Over the last few years Roberto Valenzuela has become a very good friend, but the friendship came out of the respect I have for his refusal to ever compromise on the quality of his images.  He made a statement in the first workshop I ever heard him teach, “Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Only perfect practice [...]

At WPPI’s opening program, Photographer’s Ignite, I met Byron and Wendy Roe. In their Ignite presentation they hit on a topic so timely in today’s market.  It was all about couples working together. Whether intentionally planned or an accident in today’s difficult economy and job market, there are more couples working together in photography today [...]

I don’t remember where Keith Cephus and I first met, which is one of the things I love the most about this industry. Friendships get started while standing in line for a coffee, waiting for a program to start, meeting old friends and being introduced to new ones. We’re an incredibly informal industry, seeing each [...]

Good buddy, Scott Bourne, ran this a little while back on his blog, but it makes such a good point about storytelling and that in turn ties into print competition. Storytelling is more important today than ever, especially with so many of you starting to shoot video and mixed-media. Photographers have always been the ultimate storytellers, but like everything in the [...]

We set the stage with yesterday’s post for some great background on how David Ziser has built his pricing platform and worked on one of the biggest challenges for photographers. Even the seasoned pros often forget how much needs to go into their pricing philosophy.
You should be following David’s posts at Digital Pro Talk. I [...]

It’s one of David Ziser’s best posts and also a very long read. I’ve broken it up into two parts, because it’s such an important topic, establishing your pricing.  
It’s that time of year when two key events start to happen. First, you’re going to be doing your taxes and for most of you it’ll be the first time you [...]

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, one of America’s leading portrait photographers put together a pretty terrific little book called Don Blair’s Guide to Lighting and Posing Body Parts. I wrote the book, but it was exclusively Don Blair’s words and images. 
Tony Corbell, now at Nik Software and Terry Deglau, now retired, [...]

I rarely get into topics about equipment, but this post from good buddy, David Ziser, really hits the topic of which Canon model is best suited for weddings. It might have been written a little while ago, but the points will get you thinking about your own choices. Taking it one step further, it hits on issues [...]

I want to kick this Tuesday off talking about lighting. It’s the number one skill-set challenge, especially for new photographers. It’s also the number two request for workshop topics, right after business/marketing help. How you see the light, control it, even interpret it is one of the greatest ways to put some distance between you and [...]

I’ve been a big fan of David Ziser’s for a lot of years. In fact, most newer photographers aren’t aware that going back to the early 90’s David and Denis Reggie did the Engaged in Excellence Tour, which to this day remains the largest attended workshop series ever presented in wedding photography. It wasn’t unusual [...]