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Back to Businss by Michael Connors & MorePhotos Staff, Drone Photography, Fall Photos, Family Photo, For Fun!, Photography Portfolio

Top 5 Tips for Organizing Your Digital Photo Archive

organizing your digital photo archiveDo you have a messy digital photo archive that is stressing you out? It is no wonder efficiency, or lack thereof, has an effect on your brain. It does not only contribute to stress. A lack of efficiency and organization also impacts your productivity.

As in every other aspect of your life, it is important to have organizational skills in photo storage. It will help you be more efficient in finding and storing every single photo you take.

If you do not know where to begin, then check out the tips below and organize your archive in a slow but sure manner.

  1. Clean Up Your Digital Photo Archive

The first step in photo organization is removing the clutter. In a photo archive, the clutter consists of duplicate photos, accidental shots, blurred images, test shots, and other unwanted ones. Clean these up first before you sort through them.

  1. Edit Bad Dates

Sometimes, you will get photos that do not have the right dates. This process happens when you have not set up the camera’s date settings. Your photos will get dates from the past or in the future if it does not have automatic update capabilities.

Photos with bad dates will mess up the chronological order of your photos. However, you do not have to worry as computers have a function that lets you adjust the date and time on individual photos or groups.

  1. Create Categories and Put Photos in Folders

Creating folders is the best way to stay organized as it enables you to be able to find a photo when needed. Still, keep in mind that you have to name the folders in a way that makes sense for you.

You may use categories to separate your photos, but keep it simple to make finding photos easier. The categories can be something as straightforward as the year you took the images or other names that you would remember.

  1. Create Sub-Folders

Within those folders, create more sub-folders. If you organized them by year, then you may now use months as sub-categories.

Make sure you use a number at the beginning of the name so that the folders are in chronological order and not alphabetical order. It would look like 1 Jan, 2 Feb, and so on, or even a simple 1, 2, 3 would work well.

However, photos from special events should be separate if possible. In addition to the months, you would also have sub-folders by events, such as a vacation or a birthday party.

You may also categorize your photos in a different way. Want to be able to find all your family photos in one place? Create a sub-folder for it, then another for portrait photography, then another for your photography sessions, and so on.

  1. Back Up to an External HDD or a Cloud Service

Do not forget to back up your photos. Take some time to copy them to an external hard drive or upload them to a cloud service. This process will allow you to take your photos with you without fear of losing them should your computer break down.

Cloud services usually have automated backup services as well so you won’t have to worry about forgetting to regularly backup. However, storage does come at a price.

What’s Next?

The tips above should help any digital photo archive have a bit of organization. For more tips, visit our blog or contact us if you want to take your photography to the next level.

MorePhotos offers online solutions that include professional websites and a powerful e-commerce shopping cart. With our friendly and knowledgeable staff, we can assist you in creating an online presence that will attract traffic to your photography website.

Back to Businss by Michael Connors & MorePhotos Staff

Back to Business Chapter 6 ~ So, I do this for Money?

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A Success Series for Modern Day Photographers

How to Charge for Photography

In last week’s edition, How to Get Repeat Business, we talked about simple but effective was to keep clients once you get them – how to not let them slip away to the often lower priced competition.

We’ve been talking a lot about getting new business lately and of course, if you don’t get new business (and keep it), you won’t have to worry about the financial aspects of your business.  However, I am kind of amazed at the number of “Professional” photographers who simply don’t pay any attention to the “Pro” part of their business, which means you get paid to do this.

You have all gone to seminars, read articles or watched videos that will tell you that you need to charge a fair price for your artistry and work product and that you are worth every penny you charge.  I find that many of you, maybe even most of you are still struggling with this part of the business.  My best advice would be simply and brutally; get over it.  And, not only that, get in the habit of getting a contract for your services and asking for your money up front.  Believe it or not (and don’t believe it at your own peril) this may be the most important thing you can do to help your business go and grow.  Taking these simple (OK, I know for a lot of you it isn’t simple or easy) steps will change the way you look at your business and the way your customers look at you.

Thinking of yourself as a professional will give you the confidence you need to set good prices for your time and work product, the first step in long term success.  Getting paid up front will make it more exciting to go to work for your customers (trust me, it will) and you will give them a better product.  Asking for money up front will make your customers look at you as a professional that deserves to be paid, not someone who works for free and gets paid if they like what you do, which you know happens to you.

There are some tools that can help.  First, we talked before about the value of joining trade associations, and all of these professional organizations have resources that are available to you either free or at a low cost which often include sample contracts – just fill in the blanks.  These contracts have been developed over the years by photographers and lawyers and cover areas of importance in your industry that should be professionally documented.  Using a contract makes it easier to ask for money up front since you’re setting the bar before services are even rendered; you are booking your time out according to the rates you believe you are worth.  These contracts alone are worth the price of the trade association membership fees.

It is critically important that you look at your business as just that, a business.  When you go to your local garage for auto service, there is never any question that you are going to pay for the service.  When you order products from a website, you pay upfront and expect to receive what you ordered.  You are just as much a business as either of these examples and thinking of yourself as a business is the first step to being a successful one.

Drew Warner | MorePhotos Marketing

Back to Businss by Michael Connors & MorePhotos Staff, Sell Photos Online, Shopping Cart

Post images online to gain exposure

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There is no better way for a photographer to gain exposure then when they post images online for customers to view and buy!

It’s an amazing benefit that photographers have over almost every other type of company. The cost to purchase Ad Words to gain website traffic would be more than most photographers make in a year. Why don’t all photographers post images online then? I think there are a couple of factors involved:

1. Photographers are artists not marketers – the same reason a lot of people can’t shoot great photos. (Like Me)

2. Some of today’s great photographers, who have become speakers, tell other photographers not to post images online – (now we are back to listening to artists not marketers). Face to face sales are important, but not all events present a face-to-face opportunity, you have got to do both online and direct sales.

3. Photographers think just posting images on Facebook will be good enough, but it only works well for a day or two until the photos get the buried. Facebook posting does not even come close to having the same impact as posting on a professional looking cart. My suggestion is to use Facebook to make a post with a link to the images in your cart. Facebook is great for a lot of things, but not for a company using it for its only online connection.

Post images online, photographers photo cart4. A lot of photographers base the reason for not posting images online because they do in house presentations (remember, I’m a marketer and I would do the same for most jobs). I think the thing photographers are not grasping is that to stay in business you need to keep marketing 24/7… So after we had done the presentation, when walking my customer to the door, I would say, “By the way I will post your images on my website so you can share them with your family and friends.” What did I just do? Basically it’s like handing my customer a stack of my studio brochures. Even a corporate head shot customer could bring 5 to 10 people to your site that did not know who you were. A wedding could bring in hundreds of visitors – and the advantage is that a friend or family has already hired you – What better referral can you get?

The golden rule in marketing: The more people who know about your service, the better you will do!

If you are one of those people that do not post online – I want to hear the reasons why not.

Or if you are one of those speakers who advises against it – we all need to hear why you recommend this to others!