Assist to Learn the Intangibles

[by Jay Kinghorn]

Congratulations, you’ve just graduated from a prestigious photo school with a spectacular portfolio and you’re ready to change the world. As you start your career as a professional, I strongly encourage you to assist another photographer to learn the ropes of running a profitable photography business.

While assisting, watch and listen to the way your photographer interacts with clients, manages jobs and handles problems. These intangibles are often the difference between a good photographer with a busy, profitable studio and a great photographer with a stellar portfolio but no clients because they don’t understand the “soft skills” necessary for success.

Small Victories and Big Goals

[by Jay Kinghorn]

This summer, I completed my first XTERRA off-road triathlon. It was exhilarating and downright exhausting. Happily, I crossed the finish line muddy, tired and satisfied with my accomplishment.

The key to being able to complete the race was a 12-week, self-paced training program to prepare me physically as well as mentally for the big day. The plan gave me six detailed workouts per week with swim distances, running sprints and biking hills. Each workout was, in itself, a small victory on the way to the larger goal of finishing this tough off-road challenge.

Believe it or not, training for a triathlon and starting business as a professional photographer are not all that much different. They both take a great amount of dedication, drive and staying power. And, just like there were many paths for me to train for my race, the photography business also offers myriad ways to reach your goal. The hard part is sifting through those options and separating the paths that just put food on the table from the paths that actually advance you toward your ultimate business goal.

My best advice to anyone starting out is to first establish, as clearly as possible, your ultimate goal (to become the leading architectural photographer in Miami, to feel comfortable lighting portraits, to have a mastery of Photoshop, for examples), then break the path down into individual, manageable goals. If I had looked at my training plan at one huge plan and not a series of small victories, I may have given up just from the sheer number of hours it would take. Make sure you celebrate the small victories along the way. The momentum created by completing these individual steps will propel you onward toward photography success.

Jay Kinghorn is currently training for a far more grueling and difficult endurance sport than the XTERRA, parenting.

FedEx Days

[by Jay Kinghorn]

In 2005, an Australian software company, Atlassian, began an experiment they called FedEx days Their software developers were given 1-1/2 days to develop something “out of the ordinary” and show it to their colleagues at the end of the session.

Atlassian’s goal was to inspire their developers to break their daily routines, work with unfamiliar technologies and tackle a small project, often with a coworker. These FedEx days, patterned after Google’s 20 percent time for employees, has been widely emulated by other software companies and has repeatedly shown its value to these organizations through expanded skillsets, new collaborations and renewed excitement about projects.

As summer brings a dip in your client work load, consider implementing your own version of FedEx days. Have you been itching to try a new lighting setup, test a new software application or tinker with creating your own iPhone app? Dedicate time to tackling a small project and expanding your skill set at the same time.

I typically take my FedEx days at the end of the day on Fridays. My client work for the week is done and I take 2-3 hours to learn new technologies. I typically leave work on Friday energized and spend much of the weekend brainstorming ways I can incorporate this newly acquired knowledge into my business.

Become a Flash (video) Master

[by Jay Kinghorn]

Despite the recent dustup between Flash Video and HTML 5, the majority of online video today is delivered in the Flash Video (FLV) format.

To get the best video quality at the smallest file size, be sure to check out Robert Reinhardt’s Flash Video Bitrate Calculator. Not only does it help you determine which sizes and settings are optimal for use in your video compression software, but it also allows you to download your settings for use in Sorenson Squeeze and On2Flix software.

Tips to make your Web site iPhone-friendly

[by Jay Kinghorn]

For most photographers, their Web site is their #1 marketing tool. As a result, your Web site should be compatible with as wide an audience as possible. Increasingly, this includes mobile devices like the iPhone, Droid and iPad.

To make sure your Web site is mobile-friendly, follow these few simple rules:
Make it quick. Avoid long animations and optimize images to improve download speed on slower connections.

• Keep it simple. Reduce or eliminate Flash, Java and other technologies that aren’t supported on all mobile phones. HTML and JavaScript is widely supported across desktop and mobile browsers
• Keep it small. Mobile Safari opens pages at a default view of 980 pixels wide. If your site is wider than that, site viewers will have to scroll side to side. Simplify your splash screen to ensure it all fits on the opening screen.
• Keep it separate. Increasingly, companies are creating separate, mobile-friendly versions of their Web sites to accommodate mobile visitors. For some sites, this can be accomplished through the use of JavaScript and CSS, but for more elaborate sites, you may need to create and maintain a duplicate, mobile-friendly copy of your site.

Resources:
- iPhone WebDev: http://www.iphonewebdev.com Forums, FAQ’s and tips for optimizing or developing sites for the iPhone.
- SiteCatalyst NetAverages: Free subscription with purchase of Adobe CreativeSuite CS5, aggregates data from Omniture’s web analytics customers to show trends for desktop and mobile browsers
- iPhone/iPad Simulator: Register for the free iPhone SDK to download the iPhone/iPad simulator application to test your site. (Or, save the 2GB download by asking your friends to test your site for you and send screengrabs.)

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