How we use our sponsors products

Pictage is our online image hosting service and print provider. Pictage retouches, prints and deliveries our customer's orders while we shoot weddings and portraits and travel teaching workshops. They even handle our customer service phone calls (about prints). Without Pictage, we would spend far too much time dealing with prints and not enough time tending to our business. They are unmatched in the business.

liveBooks is far and away, the best web design company. My web portfolio was designed by liveBooks and is maintained by them. They are responsive to my needs. They have email and phone support and are fast in designing, launching and editing my web site. In addition to their excellent customer service, they have created a Flash web environment that is fully accessible to google and other search engines. So my clients get a rich Flash environment and I get searchability. And updating the site is simple as can be. If you need to be on the web, you need to take a look at liveBooks.

I am an uncomplicated person with a need for simple solutions and efficient methods. So when I found KISS BOOKS, I knew I was home. KISS provides beautiful, high quality albums and books at good price with a turn around time that is unheard of in the business. Their customer service is absolutely unparalleled and their products are fresh and unique. KISS can offer all of this because they keep it simple. The Little Kiss Book is a must. The client loves having showing off their travel sized album to their friends and that kind of marketing is invaluable.

Blub makes a fantastic low cost one off book with great quality printing that allows me to create a beautiful proof book for my clients and attractive example books for the venues I work with. The process is simple and fast and fits perfectly into my workflow. My proof books are a big hit with my clients and thanks to Blurb's price point, I can offer them to my clients as part of their wedding coverage.

Photographers need music, but music is hard to come by LEGALY. Sure, you could play a song by your favorite band on your web site or add it to a slide show for your clients, but by doing so, you are breaking the law and being immoral. No photographer would ever want their photos used without their permission to advertise someone else's product without compensation, and yet photographers do it all the time with their fellow artist's music. At one time it was hard to obtain permission to use great music for limited use, but now Triple Scoop has made a way for photographers to get the music they need at an affordable price in a legal way. At triplescoopmusic.com you will find a great selection of music for your projects and web sites with an easy shopping experience that makes obtaining legal music possible. So now, you are without excuse. No more illegal use of music. Do the right thing and support the art of music, the same way people pay you to support the art of photography.

I have been a fan of Calumet Photographic from my early years in college, through my work as a commercial assistant to now. Calumet not only has a great online store for all of your photographic needs, but they have 9 physical locations on the west coast, the east coast and in the midwest and all over Europe. And they are committed to photographic education for both the photo enthusiast and the professional photographer. Catch us in New York at Calumet's store on West 22nd Street, on August 6th, 2010 and visit them online at www.calumetphoto.com.

If you don't have the time or the staff to do your own post production, photoshop edits or album design, then stop stressing over it and outsource it to the best in the business. Shoot Dot Edit has the most efficient and best trained staff in the industry. They workflow is perfect and their work is impeccable. Why do I trust them? Because they consult with the very best in the industry (like me) to develop the perfect workflow for their clients. So, even if you have your post production workflow down to a science, you owe it to yourself to check out Shoot Dot Edit and find out how outsourcing your post production can help your business. Shoot Dot Edit can become your studio post production staff or they can fill in during the busy times. Check them out.

Lets face it, we are photographers, artsy people, so our organizational skills are sometimes a bit lacking. But that's not good for business. So, if a photographer is smart, he will develop systems to organize himself to maximize his efficiency and insure that nothing falls through the cracks. ShootQ is one of those indispensable organizational tools to help you get it all done. ShootQ captures client inquiries, tracks the progress of the sale, the contract, the payment, the job, the post production and maintains contact with your client all the way through the process. ShootQ is even on the iPhone and iPad for mobile access to everything. ShootQ is your business assistant online, anywhere you need it. So, look at your desk, all the notes and piles of paper and commit to get your business under control. Sign up for a ShootQ account now. Then email me and thank me for the advise. You are welcome.

Digital Wedding Pro is a great place to learn about digital wedding photography. The forum is a great place to ask questions and learn from photographers like yourself. There are also instructional DVDs available by Gino Lucadamo who make learning photography simple and fun. Follow him on a typical wedding or learn how to get into destination weddings.