Before the rise of social media and the ubiquity of apps like Instagram, photographers established and flexed their brands through their personal website and blog. The photographer website supplanted the printed portfolio, for the most part, offering photographers a way to showcase their work with a remote audience of photo editors, customers, and fans.
A recent update to Facebook's Creator Studio has added a highly requested feature for Instagram power users and marketers: the ability to natively schedule Instagram posts and IGTV broadcasts ahead of time.
Following a shocking expose from Business Insider, major Instagram ad partner Hyp3r has been banned by the platform for tracking millions of users' locations, saving public Instagram Stories, and automatically scraping user data.
Why do photographers need to market themselves? In a phrase: so that you don't starve to death. No, but seriously. Otherwise, you risk ending up like Vincent van Gogh who (in the words of Steven Pressfield) “produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.”
I, like many of you, watched the Sony a7R IV announcement live stream on Tuesday. I saw them put up the video of the camera and its specs, which I thought looked good as an evolution of their R platform. However, when the lights came back on in the room, the kind man that is the VP of their alpha division debuted the camera to the world with the line: “medium format level image quality”
ZEISS has issued an apology after a promotional photoshoot featuring its latest Otus lens struck a negative chord with a large number of the brand's followers on Twitter, who accused the brand of being sexist.
A construction guy named Omar in Austin, Texas, became an "Instagram influencer" recently after attracting hundreds of thousands of followers to his @justaconstructionguy account with just a handful of photos. But it turns out the guy was a carefully crafted persona designed to help a small coffee shop sell coffee.
IKEA United Emirates has launched a clever new marketing campaign called the "Real Life Series." Each picture is a famous room from a popular TV show recreated entirely using IKEA furniture and products.
The outdoor apparel company The North Face is getting slammed today after it boasted of sneaking product placement photos into Wikipedia articles in order to show up as top results in Google Images search results.
Leica has sparked a huge backlash in China over a short film released by its ad agency in Brazil. The video (warning: strong language) depicts a news photographer covering the Chinese government's crackdown during pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989.
Smartphone camera quality continues to hit new heights, and here's another example of how far we've come: NBC will air an episode of "The Tonight Show" shot entirely on the Samsung Galaxy S10+.
Photographer Lians Jadan recently spent months brainstorming in hopes of creating an effective promo. He came up with the idea of sending out his work to prospective clients with a retro View-Master-style viewer.
Fujifilm has launched its latest Film Simulation product: this time, they're instant noodles. And no, it's not a photo filter look that's named "instant noodles" -- Fujifilm literally released some real instant noodles.
No matter how you feel about Instagram, if you’re reading this you know that you need it. Period. Social media can change careers. Instead of being stuck working with people in your 15-mile radius, you’re now open to the world. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably also using Instagram wrong.
Facebook has announced that it will be introducing drastic changes to how its News Feed works, prioritizing content from family and friends and de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands. If you use business page for your photography services, you may soon see your reach plummet.
It seems like every month there's an earth-shattering new camera bag that can hold ridiculous amounts of gear in an absurd number of compartments. Fstoppers decided to poke fun at this niche in the photo industry and created this humorous 3-minute sketch showing what camera bag marketing hype is like when you buy into it.
It’s not surprising when camera companies hire photographers to pitch their products. But photographers have also been enlisted to sell other types of products -- the result of Madison Avenue trying to romanticize the occupation, even though the reality often fails to meet the expectation. Nowadays photographers are more likely to spend the majority of their time sitting at a desk in post-processing or trying to collect on invoices that are 6 months past due.
Concert photographer Rich Gastwirt came up with this unusual "viral" business card for getting his website URL into people's hands.
A photographer is suing consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, accusing the corporation and the world's largest advertiser of not paying her for photos that have appeared on Olay packaging and marketing materials used around the world. An expert on the photographer's side estimates that P&G could owe more than $75 million.
When camera companies announce new cameras or lenses, the press releases are often filled with generic statements about the wonderful qualities of the product. Now the marketing teams behind those words have a new shortcut: the Random Photo Marketing Generator.
Last fall, in preparation for a fair for my wedding photography business in Helsinki, I wanted to create something out-of-the-ordinary that would attract attention to my booth. A friend of mine suggested a type of vintage camera that visitors could look through.
Vintage camera with a mini slideshow inside? Sounds like a plan!
As a professional photographer, getting noticed by potential clients means getting creative. Don't just send out postcards or basic mailers to the art directors you want to work with; take a leaf out of designer April Hansen's playbook instead.
Last week, we shared the unbelievable story of travel blogger Lauren Bullen, who discovered that one of her fans had been following her and her boyfriend around the world, copying every photo they posted down to the outfits she was wearing.
It was incredible, mind-blowing, and more than a little creepy... it may also be a big hoax.
Well it’s here, and whether you like it or not, Instagram’s new Stories feature is taking direct aim at Snapchat and the minutia of our daily lives. I, for one, am loving it. Stories allows us to share things with our followers that we might never post, humanizing our digital personas and connecting with the community in a totally new way.
I attended the Palm Springs Photo Festival last week for the first time. I have heard for years what a great event it is but never could get my schedule to work so that I could participate. Well, this year worked out and I was so happy that it did.
In today’s digital age, a budding photographer would find it hard to believe that physical mailers would be an important aspect of their marketing strategy. The reality is not only are they important but they are also essential.
If you’re like me, you’re constantly looking to improve and expand your referral base. Once you’ve got a good number of weddings under your belt your base will be made up of (mostly) previous couples.
A mis-named marketing gimmick is bringing together 360° photos and ... beer? Yep. Beck's beer has launched a special edition bottle that comes complete with a "CapCam," a 360° lens you can pop off and attach to your smartphone.
Instagram has officially announced a set of new tools for business users, called Instagram Business Tools, that will help the platform be even more powerful for marketers. As was leaked over the past weeks, there will be new business profiles, analytics, and promoted posts.
The airline Emirates is a sponsor of the French Open championship in tennis, and one of its advertisements at the tennis matches is an aerial camera in the shape of an Airbus A380.
Color is one of the fundamental aspects of branding, and most major companies in the world of photography are known for using key colors in their branding.
Since launching the MagBeam via a Kickstarter campaign two weeks ago, MagMod has raised nearly $200,000 for the flash extender and gobo. But at least one notable photographer has an issue with how the product is being marketed: David Hobby calls one of MagMod's claims "100% bulls**t."
The department store chain Lord & Taylor has agreed to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for deceptive marketing on Instagram. The company paid popular users up to $4,000 to post a single photo of themselves wearing a dress.
Nikon sure has a strange way of marketing its brand: one of its newest advertisements features a Fujifilm camera...
Instagram is known as a place where people use photos to flaunt their lifestyles, both real and fake. 50 Cent may be one of the biggest names to do so on the "fake" side: he claims he's broke and that he takes photos of fake money for marketing reasons.
Facebook ads are some of the best and cheapest sources for advertising a new wedding photography business.
When I first started wedding photography a few years ago, business was slow. I got all my inquires through Gumtree (an English version of Craiglist) and organic search traffic, and I only booked around 8 weddings in my first year. I still had a day job at this point, so could still get by.
Weddings are a seasonal thing. They really pick up in spring, roll on at a steady pace through summer and then spike into the fall. But then comes November, when the frenzy of peak wedding season slows down, it can be tempting to hibernate until spring. If you’ve had a particularly busy year, it may actually be necessary for you to cool your heels for a minute.
There are deadlines and then there are deadlines… this is the latter.
Arizona State University’s advertising campaign is one that I have now shot for 10 years. It is one that I always use to push the logistical boundaries that I had previously been inflexible towards, for the sake of art and knowledge. Photographing it is a practice in embracing the unknown and evaluating previously conceived notions of what is possible and what is not. This year’s photoshoot existed well within the impossible…
The New York Times published an article about brands using user generated content (UGC) without explicit permission. When a woman named Shereen Way posted a photo of her daughter to Instagram with the hashtag #crocs, Crocs pulled the photo and posted it to their website with other user photos.
It was only much later that Crocs sought explicit permission from Ms. Way, which she declined. And how did they ask for permission? “Please respond with #CrocsOK.”
Here's your "weird photo product o' the day": the cereal brand Cinnamon Toast Crunch has announced a new product called the Selfie Spoon. It's a selfie stick with a spoon for a handle that's designed to help you take pictures of yourself while eating food (and especially cereal).