PhotoShelter

Super Bowl Veteran Photographer Rob Tringali shares his view from the sideline

by Grover Sanschagrin

As the Indianapolis Colts get ready to take on the New Orleans Saints this Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV, Photographer Rob Tringali is preparing to attend what will be his 20th Super Bowl, an event that, after all these years, still gets him excited.

His images appear regularly in ESPN The Magazine, Sports Illustrated, TV Guide, Newsweek, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine.

I find that when I'm watching the Super Bowl, I'm more interested in spotting the photographers I know on the sidelines, than watching the game itself. But I've never actually worked a Super Bowl.

Wondering what it must be like to be a photographer on the field, I thought I'd ask Rob, who shot his first Super Bowl when he was just 19 years-old, for his veteran take.

PHOTO BY ROB TRINGALI: Guard Chris Snee #76 of the New York Giants celebrates with family the victory against the New England Patriots at Super Bowl XLII on February 3, 2008 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Giants defeated the Patriots 17-14.

Grover: What's different about shooting a Super Bowl game as compared to regular season NFL or college game?

Rob: Shooting the Super Bowl is far superior to anything else I've shot except for maybe a World Cup Final. Everyone knows you're there, and you know that friends and family back home are looking for you on TV.

I once got hit with a ball during the Giants - Pats game a couple of years ago and got 10 text messages right away from people who saw me. Stuff like that doesn't happen at any regular game.

I usually get to the game about 6 hours before kickoff, and I always make a phone call to some friends right before the National Anthem, as they watch from a bar in New Jersey. They can hear the Anthem live from the cell phone in my vest pocket. Everyone in the bar seems to get a kick out of that.

We spend a whole lot of time talking about inbound marketing strategies like SEO and Social Media, and how they can benefit your photography business. But sometimes, it makes sense to whip out an old trusted favorite that we all know works.  In this case, I'm talking about coupons.  Who doesn't love a bargain? 

Coupons work because they create a new, urgent reason for you to buy something.  Many PhotoShelter members tell us that coupons are an important part of how they generate sales of their photography and market prints and products to new buyers.  Today, we unveiled a new feature inside of PhotoShelter that lets photographers offer promotions - like a specific dollar value discount or percent off - when people purchase your photography online.  We also announced that new print partners AdoramaPix and ExposureManager are both fully integrated and live - joining EZPrints to give PhotoShelter photographers three high quality and affordable options for automated print fulfillment. 

But, rather than go on and on about our great new coupon feature and the impressive print partners we now have on board, I wanted to share some insights about using coupons to market your photography.  I'd love to hear from some photographers who have experience using coupons as well - feel free to add your insights in the comment section below.  

Let's go over some basics:

    * People like saving money.
    * People like to feel that they're being treated special or recognized for their loyalty.
    * People like the thrill of limited opportunities.

 Here are some smart tactics for marketing with coupons:

1. Create urgency. Set expiration dates.
All good marketing includes a call to action - you need to prompt the customer to act.  If your coupon is open ended, busy people have a way of letting life's other distractions interfere.  So, put an expiration date on the promotion and communicate that loud and clear.  This will create a sense of urgency around taking your offer.  If you can, send a reminder when the promotion is expiring.  If your customers are like most humans, they won't act until it's their last chance.  

2. Offer a coupon as incentive to sign up for your newsletter.
We often talk about having a goal to "convert" people when they visit your website.  This goal doesn't always have to be "buy a print."  Would you benefit from getting more names to add to your monthly newsletter?  If you would, why not give people an incentive to register with you?  Offer a "10% off" coupon to everyone who signs up for your newsletter.  You can email them the coupon and use the email to tell them more about your products and services.  You now have a new prospect in your marketing database for regular follow up.   

Ten SEO Tips To Get Websites To Link To You

by Grover Sanschagrin

If you're one of those photographers who wonders why more people aren't linking to your website, then you're probably making it too difficult for them to do so.

The single most important factor in search engine optimization (SEO) is the number of backlinks to your website. Links are like money, you can't ever have too much. I'm talking about real links, not ones you pay for, or that you create yourself.

Getting people to link to your website isn't easy, and getting important sites to link to you can be quite difficult, but well worth the effort. Remember the more important the site the more valuable the link.

I've assembled a list of guidelines to follow if you're looking to encourage sites to direct more web traffic your way.

Five Ways to Use Social Media Sites to Boost Your SEO

by Grover Sanschagrin

Imagine every one of your PhotoShelter galleries that you care most about is showing up on the first page of Google Search results for their chosen keywords. Impossible, you say? Not so, according to John Lander, who is accomplishing this by using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinedIn and StumbleUpon as the main ingredient in his SEO-boosting recipe.

Lander is a freelance writer and photographer based in Japan, specializing in editorial and stock images of Asia.

Try these Google Searches and you'll see:

Japanese Garden Images
Kyoto Images
Dalat Images
Hakodate Images

To boost search engine ranking for his images, Lander estimates that he spends about 50% of his marketing efforts on social networking sites.

"I spend a lot of time working on SEO. Tweaking captions/keywords, tweeting photo galleries, adding them to Facebook and recently using StumbleUpon as well with very good results," Lander said. "I have managed to get almost all galleries on page one of Google."

How much junk mail did you receive at home in the past week? Doesn't it feel like an anachronism to kill trees to send information out that's out-of-date by the time it reaches you? And while the trees are dying, other companies are encouraging you to follow them on Twitter or join their Facebook fan page. They are fostering social interaction with their brands, while building communities.

When you need something nowadays, do you find yourself flipping through a magazine waiting for an ad to inspire you?  Or do you Google for instant suggestions and comparisons?  Maybe you jump on Facebook and ask your friends for recommendations?
 
Marketing is changing everywhere in response to how we consume and share information, and the way you market your photography should be no different. Interruptive outbound marketing (like ads, direct mail, and even email) is losing ground to inbound marketing.  Inbound marketing focuses on optimizing your presence online so people can find you precisely when they're looking for whatever it is you offer. Inbound marketing - making use of your website, your blog, SEO and social media - has become a powerful and efficient way to market a business - any business - including photography.

by John Thawley



The majority of my motorsports shooting is done traveling throughout North America with the American Le Mans Series. I want to be perfectly honest here, I enjoy car racing... though I am not a racing fanatic. I like what I do. I like it a lot. But I love photography. A lot.

I make this distinction because I often get emails asking how to get into motorsports photography where the writer will cite; "I love racing and I love photography... nothing would be better than combing my two passions... blah, blah, blah." Being polite, I don't delete the email, I answer it. But I have to tell you, that comment is about as ludicrous as stating, "I love blondes and I love brunettes... marrying both would be my dream...." No it wouldn't. It would be your demise.



What I'm saying is, pick one. Pick one and be prepared to bleed for it. Make no mistake, the racing community loves their fans. However, they don't want them working on their team, in their garage or standing around drooling in pit lane. If you want to shoot motorsports as a pro, you'd better be a photographer first. And please don't stop me at the track to discuss this point. It's non-negotiable.

Another thing I'd like to get out of the way is the credential process and safety.

The secret to a wildly successful photo website isn't complicated at all. It's actually SIMPLE.

For part of my "Websites of the Future" presentations and photo business webinars, I compiled a list, called "Six Elements to a Successful Site." Most photographers are quickly overwhelmed with the task of building and maintaining a website. If you follow these 6 simple rules, you'll be headed in the right direction.

These rules will work for just about any website, not just photographers.


The Six Elements of a Successful Site

1) Search Engines index your content.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are extremely rich sources of traffic for any website, so it is vital that your website be constructed in a way that search engines can properly index your content - all of it.

That means lots of text, lots of keywords, lots of captions placed closely to images, lots of text-linked keywords to content elsewhere in your site or archive, carefully written page titles and meta page descriptions.

Be extremely careful of Flash because it's difficult for search engines to index content within Flash. If your heart is set on a fancy Flash website, make sure you've got an html "shadow site" that the search engines can see.

Look for every opportunity to embed keywords in your website. Image "alt" tags are often left blank, which is a shame because they are an opportunity to inject keywords into a page.

Keywords within the URL itself are also another opportunity. Make sure your URLs have actual words within them because this is yet another keyword-rich opportunity.

Download the free "SEO Cookbook for Photographers" kit from PhotoShelter. It will explain, in-depth, how search engines work specifically when it comes to photographer websites.

During the last few days of 2009, the Washington Times unexpectedly eliminated all nine of their staff photographer positions. The news spread fast and furious throughout the photo community. Photographers who were still fortunate enough to maintain a staff position somewhere got another wake-up call - they could be next.

With all the layoffs we've seen in the industry in the past few years, what surprises me most, however, is how common it is for a staff photographer to be "surprised" with the news of their own layoff. They are very often leaving themselves totally unprepared for life as a freelancer.

"The staff photographer who believes he will have a job in 10 years is kidding himself," says John Harrington in his book "Best Business Practices for Photographers".

The writing is very clearly on the wall, so I thought I'd ask Harrington, a freelance photographer, blogger and author, to help me come up with a list of things that photographers (both staff, and former staff) should be doing immediately.


The 10 Things a Not-Yet-Laid-Off Staffer Must Do

1. Know that it is not a matter of if, but a matter of when, you will lose your job. No one gets gold watches these days, and your company, no matter how much you think they care about you, only cares about the bottom line. Don't take it personally, it's not personal, it's just business.

2. Save, save, save. You should have at least 6 months (if not a year or 18 months) worth of savings that will sustain you.

3. Establish your online presence, including a website with your URL, and a professional e-mail address (that means no @gmail or @hotmail accounts!)

4. Over time, build out your businesses infrastructure. Acquire a laptop, cameras/lenses, cell phone, and street legal software (stealing Photoshop is bad karma for people stealing your photos).

5. Determine your cost of doing business in the event that you are no longer subsidized by your full-time employer. The best tool to help you do this is the NPPA's Cost of Doing Business Calculator.

Lady Gaga Named Creative Director for Specialty Line of Polaroid Imaging Products

LAS VEGAS --(Business Wire)-- Jan 06, 2010 PLR IP Holdings, LLC, owners of the Polaroid™ brand, today announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Lady Gaga, who will serve as creative director for a specialty line of Polaroid Imaging products. The partnership brings together one of the world's most iconic brands with today's fastest rising musical artist and cultural trend setter, known for her string of smash global hits including Paparazzi, Bad Romance and Poker Face, her fashion forward design aesthetic and her exceptionally close connection with her fans.

Lady Gaga will make a special appearance at the Polaroid booth at the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Thursday, January 7 at 10:45am to talk about her new creative and business relationship with the Polaroid brand.

"I am so proud to announce my new partnership with Polaroid as the creative director and inventor of specialty projects," said Lady Gaga. "The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation--blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era--and we are excited to collaborate on these ventures with the Polaroid brand. Lifestyle, music, art, fashion: I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer, and to as my father puts it--finally, have a real job."

We have some Lady Gaga fans at this office, and they couldn't be more excited about this. Can't wait to see the new products!

I was born and raised in Hawai'i. When people ask me if I surf, I always answer "Sure...the web."