Resources – APN Photography

Lightroom & Photoshop Collage Template For Bulk Portfolio Printing

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:03:27 +0000

Recently I was thinking of a gift for a friend of mine and I decided I’d make a collage from some of my non-personal photos. The collage turned out to be a 36″ x 24″ poster with one 18″x12″ hero shot. I think for someone who pursues photography purely as a passion and doesn’t have the time to organize his work into a portfolio, this template does the job.

Here’s a preview of what it turned out to be. Related photographs here.

I met several challenges while I was making this collage. Lightroom wouldn’t let me save the collage as a saved print in TIFF format. Another major one was sizing and aligning the images in a grid with the required border. But finally I managed to get it done. And so I thought of sharing it so that you don’t have to go through the same pain.

The one that I had printed was created in Lightroom and then the file was saved and printed to a file. I then sent it to the printing company and voila!

However as far as printing is concerned, I find Photoshop a lot easier to work with. I thus sat and created a Photoshop template also within which you can place your photos with the right profile and all and save for print later, in whichever format you like.

Lightroom Collage Template

Lightroom Print Template (If you are on Windows, just extract and place the file in this folder: %appdata%\Adobe\Lightroom\Print Templates\User Templates)

Photoshop Templates

Though the size of these files seems trivial, be warned. After extracting these will occupy upwards of 600MB. The files are in Adobe RGB profile and set to print a size of 36″ x 24″ at 300dpi.

Guides Only: Just drag and resize photos as required and print or save for print later. You may not want to hit the print button unless you have a printer suitable for such large prints.

Guides with Smart Objects: This allows you to place your photographs as smart objects and the photo-borders are taken care of automatically by the layer effects.

Using the templates should be straightforward. Here’s a little video to get you started.

5 Major Differences — Flickr Vs Picasa & Which One Is Better

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:38:13 +0000

In the digital age, online photo-sharing has become a buzz word. Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Photobucket, etc have facilitated sharing the photographs online. Primarily conceptualized as photo-sharing and organizing services, Flickr and Picasa have emerged as the two most popular platforms for storing, organizing and social sharing as well.

While Flickr is a service powered by Yahoo, Picasa Web Albums is Google’s initiative to encourage usage of online services for storing, sharing and growing online communities, there are a subtle differences and personal choices which make one better than the other.

Be it Flickr or Picasa, both the services are strong and offer scores of features that it becomes difficult to have an inclination towards just one of the two. While Flickr is widely used by the photographers to maintain their photo-streams, Picasa Web Albums on the other hand being a Google service enjoys the benefits of integration of various Google services like Picnik (for editing the photographs) and Blogger for publishing the photographs on the blogs.

Even though the primary purpose of both the services is to facilitate online sharing and organizing, there are some features and USPs of each which render them a distinct identity.

Picasa vs Flickr — Storage

Both the services are good at providing free space for storing the images. While Flickr seems to provide unlimited free storage, Picasa limits the free space to 1 GB.

Flickr: Flickr offers 100 MB free-space on monthly basis, the counter is reset every month; which translates into unlimited free space.
Picasa: Picasa offers 1 GB free-space to the users and uplifts the limit at the rate of $5 per year for 20GB (to 1TB for $256 per year).

Upload Limit

There are certain restrictions to the size of uploads when it comes to using free services offered by Flickr and Picasa.

Flickr: You are restricted to upload the image file not more than 10MB for free version (and the limit of 20MB for pro version) and 2 videos not exceeding 150MB (or 90 sec in length).
Picasa: With limited space, the option to use the space is yours. There is no limit as far as the size of the files is concerned. While it gives the benefit of for photos less than 800×600 pixels and videos less than 15 minutes in duration. They do not count towards your 1GB quota.

Distribution And Licensing Of Images

Flickr facilitates the distribution of images by offering the image at varying resolutions. When you upload the images, Flickr automatically re-sizes your images to thumbnail, small, medium and large and also offers you the facility of licensing the images for commercial use or to be used as creative commons. Picasa on the other hand offers just the original version of image and all the images are licensed as copyrights.

Search Efficacy [Picasa Or Flickr]

Along with sound Flickr search (which enables you to search through tags, sets, groups and photo streams), it is surprising to see that Google Image search indexes the Flickr images while leaving the images uploaded to public web albums created in Picasa Web Albums.

Community Building Features

Picasa makes it easy to share the photographs with family and friends and provides the facility of inviting comments or creating public photo albums to which even your friends can upload the albums. Flickr on the other hand thinks in terms of building the community of people with similar interests and professional instincts at large. Flickr enable the users to create group pools to share the work with the experts. Picasa is very basic and immature from professional point of view but a strong contender for personal and private use.

Flickr OR Picasa — Final Words

Picasa and Flickr both provide the features of efficient online photo-management and sharing application, it is really difficult to rate one service better than the other. Picasa enjoys the benefits of Google services and products like Picasa desktop application, Piknik (online image editor), etc and provides the features for creating slideshows and collages, for which Flickr provides tools and there are other third party tools as well for enabling the same features in Flickr.

BTW, which one do you think is better — Flickr Or Picasa Web Albums?

Learn Photogaphy The Pro Style With “The Productive Photographer”

Shivanand Sharma — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:44:34 +0000

What do you do to improve your photography? Do you prefer joining a photography school or simply follow the pros?

Well, both the styles of honing your skills have their own advantages, but the latter is more practical and result oriented. Professional photographers have a knack to share what they have learned over time by making the mistakes. And you can benefit a lot from their knowledge and experiences.

Michael Zelbel and Drew Gardner are doing the same for you by introducing the video coaching program called “The Productive Photographer“. This video coaching program brings to you the best of two personalities — Michael Zelbel, who has been coaching & teaching photography for a decade now and Drew Gardner, an award-winning UK based photographer.

The Productive Photographer is an amazing opportunity to learn & practice photography at your own pace. This video coaching program consists of 16 lessons, distributed over more than 60 short videos (max. 10 min. duration) where both the photographers have come together to demonstrate the topics from a professional and beginner’s angle alike. Some of the most interesting lessons covered in this video series are:

Developing your personal signature style.
Choosing the appropriate personal projects to hone your skills.
Michael Zelbel’s guide to building a photography portfolio in 20 minutes.
Training your mind to generate creative photo ideas.
And everything that you’d want to know about professional aspect of photography like finding the right clients, etc.

With this video training program in hand, you get lifetime access to the video lessons. You can watch these videos online or you can download them for watching offline. Along with the videos, you also get access to other downloads as well which will help you in practicing the lessons.

You can learn a lot from the personal experiences of both the photographers beautifully summed up in this video training program. Want to learn more about this program — check out “The Productive Photographer” here.

Mega Collection — 136 Lightroom Presets For Portraits

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:32:08 +0000

Here’s a mega collection of Lightroom presets for portraits. If you are looking forward to compile an album of wedding photographs or planning to showcase the family portraits, it is a great idea to add a “WOW” factor to your images with these quick and smart Lightroom presets.

Want to add that vintage look or just the dash of the retro style — these presets will help you achieve the effect you are looking for! Just get your hands on your favorite presets and get ready to impress the viewers with the little pop that these presets add to your image.

75+ Lightroom Presets For Beautiful Lomo Effects Off-camera

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:35:05 +0000

While there is no match to in-camera effects, you can always play around with various effects off-camera for that awesome cinematic and romantic feel to your photographs. Likewise, you can create or use custom presets for replicating the lomo effect off-camera. Here we have a collection of some awesome Lightroom presets to transform flat pictures to stunning lomographs. Beautiful light leaks, romantic hues, oversaturated colors and surprising vignettes will help you in adding dramatic effects to your photographs — for the perfect innocent imaginations of lomography.

Analogue Love
Archived Grain
Dreamcatchers
Bluecan Camera
Color Tints [collection with 4 presets; one for cyans, blues, purples each]
Color Fantasies
Fantasy Wedding
Icecold
Lomo 1 Free Preset [a collection 7 presets for lomo effect]
Lomo Effect [a set of 8 presets]
Miami
Light Leak Punch Grain
Old Retro Look
Frosty Season
Purple Nature
Soft Sun Light
Strong Landscape [a set of 4 presets by Preset Gallery]
Summer Afternoons
Sun Kissed [a deluxe pack of nine presets]
Faux Lomo
Toy Camera [a set of 15 toy-camera effect presets]
Toy Cameras [a set of nine unique toy-camera effect presets]
Vintage Effects [3 presets for the polaroid look]
Vintage Vegas
Warm Fuzzy

Alas, lomo effect is all what you can wish for making the images that pop out. Why not try your hands at lomo cameras for some real cool lomo-effect in-camera. Check out collection of lomo photographs for inspiration and follow up on introduction to lomography for some quick tips to get started with Lomography.

10 More Awesome Android Apps For Photography Enthusiasts

Shivanand Sharma — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:20:16 +0000

Technology has opened up creative solutions for photographers. And with the rise of iPhonography — the trend of making beautiful pictures with your camera phone, we have entered the all new world of taking and making the photographs. As much as it is simple to carry your camera phone around with you as the most handy camera, more are its utilities as photo organizer, viewer, editor, presentation tool and sharing platform. And what makes the camera phone more flexible is the photo-applications like the ones enlisted here and (showcased earlier as well).

With passage of time, there have been new additions in the Android market, the very first thing is the name itself. Google Android Market is now Google Play and here are some of the latest, free, creative and awesome applications for photographers. The best of all being Instagram — fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photographs with friends and family. After making a successful venture in App Store, it is now available as an Android app as well.

Just give it a glance. Here are 10 more free and awesome android apps to have fun clicking the photographs through your camera phone.

BTW, which apps are you using on your android powered camera phone?

E-book Review — The Art Of Boudoir Photography With Speedlights

Shivanand Sharma — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:04:26 +0000

Picking up from the piles of the books on the shelves about photography is quite of a task. Each book stands out distinctly with specific tips, tricks and blend of experiments and experiences of the photographers over the time. Some books make a lasting impresssion on the readers while others engulf the readers into seriously making the most of it. The Art of Boudoir Photography With Speedlights by Michael Zelbel is one such ebook which inspires, encourages and practically involves the photographers into understanding and implementing the finer nuances of boudoir photography all at the same time.
The ebook presents easy to follow step-by-step guide which prepares you to take flattering boudoir / bedroom photographs. Initiating with guidelines on setting up the studio in the bedroom itself, the ebook covers:

Tips for selecting the right apparel,
Practical guide for choosing the appropriate lighting set-up — for creating mood and building the level of intimacy,
A Cheat-sheet of poses that always work and some creative ideas for trying new poses for elegantly presenting the bodyscapes,
An insight into the basic compositional rules like golden ratio and rule of thirds which hold true even when taking the boudoir shots
An ultimate checklist of the don’ts of boudoir photography and
Extra pieces of advice that make up for juicy tips for creating interesting, enigmatic and artistic boudoir photographs.

The unique style of the author, technically and artistically appealing photographs, diagramatic presentation of various lighting set-ups (with practical examples) and most importantly the motivational tone of the ebook welcomes you to try your hands at boudoir photography. In just 75 pages of coverage, the ebook provides much required tips, tricks, suggestions and guidance for starters and makes up for a handy resource for enthusiasts and hobbyist as well.
The ebook offers a combination of unique, unusual and some common tips. But the outstanding feature of the ebook is that it reveals the magic of making beautiful images with minimalistic gear, i.e., instead of encouraging the readers to invest in high-end photography arsenal, it motivates them to make the most of the photo-shoot with handy speedlights; which enable you to turn the bedroom into a perfect boudoir studio (making room for appropriately playing with highlights and shadows to artistically reveal the sensuality of feminine bodyscapes). The ebook features Emily (Michael’s wife) as the model for a realistic presentation of poses and expressions as against the professional models easy to work with for glamor photo shoots.
The author of the ebook, Michael Zelbel is a fashion photographer. He loves to share the photography tips and ideas through his personal blog Smoking Strobes and his flair for sharing the love for photography clearly shows up in the examples, tips and photography ideas presented throughout the book.
Photography books dedicated to boudoir are not easy to come by. Getting experience in this field as a fresher is tough too. This ebook is a great resource for anyone looking for some professional advice on boudoir and a great poses-cheat-sheet that comes with it. Handy and valuable resource: you can grab it from here.

8 Effortless Options For Creating Impressive Photo Collages

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:45:57 +0000

Photography is all about creativity. It is not only restricted to taking and making beautiful photographs but the realm of photography engulfs the presentation aspect as well. Creating photo collages, mosaics, etc come in handy for presenting the photographs in artistic manner. Photo collage is a work of formal art made from an assemblage of different pictures to create a new whole and digital photography has made creating photo collages simply fun! Here are 8 effortless options for creating impressive photo collages.

Photovisi

Photovisi is a free and easy to use online photo collage maker. Creating collages with Photovisi is a child’s play. You just need to follow three simple steps, i.e select the template, add the photos (and choose the background) and download, share or print the collage. The simplified interface of Photovisi offers you the flexibility of arranging, rotating, resizing and cropping the images to arrive at the pre-visualized final result.
Picture2Life

Picture2life is a free to use three-in-one online utility. Along side creating collages it also allows you to manage the gallery, edit the images, create animations and share pictures with family and friends. It’s fairly simple and easy to create collages with Picture2life’s collage generator. Start with selecting the images to be used for creating the collage and move to the advanced level by opting to customize the featured collage. It offers a host of customization features wherein you can set the canvas size, apply the effects and adjustments, choose from cropping and alignment options or opt to create the collage of the selected images right from scratch.
Fotonea

Fotonea is just like Photovisi — simple, easy and fun website to create collages online. Unlike Photovisi and Picture2life, Fotonea is free for upto 6 images only. So, if you are planning to create a collage of more than 6 images, it’s better to look up to other options or get going with Fotonea at the nominal charges of $1 for maximum 20 photos.
Picture Collage Maker

The next in the series is the professional solution which comes as a 15-day free trial software. Picture Collage Maker comes packed with all the bells and whistles of the collage generator — hundreds of templates, backgrounds, masks and cliparts to choose from. Picture Collage Maker is a full-fledged collage making application which offers you the flexibility of creating highly customized collages. The free-trial version is good to play around with the options and settings but you will need to upgrade to the premium version for creating unwatermarked collages which can be readily used in your web-projects or for online sharing.
Shape Collage

Shape collage is the collage maker which comes in three flavors — Shape collage online, free download version and a pro version. Drag the photos, set the options and push create to generate the collage.
Collage It

Collage It is an automatic collage making solution available for Windows and Mac platform. It’s fun creating collages with Collage It, specifically its feature to shuffle the collage helps you in picking up the best composition.
Google Picasa

Google Picasa is an online image editor which provides the feature for creating artistic collages from the image galleries. Experiment with six different collage types in the hands-on collage creation screen and edit and re-edit the draft to come up with the collage that goes well with your theme.
AutoCollage

AutoCollage is the Microsoft’s offering for creating effortless collages. Simply upload the folder of selected images and specify the settings for the application to generate the collage. However, the limitation with this application is that you cannot customize the collage once created (like shuffling, re-arrangement, rotations, cropping, alignment and so on). It is available as 30 day free trial version.

Feel free to add your favorite collage maker to the list.

10 More Inspirational Photography Quotes

Shivanand Sharma — Sat, 28 May 2011 12:10:57 +0000

Few months back we had compiled a list of inspirational photography quotes by the famous photographers and this time we have an awesome collection of the wise sayings focusing more on the photography as an art of visualization. Photography as an art depends on the way you see the world around you and how you capture the shot; either to conceal the secret or to disclose the reality.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

—Elliott Erwitt
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

—Eudora Welty
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

—Ansel Adams
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.

—Diane Arbus
In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

—Alfred Stieglitz
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

—Edward Steichen
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

—Ansel Adams
While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

—Dorothea Lange
Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.

—Matt Hardy
My last word is that it all depends on what you visualize.

—Ansel Adams

Make Money With Photography — 15 Websites For Selling Photos Online

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:10:19 +0000

While maintaining the micro-stocks on stock photography websites is a good option for selling the photographs online, there are scores of other options as well. For instance creating web galleries and portfolio websites or offering the images to be used for crafting amazing photo-gifts (cards, mugs, t-shirts, teddy bears, etc) or perhaps registering with the websites which offer business and marketing tools to professional photographers. These options which weigh more on the fronts of flexibility and freedom of posting / uploading the images unlike the rules, restrictions and rejections of the stock photography websites.

With the emergence of online businesses, a number of companies and websites have emerged over last 5-10 years which offer promotional and marketing tools even for photographers. Here are some of the websites designed especially for helping the photographers boost their sales online.

PhotoBox: PhotoBox is a photo gallery service which along with offering digital photo printing services provides you an opportunity to sell the photographs. Get started with creating the galleries and set the prices for the images. Photobox takes up the responsibility of processing, printing and posting the photographs to your clients.
Instaproofs: Instaproofs helps you in promoting and marketing the photographs. Some of the promotional tools include automated sale and discount notifications, social bookmarking, photo forwarding, exportable visitor lists and a referral commission program which paves way for gaining viewers and potential buyers for your photos. Along with the promotional activities, Instaproofs also engages in presentation and payment process, thus completely relieving you of the hassles involved in marketing your product; the photographs.
ifp3: ifp3 is an excellent tool for showcasing your work in your own style. ifp3 helps you in creating advanced and professional photography (flash) websites with great ease. Choose the template theme, create pages and galleries and set up the shopping cart to sell the products you want. You can experience the ease of creating your own website with the free trial and eventually own a professional website for $20 per month with one year subscription plan.
DigiLabs: Digilabs offers easy studio branded photo solutions for the busy professional photographers. The simplest of applications to get started with DigiLabs is the web gallery. DigiLabs web galleries enables you to create a storefront that showcases your studio brand, reflects your unique style and seamlessly integrates with your web site.
Smugmug: Smugmug offers you a variety of features. Its primary purpose being the photo sharing and digital printing service, it also offers solutions for creating custom websites, provides various sales tools and provisions buying and selling the prints.
PhotoMerchant: Photo Merchant is a complete online solution for professional photographer. Along with designing your own photography websites, it provides you an opportunity to sustain the photography business by providing the features for hosting, selling and delivering the photographs to your customers.
Exposure Manager: Exposure manager offers business tools for photographers. Online proofing, order management, e-mail campaigns, discount promotions, customer service and order-shipping; Exposure manager offers a host of features for boosting the sale of your photographs online as well as offline.
ZenFolio: Zenfolio targets photography from the perspective of providing platform to the photographers and their work. The elegant, customizable presentation and sales solutions offered by Zenfolio make it easy to sell the prints to online audience.
Photo Shelter: Photo Shelter is a good option for creating portfolio websites powered with features for marketing and archiving tools to boost the photo sales. It offers a complete solution to make the business of photography easier to manage. Photo Shelter offers image security, online image delivery, and advanced marketing tools like SEO and social media sharing capabilities so that photographers can focus more on their core-competencies of creating beautiful images.
Imagekind: Image Kind is the subsidiary of Cafepress, the online shop for selling photo-gifts and t-shirts. It is a community of artists which enable you to display your art to a global audience in public, private or locked galleries. Imagekind is dedicated to selling quality framed prints and deals with order processing, customer service packaging and worldwide shipping.
MorePhotos
Picscliq: Picscliq taps in the power of social media as a sales tool. Go social and sell more is thus the mantra of Picscliq. It enables you to design beautiful website interface free of cost and helps you keep track of your sales in real time.
RedBubble: RedBubble assures selling your works hassles-free. The work of the photographers / artists ends with the supply of digital files which are taken care of by the photo-products created by RedBubble.
FotoStudio
1x.com: 1x is an online photo gallery and social network. Even though the primary purpose of the website is to provide exposure to photographers and their works, it does offer features like buy prints which encourages the photo-sales.

How do you sell your photographs online?

10 Awesome Android Apps For Photography Enthusiasts

Shivanand Sharma — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:11:35 +0000

Simple, easy and handy are the three words which best describe the camera phones and with various apps in the Android market, the Android users can further qualify their camera phones to smart (and advanced) camera. Android market offers some outstanding and excellent apps for serious photographers as well. Apart from photo-editing apps and filters & effects, there are apps which help you in experimenting with the tricky rules of photography. Here are 10 handpicked apps for photography enthusiasts, to help them explore the possibilities with the smart camera phones.

Adobe Photoshop Express: Photoshop being an all time favorite and power packed photo-editor makes way for mobile phones with Adobe Photoshop Express. Now you can edit and share photos virtually anywhere by accessing all your photos and videos directly from your free Photoshop.com account.
Picsin Photo Studio: Picsin Photo Studio is an awesome image editor with in-built features for creating public galleries and social sharing.
PicSay- Photo Editor: Besides Photoshop Express, PicSay is a powerful photo editor. PicSay enables you to color-correct your pictures and add word balloons, titles, graphics, and effects like distortion; all in a fun, intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
Camera Illusion: Camera illusion is a camera application that lets you process photos in real-time. It enables you to preview and take amazing pictures by combining filters, effects and masks. You can choose from around 16 filters and 13 effects to give a twist to your photographs.
Camera 360 Ultimate: This nifty app turns your phone into a professional camera. It provides LOMO, HDR, axis shift, draft, ghost, etc. and multiple styles to make photography fun and a serious stuff both at the same time. Tune in the desired style (tilt-shift, color-shift, funny, normal, etc), select your favorite effect and get ready to experience ease pf making good photographs with your camera phone.
Camera Zoom FX: Camera Zoom FX claims to be the most advanced camera for Android. Along with several effects and filters, the app also features the composition guidelines and options for launching picture gallery, making the camera phone a full-fledged pro-camera.
Photo Tools: Photo tools is an amazing application for serious photographers. It provides a host of tools for making calculations to result in the perfect shot. It is an awesome collection of photography tools; field of view calculator, minimal shutter-speed calculator, exposure reciprocation calculator, sunny 16, color temperature chart, grid overlay camera, etc being some of the most useful ones.
PHOforPHO: PHOforPHO is another set of free tools for serious photographers. The app is provides several handy tools which help in improving as a professional photographer. Exposure calculator, DOF calculator, hyperfocal calculator and integration with Catch for notes are some of tools this app offers in its toolkit.
Picasa Tool: Picasa Tool Pro helps you to manage your Picasa web albums with simple yet powerful user interface designed specifically for Android powered smartphone. You can browse, upload and manage your albums, photos with the tool on your phone. Also there are options for Flickr users as well, Flickr Companion being one of the most Flickr client for Android devices.
JustPictures: JustPictures is about browsing and uploading photos from photo sharing sites and local storage. It enables you to browse photos from Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket, Windows Live, Tumblr, Deviant Art, Imgur and your SDCARD through a unified and clean UI.

Which is your favorite photography app?

Photoblog Themes — 11 Exquisite [And Free] WordPress Themes For Photographers

Shivanand Sharma — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 12:15:26 +0000

In the series “Photography Portfolio”, today we present a compilation of beautiful and free WordPress themes (templates) for building photography website. WordPress itself being an efficient tool for building the websites, offer themes to simplify the process of building websites and online portfolios. WordPress requires minimal effort on the part of an individual to design elegant websites. It just requires you to select the theme and get started with posting images and content-sharing; and photoblog themes makes the task much easier when your primary objective is to showcase the images. Here are 11 exquisite WordPress photoblog themes to help you design outstanding portfolio website. [Learn more about designing the photography portfolio site here.]

Sliding Door
Cleanr
Picture Perfect
Monotone
Ocular Professor
Elegant Grunge
Modularity Lite
AutoFocus
Ali Han Neon
WpFolio
Svelt

Also check out the some beautifully designed photographers’ portfolio websites here.

10 Awesome Photographer Portfolio Websites

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:06:24 +0000

Building an online portfolio is crucial for photographers. Along with providing the opportunity to showcase the work, the photographers get acclaimed by large audience which adds to their commercial value as professional photographer. In the first part of the series (Photography Portfolio), we had a chance to discuss the do’s and don’ts of building online portfolio site for photographers. Here are 10 awesome photographer portfolio websites as an inspiration for designing excellent portfolio website to showcase your photographs (without restrictions).

With time, the web designers are working in the positive direction for making the ready-made designs available for the photographers. Here we feature some beautifully designed photo-blog themes as the third part of the series “Photography Portfolio”.

10 Must-Follow Photographers On Twitter

Shivanand Sharma — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:16:32 +0000

Pursuing photography as passion, profession or personal interest requires you to experiment and learn from the experience of others — from professionals and masters of photography. One simple way to learn from photographers is obviously through social media — Twitter; where you can follow your favorite photographers, know about their habits as a photographer and learn cool tips and secrets of photography through tweets. Here are 10 influential photographers to follow on Twitter for grooming the photographer in you.

Jim Goldstein: Jim Goldstein is a professional photographer who specializes in nature photography in form of landscapes. Besides beautiful shots of landscapes, he covers event photography as well. Jim’s photography has been featured in publications worldwide including in the Washington Post, Sierra Club, Outdoor Photographer and many more.
Bruce Percy: Highly influenced by the works of Ansel Adams, Bruse Percy took up photography as an art of getting closer to the land and the cultures that inhabit it. Having worked for American Express and National Geographic Traveler Magazine, Bruce is now inclined towards teaching photography through his own workshops in Scotland.
Scott Bourne: Scott Bourne is a publisher of an online photography blog — Photofocus. Scott is widely acclaimed as wildlife and nature photographer specializing in bird photography. The award-winning photographer started his photographic career in early 1970’s and is immensely interested in teaching photography through lectures and photography books authored by him.
Jeremy Cowart: Jeremy Cowart is famed as celebrity photographer, a portrait photographer who is the perfectionist at making friends with clients and thus make awesome portrait shots. Apart from being a creative person, he is also a social artist and founder of Help Portrait (a worldwide movement of photographers using their time, equipment, and expertise to give back to those less fortunate).
Abigail Harenberg:Abigail Harenberg is a Chicagoland photographer who loves to take the photographs of people for special occasions of their lives. She is widely acclaimed for her works as a wedding photographer, who captures the special moments of life artistically.
The Photographer by Wormwood.
Scott Kelby: Scott Kelby specializes in digital photography training. He is the editor and publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, training director and instructor for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and author of numerous Photoshop training manuals and online courses.
Thomas Hawk: Thomas Hawk is a passionate photographer aiming to publish a library of 1000,000 processed photographs. Thomas is obsessed with photography. His obsession for photography can be justified by the statement made by Thomas, “When I’m not taking or processing the pictures I’m mostly thinking about the pictures.”
Haje Jan Kamps: Haje Jan Kamps is a photographer, writer and journalist. He is best known for running the popular photography blog ” Photocritic” and is currently working as freelance writer and editor for photography books. Haje is immensely interested in anything related to photography and has also compiled articles on photographing capabilities of iPhone.
Rick Sammon: Rick Sammon’s Twitter profile reads Rick Sammon as a photographer, book author, iPhone app author, workshop instructor and Photoshop trainer at Kelbytraining.com, an online training institute for photographers and graphic designers.
Robert Evans: Robert Evans is a professional celebrity and wedding photographer. He has photographer near about 800 weddings and thousands of portraits ranging from children portraits to family portraits.

Which photographers do you follow? Whom would you recommend?

Top 10 Stock Photography Websites To Help You Make Money Online

Shivanand Sharma — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:04:16 +0000

Stock photography websites specialize in maintaining user-generated stock of photos (and illustrations, videos, audio files); to drive the demand-supply chain of stock photos online. And they help you — the photographer — make money (the coolest part). Stock photography is one of the most effective mediums for photographers. They also help you make money online and provide you exposure as a photographer. They make an excellent marketing platform to the photographers too. Check out the article on stock photography tips to learn how to make money with stock photography sites. Here are top 10 stock photography sites you should consider when offering your photographs for the stock sites.

iStockPhoto: iStockPhoto is the choice of millions of people owing to the affordable prices and unexceptional quality of art work offered by the artists. It not only specializes in providing royalty-free photographs and images for various web projects and advertisements, it also offers vector illustrations, music, videos and sound effects to its clients. It provides an excellent platform to the photographers to build their own microstock and turn it into well-established online portfolio. It offers great deals to the clients starting at just $1 (or below).
ShutterStock: ShutterStock claims to be the largest subscription-based stock photo agency in the world. It is an online community of 275,174 photographers, who come up with new and creative ideas which sell best as stock. The website offers thousands of royalty-free photographs, illustrations and vectors under various subscription plans to get started with.
Corbis Images: Corbis Images follow the same pattern as Getty Images. It provides the images for creative as well as editorial purpose under royalty free license and rights-managed license respectively. Corbis offers images and other media files for advertising, marketing and media professionals through a comprehensive selection of photography, illustration, footage and typefaces. The best thing with Corbis is that it offers the searching tips to the clients to make finding the perfect image simple and easy.
Getty Images: Getty images offer the stock of images, music and multimedia files that help the clients communicate the purpose / concept of the brand. This simple to use stock website enables you to get the desired stock in three simple steps — search, license and download; offering the stock of images and multimedia files under royalty-free license and rights-managed license. Getty Images is one of the best stock photography sites which provides creative images for editorial coverage as well.
Dreamstime: Dreamstime is the place where one can easily find high quality images at minimal rates of $0.20 or free. The buying and selling of stock at Dreamstime gains the benefits of powerful photo community build around it. While the buyers and clients can get the images at minimal costs, it is a beneficial source of income for photographers also where the photographers can easily get 30-60% from each sale.
Stock.Xchange: Stock Exchange is one of the leading free stock photography websites. Stock Exchange is now owned by Getty Images but still works on the earlier guidelines of providing the stock images free of cost. Stock Exchange is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to those who need them free of charge.
Freerange Stock: The other option for free stock photos is Free Range Stock, the stock photography website which requires you to just sign up for free for start downloading the images for commercial or personal projects. Freerange is an advertising revenue supported photographic community – photographers get paid when users click on the ads that appear next to their submissions.
Fotolia: Fotolia is a hassles-free stock photography site which offers free images and royalty-free photographs at affordable prices starting at $0.75 per download (prices vary with file size). Fotolia had started with the aim to challenge the traditional closed agency model by offering the opportunity to monetize the talents of hobbyist or professional photographers (irrespective of the size of portfolio).
Big Stock Photo: Big Stock Photo is a subsidiary of ShutterStock which works on the principles of iStockPhoto. It provides platform to the photographers to easily maintain their online portfolio by creating the microstock on Big Stock Photo. Along with royalty free images, it also offers the images under special licenses meant for some specific purposes.
CanStock Photo: CanStock Photo is one of the microstock agencies online which works in favor of photographers. It allows photographers to submit their work (without any charges) and pay them depending on the subscription plan of the clients. CanStock Photos work in collaboration with FotoSearch (the leader in microstock photography), resulting in a better exposure for photographers and other contributors.

Each stock photography site offer the guide (tutorial, graphic design tips and insight into what a client needs) to photographers. These stock photography sites are a great way to start counting on internet as an easy and convenient source of income for photographers. Which one do you use?