Quick Hit Monday: Wedding & Portrait Photography; Lighting; Inspiration; and Photoshop Freebies!

Good Morning, uh Afternoon Everybody,

Hey gang, it’s a BIG day today with lots of good information coming your way – 18 scintillating resources in all that will keep you busy for hours, just like they did for me. Also, thanks for your patience with the late post. My morning got jammed up with a lot of appointments and multiple planning sessions involving several new projects.

Add to that a noon appointment with our financial advisor that went longer than expected – just what I needed with the market trajectory these last few days, and it was afternoon when I got back to the computer.  Here we go…

My Cincinnati, OH Photo Walk Update

First of all, I would like to give you an update on my Scott Kelby Photo Walk scheduled in Cincinnati Ohio. Within 24 hours of posting the photo walk it was completely full. We have a few people on the the standby list and I suspect that they will be able to join us on the walk as there are always a few last minute cancellations.

Let me say that there is another great walk happening in Cincinnati, Ohio on that same weekend. It's being led by my good friend, Jason Lykins, works with Terry White on Terry’s  Best Apps site. Jason is a great guy, full of terrific information, and a wonderful photographer. I promise Jason will do a great walk, too. Here's the link to his sign-up page.

In The World Of Photography

Wedding & Portrait Photography:

1. 10 Tips to Improve Your Wedding Venue and Detail Shots: [link]

Capturing detail photographs or what I like to say, photographs of what  your clients spend their money on, is really important to the storytelling aspect of your wedding photography.  This link has some great ideas to capture the best detail shots possible on your next job.

2. Wedding Photographers | Five Questions To Ask Your Wedding Photographer: [link]

I like this post because it gives good advice about what the bride should be asking her photographer. I think it's food for thought for every photographer thinking about shooting weddings.

3. Beautiful Video About Wedding Photography: [link]

I think one of the best things you can do for building your business is to include a video on your website (obviously it includes your blog, too) that illustrates your passion, your talent, your dedication to the profession of wedding photography. I’ve suggested many times that I believe Jasmine Star has one of the best websites emphasizing this approach. The wedding video presented in this post does exactly the same thing. I still believe it's one of the most important things you can do for yourselves in building your own business.

4. Beginner Photography Tips - Composition: [link]

Although this post is listed “Beginner photography tips”, I feel it contains some solid information for designing your images in the viewfinder. I certainly think it's a worthwhile read because I believe this is where a lot of photographers come up short in creating their best images.  Give it a read and see what you think.

5. Studio Lighting for Portraits: [link]

This is a great, in-depth article on portrait lighting.  There's a lot of variety in the model poses as well as a lot of variety in the lighting. This is definitely a link I’ll be adding to my favorites list.

6. 5 Lessons You Can Learn from One Portrait: [link]

This post is like “singing to the choir” for me. I find I use just about everyone of the ideas and suggestions listed.  Give it a read, make your notes, and plan to use a few of these ideas on your next shoot.

And Now A Little Inspiration For You

I think you really enjoy this next set of links. It's these kinds of posts that I could use to inspire and enhance my creativity every now and then. The topics are varied, the photography is exciting and the imagery presented is fun and refreshing.

• Extreme Examples of Photo-Journalism: [link]
• Long Time Exposure Photography: [link]
• 24 Hour Landscape Photography Guide: [link]
• Beautiful Digital Arts By Elena Dudina: [link]
• "Captain America: The First Avenger" Action Shots Captured With Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR Cameras: [link]

Photoshop & Lightroom Freebies

The Photoshop freebies section of my Quick Hit Monday post is always fun for me to put together.  Every week I'm always able to find some great links to some wonderful resources that we can incorporate into our studio work flow. I hope you too find these resources useful, as well. I'm thinking maybe I should create a directory of these posts. There must be tons of instructional posts I have listed over the past several weeks. Enjoy!

• 18 Essential Free Photoshop Tutorials for Black and White Photography Lovers: [link]
• Creating Custom Brushes: [link]
• High Resolution Concrete Free Photoshop Brush Set: [link]
• Classy Photoshop Action Sets for Image Enhancement: [link]
• Free Photoshop Patterns for Your Creative Designs: [link]
• Business Card Design: Collection Of 20+ Great Tutorials: [link]
• How to Tone Map and Create an HDR Like Image Using Only Lightroom 3 – Lightroom Video Tutorial: [link]

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. We've got a lot of things going on at the studio and I better get back to my real job. How about I plan to see everybody tomorrow for a special edition of Business Day Thursday only its going to be on Tuesday.  Don't worry, I'm moving Technique Tuesday to Thursday of this week. I know it sounds confusing but, just know you'll still be getting your full dose of DigitalProTalk this week;~)

Everybody have a great day and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow for Business Day Thursday on Tuesday.

Adios for now, -David