Articles

Take a look at some of the great free articles on topics such as “Learning to See Light”; “Composition and the Rule of Thirds”; “What is The Inverse Square Law and Why Should You Care?”; “How To Build Your Own Baby Posing Table”; Lighting The High-Key Background” with more articles added every month.

Create Your Own High School Senior Portrait Cash Cow

Does the idea of doing something you love – AND getting paid for it – sound appealing? How about working three to five months a year for a couple hours a day and putting an extra $30,000 to $50,000 in your pocket – cash profit.

In 2010 there were an estimated 3.2 million graduating high school seniors in the United States. That trend is predicted to continue rising and is estimated to be in excess of 3.4 million graduating seniors per year by 2022.

Create Your Own High School Senior Portrait Cash Cow

Leap Frog – It’s Not Just For Kid’s

In Robert Ringer’s book, Winning Through Intimidation, Ringer suggests the hardest part about getting to the top is fighting through the crowd at the bottom; he encourages people to simply “leap frog” over them.

Climbing the invisible ladder

One of the most challenging aspects of running your own show is moving up the corporate ladder – because there isn’t one. If you’ve been a hard working dedicated employee all your life you’ve probably come to respect, or at least accept, the management hierarchy. For most of us our salary and feeling of importance increase as we climb the invisible ladder.

Lighting A White Background

Here we go with some real meat and potatoes – lighting the hi-key portrait. Believe me when I tell you (Oh! Darling by the Beatles) many, many “professional” photographers struggle with this concept. I must admit I don’t always get it right myself – so I blame it on the lights

Just Blast the Background with Light

More is not always better – unless you’re Tim “The Tool-man” Taylor. Like making a cake – if one cup of sugar is good, two is not necessarily better. The same with lighting your white background; more light does not equal a good image.

Photography Money Making Cash Machine

What would you rather do?

A. Turn over a significant portion of the monthly revenue from your fledgling portrait business to a landlord?

B. Fill your bank account with business stabilizing profit and actually earn a living from your portraiture?

Time and again I get emails from members on my website expressing their desire to “open a portrait studio” and I naturally assume their intention is to have an actual “physical” portrait studio. As my sister likes to say, “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt”. I’m here to tell you ladies and gentlemen – you just don’t need one.

See The Light – Naturally

We send out a monthly newsletter to all our studio clients (something we can help you with in your studio if you’d like – check out the Iron Fence marketing section) and I always include a short article on taking better portraits. Not long ago the article I published revolved around tips for better natural light portraits so I thought I’d expand on that idea here.

I’ve purposely not included sample photographs in this article because I want you to go through the exercise detailed below. We learn by doing and while I could have included images to help illustrate what I’m writing about I know it will be more effective and you will remember this lesson better, if you work it through yourself.