Five things to always keep in mind as a photographer.

Always Carry a Camera Absolutely always carry a camera, to the store, to work, to dinner, to family functions, everywhere. You just never know, and there is nothing worse than hearing the words “where’s my my camera when I need it?” come out of your own mouth.

Stop To Make The Picture Never hesitate to stop and make a photograph when the opportunity presents itself. Great photographs and instantaneous and fleeting in nature, chances are you’ll never see it again. So do yourself a favor and stop.

Ignorance Is Bliss So stop looking at that little screen on the back of your camera. It serves absolutely no purpose accept to break your rhythm of shooting. Just keep in mind that while your checking out that little screen, that gives you no accurate indication of exposure or sharpness or depth of field, 10 pictures just blew right past you.

Shoot For Yourself Constructive criticism can only help to improve your photographs. However, when all is said and done, you are the one who has to live with your work. Shoot for yourself, and nobody else.

Strive To Improve Never stop learning. Never stop looking at good work. Never stop improving. Perhaps the most amazing thing about photographing the world around us is that we always go to bed smarter than when we woke up. Never assume that there is nothing left to learn.

Five photographs that may just live on forever…

Execution of a Viet Cong, 1968 - Photograph by Eddie Adams. The image shows Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief executing a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain.

Elizabeth Eckford, 1957 - Photograph by Will Counts. On September 4, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford and eight other African American students tried to enter Little Rock Central High School, which didn’t allow black students. They were stopped by the Arkansas National Guard. They tried again without success on September 23rd. September 24, President Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the Little Rock Nine to school for protection.

Phan Thi Kim Ph??c, 1972 - Photograph by Nick Ut. Kim Ph??c, center left, running down a road near Trang Bang after a napalm attack. A South Vietnamese VNAF pilot mistook the fleeing group as a threat and diverted to attack it. Along with other villagers two of Kim Phuc’s cousins were killed.

Kent State Shootings, 1970 - Photograph by John Filo. Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway and Vietnam War protester, screaming with anguish and kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller, shot through the mouth by an unknown Ohio National Guardsman during a protest.

Thich Quang Duc, 1963 - Photograph by Malcolm W. Browne. Vietnamese Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection on June 11, 1963. Thich Quang Duc was protesting the persecution of Buddhism by South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem administration.

Five websites for selling your photographs online.

Image Kind ImageKind.com is a site where photographers and artist can upload digital files of our artwork for others to buy. Individual artists don’t have to deal with the printing, storing, mailing, online credit card transactions, nothing. Imagekind handles all of it and pays you every time one of your prints sells. The amount you earn simply depends on how much you marked up the base price. It’s free to become a Member, and it only costs money if you want more online storage space.

Boundless Gallery BoundlessGallery.com sells all types of art by original artists‚ÄîPaintings, Photography, Glass Art, Metal and Wood Artwork, Ceramics, Sewn and Knitted Art, Jewelry, and even Fine Art Prints. Basically, no matter what kind of art you make, at BoundlessGallery you‚Äôll find a category that will work for you. BoundlessGallery.com takes a 25% commission, which isn’t bad considering there is no setup fee or subscription cost .

Artist Rising ArtistRising.com, part of Art.com behemoth, allows artists to have their own personal online gallery. It will be similar the old OAP group, in that you can upload, organize and present your original work for everyone to see, but will have a new feature that will let you sell your original artwork right from your gallery space. You’ll also be able to manage all of your Print-On-Demand pieces from your gallery and set up additional pages about yourself too, including a bio, artist statement and more.

deviantART deviantART.com has been around for quite some time. The shopping side of deviant art isn‚Äôt as well done as the rest of the site. It looks good, but seems to lack any desire to be marketed to the outside world. The prints are amazing; done on Fuji Crystal Archive photo paper. The sizes are limited, so if you’re looking panorama‚Äôs or some other aspect ratio, you may be out of luck.

Original Art Online OriginalArtOnline.com is a website that has been selling original work by Artists for over two and a half years. The site is very clean, but the design is quite lacking. There’s no commission fee charged when you sell your work, in fact, there’s no system for payment through OriginalArtOnline at all. When a buyer is interested in your art, they contact you personally and then the two of you work out the details of payment and shipping. Rumor has it the OriginalArtOnline is in the process of developing a shopping cart system to sell art directly on their website.

Top Five Marketing Tools For Photographers

The Blog: Blogs are everywhere, they take all of ten minutes to set up, free of charge, and your work is instantaneously exposed to millions of people around the world. A website is just a portfolio, a blog can serve as a journal of your work. Post photographs, thoughts, news on what your shooting, what you’re working on, where you’re going. The personal nature of a blog can build a following that wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

The Book: Publishing on demand is a photographers dream. Sites such as blurb.com offer very reasonable rates and no minimum purchase. Blurb also offers a storefront to sell your book. You set the price, their commission is minimal. While selling books is a great idea, margins are thin, and revenues depend on volume. However, handing a potential client a professionally bound 40 page book, chances are your going to look pretty good.

The Exhibition: Photographers often think that their exhibition will generate income, that touring a show is a way to make money. This could not be farther from the truth. An exhibition is two things, a time suck, and an ego stroke, neither of which are money makers. That said, an exhibition can be an amazing promotional tool, and does have the potential to generate income if the infrastructure is in place. Selling books, catalogs, prints, and posters at the exhibition and through your website can produce a steady cash flow. An exhibition is really just a big PR campaign, use it.

The Card: May sound old school, but it still works. Hand them out like candy. Make them cool. Check out Creative Bits for ideas. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The Street: You meet some interesting people when you’re on the street making pictures. Carry business cards, a couple 4×6’s, postcards, a small catalog, anything that you can put in someone’s hands. You never know who you’ll meet.

Yeah, that’s right, 893 of them.
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