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Copyright © 2016 Success Vantage Group Pte Ltd

All rights reserved.

Published by Jenny Lewis.

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Introduction ........................................................................................................... 4

What Makes This Photographer So Successful? ..................................................... 5

Benefits Of Smartphone Photography ................................................................... 8

Can I Make Money With A Camera? .................................................................... 13

The Electronic Commerce World Of Photography ............................................... 14

How One Man Clicked On Success ....................................................................... 17

Converting To Professional Photography ............................................................. 19

Photographic Technique, Part One ...................................................................... 21

Photographic Technique, Part Two ...................................................................... 26

Starting Your Own Home-Based Photography Business ....................................... 30

Expanding Your Photographic Income Potential .................................................. 32

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Introduction

Have you noticed the difference?

Today, we don’t use as many words or plain text anymore - It's emoticons, shared photos,

selfies, and videos!

In the world of Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitter, we link to images, not blog

messages.

The hashtag is central to communication, now.

Cameras are now located in every conceivable place and found in most phones and many

wearable devices. The days of the complicated camera and the professional photographer

being the only source of important images are over.

Today, being a photographer doesn't have to be something that comes with photography

courses and a top-of-the-line camera. Even big companies like Nike and Sony are using

photographers who shoot exclusively with iPhones for their social media platforms.

As long as you are open-minded and willing to see things from different angles, your images

can touch people's hearts and, at the same time, make you some money.

Welcome to Report 6 where we focus on the

variety of ways you can earn money with

photography.

You probably don’t stop to consider the gentle change in recent

years as you grab your smartphone and chat in one of the many

social networks.

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What Makes This Photographer So Successful? Chase Jarvis is a name you may have heard of from his

work with Apple, Starbucks, and Nike.

If not, you are sure to have associated him with the likes

of Pearl Jam. Chase Jarvis is an internationally acclaimed

photographer with photographic trade magazines

declaring him as an icon in the industry. He has been

awarded The Advertising Photographers of America

award, has been bestowed the Prix de la Photographie

de Paris, and accepted The International Photography

Awards.

Still the iPhone application creator of "Best Camera" that

first permitted people to share images through social

networks was not always a photographer.

Believe it or not, Chase Jarvis was a philosopher. He was

working on his dissertation for a doctorate of Philosophy

Arts, a Ph.D. He was also under pressure to attend

medical school, but he realized that the philosophy

schooling helped force him to be honest with the

realities of life… and himself.

When Chase Jarvis decided to drop out of school and take up photography as an income

source, he discovered philosophy opened his eyes to deeper truths in front of him useful for

picture taking.

Thus, philosophy had counseled his thinking to be critical about life and its many contexts,

and art and how culture influences it. Most importantly, philosophy taught him to

understand the foundations of happiness.

When Chase Jarvis abandoned the "cookie cutter" expectations that college brings as a

cultural milestone, as he defined it, he then felt empowered to become an entrepreneur.

Thus, as an entrepreneur, he ventured into photography. His style, as he defines it, is to

push the boundaries of expectation. To be categorized, labeled, or pinned to a specific title

is equivalent to

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culture imprisoning him by their definitions. So, Chase Jarvis seeks to break continually the

mold with cutting edge ideas.

It is with a mindset of following along the Steve Jobs mantra of being different, not just

better, that Chase Jarvis has carved out his theme. With that, he seeks to view each project

with the question that asks how his idea will be wholly different than anything anyone else

can put forth to the task. Chase Jarvis intentionally looks for projects that allow him to

reflect this attribute. He knows to lead with his strength and avoid his weaknesses.

Chase Jarvis realized something then which still holds true now - That producing success is

more effective when one is active than when one is thinking too much about the pros and

cons of the outcome. Risk analysis is fine for the business manager and lawyer, but for the

entrepreneur who is looking at the "big picture", results requires action.

Chase Jarvis invited several musicians for dinner whom he thought had potential. His goal

was to photograph them practicing and performing. Ben Haggerty, one of the musicians

present, was an unknown at the time but soon became the platinum artist, Macklemore.

Amazingly, the photography showed vision because it documented Ben reading the lines

from a few of his works before they were famous.

More recently, Chase Jarvis' efforts are known for giving back to the international

community.

He is trying to teach what he calls a "creative" literacy using art, photography, music,

painting, and the performing arts to resolve the problems of life.

His resource site is CreativeLive, which has a supply of top creative experts in each field.

These experts livestream onto the website for anyone who wants free access to guidance to

craft their photo and videos, skills in design and art, talent enhancements for music and

audio arts, as well as tools for business and money management. While it is usually free, he

does charge for those who download his materials to keep permanently.

Chase Jarvis has a few recommendations for new entrepreneurs seeking to make a business

income from photography:

You should inventory your life’s problems, by assessing what has been

overwhelming you and challenging your ability to cope with life. These are

the stuff of stories. And with photography you tell your stories visually, and

passionately, following that storyline or theme through to the solution that

you want to tell.

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Apply time management usefully. Gobble up wasted time and use it for

starting your new photography business while you continue to work your

regular job. Wasted time is often spent watching television or chatting on

social networking sites through the

evenings and weekends. So, re-dedicate these times to your new

entrepreneurial interest whether it be studying or picture taking:

photography.

Since photography requires other people’s eyeballs to view your craft you

cannot be an island. You must develop skills at making friends who will put

their eyeballs on your photography. And, when eyeballs are on your work

you will then get discovered. Income requires the right people discovering

your craft.

Moving into the future, Chase Jarvis is trying to use live internet video and wearable

technology for his photography. This ensures he maintains his mantra of being different and

better.

To Chase Jarvis, live internet video is the television of today.

And, wearable technology permits most anything to be placed on or in the body to be

photographed, imaged, or otherwise creatively documented.The wearable camera became

internationally popular, recently, when the U.S. President used his waterproof GoPro with

selfie stick (for taking self-portraits and stabilizing the small camera when not worn), to

personally photo-journal his Arctic Circle expedition on climate change in Alaska.

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Benefits Of Smartphone Photography

It is often thought that photography is the purview of the professional photographer. And,

for the rest of us, photography is just an amateur art that is appreciated by friends and

family. Still, with the advent of digital tools that have replaced film photography, the

landscape of photography has changed rapidly.

Today, photographers are those who are in the right place at the right time.

News services pay finder fees for selling exclusive pictures and video that accesses never-

before-seen footage. Information companies know that the public will accept lower quality

photography skills in return for raw footage that depicts images instead of the written

narrative. And, since news sells, it garnishes the advertising draw that keeps the big money

rolling in.

Add to this the fact that we are an international or globalized society, known to be

incessantly curious feeding each other through social networking.

What can be said through pictures replaces 1,000 words.

Emoticons have allowed elementary

communication across language barriers!

Thus, pictures of any shape or imagination

deliver emotional communication across all

languages. This is the beauty of snap

photography. This is the benefit of the

amateur photographer.

And, as we will discuss, later, using the tools

already available on the internet and in your

smartphone you can establish a

moneymaking business… a profession…

snapping up photography!

So, what makes a smartphone so beneficial when a digital camera is so wonderful at taking

terrific pictures?

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First, consider a typical scenario:

You are traveling on vacation in Nepal. You are a mountain climber. It is your first time to

see and attempt to summit, K2, the world’s second highest mountain, but most

treacherous. You have all your gear including a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera for

great pictures. Still, you just arrived and are

having coffee and some food at a local restaurant in town, chatting with local guides about

plans for your assent. Just then, the famous earthquakes begin, and terror is all around you.

You make phone calls to home. You want to photograph what is happening, but your gear is

back in the hotel. What do you do?

You quickly snap up several photographs using your smartphone as you dart through town.

More shots of the terrific images are taken as you escape to the outskirts of town where it is

safer. These photos are then posted online so people can see what has happened, and you

have no idea where your DSLR camera is. Frankly, you don’t care.

Obviously, this scenario is rather graphic, but the point is made.

When it really counts, the smartphone is already in your hand and there to capture the most

important photographs in life. So, get used to using your smartphone for most of your

photography and then back it up with your DSLR when you can for those special shots.

By now, you are probably asking what this DSLR camera is that is so great for those perfect

shots. Most of us already have one. It’s that fancy $100 to $300 or more camera that you

use just for taking pictures.

The digital camera replaced your old photographic film camera of yesteryear (if you can

remember back that far) by using a digital imaging sensor with the optics of a single-lens

reflex camera. Once your photographed images are downloaded into your computer you

use any of several high-powered editing packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop

Elements or Adobe Lightroom to edit the pictures to make great, even perfect pictures that

border on expert level.

Additional features of the DSLR include the HD or High-Density pixel capture for greater

clarity in resolution, which you can use to expand your pictures without losing integrity. The

HD is also available in a video component making your DSLR a wonderful, high-quality movie

camera. The DSLR usually has fancy features like wide angle view, inexhaustibly

interchangeable lenses for that "perfect" image capture, and a live preview television screen

for ready inspection of what is being photographed.

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Another fancy feature of the DSLR is that with the new advent of near field communication

technology, the DSLR camera can quickly link to the internet. Near field communication

(NFC) technology is akin to Bluetooth, but more correctly is the next generation of radio

frequency identification (RFID) that’s used in passports, electronic highway toll collection

readers, and key lock fobs.

Simply touching the DSLR with its internal NFC tag of memory-loaded photographs to the

smartphone (to get it close enough), your smartphone scans the NFC-tagged memory and

links to the internet so your photographs are uploaded. More recent DSLR cameras have

smartphone technology embedded.

Still, lugging a DSLR camera to all the terrific photographic

opportunities as they happen remains a challenge.

The advantage of a DSLR is purely photographic perfection

when you know you are going to be at a scheduled experience

such as a party, touring or traveling picture moment, or major

life event. You know these times well because they are always

preceded by the thoughts, "Let me get out the camera". By then,

99 percent of the great shots have been seen and vanished; all you

had was your smartphone in your hand with its camera.

What, then, are you to do to compensate for the lesser quality images you get from a

smartphone camera? - Return to the basics of the photographic arts and don’t depend as

much on editing and the fancy camera.

These include attending to the composition of your field of view, such as lighting, coloring,

shapes, and line patterns. We will explore these in much greater detail when we review

photographic technique. But, also, it includes using the unique features of the smartphone

to create different photography that comes only with using smartphone technology!

Indeed, your smartphone has many crude features that you capture with your images!

First, the smartphone lacks the finesse to trap light like your DSLR

camera,which enjoys a variable shutter speed sensor and aperture. This

gives you unnaturally blurry images for surreal, abstract results.

Second, you probably notice smartphones are incessantly struggling to

autofocus when DSLR cameras command a clear shot every time. If you

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don’t wait so the autofocus can finish "struggling", you can capture some

parts of your field of view in focus that you did not intend, which creates a

different photographic outcome. With practice, you can produce great

"flawed" shots that draw out images that no computer editing program can

produce!

Third, most cellphones lack the advanced feature of high dynamic range

(HDR), which is a standard benefit of DSLR cameras. You can use this

missing feature to overexpose photographs in highlighting settings. A few

high-end smartphones, however, are equipped with HDR.

It’s good to have a basic idea of what high dynamic range (HDR) is, on the off chance you

have a smartphone equipped with HDR. It’s also good to know HDR so you can use the

handy feature on your DSLR camera that you use for those perfect moments.

Briefly, the concept is to reproduce the photographic image with a more accurate recreation

of what the naked eye is visualizing. All photographs lack the full spectrum of color and

shading hues registered by the naked eye to the brain.

The HDR difference is most appreciated in full spectrum or high sunlight settings, but the

principle applies at all lighting levels. Smartphone images are often bleached by the over

penetration of full-spectrum light. Still, the HDR feature can adapt the hues and render the

photograph accurately. Greater quality in highlights and shadows for a richer, deeper

photograph are the most noticeable differences when the HDR is applied to the camera.

Now that you are convinced that a smartphone is the most beneficial tool in your

photographic arsenal, it is time to consider which smartphone to select. That is unless you

already have one, and you are already pleased with its performance. After all, most people

don’t normally buy a cellphone for its camera, but for other features such as memory

capacity, operating system compatibility with their home computer, and accessory support.

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First, realize you will want a smartphone that has all the features essential

to the type of photography you will most likely encounter. Realize there

are currently options available in smartphones that include panoramic

views, HDR, a few attachable lenses (wide angle and macro), and video

photography in high definition including double and 4X speed to create slow

motion photography. A few smartphones can shoot images in non-

compressible file formats such as .tiff and .dng to ensure greater quality

photographs prior to editing.

Second, look for features in your smartphone that will be critical for

editing and photo quality purposes. These include the gridline feature so

you can align your photograph, manual flash-enabler/disabler, and a photo

timer. You will also want access to your exposure level so you can adjust it.

Resolution and screen size are important to consider as are the megapixels,

image sharpness, contrast, saturation and color to your camera. Image

stabilization to prevent camera movement caused blurriness of images is a

must for low-light photography. No smartphone should be deemed

acceptable unless you can simultaneously lock your focus and exposure

levels while changing the composition of the scenery in your field of vision.

Third, attend to the ancillary features that will make your smartphone

camera experience a useful experience. This includes consideration that

the smartphone has sufficient memory (at least 32 GB). Also to be

considered are a portable battery pack (no smartphone ever lasts long

enough until you get to the next wall outlet!), a screen protector film, a

shock absorbing case and a waterproof case for your smartphone.

Fourth, consider the operating system for your smartphone. You should

align your smartphone with the laptop or desktop computer you normally

interface your regular activities. Then the programs will be compatible.

So, if you have an Apple, then an iPhone would be appropriate. If you use a Microsoft

operating system computer then a Google-developed, Android-based smartphone would be

appropriate.

If you have no allegiance either way, consider the fact that most internet photographic

networking services currently lean in favor of giving better options and higher quality

outcomes to uploads from the iPhones.

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Can I Make Money With A Camera?

The unique benefit of a smartphone is it has both a relatively good camera, and it is linked

to the internet. Also, the smartphone has applications that interact with the internet that

provide editing of photographed images. Other applications on the smartphone network

those images to the international community via social networking. From Report 2, you

learned how to set up and earn money creating a blog. Combining these features makes

income production a reality.

The smartphone editing has many available applications:

VSCO Cam offers both iPhone and Android smartphone users brightness,

contrast, tint, warmth, sharpness, crop and orientation filters for editing

your images.

Grain or fade filters are also available as are tonality in highlighting and

shadows.

If you are an iPhone user, you can access PicTapGo. PicTapGo permits memory of multiple

filters by its members, which speeds the editing process and allows for custom results.

Instagram, a primary photo sharing network, has a photo editing application as well. Once

you upload your photos to Instagram, you have the option of editing directly on their site

before posting to the social networking community.

Image editing includes such features as brightness, contrast,

sharpness, shadows, highlights, and warmth. There are no

color filters available, but Instagram does have filters for

radial and linear blurring.

NoCrop is a Google Play application extension of Instagram. It

advertises that "it's the best way to post entire pics on

Instagram without cropping!"

So, this application takes the uncropped image and builds

borders, so the image and the borders become the square for

social networking on Instagram. This is superior to

Instagram’s automatic cropping feature, which lops all images

uploaded to Instagram into a square aspect ratio.

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The Electronic Commerce

World Of Photography

You have now seen that you can use your smartphone to capture the bulk of life’s action,

and there are applications to edit quickly those images. You have also seen that the

smartphone is linked to the internet where you have access to moneymaking blogs. So, you

must be quite excited now that you have a glimpse of what you can do when the world of

photography enters the electronic commerce world. Let’s take some time to turn that

glimpse into solid knowledge!

Photographs collected on the smartphone have the advantage over DSLR cameras.

This is because, once briefly edited, they can almost instantly be posted to photographic

communities like Pinterest, social networking sites, messaging services, and sent out on

email lists. You simply need to access the internet, check your phone service provider for

data use limits (so you don’t incur extra monthly charges) and share your photographs with

the chosen internet site.

Instagram is certainly not the oldest, but it is the most direct resource for rapidly marketing

smartphone photographs to a large viewing audience.

In fact, the over 300 million users on Instagram include users of all walks that actively

interact in a positive, dynamic hive of photo sharing individuals. This network includes

artists, professional athletes, talent scouts for paying companies, professional

photographers, the United States President, and most importantly many everyday

individuals.

It is on Instagram that many people have been discovered and become

professional photographers earning sizeable incomes. Still, in all its glory,

Instagram does have a few drawbacks.

Just until recently, it crops all its uploaded photographs into a square aspect ratio, which

tends to delete the quality appreciated in usual rectangular images. But the latest update is

that it is now possible to post the picture in its original format, without any cropping! (Good

news for the user!)

Also, its resolution after upload is far less than what you originally photographed. And, if

you have an Android operating system the resolution will be much more compromised than

if you are using an iPhone.

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Instagram’s Terms and Conditions are some of the most restrictive of any of the

photographic social networks on the internet. Instagram declares all of your uploaded

photographs as the property of Instagram to do what it wants. Still, membership is quite

easy and once you download the application

and create your public or private account you upload your photos, apply edits as desired

and then post to the networking community.

If you don’t share your photo, Instagram will not retain the picture on their network. For

that, you may want to consider Pinterest or Flickr.

Instagram rules require posting photos not taken on the same day with a hashtag

(#latergram) or to wait to post them on “Throwback Thursday” (#tbt). Also, you must get

permission from the person who posted a photo to repost it.

Flickr, as stated earlier, is better able to store all photos, including those that are not shared

with the network.

Flickr has been around for over a decade, not just the past five years like

Instagram. So, it is more adaptable to storing photographs from other

sources other than a smartphone. Flickr provides a terabyte of memory

to its members, allows some ownership of photographs loaded, uses the

hashtag system, and facilitates licensing of posted images.

Tumblr is just like your website blog, except it is dedicated to mini-blogging, only.

When you consider Twitter as a super-mini blog at just 140 characters per blog, Tumblr is

that wonderful step up where you can create short blogs with just a few paragraphs. In fact,

over 200 million blogs are registered! Tumblr can also mini-blog photo images and videos,

complete with hashtagging to link your keyword and draw in clientele.

VSCO Grid is another highly respected smartphone photography social network.

It requires that you download the editing application VSCO Cam for both iPhone and

Android cameras discussed earlier to interface with the website. Many professional

photographers maintain accounts here because the editing application is superior to the

other social network competitors.

Snapchat is an extremely rapid photo sharing, social network that opens the member

directly to an active camera for easy network collection of photographs and internet

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collection. Then, the member selects the intended recipients and delivers the photograph

with needed comments and minor editing.

A feature of Snapchat is that once each of the intended recipients has viewed the sent

photograph, Snapchat deletes it from its servers, according to blog clarifications after

litigation with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General for the State of

Maryland (USA).

Thus, if you intend to store your collection on Snapchat immediately shared, you would

want to share simultaneously each photograph with a long-term posting site such as

Pinterest.

As mentioned, Twitter is just 140 characters of content or written words per

mini-blog.

Twitter is now trying to keep its social networking community under one roof

by adding images to its super-short message strings. And, since Twitter

initiated the culture of the hashtag, more viewers (almost 285 million) see

your photographs!

Facebook is not the best resource for displaying and promoting your

photographs and videos.

Quite simply the hashtag system is not as well developed, and the

membership does not use it. So, pictures require paid advertising to get

noticed!

Instead, consider using this the largest pool of viewers (now at almost 1.4 billion users) as a

stepping off point. Use a redirect link from your photo that gets seen by all your friends to

another image pool that displays and advertises your brand most effectively, like Pinterest.

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How One Man Clicked

Chris Osler started his career as a music teacher with a side job playing jazz. He was feeling

blue about his prospects and decided to sit behind a desk for half a decade. But this stability

lost its luster quickly, and he was in search of a something that would best harmonize with

the rhythm of his lifestyle.

For Chris Osler, Instagram was his ticket to creativity and October 2010 was his benchmark

for success.

The results from what Chris Osler realized while experimenting heavily in the Instagram are

seen in the successful photography contracts with Facebook, Cole Haan, Samsung, Nike, and

Evernote.

But, how did Chris achieve such success so rapidly? What was his secret?

Passion.

Indeed, what Chris Osler did next was devote every free moment when he was not working

his desk job to studying the nuances of Instagram and the art of photography. Then, he

explored marketing concepts, design skills, and the science of branding.

To him, the business of photography had potential.

Instagram had just started when he downloaded the application as he responded to

Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey’s then recent tweet that he had just completed beta testing

the great, new program for himself!

What captured Chris Osler's attention were Instagram’s photo-editing and instant posting

features, the former being a direct adaptation of Chase Jarvis’ "Best Camera" cellphone

application marketed earlier.

Chris Osler was pleasantly surprised also to discover that Instagram had a social media

component!

It was this social media aspect to Instagram that drew multiple viewers to Chris Osler's

handiwork the very first day he posted a photograph. With time, he used social media to

build a following of almost 570,000.

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According to Chris Osler, his photography was originally limited to fancier shooting using

digital cameras with DSLR capability. These demanded fancy settings such as f-stop ratios

between the diameter of the aperture in the lens and the focal length of the lens, ISO sensor

speed for light sensitivity, and aperture shutter speed.

When Chris Osler began to use Instagram, he could set aside his DSLR camera and just use

his smartphone for simpler shots. Instead, he dedicated his art to using traditional

photography principles of lighting, composition, mood, and subject. When he mastered

these photography basics, his Instagram following shot through the roof!

Chris Osler notes that with time he has discovered success required expanding his posting

portfolio to more than one platform. So, he opened accounts on Tumblr and VSCO. He notes

there are added benefits for "exposure" on these other platforms, unlike Instagram. Still, it

is Instagram that has the greatest number of available eyes for initial review of most

postings.

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Converting To Professional Photography

As Chris Osler noted, it was when he mastered his skill level in all areas of the photographic

arts that he developed a true following.

Within the dedicated following on Instagram were a few talent scouts for paying clients.

They liked what they saw with Chris Olser and contracted him to perform private work.

So, too can you slowly work your art form, receiving feedback, improving your skill, and

modifying your art until that one magical moment when you cross over… from amateur to

professional.

But, let’s take a moment, now, and explore some of the tactics to get you noticed on the

photographic social networks. It must be gently applied, without undue overkill. Still, with a

little finesse you will attract the correct clients like bees to honey!

Your first step to attracting attention is to share your services with others.

Basic marketing demands that you get your materials on the platter of

social networking. Display it in a manner that brands you uniquely. The trick

to marketing is individuality. Sometimes this means changing your display to

follow a theme that either the proposed client would expect or something

completely disruptive just to remain fresh and exciting.

Your second step is to tune your internet following to look for your work.

This may require mini-blogging on other social networks with links to your

photographic displays in larger libraries such as Pinterest, Instagram,

Tumblr, or Flickr. Your mini-blogs may be carefully placed on social

networks less likely to hold photographic works, but more likely to field

great numbers of social networking groups. Examples include Facebook,

Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Your third step is to invoke the power of the hashtag. The #hashtag is the

most powerful linking mini-blog in social networking history. This small link

is deposited in the mini-blog comment field next to your posted

photographs so you can give the photograph special characteristics for

professional marketing. What are some of these special marketing

characteristics?

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#hashtag’s are linked to the photograph and your profile identification picture. Thus, when

people see the #hashtag in mini-blogs posted on other social media the #hashtag links to

you. More importantly, when you add the #hashtag of your potential clients to your mini-

blog comment section of your photograph, something magical happens!

Each of the clients receives a message linking them to you and your photograph, which

invites them to view your photograph. You get to give high ranking users of Instagram,

Tumblr, Flickr, and VSCO a personal invitation that is politely placed. Yes, they may ignore it,

but then many will look at it.

When your photography skills are truly mastered, you will begin to receive contacts from

some of those you have hashtagged. When they do, they will ask to either repost

(considered social media etiquette) or hopefully license some of your photographic work!

You too can convert your learned traditional photography principles into a profession. To do

this, you need to learn the basics of the photographic technique.

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Photographic Technique, Part One

As described earlier, perform the bulk of your photographic work using your smartphone

and not your wonderful camera with its exotic features. Yes, when you have the time to

heave the thing to your special events, pull it out, and adjust it to the fancy settings, you can

capture those few perfect moments.

The rest of life happens on the spur of the moment and must be captured with what is

already in your hand, your smartphone. For these more realistic events, you need to apply

certain photographic techniques, which compensates for the low quality of the smartphone

camera.

The photographic technique involves not the fancy features of high dynamic range and

computer editing from Adobe Photoshop. Instead, it

is an art form dedicated to focusing attention on

what is in or available to the photographic scenery.

In short, photographic technique is all about

composition.

Composition elicits emotion from the viewer of your

photography, forcing them to think about what they

are seeing.

Photograph a toaster plugged into a kitchen outlet

and you have a boring shot. Photograph a toaster

with the plug suspended in the air just short of

entering the outlet and you have the emotion of

suspense, anticipation, and incompleteness.

The elements of composition are equivalent to a painter’s paints blended and prepared to

apply to the canvas. These are your lines, shapes, color and lighting.

What do lines have to do with drawing out a great photograph?

Lines make all the difference between presenting boring architecture, nauseous food,

exciting travel, energetic animals, and sellable products. Lines can produce income,

presented properly.

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Recall that your smartphone will produce a basic photograph. It’s nothing fancy. It’s mostly

point and shoot photography.

The difference is your knowing what to point at and how to shoot it!

So, you must know what should be in your viewfinder to make that shot stand out and have

excitement, emotion, and thoughtful presentation. It must have a useful application of all

the lines in view.

So it is with lines. Buildings are mostly straight lines. Roads, highways, runways, windows,

sidewalks, most furniture, computer and television frames… they are all built with straight

lines. Even in the military, the troops pride themselves on dressing shirts and pants and

belts to a straight line… and then forming up to march in… you guessed it! A straight line.

So, straight lines in photography are important. And the human eye naturally looks for

things to be straight. That’s why you want your smartphone to have the grid feature to align

your picture to have straight lines!

But, with all that straight line dedication there is a cost. That cost is ritual, regularity, and

routine.

Lines, especially straight lines are what the human eye is naturally expecting, and

emotionally they are interpreted as static.

Say you introduce a diagonal aspect to your image.

Try the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. Why do so

many people marvel and love the beauty of seeing

it in family member photographs?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a huge diagonal line!

It creates dynamic emotion. Composition becomes

emotional when the line is shifted from right angles

or off the straight up and down or right and left to

the diagonal.

So, pictures of mountains become more magical not

because they have straight trees, but because they

have diagonal slopes! Remember to introduce a

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diagonal line in your image to instill emotion and you will convert your boring shots to

dynamic photographs.

If you want to play with the whole "line" thing further, place the subject of your picture

between diagonal lines such as railings at the end of a staircase.

Now, you have a dynamic effect that pulls the viewer’s eyes, emotionally to your intended

item of focus. Take the lines and make them wavy, instead of straight, and the dynamics

multiply. Curves in the road, winding pathways, zigzagging patterns of nature all play to the

emotional side of the viewer.

Composition also includes adapting your ambient lighting to the image. Most of your

smartphone shots are taken in broad daylight with the assumption that full spectrum light

brings out all the splendor of your image.

Remember your audience. You want to be different. You want to create emotion and cause

the viewer to think about what they are seeing.

Maybe that building or food or travel setting or product you are trying to sell looks different

in a different light. Cast a morning or evening hue on the building or travel site by coming

back a few hours later and see what you register on your smartphone. The image will be

much warmer.

But wait…

Allow the sun to set for 30 minutes or arrive just before the sun has begun to insert its warm

colors on the scenery. To your eyes, they will appear normal. But still take the picture with

your smartphone and it will not absorb the sunlight and register a colder image with bluer

hues.

Composition includes factoring space into your image. This is not always the distance

between the subject in your image and the scenery around it. Space involves decluttering

the total photograph to draw attention to the subject in your image.

Maybe your building, food or travel site is beautiful but lacks something because it is lost in

the busyness of the things around it. You don’t have your DSLR camera to perform fancy

things such as black and white photography in the background with color editing to promote

your subject. What are you to do?

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Apply "negative" space.

That’s right. Change your angle of view so the building, food, travel location or product you

are trying to sell stands against the backdrop of the big, beautiful sky. Then, your viewer

cannot help but be emotionally drawn to your subject.

Other negative space backdrops include the sea, panel trucks, windowless sides of buildings

(if you are using something else to photograph), barren sand dunes, and whitened fields of

grain.

Have you ever seen those Hollywood producers who are mocked for their use of both hands

shaped as a box to frame what they are seeing in front of them? This is yet another

composition art of photography, called framing.

Placing anything in a frame creates an emotional effect. You prove this when you take your

photographs, mat them, and then invest money on quality frames to hang or place on a

mantle.

This same framing effect can be created in your smartphone photographs.

When you want to emphasize the subject of your image, create emotion, and emphasize its

importance such as selling a product or advertising a travel site simply frame it. Find

anything that creates a natural frame for the subject within the image.

It can be a doorframe, a pair of leaning trees, a set of adjacent buildings, or maybe an

arching walkway or bridge overhead. When you are short of ideas, you can always default to

Hollywood’s tool of placing two hands in a frame and shoot them in the picture!

Composition includes applying the careful use of shadows in your image as well as the

opposite: reflections.

All composition elements seek to draw out emotion and provoke thought from the viewer.

No element works stronger than shadows and reflections.

The very fact that the subjects captured in a shadow or reflected image is from a focal point

outside the range of the smartphone leads the viewer to strain and wonder what is next,

what is out there, and even what is missing!

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Shadows and reflections also have the unique capacity to introduce a higher order of

composition complexity. You can add lines, shapes, framing, and lighting effects from the

very shadows and reflections you detect.

The key is to be observant of every detail, draw upon the creative resources that are all

around you, and keep all your senses activated for hidden clues.

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Photographic Technique, Part Two

Photographing humans rather than things as your subject can be a daunting task.

In Part One, we reviewed the composition tactics to turn your smartphone into income

magic when photographing buildings, food, travel locations, animals, and products, scientific

presentations or real estate you are drawing income through selling images.

In Part Two, we tackle the prickly subject, the human, as she or he attends weddings, sits for

portraits, shoots couple photography, gathers for family pictures, endures the politics of

corporate photos and smiles for those all-important headshots.

The most important item to address is the smile.

Most people don’t naturally want to pose and smile. There are those few actors who live for

the camera, but most just avoid the photographer as much as the dentist.

The key is to make things funny for those being photographed, so they want to smile.

You may not be a comedian or comedienne, and that’s okay.

As long as you manage to draw the subject or subjects a little past the boundaries of what

they think is social etiquette, things suddenly become funny for them. You have your

smile(s) that makes great, natural photographs.

What does this mean in reality?

Engage your subject.

Remove inhibitions from your audience.

Remember, despite the fact that not every culture believes a photographer

is stealing a part of one’s soul with a photograph, there is a subconscious

sensation that something has been taken, most especially personal control.

So, it is an exchange or partnership and certainly not an emotionless seizure

of a person’s image.

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Build trust.

Soften the barriers by building comfort with the subject; not necessarily

with you, but with those in the image. You should direct couples and small

groups to look at the other, individually, rather than telling them to look at

each other as a couple or group. If it involves getting closer, holding each

other, or squeezing to get an expression tell them, each subject at a time.

This somewhat comical practice of showing the subjects the step-by-step process involved

in posing makes the whole process ridiculous. Often there will be laughter, but you hold

your smartphone poised because it will be followed by your inevitable prize. Then, you have

it. Your natural smile… click!

Aside from coaxing smiles by drawing subjects past what they consider to be their social

etiquette boundary, what other trust building efforts can you use?

First, you can speak to their personal pride and tell

them they are amazing. Many smile when this reality

resonates with their inner psyche. For others, it

certainly establishes confidence when they are in an

environment where they sense a certain loss of

personal control.

Second, psychiatrists (well, psychologists, too) will

tell you that humans are highly prone to mimic the

behavior of others when they observe a behavior

they need or want. Obviously, there are those who

love to commiserate and feed scowling faces to each

other, but that’s another topic.

On the other hand, when you are presented with a

salesperson who is beaming with a perfect-teeth,

ear-to-ear smile throughout their presentation, you

will find it physically impossible to refrain from

smiling during some or most of that presentation.

Now, apply that to photography!

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Third, psychiatrists (and psychologists) note that all memories are linked to either a positive

or negative emotion. In fact, you cannot have created that memory without having assigned

a positive or negative emotion to catalog it, in the first place! Disney’s 2015 cartoon movie

"Inside Out" depicts this reality quite vividly.

So, if you want to trigger a wholesome smile for your photographs ask your subject to tell

you a happy memory, such as how the couple met or describe eating that favorite meal at

that favorite restaurant.

Fourth, there is also the reverse psychology tactic of applying a serious face, which

invariably elicits smiles… and a few laughs. When you throw in a command for them to stop

smiling, you will often get the response you are seeking.

If this does not elicit the smile, you can apply the fifth tactic of having the subjects forcibly

fake laugh to be goofy. Then, when they are done pretending to fake laugh the real smiles

will pop out, and you have your photograph!

Asking one subject to kiss the other on the cheek always subconsciously elicits a smile.

Having subjects make faces, assuming they are not corporate executives (oh, go ahead,

corporate executives, too!) creates natural smiles.

Irritate your small groups into an unexpected smile by telling them to "look like you are

supposed to be really happy".

Remember, your goal is to move subjects beyond the scope of what they deem is social

etiquette.

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Other than having subjects make faces you also have the option to ask them to wiggle their

noses, wiggle their asses, stick out their tongues, cross their eyes, or the pièce de

résistance… stick out your own tongue. Of course, you can also resort to animal and farting

noises.

There’s the novel idea; tell a joke!

Psychiatrists use a secret weapon called silence to get patients to talk. You can do the same

thing by posing the subjects and holding for an incredibly long time until they cannot help

but smile… click!

Finally, get your subjects off their seats and have them move. This erases all chances for

social etiquette when you get them to perform things such as skipping or hopping, which

are clearly smile-inducing activities. Dancing is the next phase to remove inhibitions. Then,

attempt straightforward tickling.

These are just a few ideas for the photographic technique using the smartphone as an

income producing tool. When you have mastered the photographic technique, you will be

ready to achieve success as a professional photographer!

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Starting Your Own Home-Based Photography Business Okay, just the basics, here.

Clearly, your needs and experiences will vary depending on conditions you experience. And,

in earlier Reports the concepts of setting up a home-based business have been described in

great detail. Thus, every successful home-based (or world-traveling entrepreneurial type for

that matter!) photography business has similar methods for start-up. Let’s review some of

the major components needed for your photographic business.

Invest some time creating a business plan. This may seem scary, but it’s nothing more than

putting on paper (organized on the computer) what you see yourself doing with

photography in the next three to five years.

Then, create a mission statement and vision to focus beyond that to the next five years.

Describe what kind of business you are operating. If you have not yet registered by

obtaining your tax identification (corporate, as in an LLC, or individual, as in a sole-

proprietorship), make sure to be legal and declare your business with the respective

governments: federal, state or province. Building your business plan online is often an easier

way to complete this process. Try a fill-in-the-blanks service that also offers free samples

such as LivePlan. This service will also create your financial plan so you can take a

professional-looking business plan to investors.

Why would you need investors?

Let’s assume your business plan is not based on a simple smartphone-to-social network

business model. You may choose to build a DSLR-based camera business model that uses

extensive computer-based editing of photographs.

You may want to set up a photoshop in a shopping mall or start a professional consulting

service that focuses on the major events in your local town. If so, you will probably need

underwriting by investors to get your equipment, initial rental space expense, and money

for travel and utilities for that head start against your start-up overhead. Investors, when

given a glowing business plan, will help purchase that spare camera (they get damaged!),

two high quality lenses, two flashes, and those expensive editing software packages like

Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

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The components of a business plan vary, but they usually start with such things as defining

your market and what their needs are. You want to explain how you intend to meet this

niche market’s needs in a

very different and special way, so they see it as having value to them. This includes your

model for attracting clients and pricing policy that will define your market.

Some advisors tell you to add up all the expenses that enter into the cost of doing business.

But remember you are selling marketing benefits with value to the customer, not sales

features that are important to you. Weigh both, but lean towards what the market values in

your product, which may be much higher! Your observing and documenting the competition

from the photography social networks is especially educational in your business plan. Note

how they satisfy their markets, and comment how you might do better when you perfect

your photographic technique.

You will need to have your own website to brand or define your business to the

international community. The photographic social networks like Instagram and Flickr will

limit your branding to what you display through your photography. So, the content or

wording that explains your brand will be on your website with some help from places like

Pinterest.

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Expanding Your Photographic Income Potential It is important to incorporate into your business plan thoughts about expanding your

viewership, regardless if your business model is smartphone-to-social network photography,

events photography, fixed-base services, or something else. Income is not limited to just

those niche markets.

Remember, there once was a time when we used to print our images!

Using something as basic as the Fujifilm Instax SHARE Smartphone Printer SP-1, you can

quickly convert images to print without having to divert them through a computer editor

and peripheral printer. From there you can display your photographs wherever there is a

market for art.

You have income potential, also, from the huge stock photo industry. Companies pay

photographers who have demonstrated mastery of the photographic composition arts to

provide a steady stream of images that sustain their market.

Editing and retouching photographs is the other side of photography that is yours for the

niche market that discovers your prowess. Instead of marketing your photography, you can

brand yourself as having editing skills. Then, you can service those professional

photographers who don’t have or desire to take the time to retouch their photography!

Consider some of the creative markets in photography (as if that statement isn’t a

redundancy):

There’s aerial or drone photography, photography for the travel and real estate industries,

and journalistic photography. You could pretend you are Clark Kent (just kidding!) from

Superman.

Over time, your photographs build into collections. These collections have themes. Use

these themes to create photographic books. The market is always hungry for a new book

with a fresh outlook with a collection of dynamic themes. This then leads to the market of

teaching photography!

Chase Jarvis got his professional start holding an exhibition. This practical tool provides

many opportunities.

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Exhibitions serve as opportunities, not just for displaying your photographic work for sale to

viewers in a different venue, but also for being discovered by talent scouts who want to sign

licensing contracts for more business.

Chase Jarvis' experiment was to set up a snapshot gallery in the Ace Hotel instead of the

traditional-and-routine masterpiece collections. He connected with 10,000 photographers

around the world who contributed their snapshots to the gallery. He advertised the

snapshots as the reality of life, not masterpieces. This attracted senior ranked curators from

The Met, the New Museum in NYC, and MOMA, essentially spring boarding his career.

All right, we have now completed Report 6. One last Report to go for this special series!

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