Professional Photo Books.com

When you design your portfolio, you include your best photographic work and - assuming that you’ve been published - tear sheets of advertisements and cover shots that have included your best work. The basic gist is that you want to be sure that you’re showing what you’re capable of and what others have seen in your work.

Though tear sheets are a traditional inclusion for your portfolio, there is a way that you can include them in your portfolio without much effort: include digital scans of your tear sheets along with your best photos in a printed photo book.

Printed photo books not only enable you to enhance your portfolio by using some smaller prints, some shots included on angles and a more professional appearance, but they also enable you to show shots from a session along with the tear sheet image - side by side.

In other words, rather than keeping a traditional portfolio with tear sheets at the back, you’ll be able to use a professional quality photo book to share your creativity and your vision for all that you can accomplish.

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When you spend your days slogging through the wetlands, hiking in a rain forest, waiting in the snow for a bear or moose to appear, that one prized shot - the photo that stands out above all of the rest - is what makes it all worthwhile.

The more that you go out, the more of these great shots that you’re going to capture; it would be a shame to leave them all filed away either in boxes or in a folder on your computer hard drive - but not everyone is in a position where they are able to publish all of their best shots, at least not by the more traditional means.

Professional photo books enable wildlife photographers to capture and publish their own best shots - even if the shot of the day while you were looking for moose turns out to be of a bald eagle or your efforts to capture birds in the wetland result in your shooting a bear standing at the edge of the water.

Shots that otherwise may not be printed continue to be worthwhile, even if they aren’t the shots that your publisher hopes that you’ll capture; why keep them back from the rest of the world when pro photo books enable you to self-publish, to share your best work with those who share your passion for the outdoors?

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There’s nothing like getting together with friends to ring in the new year. It’s a chance to look back on where you’ve been and an opportunity to look forward and decide what the year is going to look like.

As a photographer though, these celebrations aren’t just a chance to spend time with family and friends; they are an opportunity to create an event. While you’re still planning the party, why not look ahead to see what you can give back to those who are celebrating with you?

Printed photo books are a great way to do that - after all, it’s not like you won’t attend without having a camera with you.

Why not take photos of your friends - in groups and individually - and take the time to ask everyone how their year was? Then, in a photo book you can create a retrospective. You can capture your best shots, include resolutions and reflections, images of the room and items you associate with the party.

The photo books that you create can then be shared with the other guests for other events - birthday gifts perhaps, a little something in the middle of the year that they can look back on or even a holiday gift for next year. It’s a great way of looking back and looking forward (and putting the camera you brought with you to good use).

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When you chose your digital camera, the idea of getting a point and shoot never even occurred to you because you know that a fully automatic camera wouldn’t suit your needs for digital shooting any more than it would have if you were using film. The manual settings on a digital SLR put you in control: you have a better sense of exposure, metering, focus and, well, even shutter release with the right remote.

But that doesn’t mean that the switch to digital was going to be simple for you - and one of the most common reasons for that is that there’s no time spent in the darkroom. When you shoot digitally, you don’t get to manipulate the chemicals, you don’t control the amount of time that you spend developing a shot and you have less control (at least initially) over the way that color is produced.

Once you become more familiar with digital editing and know that you have the right tools, however, you’ll start to realize that there really isn’t that much missing - except for prints. Professional photo books provide you with the chance that you need to show off just how much you have accomplished.

Professional photo books enable you to compare the original RAW shots to the manipulated images - even multiple manipulations of the same photo. With them, you’ll be able to display contrast, fine focus, macro shots and landscapes the way that you saw them. With printed photo books, digital shooters won’t have to worry that their best work will merely be trapped on a hard drive: they will have a way of sharing their photos with the world.

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It happens to everyone: one day, you look at the same things that you’ve been photographing for years and you notice that something is a little bit different. If you shot landscapes, maybe what you see is that there are different trends emerging - rather than shooting the barns at a farm, you’ve started shooting animals at pasture; if you shoot outdoors in major cities, you’re drawn to different areas - think about the difference between shooting in Times Square and Central Park as an example.

The same changes are also going to happen if you shoot fashion. Maybe instead of shooting catalog shots, you’ve moved on to shooting while models are making their way down the runway. With portraits, you may see that you’re doing more or less shooting outdoors.

These changes are essential: they show your growth as a photographer and reflect the trends that are emerging while you work. What better way to document that process than a printed photo book in which you lay out your shots, displaying those things that have changed as well as elements that have stayed the same?

With printed photo books, you’ll find that you’re able to showcase more than just the changes in your work; you’ll be able to document your increasing ability as a photographer.

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When you took your photographic skills and decided to make your business with your camera, it’s safe to assume that - despite countless people telling you that you did great work - you had some doubts.

Everyone has these questions - questions about whether their work is good enough, whether or not they have the best camera for the job and even questions about whether or not they will be taken seriously.

As a result - whether you’re just getting started or you are looking for a reminder - chances are good that you’ll want to find a way of displaying your best work in a place where you are able to see it. Printed photo books make this possible.

When you gather your work into a printed photo books, you’ll find that you’re able to take a closer look at what you’ve accomplished. You’ll find that you are able to collect your work in a way that makes sense - a few older photos placed on a page alongside newer shots of the same subject - and shows what you’re capable of and how far you’ve come.

That way, when those doubts creep in as they often will, you’ll be able to combat them with tangible proof - proof of why you made the choice to become a photographer in the first place.

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As a wedding photographer, a fashion photographer or even as someone who specializes in portraits, there’s something that you are going to discover: you have competition and, as a result, you need to find a tool that will help you to stand out from your peers.

Think about it for a minute. If all of your competitors offer photos that they’ve taken as prints and on a CD, and then you do something different, something that’s a bit more interesting, who is going to have the advantage?

With professional photo books, you’ll find that you are able to offer something different to your clients - to give them an options that they will not have elsewhere.

More importantly, when you offer professional photo books as an option for your clients, you’ll discover that all of a sudden, more of the shots that you took will capture their interest - though they may not have wanted a print of the shot you took with their “goofy smile,” adding one or more of these shots from a sitting gives the book more character - brings out more of whom they are.

In other words, not only will you find that your clients are using more of the shots that you took, but you’ll also find that you’re able to get a better feel for them, to interact more and establish a rapport that will add life to all of the photos that you take.

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When you walk into your local bookstore and take a look at the photography section, you’re going o find two things. First, there are the primers - books that tell you all about what you can do to enhance your digital photos, books meant to help you learn more about lighting or about f-stops or about photographic techniques (in other words, books that you would look at if you wanted to see what information was out there and why some of the novice camera-junkies in your lift couldn’t realy understand why you use a light tent when you shoot macros). And then you’re going to find the coffee table books.

It’s the coffee table books that are really going to grab your attention - and not just the collections of Ansel Adams black and whites either. You’ll look at those books that collect the fashion photography related to a particular designer. You’ll look at the collections of portraits, of advertising photography and of landscapes that show the photographer really did know the right time and the right place to capture a dream shot.

Coffee table books tend to get us photographers thinking about publication, but we all know that there’s a catch: it’s hard to get published. There’s a secret though - and that secret is that it doesn’t have to be. Self-publishing is always an option and printed photo books that are made with a professional quality and your own attention to detail make creating your own coffee table books a simple and effective way of showing off your best work.

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When you market your photography business with printed photo books, who will you be trying to reach?

You may not immediately have an answer to that question right now, but before you tackle a photo book marketing campaign, it’s a good idea to think about it as it will - in part - dictate the way you layout your photo book.

For example:

• If your goal is to market your portraiture services to your clients, you’ll design your book so that it captures some of the best work that you’ve done with lighting, different backdrops and unique posing.
• If your goal is to book a gallery show, you’ll want to collect the work that’s most likely to fit into a show.
• If your hope is that you’ll encourage sales of your art photography, the book that you design will be more than just a collection of your work, it will be a portfolio and catalog rolled into one.

In other words, before designing a photo book to market your services, it’s a good idea to really look at what you hope to accomplish - who you’re trying to reach and what you want them to do in response.

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Photography isn’t all about the end product. Whether you shoot fashion, kids or landscapes, whether you capture with film or digital, while you put everything that you have into making the best of your shot, it’s not the the thing that drives you.

When photography is in your blood, when it’s your driving motivation, it’s not the end result that drives you: it’s all about your inspiration. What inspires you?

Is it family? Is it your friends? Is it a particular designer or even the process of creating fashion? Is it the first changing leaves in the fall or the first buds of spring?

Whatever your inspiration, you’ll find that it’s a great resource when you’re trying to show clients or customers what you have to offer. Professional photo books are a great way of sharing those things that inspire you and how they affect your art.

Consider the marketing value for fashion photographers - particularly if you want to expand your business - of showing the way that the design process unfolds and why it matters to you. Thing about the ways in which those great photos of family members and friends can show your portrait studio clients the emotion that you can bring out in their photos.

Your inspiration is always going to have a profound affect on your business; why not use that to your advantage?

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