am looking forward to gaining important information about photography and how it is used today. I am very interested to see what job opportunities a photographer has in today’s world and to consider if this would be a profession I would like to look more closely at.

In this class, I want to learn how to use my digital camera, as well as how to use the more complex settings that mine may not have. I want to learn how to take a picture in different lighting, at different times of the day, and indoors or outdoors. I want to learn how to shoot pictures of people, places, and objects. I want to learn how to utilize computer programs such as Photoshop to edit and create photographs.

While my goal for this semester is to achieve a good grade in the course, I mostly hope to become more excited about photography and learn to make, instead of take, pictures.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

When it comes to photography, I have all those things. But I’ve found that pursuing passion is not that easy. You’d think there would be nothing easier in life than doing what you have enthusiasm for, right? After all, photography is what I love! But I’ve come upon two difficult questions I’ve had to answer to truly follow my passion.

What You Like vs. What You Love

The first is a tricky one: Do I really know what my passions are? My gut response is yes, of course I know what I love. But I’ve found that when I actually try to define my passions, it becomes less clear, mostly due to the second question.

The second question is this: Do I know the difference between the things I like and things I love? Sure, I like to take all kinds of pictures. I’ve enjoyed photographing a wide variety of things — weddings, architectural interiors, school portraits, still life, landscapes, events and the list goes on. I like them all. But I’m not passionate about them all.

In recent weeks, I’ve been working to define what I love most about images and making them. This has been a challenge. I ask myself what I love, and what I really love? What am I drawn to for its own sake, without considering what I think its market appeal is?

This is not about finding the kind of work that will make me the most money. Forget what sells best, or what the big-shot photographers are doing. What kind of imagery has the most draw for me?

Becoming Attuned to Your Passions

I’m excited about this process and the focus it’s bringing to my work. Particularly thrilling is the way that, with practice, I’m learning to recognize my own passions more easily. This has brought me the increased confidence to pursue them.

The image below, of model Erika Klaar during the Alaskan spring, has been stuck in my head for several weeks. I haven’t defined why, but I know that it elicits fascination, obsession and preoccupation, also known as passion. I was completely consumed by the creative energy on this shoot, buzzing from the thrill of creating images. That high confirms that I’m doing something I love.

Springtime in Alaska

What Are You Passionate About?

Signs of not following your passion reveal themselves in obvious ways. If you are working on something and it feels like drudgery, or mustering enthusiasm is difficult, or you are only doing the work as a means to an end, you are probably not pursuing something you are passionate about.

When you are passionate about something, the energy and desire to pursue the passion wells up within you; it happens spontaneously, without effort on your part. In other words, it’s easier to follow this thing than it would be to ignore or avoid it.

When you turn away from it, it gnaws at your insides. In the morning, when you are lying comfortably in bed, the desire for it makes you throw the covers off. I don’t have to try to get excited about photography, I just am. I don’t try to muster the enthusiasm to do a photo shoot; instead there seems to be a boundless supply of desire for it.

Being in the Moment

The pursuit of passion is satisfying and rewarding in the present moment; a passion cannot be solely about the future. I think it’s possible to be passionate about reaching a goal, but if you find that the process getting there is not pleasurable, then I think it’s time to reconsider what you’re doing.

The best way I can explain this is a surfing analogy. For about 10 years I’ve had a vague goal of becoming a skilled surfer. But the first wave I caught was just as fun as the wave I caught yesterday, and frankly, if I ever reach this goal of being “skilled,” I don’t expect that I’ll enjoy surfing any more than I did a decade ago. That’s because my passion for surfing is not confined to my goal; my passion is for surfing period. The process, the means toward the goal, is satisfying and rewarding in the present moment.

There is much more that could be said on this topic, but let me end with an example of real passion — kayak surfer Randy Keller. In the image below, Randy is trying to take his frozen hand out of a frozen glove after a surfing session during a winter storm. Notice the ice covering everything, including the one remaining lens in his glasses.

Kayak surfer Randy Keller

Randy’s face tells it all. When a person is following a passion, the endurance and commitment required comes naturally. He’s not suffering through the experience; he loves it. That’s what we should strive for in our photography.

I was looking through the stock agency database of photographs because I wanted a large collection of images to use in an exercise with my mass communication writing students. My goal was to help my students understand the thematic aspect of photographs and their communicative power.

I projected a photograph on the screen at the front of the room and asked my students to write down whatever words that particular image called to mind. We then went around the room and each student said the words he or she had written down. Eventually, these students will enter the fields of advertising or public relations, where they will be called upon to marry images with written text.

Thematic Photographs

In order to select the photographs for this exercise, I searched the stock agency database using these keywords: “danger,” “power,” “romance,” and “security.” I was looking for thematic rather than literal photographs. Students viewing a literal photograph, such as a rose and a heart-shaped box of chocolates, would probably all write down the same word, such as “love.” But students viewing a thematic photograph, such as a man grasping a frayed rope, might write down “fear,” “hope,” “danger,” or any number of similar concepts.

Some of the photographs I showed my students fit the dictionary definition of a cliché. In other words, they were images that relied on familiar and easily interpreted visual cues: a rock-climber dangling from an overhanging cliff (danger); an executive, arms folded, seated behind a large desk (power); a couple holding hands (romance); a penguin chick being sheltered by its parents (security).

Others were more ambiguous and provoked a wider variety of responses—are the two young, beautiful people embracing on the beach in love or in lust? Is the swimmer reaching for the life preserver about to drown or about to be saved? Does a gun indicate danger or protection?

Easy to Read, or More Nuanced?

It would be interesting to see sales figures for some of the photographs I showed my students. On the one hand, you would think that unambiguous, easily readable images would be the most successful. On the other hand, it would seem that a photograph’s chance of selling would increase in proportion to the number of themes or concepts an art director or editor could associate with that particular image—in other words, more ambiguous, more nuanced photographs should sell better than clichés.

Judging from my nonscientific sample of one stock agency’s database of images deemed “commercial,” there is a bewildering blend of clichéd photographs, quirky photo-illustrations, and well-crafted, thoughtful images.

In the ancient past, stock consisted primarily of editorial outtakes. Then, with the advent of agencies such as The Image Bank, stock photographers began to create photographs specifically for higher-end corporate and advertising use. Stock agencies began to produce lavish catalogs, distribute want lists to their photographers, and even help organize shooting sessions for favored contributors.

Industry consolidation reduced the number of viable agencies, and the Web created a vast database of images, many of which are available for little or no cost. If you are a stock photographer today, how do you decide what to shoot? Do you go with the flow and create images similar to the ones you see on stock agency Web sites? Or do you break from the pack and create cutting-edge imagery, knowing that it might not find the right audience?

Newspaper Contest

My next foray into the world of visual clichés came when I helped judge a newspaper-photography contest. My fellow judges were teachers of photography and graphic design. Our goal was to select first-, second-, and third-place winners from dozens of entries in various categories, including spot news, features, and sports.

Whatever our differences in the way we approached the judging, it soon became clear that we shared a common goal: to reward those photographers who demonstrated an ability to make meaningful, communicative photographs from situations that might otherwise have produced a trite or hackneyed images, to use Merriam-Webster’s words. In short, we wanted to avoid clichés like, well, the plague.

Inevitably, this meant we gave a collective thumbs-down to many dramatic, visually appealing photographs—images that might have done well in a more artistically oriented contest. In fact, some of these photographs—if they were available to license as stock images—might outsell the ones we named as winners.

Why? A photograph that is unambiguous and easy to read might be appropriate for one type of use, whereas a more nuanced photograph—or one that provides more useful information to its viewers—might just fit the bill for another type of use. As contest judges, we wanted to use our power (such as it was) to try to influence, in some small way, the types of photographs that get made for—and run in—daily newspapers. In the words of that old cliché, everybody loves a winner.

What’s Wrong with Clichés?

Now I want you to close your eyes and call up some images made by your favorite photographer. See any visual clichés? I’m partial to that long lineage of documentary photographers stretching back to the early days of 35mm candid photography and reaching forward to today’s multimedia photojournalists. Think Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, Mary Ellen Mark, Lauren Greenfield—you get the idea.

These image-makers created—and are creating—a new visual language, as devoid of clichés as possible. That’s what makes their work original, lively, and stimulating to look at. As the literary critic C. L. R. James wrote about Melville’s Moby-Dick, great literature introduces us to characters unlike any the world has ever known. Similarly, great photographers introduce us to images unlike any the world has ever seen.

So what’s wrong with clichés? Let’s go back to Merriam-Webster’s definition, as applied to writing. A cliché represents lazy writing, the easy way out. A cliché is a crutch to lean on when originality fails and you lose the support of your imagination.

The same is true when it comes to image-making. Can’t think of an original way to solve a visual-communication problem? Retrieve a well-worn image from the standard repertoire: the businessperson leaping over a hurdle or dashing through the airport, mobile phone and laptop case in hand; the grieving family at a funeral, shot discreetly with a telephoto lens.

In some cases, these types of images fit the bill—unambiguous, easy to read. But in the long run, a steady diet of clichéd images may encourage image-makers to adopt a “good enough” mentality. Given the importance of visual images in today’s world, we can, and should, do better.

The funny thing is, I also spend a lot of time in the southwest deserts and in Florida — and after shooting in sunshine for a week or two, I start to miss those unexpected changes in the weather, including the raindrops.

Changes in weather not only provide variety to the look of landscapes and outdoor scenes; they instigate shifts in the emotional climate as well, and that is a wonderful thing. While it’s certainly simpler to take good pictures in nice weather, I find that a sudden bank of fog or a passing rainsquall can instantly transform an ordinary scene into an unexpectedly dramatic one.

Sometimes the changes are gradual and you can see them coming — fog creeping into an early morning harbor scene, for example. Other times the changes are so sudden that there’s simply no way you could have prepared mentally for the transformation. That’s when having a mental plan for handling those situations is invaluable.

And while I refer to this in the title as “bad” weather, in reality, I love unusual weather. It’s a very good creative stimulus for taking better photos, especially landscape and travel pictures.

Fog and Mist

It was Carl Sandburg who wrote:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Sandburg (who incidentally was married to famed photographer Edward Steichen’s sister Lilian) was right. Fog does just creep in silently, and it usually fades away just as quickly and mysteriously. While it’s there, however, fog has a wonderful ability to transform common landscapes and scenes into very romantic and evocative photos.

If you’re lucky enough to live near a river or lake or in a hilly area, fog and mist are fairly common occurrences; they occur most frequently when the humidity is high and there is a drop in air temperature. Both fog and mist (mist is really just a less intense form of fog) tend to be quite intense after a cool night, before the sun has risen too high and caused the air to warm.

As the sun rises higher in the sky the moisture evaporates and the fog and mist begin to thin rapidly, so it’s important to shoot as quickly as possible or the atmosphere will literally burn off. On a number of occasions I’ve watched the fog disappear as I try to decide on a composition.

What's a fishing boat photo without a little fog?

Fog is particularly appealing when it’s used with a thematically linked subject, as in the shot shown above. Because we associate harbors and fishing boats with fog and mist, they seem to go naturally together and, in fact, we almost expect to see fog in photos of harbors and fishing boats. Long lenses intensify the look of fog because they compress the fog and the subject, causing detail and colors to soften and melt away in the fog.

Exposing for fog is tricky because the moisture reflects a lot of light, fooling the camera into thinking there is more light than is really there. If you photograph a foggy or misty scene using a matrix meter reading, for example, the scene will undoubtedly be underexposed and the fog will appear as a dark gray, rather than the lilting gentle blue color you want. To bring the tones back to a softer color, use exposure compensation (or bracketing) to add between a stop and one-and-a-half stops of additional light. Because thick fog can sometimes be too blue-looking, I usually set the white balance to “cloudy” in order to warm it up just a touch.

Longer telephoto lenses will magnify the effects of fog, so if you want thicker-looking fog, choose a longer lens. But remember that the more you magnify the lens the more the reflected light will fool your meter, so you may have to add additional compensation as the focal length increases. Also, don’t depend on your LCD screen with fog because images tend to look somewhat brighter on the LCD.

If you want to take fog photos but just can’t seem to catch a foggy day, consider buying an inexpensive “fog” filter for your lens. Fog filters mimic the look of fog and mist by diffusing the entire image and you can buy them in varying degrees of intensity. You probably won’t fool anyone into thinking it’s real fog, but the effect can be attractive nonetheless.

Rainy Days

It’s tempting to stash the camera and head for the nearest café (or stay home and guard the TV) when the rain starts to fall, but like fog and mist, rain also has its pretty side. Rain also has some unique photographic advantages: it saturates colors, puts a glossy surface on subjects like leaves and grass and, at night, drips colorful reflections across rain-soaked streets. Also, like fog and mist, rain adds atmosphere to landscape and travel shots.

This is a good photograph to take from a covered doorway.

You don’t necessarily have to get soaked to get good photos of rain, either. It’s easy to hide out under awning or in a doorway, which is exactly what I did to get the shot above of the umbrella-hidden people watching (of all things) a fountain show at Longwood Gardens during a downpour. Your car also makes a nice dry vantage point from which to shoot (and has the added advantage of letting you listen to music while you work).

Rain really doesn’t create any exposure problems, other than the fact that overcast skies will force you to show at slower shutter speeds or open up the lens (or raise the ISO). Rainy days, like mist and fog, also steal a lot of warmth from scenes, so it’s best to add some back using the cloudy day or open shade white balance. If the rain is falling hard enough, you can also intentionally slow down the shutter speed to turn the rain into long streaks, or you can try and use a faster shutter speed to freeze the raindrops.

The one thing you don’t want to happen on a rainy day is to get your nice digital camera wet. You can protect it completely by carrying it in a zipper bag when you’re not shooting, and then just pulling it out long enough to take the shot. Or you can poke a hole for the lens to stick through and just leave the bag on while you’re shooting.

You can also buy a relatively inexpensive bag-type underwater housing (they’re even available for point-and-shoot cameras) to protect your camera completely (and give you better access to controls). An umbrella, obviously, is a good thing to have as well — especially if you can get someone to hold it for you.

Stormy Skies

Stormy skies are a great by-product of rainy days, and you usually get two opportunities to shoot them — before and after the storm itself. Cloud formations, especially when combined with colorful sunset lighting, often put on transient sky shows that are hard to fathom even when you’re standing there watching them.

Gathering or departing storms can produce dramatic effects at sunrise or sunset.

In fact, I often venture out into storms at sunset time, hoping that it will break up and that the sky will get intense with color and passion, as it did in the beach scene above. I’ve shot as many as 100 pictures in a 15-minute period immediately after a storm because the cloud formations morph and re-invent themselves so quickly that no two shots are alike.

Exposing for clouds is pretty straightforward: I usually take a matrix meter reading directly from the clouds and then use about one stop of minus exposure compensation to darken the clouds even further. A warming filter used over the lens (or added later in Photoshop) will really enhance the “hot” emotional feeling of scenes like this while a blue filter (or even just setting the white balance for tungsten light–which adds blue) will give the shot a distant, cool feeling.

Rainbows

The flip side of a rainy day, if you’re lucky, is a rainbow. Rainbows are such a rare treat that it’s tough not to stop everything to photograph one. One of the keys to getting a good rainbow show is, of course, trying to predict them a few minutes in advance by keeping an eye on the sun position as it breaks out of a dark sky. Rainbows occur directly across from the sun — so if you can see the sun beginning to break through the clouds, turn your back on it and face the darkest area of sky you see.

It’s also great if you can find a pretty or interesting foreground to use beneath your rainbow, but unless you’re a storm chaser, it’s largely a matter of luck. I photographed the rainbow show below in Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park after enduring several hours of nonstop downpour. When the sun unexpectedly broke out, I raced down a trail with a tripod on my shoulder and cameras swinging from my neck looking for a nice rock formation. I climbed about 15 feet up on a boulder to get a clear shot of the rainbow as it grew in the gray sky.

Rainbows are a reward for storm chasing.

There’s only one way to find rainbows and that’s to go storm chasing and hope for the sun to pop out. Usually there’s plenty of light; I shot exposed this scene at 1/250 at f/4.5, on a tripod.

Metering and exposing a rainbow is pretty straightforward, but don’t let especially dark clouds fool your meter into overexposing the scene. Instead, aim your meter (I prefer to use a center-weighted meter) right at the rainbow and then, to saturate the colors even more, bracket a stop or two under that reading.

Rainbows are pretty rare (unless you’re lucky enough to live in Hawaii), so my advice is to shoot them whenever you see them even if they’re not perfect. You can always use a partial rainbow as a background in a homemade greeting card or as a theme icon in a digital scrapbook.

If you own a polarizing filter, keep it handy when you’re out chasing rainbows. By rotating the filter in its mount you can intensify the colors of the rainbow. Be careful, though; rotate it too much and you’ll erase the rainbow! Keep an eye on the viewfinder, of course, and when the colors look their boldest, it’s time to shoot. You can usually saturate the colors even more with a bit of underexposure, either in-camera or later using curves in Photoshop.

Under Section 102 of the Copyright Act, copyright protection “subsists . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression . . . [including] literary works . . . .” Therefore, writings generally are protected by copyright law, just as are photographs.

But under copyright law, ideas are not protected - only the expression of those ideas. See Section 102(b):

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Many contracts contain language for which there are limits in the number of ways the ideas can be expressed to such extent that the expression can be considered to “merge” with the underlying idea. Known as the “merger doctrine,” the law states, in effect, that if there are few ways to say it or do it, then copyright law does not protect the expression of the idea.

A Risky Proposition

To see how this applies to photographs, review Nancy Wolff’s PowerPoint presentation on copyright law, beginning with slide 37, “Idea vs. Expression”. For additional information, review Lewis R. Clayton’s article on the merger doctrine.

In some instances, you may be given an implied or actual license to use a contract, such as those provided in books you purchase or provided at workshops. Check Tad Crawford’s book, Business and Legal Forms for Photographers, for a great source of contracts. Furthermore, reviewing and comparing several contracts may help you understand the different provisions and suggest what protections you need.

In sum, it’s always risky to copy verbatim another’s work and it’s always best to ask your attorney to prepare contracts that fit your specific needs. Your lawyer then can determine what can be copied from other contracts.

Take my advice; get professional help.

The long hours were hard, and the pay was worse than a schoolteacher’s, but the experiences gained by witnessing such a diverse spectrum of life were priceless. Ultimately, though, I just couldn’t handle the quarterly threat of being laid off, and the growing realization that moving up the professional ladder was becoming impossible because those jobs were being eliminated.

When I quit my job in April 2008 at age 31, I was senior to 75 percent of the newsroom. That sounds promising for graduating students, but it was also a sign that retiring from the profession that I loved was about as likely as winning the lottery.

So I left newspapers to work for myself as a wedding photographer, and now many of my former co-workers and friends are envious of my perceived job security in this bad economy. But it wasn’t easy, and while I have no regrets I am still cautious about the future.

Find a Path That Will Work for You Now

I continue to see staffs shrink week by week, and the company I left recently filed for bankruptcy. I continue to hear a lot of college students and recent grads complain on SportsShooter.com and other sites that they can’t get a job or work and are desperate for a solution to the growing problem. They want the future that I wanted, but the present situation has changed so much that they either can’t get started or are afraid to because there is clearly no job security.

The only answer I can offer is to find a path that will work for you now, and remember that nothing is guaranteed and everything can change. Be true to yourself and what you are passionate about and be wary about trusting your future with anyone in the media business.

People often ask me about the choice I made. I tell them that wedding photography is not the answer for every photographer laid off from a newspaper or magazine. It does pay better than a staff job at nearly every newspaper, but the hours are longer and the stress higher than your daily assignment work. There is a lot of work involved that keeps you in front of a computer for more hours than behind your camera. You have to be a good business person, too. And it can get a little lonely sometimes.

In addition, freelancers are starting to see the same cutbacks and shrinking income that staff photographers are seeing, so it’s a little risky to be on your own right now. Frankly, finding a job in a completely different field might be a better choice, while keeping your passion alive by shooting for yourself or as a part-time freelancer. I know some photographers who are putting down their cameras entirely and investing their time in their families or other hobbies.

Blame the economy or the universities for turning out too many students, but the fact remains that there are not enough jobs for everyone — staff or freelance. Photography has always been a competitive field, but now talent no longer seems to be the deciding factor and that is discouraging to everyone. As more and more people work for free, or really cheap, everyone is worried about their jobs while questioning the future of photojournalism as a whole.

Unless you are within a couple years of retirement, you may have a hard time waiting out the changes to come.

Desperation Helps No One

With so many photographers leaving their staff jobs to shoot weddings or go freelance, those markets may become saturated and see similar problems. That is already starting to happen at places like AP and Sports Illustrated, where freelancers who have been working for them for over a decade are beginning to to see the same cutbacks and shrinking incomes that newspaper staffers have been experiencing.

This is not happening as a result of the pool of photographers improving. It is happening because desperate people are willing to accept less pay, and that is hurting everyone.

Newspapers and other media groups are starting to realize they can get a photographer to shoot an assignment for under $200, without mileage or benefits, so they lay off more photographers and hire more freelancers because it saves them money. The quality is usually not as good because the experience level is lower, but more and more companies are willing to accept the trade-off.

I know how tempting it can be when the bills are coming in faster than the checks to take a job for less just to have it, or lower your rates because the economy is struggling, but I encourage you not to take this route. It will only hurt you — and all of us — in the long run.

I do not have the answer on how to save the newspaper business; I wish I did. But if there is one word of advice that I can offer, it would be to remind all of you that if you enter the freelance world you should not sell yourself short and settle for less. If you do, it makes us all worth less.

In large part, all of these people who keep the fabric of our lives together go unnoticed and undocumented. We tend to develop a blind spot to everyday events, but the things people do for a living are often quite interesting visually.

Plus, you never know just how valuable those images might become–particularly to the subjects themselves.

The Tree Cutters

Recently I had a big old maple tree taken down in my backyard. I got so fascinated watching the tree cutters work, I decided to document their amazing skills (and courage–the tree was nearly 90-feet tall). These guys swung around the treetops with a four-foot chain saw like ballerinas on an aerial stage. I probably shot 100 or so images during the several hours they worked.

Once they had the tree down, I went inside, downloaded the images and printed a few of the guy who did most of the cutting. When I gave him the prints, he was pretty shocked. I thought it was because I was able to hand him an 8 x 10-inch print in a matter of minutes.

Connecting a Mother and Son

The story, however, was far more interesting. It turns out he’d never seen a photograph of himself at work and–even more incredibly–his mother back in Central America hadn’t seen a photo of him in the 12 years he’d been living and working here. I was stunned. In all the time he was living here (and living here legally), he’d never had a photo taken of himself to send home.

Of course, I gave him a set of prints to send to his mother and he was overwhelmed and very grateful. Here I was just trying to pass the time and put some more images into my library, and those photos became a connection between a mother and son thousands of miles apart.

Everyone has a story to tell. As a photographer, it’s your job to help them tell it visually.

1. Photojournalism is being killed by celebrity photographers. In fact, photographers who cover the celebrity scene, whether red carpet or street photographer, have the same ratio of good to bad photographers as in news. It takes some of the same skills to cover news and celebrity. Regardless, Time or Newsweek have not increased their celebrity photography coverage. They just have just lessened their news coverage.

2. Editorial photography is dying. What is dying are the daily and weekly print publications. Newspapers, magazines, and old brands. They cannot compete with the speed of news anymore. What is dying is the image that is formatted for a print support with a rectangular format. What is dying is the photography taught in school and colleges today. There is a new medium for editorial photography that has never existed before, that knows no boundaries in size, amount, artifact and pricing (the Internet). What really is dying here is an old mentality.

3. Video will replace stills. Take a look at the volume of video images that came out of the Olympics. Hours and hours of footage. Now, tell me who will sit down and edit film pumped out at 25 frames per seconds to find the right image?

4. Anybody can shoot great images these days. Why would anyone say that when pro photographers have always used the same equipment as amateurs? This is not like dentistry or chemistry where the tools are hard to find, let alone the knowledge. Photography has always been easy to learn and the equipment always available to anyone. The only part that has changed is how much easier it is these days to share. But really good images created by amateurs have always been around. Not as accessible, that is all. It’s not the equipment that matters in great photography, it is the person holding it.

5. If you produce a lot of images, you can make a living with your photography. A rule of thumb more in the stock photography world than in the editorial one. It was true for a while, when it was expensive to distribute images to clients. Today, it is a dangerous thought. Quantity will slowly be replaced by quality as the market will no longer be able to support myriads of photographers hoping to make a living. Image buyers will no longer be capable of keeping up with offers and will start closing doors.

6. A photo editor knows a lot about photography. A photo editor only knows a lot about the photography used in their publication. He or she works, breathes and sleeps in a very confined universe. Their ability to make one publication look great almost never translates into making any and all publications look great. That is why very successful photo editors never leave the publication they work for. They grow into them.

7. Blogs about photography are useful. Besides posting press releases they never read or repeating something they read elsewhere, they actually do not help much. Only a very few escape the narcissistic trip of the popularity contest and give out valuable insight. They are extremely rare. The rest are operated by hit counters.

8. Every successful photographer is a great photo editor. Why do thousands of photographers flock to have their portfolio edited by another photographer? It would vaguely make sense if one would want to be that photographer or replace him/her. Even so, photographers are the worst editors of their own work. But what makes a successful photographer a better editor than a non-photographer? If anything, when they see a great portfolio, wouldn’t they try to dissuade that person from stealing their job?

9. There is still room for a news agency. With AP, AFP, Reuters, Getty, EPA, DPA and other wire services employing some of the best photographers in the world while controlling most of the sales channel, there is no more oxygen. The best one can hope to do is represent a small pool of extremely talented photographers and help them get assignments, but even that is not a given. If they are extremely talented, they really don’t need much help. So what makes all these agencies try to cover events with 1/10 of the resources the others have with medium to mediocre photographers (crumb photographers)? Hope ?

10. Free photography will save the world. There is only one thing that will save photography, if it actually needs saving. It’s photography — great photography.

If your sources of income are drying up, one way to find new work is by expanding your network through membership in professional and community organizations. Having your name on a membership roster can give you access to potential clients.

But to make the organization work for you, you also must work for it.

Volunteer. Become involved. Help the group accomplish its goals. Volunteer to call members to attend meetings. In the process of making these cold calls, you are laying the foundation for a stable career. You are getting to know others and they are getting to know you. Should the time come to call one of these people for a job, it will no longer be a cold call.

Serving on Committees

Serving on committees lets others see your skills and how you work and communicate. Committees provide an opportunity to show what can’t be shown in a resume, portfolio or reference letter.

You are probably considered an expert due to your experience. People want to employ experts. It is a good idea to volunteer to lead seminars and workshops. While this shows your knowledge, it also shows your ability to communicate clearly your ideas to others. It shows you as a person who wants everyone to succeed.

Volunteer with more than one organization. They don’t all need to be within your work area so long as they help you connect to your community. Rotary clubs, the Red Cross, coaching a youth sport team — all of these can help you expand beyond your profession.

Industry leaders are involved in community programs. What better way to get to know leaders than to volunteer alongside them? The number of groups you join is not important. What is important is to be more than just another name on the membership roll.

Communication and Leadership

I have been working with college recruiters and admissions offices for most of my career. Many of the suggestions I’ve listed are what colleges look for when going through applications. They want the best, most well-rounded students to attend their college. It is the same with employers and clients; they want the best, too.

Networking builds communication skills. Volunteering improves skills in service roles and leadership positions.

All this volunteering is not just for the future; it is for right now. The benefits of networking help in current jobs. The foundation of building a network is giving. As we learn to give of our time and talents to those around us, we learn that our greatest rewards are the relationships we develop in the process.

Sure, Google takes hundreds of variables into consideration when building search engine result pages (SERPs). But while a human can look at your photographs and feel the expressed emotions, understand the story you’re telling, and get a sense for what your expertise is, a search engine needs to be told with text.

That’s why, for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, it’s important for your site to combine text-rich content with a solid visual representation of your work.

Adding Text Content to Your Web Site

Chances are, there’s a lot you can say about yourself and your work on your site. For example –

Home Page. Use your home page to convey clearly what your specialty is, your passion for your work, the geographic location where you shoot, and maybe the amazing number of clients for whom you’ve provided quality work. Write three or four paragraphs to place on your home page, including the keywords identifying you with your specialty.

Bio Page. While a one-paragraph bio may work for your profile on Photo.net, it’s not going to fly here. Believe me, I understand that writing your own bio is difficult, but you need a minimum of 350 words (again, incorporating your keywords). You’ll probably show up in search engines when someone searches for your name even with a short bio, but the trick here is for your bio page to tell Google they need to associate your name with your specialty. Oh, and this bio needs to be completely different from any other bio you have on the Web — Google hates duplicate content.

Blog. If you are so inclined, start a blog (not a photoblog, that’s different) where you can write about your specialty, describe techniques you use, talk about recent assignments, or anything else you’d like to write about.

Services Page. Create a page that uses your keywords to describe the services you offer and all the ways your clients can come to enjoy your work. Again, you want enough content to appropriately convey the topic you’re covering. One or two paragraphs is not enough.

History of Your Specialty. Show that you’re more than just a person with a camera; you’re a photographer who maintains a passion for the art form. Host a page on your site with a history of your specialty.

Photographers You Respect. Contrary to popular belief, it is OK to link to other photographers, and it is possible to do so without losing business. Build a page to showcase your five favorite photographers. Talk about why you enjoy their work, how it influences you, and anything else about them you’d like to mention. And link to their sites. (If you’re concerned about losing business, you can always choose photographers who are outside your region or market.)

Placing Keywords in Your Content

Remember that while you’re creating content that’s readable and useful to human visitors, it’s critical that it be noticed by Google.  These pages are designed to be a gateway to your site — helping visitors to find your portfolio and see your work. And that means they must be rich in keywords.

The use of keywords is how search engines determine the terms for which your site should rank. For example, one of your key phrases might be “Houston wedding photographer” or “Boston freelance photojournalist.” There are tools available online to help you research the best keywords for your business.

The thing is, while keyword research is important, it is useless if the keywords aren’t used correctly. From what I’ve seen out there, many photographers would be better off printing out their keyword lists, putting them in an envelope and mailing them to Google rather than continuing with their current practices.

Here are a few pointers for putting your keywords to use in a way that will actually make a difference in your search ranking –

• Keywords should be different for each page of your Web site
• Use no more than two key phrases in your title tag and always write unique titles for each page of your site
• Add keywords next to your name in the header of your bio page (Joe Schmoe – Wedding Photographer)
• Name your images using your keywords
• Place your keywords in the alt tag of your images
• Place keywords in the captions for your images
• Use high-level, relevant keywords to categorize your photos
• Use specific keywords to tag your images
• Try to work keywords into the URL of the page

How well you will rank depends on how many other sites are competing for the same keyword. If you have three sentences of text on a page you want Google to display when someone searches for “wedding photographers,” it’s simply not going to happen without a major off-page (SEO tactics applied outside your Web site) campaign. If you’re looking to rank for a phrase like “amazing wedding photographers in Maryland,” you can probably do so with correct keyword usage and minimal off-page efforts.

Tracking Your Results

Once your site has plenty of text-rich content with appropriately placed keywords, it’s important to track your results so you can continually improve your search position.

It isn’t enough to install a data-collecting feature on your Web pages like Google Analytics; you should be paying attention to what the data tells you, too. The data collected in your analytics package is your key to really understanding what your visitors are looking for and how you can fill the needs they have.

Here are a few key performance indicators you should be listening to, because they are relevant to SEO and how your Web site is doing its job –

Bounce Rate. Depending on the report you’re looking at, this will either be how long visitors stay on a page, or an average of how long they have been on your site. Here’s a secret that some search-engine consultants will deny, and many don’t even know: your bounce rate is an important factor in how long you keep your position in the search engines. If your No. 1 rank drops down to No. 5, look at your bounce rate to see if it’s gone up recently.

Referrers. This is how people are getting to your site. Referrers include search engines, other Web sites, an e-mail with a link to your site, or any other way someone may find you. You can begin to review what Web sites have links to your site and pass on the most traffic, and what search engines you get your visits from.

Region. Pay attention to where your visitors are coming from geographically. If you’re in Texas and the majority of your traffic is coming from Maine, you may want to review how and why you’re attracting so much traffic from that region. You can usually get pretty granular in this report, down to the city. This will also help you gauge any local advertising you do that is intended to push people to your site.

Build text-rich content around your images, place keywords correctly across your site, and learn how to follow up with analytics, and you’re well on your way to a search-optimized photography site.

Regardless of what you’ve heard, it all started with a 14-year old Jack Dorsey (now CEO) who way back when wondered: what if you could create an instant messaging service to easily and quickly share your status with friends and vice versa?

Personally, I created my own profile after reading that NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander was posting updates of its mission on Twitter. Soon after choosing my profile picture and a photo to customize my Twitter background, I discovered there was a whole world of online communication happening—with over 3 million users all sending messages to each other, in 140 characters or less.

Within the Twitter-verse, I’ve found many who identify themselves as pro photographers in their bios. In this blog post, I’ll identify some of the photographer’s I follow on Twitter and how they’re using it to communicate with friends, find new customers, share their brands and grow their businesses.

Geeks & Tech Heads

@GordWeisflock is a marketing and business development manager for the Asia Pacific region in the Kodak Graphic Communications Group. Keep up with Kodak developments with @cornpoppy, who also works at the company’s Rochester headquarters.

@newmediaphoto tweets links to his podcasts and about the ways in which photographers can benefit from social media.

@thomashawk recently tweeted about his pre-order for the Canon 5D Mark II while @susheel_c reps the Beyond Photo Tips blog and recently rendered HD video using Photoshop.

Underwater and travel photographer @JasonDPG feeds his blog posts, links to his portfolio and also updates the Twitter page for the @DivePhotoGuide.

Like many on Twitter, @wmmarc uses Twitpic to share his shots. Podcaster @frederickvan is an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 fan who also tweets reviews about cameras like the newly released Nikon D3x.

Business Uses

@photographyvoter is a Web site that aggregates photography news on the Web and feeds their updates in to Twitter while the business Twitter account of @PhotoHand advertises its photography restoration and retouching services.

@photojojo, in their own words, are “the world’s awesomest photography newsletter!”

Washington, D.C. photojournalist @jaymichael is a Twitter newbie and I bet he’ll have a spot at Obama’s inauguration.

U.K.’s Colours Magazine publisher @zakazmi might just convince you to get into high dynamic range (HDR) photography.

@polaroidgirl links to her Etsy boutique where she sells adorable Polaroid prints and has recently tweeted some sweet holiday discounts.

The unofficial FFFOUND Twitter page @FFFFIND offers feed updates of users’ found, shared and uploaded images -– a great way to discover new work and find inspiration if you’ve got crippling photographer’s block.

Fun Self-Promotion

Music photographer @jorycordy uses Twitter casually and often hangs with fellow lifestyle photographer @FredEgan. Both have recently tweeted about their recent six-day Mammoth Men photographers road trip along with @michaelnorwood –- sounds like it was fun! Half of the husband and wife photography team @imageisfound is also a fellow Mammoth Man.

My friend @missmaro is one of the few women photographers I’ve found on Twitter. She is the in-house photographer at SIRIUS XM Satellite Radio and gets to shoot radio hosts and guests -– everyone from Martha Stewart to Mary J Blige. In her spare time she also shoots freelance for the Village Voice.

@jswright is a photographer who’s not afraid to explore how to use Web technology to display his work. You’ll see him tweet links to the pics on his Tumblr account as well as collages made using VUVOX.

NYC area location scout/manager @rrhobbs constantly tweets the names and Web site links of the photographers he works with.

Photographer @wolf_brigade st