Now more than ever being a professional photographer is more than capturing an image. Technology has changed the way we capture photographs from a photochemical process (film) to a electronic (digital) one. This shift in technology has also caused a shift in responsibility. A commercial photographer has to do much more than just take a picture. He has to become an IT specialist (or hire one) to do everything that today’s clients expect.

We are able to manage our business online, which begins with building our website, how we deliver our images to our customers, the way we manage our clients and business contacts, how we track the performance of our web presence and ads online and where we actually host our website.

Before you read on I do have to make one disclaimer, this post is inspired by Jeana Lee Tahnk‘s mashable post “5 Essential Sites for Professional Photographers” and were her blog gives you the turn key solutions to some of these needs, the sites that I have listed here, require you to do a little more work – be it learning a new software, re- interpreting how a cloud can be used for your business or figuring out how to bounce data through a few services to make it work for you. The upside of this is that you do save money. Here are the sites in no particular order: (more…)

We took the kids to the Everglades for a mini Christmas vacation and were rewarded for braving the mosquitos, by seeing some amazing wildlife. It always surprises me to have such a pristine wilderness two hours outside one of the 10 most densely populated counties in the United States.

A south Florida Osprey flies clutching a Jackfish in Flamingo National Park

Special thanks to Steve from Feather Light photography for shooting this bird of prey and making us aware of this beautiful Osprey.

Everglades National Park is the third largest National Park in the lower 48 states, behind Yellowstone and Death Valley and is home to a large variety of kinds of animals and plant life. We took out a little fishing skif onto the canal to see a variety of birds and crocodiles. We found this little one sleeping on a log taking in the rays of the sun. Once we had returned the boat a much larger one (about 15′ long) came swimming through the waterway.

Baby crocodile sunning itself on a branch.

Even in the 48 hours that we were in the park we had opportunity to see some beautiful animals, like this white tale that was running through the swamp at dwarf cypress as we were leaving the park on Sunday.

A Whitetail deer running through the swamp at Dwarf Cypress Forest.

I am going toward a convergence of design in my website, blog and social media platforms like twitter. I have been working hard on branding my business in the real world over the last two years and now it is time to translate that into my online presence as well (thanks to Bob from Bob Buchanan Design for helping tweak the website version).

www.depuhl.com

blog.depuhl.com

www.twitter.com/photosbydepuhl

Photography by Depuhl is cautiously testing the waters of paid advertising. The first ad began running on December 16th, 2009. Although I have been creating photographs for clients since the late 1980′s, the way of selling yourself as a photographer has drastically changed. You used to have to purchase expensive ads in printed annual professional directories to have your work seen, have an agent that had all the connections – a route that I just could not afford as a beginning photographer. Today I can determine down to the $0.01 how much an ad costs, which search phrase triggers it, when and where it is displayed, …

Screen capture of the first paid ad for photography services

Paid advertising is the logical next step for our online presence. Back in 2007 I made the decision to put a professional website up online. It is created with an awesome photoshop plugin called sitegrinder. This is my first step in a concerted effort to use the web as my primary sales tool for my fashion and product photography.

In 2008 Photography by Depuhl pursues its online network in earnest … (more…)

On December 8th, 2009 Google rolled out a program called “Favorite Place on Google“. The search company has send out the decals free of charge to over 100,000 businesses in the U.S. and I am pleased to announce that Photography by Depuhl has been selected by Google to be one of these selected businesses. According to D’ Technology Weblog, Google picked the businesses, that’ve been most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps

We're a favorite place on Google

Photography by Depuhl has been found in their business listings over 6500 times in the July-September, as per Google’s letter that was included with the Favorite window decal. All of these results have been organic results with no PPC advertising done for the company. Incidentally this has been the best quarter my commercial photography business has ever had, in spite of the economy.

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Just added catching the light blog to:

Blogging Fusion Blog Directory

photoblogs

You know I love this app for my iPhone. It is actually the only app I have paid for – well I did buy the Chicago CTA app this summer to figure out the schedules for their public transportation – but that’s neither here nor there.

I really like onOne Software’s DSLR Camera Remote.

If you are a photographer that shoots tethered using Canon or Nikon, you know that you can control the camera from the computer – depending what software you shoot into. I use Phase One’s (more…)

I have been shooting for a new client today. 100 tulips for their website. Tomorrow we’ll photograph a few more plants. Here is our last shot for the day:

Wow. Now this is awesome. If you want to remotely tether your Nikon or Canon camera to your computer and trigger your camera with your iPhone this is the app for you.

Taking a digital capture with my iPhone

But WAIT there’s more …

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