HBCM July 4th, originally uploaded by photographybydepuhl.

Happy birthday America! We had a great weekend of the grid – so to speak with my family – which culminated in a wonderful forth of July celebration with our friends. We had a great time watching the local fireworks from our friends pier, overlooking the canal.

I’ve been looking at local search for a while now, being listed in Google places has helped my business tremendously by being ranked well in a Google organic search results, so much so that my business is a favorite place on Google. (I got the fancy QR code sticker and everything.) In the last few months I have been studying other local search such as foursquare and yelp. I have been asking experts in the photography field about how local search affects photographers online and had an interview with Rosh Sillars, co-author of “The Linked Photographer’s guide” on his podcast the new media photographer. Yesterday I got a call from a very kind and knowledgeable sales rep from Yelp and I had a long phone call with him this morning. I learned a lot about Yelp and thought I’d share it here.

the free business profile on Yelp

Yelp’s business listings let your customers write reviews about your business and also give you a chance to add some basic information about your business, similar to a profile on Google local. It includes your address, contact info, link to your website, map of the business location, room for a special offer, your opening hours, some options for sharing this listing and writing a review and a space for an add of your competitor (more on that later).

Below the fold your business listing continues with your reviews and some more information about your specialities, your businesses history and a brief bio of you the business owner. (more…)

I just had the opportunity to speak with Rosh Sillars, the new media photographer, about my experience with Social Media – especially SEO, local search in my advertising and marketing strategy for my photography business. You can listen to our interview on his New Media Photographer podcast.

We discuss how photographers traditionally market their services and how we market and advertise our photography today. What still works and does not work today. We talk about SEO and how important good Search Engine Optimization is to be found in search. We speak about Yelp, Foursquare and Google places.

One of examples we look at is the location based services of Google, where Photography by Depuhl is a “Favorite place on Google” and how that effects search and why I believe having a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, Google places and other location based services.

I am a commercial photographer. I don’t shoot the portrait session with the 4 wallets and the 5×7. I shoot mostly models, i.E.people that have been hired to represent the company, fashion line or product that we’re shooting. Often there is a crew of art directors, fashion stylists, hair and make-up artists, clients, assistants, product stylists, prepers, caterers, …

However I have been getting more and more requests lately to photograph people for the people themselves, where the person is the hero of the shot and everything else becomes secondary. This genre of photography requires you to take photos of the person that’s being featured. You can’t use a stock shot for this. It needs to be this human being that has to be in front of your lens.

Grammy award winning producer, composer and conductor Julio Reyes.

Take for example this environmental portrait of Julio Reyes, the grammy award winning producer for Mark Anthony. Julio had asked me to photograph a recording session a few months ago and I had a great time documenting 35 musicians laying down a beautiful track for the new album. Mr. Reyes had asked me to photograph him for his media collateral at that point and we got our schedules lined up a few weeks ago to shoot in his sound studio. So what’s the secret ingredient that you always need for a great portrait?

(find out after the jump)

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I wrote a blog post about Capture One acquiring Microsoft’s Expressions Media a few weeks ago about a great offer they were making through the end of June: If you bought Capture One for $129.- they would give you Expression Media (Retail $199.-) for free!

That deal just got better, for one week Phase One is selling Capture One software for half price, so you can get Capture One for $64.50 – but only to June 18th.
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Website grader is a great website that helps you track your website and gives you a good idea on what you need to continue to improve your site. They have a bunch of other (free) grader products, this blog has been graded and has received a

We’re just getting started on yelp, and I will blog about my experiences with this plattform. So far you can read some of my reviews.

Recent reviews by Pascal D.

What's this?

Phase One just announced the acquisition of Expression Media.

Phase One is a company based in Sweden, that creates the worlds greatest high end digital backs and a phenomenal RAW image processing software. In my opinion it is the best digital processor available today. I have use their software for years now and am thrilled at the results.

Expression Media, formerly iView, is one of the best image cataloging systems available. It was bought up by Microsoft a few years ago, but has been sitting around their proverbial shelf – just try to find a page that let’s you download an update to Expressions Media – and you’ll know what I mean. Expression Media however keeps track of your digital collection (photos, videos, files, …) and knows where every file is – be it online = connected to your machine – or offline = detached from your computer. It manages all of your metadata, comments, rating, keywords, … all the things that Capture One did not do.

Find out how to get FREE Expression Media or Capture One software!

If you own either Capture One or Expression Media, Phase One has a special offer that gives you the other software package for free until the end of June. So if you own Capture One, you get Expression Media for free and vice versa.

How do you get the free software? Find out after the bump!
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I create images for a Miami based company, that creates a variety of high end cosmetic products for men and women. The product photography for their packaging needs to be clean, simple and strong. And shot on a black set and a white set (black for the web, white for print).

Take today for example – a new product line launches and they need all 8 products shot on white – and on black. What I would do in the past is shoot on white paper and plexiglass for the white set and then reset up the shots on black plexi with a black background – 8 products x 2 set ups =  16 styled shots.

But I want to show you a trick, in this mini tutorial, on how to set up the shots one time and shoot the white set and the black set within 3 seconds of each other. First of all here are the two shots we’re talking about:

Same product – same set up – 3 sec set change. Find out after the jump how it’s done

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