STARTING A PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS | Goodhart Photography, Northern Virginia Loudoun County Senior Portraits

I"ve been approached a few times asking for advice about starting a portrait photography business. So, I decided to blog about it. This outline is based on a brief presentation I gave last November at the northern Virginia NatureVisions Expo. I will eventually fill in all of these details in subsequent posts, but this will get you started.

 1. Set up legally.
      a. Small Business Development Centers in your area are your friend! The Loudoun Small Business
          Development Center has been invaluable to me. They have excellent checklists to help you through
          the process.
      b. Insurance (equipment, liability) -- one photographer was almost sued because a child tripped on a
          photoshoot and cut her lip
      c. Organize for your taxes and fees (sales tax, property tax, income tax, business licenses, home
          occupation permit if you do viewings in your home, etc...) -- get a system set up ASAP so when
          you are busy you'll be on top of things

 2. Keep improving your skills.
      a. Why? Everyone wants to be a photographer -- it's a highly competitive industry -- you have to
          differentiate yourself.
      b. Training seminars
      c. Associations and groups
      d. Competitions

 3. Be prepared to invest!
      a. Camera, lenses
      b. computer, software
      c. A web presence
      d. Marketing
      e. Growing in your area of expertise (props, etc...)
      f. Outsourcing tasks as your business grows

 4. Getting those first clients
      a. Portfolio Building  clients -- give them a killer special off of your rates
      b. network -- groups, photographic opportunities (golf tourneys, etc...)
      c. service projects -- some of my most widely read blog posts were my autism awareness posts
      d. creative marketing

5.  Business Practices
     a.   Legal (tracking receipts and expenses)
     b.  Workflow
     c.  Sales Practices, including pricing
     d.  Packaging and Presentation

 6. Growing
      a. WOM - keep your customers happy
      b. Social Media
      c. Marketing
      d. SEO
      e. Community events

FIREWORKS | Goodhart Photography, Loudoun County Family and Portrait Photographer

My family and I had a wonderful 4th of July and hope you did too! We didn't travel far to see Fireworks - in fact, there was a show just down the street, so armed with my tripod and camera I set off to take some photographs.

A few people have asked me how to photograph fireworks. The main thing to keep in mind is that you will want a slow shutter speed (my exposures were 2-5 seconds) to catch the light trails. And if you have a slow shutter speed, you'll need a tripod or you'll just end up with a blurry mess.

Find a good location with something interesting in the foreground or background. I didn't follow this advice myself, actually, but ideally there would be a pond in the foreground, or monuments or a skyline or something to balance the fireworks in the sky. If you can't find anything interesting, then zoom your lens so that the fireworks fill the frame of your camera.

Set up your tripod and camera. Do not use your flash. Ideally you'd have a wireless trigger for your camera to avoid any camera shake whatsoever. My trigger had dead batteries, so you can manage without a wireless trigger if you are careful to gently squeeze the shutter button rather than decisively press it.

Experiment with your camera. Try longer and slower shutter speeds. Try zooming your lens during an exposure, like I did here:

.

Take lots of photos and have fun!

INTRODUCING THE NEWEST NA'VI| Goodhart Photography, Northern Virginia Family Photographer

That's my daughter above as a Na'vi. She hasn't even seen Avatar, but I did, and I just loved the beautiful imaginary world that the Na'vi inhabited. I think she would, too. Pandora sort of reminded me of that Disney movie without words....Fantasia. I had to google that, my mind couldn't pull it out of my memory!

Anyway, below is the Na'vi image superimposed on the original. Isn't photoshop amazing?



And no, I did not figure out how to do this on my own! There is a tutorial in March 2010 Photoshop User, the official magazine of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.  I highly recommend subscribing to Photoshop User if you are interested in the post-processing end of photography.  It has really helped me improve my abilities!  And it always has fun projects to practice.

So now I must put away my computer and think about getting dinner on the table...

Is a photo ever finished?

I suppose at some point I will be too busy to go back and edit old photographs every time I learn a new photoshop technique or find a new favorite texture! But right now, I always manage to go back and edit a few...these are from a shoot in early July....