From time to time I get emails from new photographers who are asking for help in their business and looking for advice on making certain decisions. This isn’t something I do on a regular basis here on my blog because I normally just write the photographers back personally and never blog their questions. For this blog entry, I am going to blog this question because it is one that I asked a ton of people when I was first starting out. I am not going to email back the reader personally but instead throw her question on here.

I never started as a wedding photographer. More like a wedding videographer. Actually, I was a wedding videographer for 4 years prior to becoming a photographer. I found photography through shooting film & developing my work in the darkroom. If you haven’t tried the old process yet I encourage you to try it at least once… It’ll change the way you shoot. So below this are a few highlighted areas that I was involved in and what helped me grow to where I am today. Let me know first that there are two areas that you get started in. First, you have the world of clients and building a referral base when you start out. Secondly, you have the wedding photography industry and all of your peers. Keep these in mind when you read these areas below…

Shoot, Shoot and then Shoot: YOU should be taking pictures everyday. When I got my first camera about two years ago it was a Canon Rebel XTI. I literally went outside everyday and took pictures of flowers, cars, dogs, clouds and every other thing that was in my sight. I did this because I wanted to play with every setting and understand how f-stops work and what each shutter speed does. You MUST understand your camera… DO NOT shoot on automatic. Shooting everyday when I first started helped me a big way for when I started to shoot more often because I know all the settings in my mind and can switch them on the go.

Shoot a couple: This one goes in with “shoot, shoot and then shoot”. When you start shooting more often you will need images of a couple. It’s easy to find couples that you will know from church, work or maybe you can find one on facebook and offer them a free session. I use married couples to model for me all the time when I am looking for some fresh work and as a photographer you will need to love capturing people and the only thing it will cost you is time. You need to find the time to shoot images of people and give them the files in exchange for them modeling for you. There is no excuse for a photographer saying “I don’t have a portfolio”. Your a PHOTOGRAPHER. I believe many would agree with me when I say that your job is to find opportunities to shoot whenever possible.

Find a Mentor: A few months into starting out I met a photographer by the name of Sara France. After a few meetings with her I was chosen as her intern. Having Sara as a mentor & friend shaped me into where I was going for my career. She taught me so much about this industry and how to actually shoot a wedding, taking care of your clients and how to create and sustain growth in your business. That is only a few of the many things I learned. It never hurts to keep on learning and if you have 10-20 hours a week to give into another studio in your area then I believe you should start contacting them and find one that would take you in and intern for the photographer and in exchange have the photographer be your mentor. It will change your life… I can promise you that.

Networking groups: START NETWORKING! There are plenty of opportunities to meet other photographers. Start attending PUG meetings in your area on a monthly basis. You can find the one nearest to you by clicking here. There are also the PhotogShootout events, ASMP hosts monthly dinners in every city nationwide and I believe there are smug groups too. If you get into these events don’t just attend one time then never return. These communities will become a family for you and they will support you through the hard times we all face and they will rejoice with you over your success. These groups are the perfect place to meet new friends and once you get to know the group well I assure you that you can find the chance to 2nd & 3rd shoot for some photographers on their weddings and build wedding experience from there. By the way, don’t forget your business cards when you go to these events.

I hope these thoughts help you blog reader… In my own personal story, I used all of these methods to growing my business. Attending networking groups led me to meeting Sara France. Sara took me as her second shooter on weddings which led me to learn how to shoot a wedding as a photographer. From second shooting for her I was given more shooting opportunities to other photographers. I continued to attend the monthly networking groups (PUGs & PhotogShootouts) and grew into a family style of friendship with other photographers. I was impacted so much by the local networking groups that I started the San Diego PhotogShootout group. All of these events in my career worked together and gave the the confidence needed to succeed. With that confidence I built a strong portfolio and now book my own weddings and shoot as a full-time photographer. After mixing all of this together I was just announced as the 2009 Photographer of the Year. How did all of this happen? I used each of these areas very carefully and understood my strengths and looked to others for help in areas that I was not so good with.

Hope all of this help. Email me if you have any further questions: stephen@stephenknuth.com

Last week I had the honor of attending San Diego PhotogShootout’s sister group, SoCal PhotogShootout. It’s an amazing group that’s run by Hanssie Trainor & Matthew Saville. It’s fun to attend their events because when I organize the San Diego events I’m really busy the day of making sure everything works and I don’t get to shoot very much and I always have Hanssie attend so she gets to shoot at mine and when I attend her event, she is running around and I am getting to shoot. I guess my sense of humor in the mornings is lame then if you didn’t laugh at that.. because I did.

This shootout was off the hook! It took place at the beautiful venue, The Romanesque Room in Pasadena with everything themed through the journey of a wedding day. There was six stations with The engagement session, Getting ready details, the ceremony, bridal shoot and the reception. Hanssie & Matt did a phenomenal job putting this one together!

Special Thanks to all the catering services that made it happen!

Coordinator: Amanda Auer of In the Now Weddings

Florist: Honey and Poppies

DJ: First Choice DJ’s

Rentals: Town & Country

Catering: Jays Catering

Styling: Mila

Hair/Makeup: Kacee Geoffroy

Hair/Makeup: Alisha Baijournas

I was asked by SoCal PhotogShootout if I would lead an “Advanced Off-Camera Lighting” Mini-Workshop after the event concluded. I took about 10 photogs into the streets of old Pasadena with one of our amazing couples for some fun! I really loved how old all the buildings were and they streets had a very artistic style mixed in with the amazing textures throughout the alleyways. I was teaching with a WhiteLightning 1600, 12×24 strip softbox and vegabond powerpack. I taught the group that when using off camera strobes you can shoot around 1/20 at f/8 with an ISO 800 and get some awesome images like this one below.

I presented the differences between front lighting which has a much more “beauty” style lighting vs. side lighting (more dramatic light) which at the time was a better style of light because of the textured walls.

I am now offering 1-on-1 mentoring for photographers! These mentoring sessions cover fast editing workflow, shooting on manual, advanced editing in photoshop, building a custom blog, off camera lighting, backlight shooting, getting clients to relax during a shoot, etc. I just started offering these to photographers and they are starting to fill up! I’m going to do a video pretty soon talking about what exactly happens during a 1-on-1 session.

Yesterday, Shari Barnes came to spend a 2 hour lunch with me where we covered fast editing workflow, building a custom blog and taught her how to understand the histogram. Beyond that it was so much fun because we totally connected on a more personal level too and we spent some time chatting about our love for photography and our strong faith in Christ.

After I got home from the session, I got a really sweet email from her describing to me what she experienced!

“First, I loved that you prayed for our food and for our time together, and for me.  It is amazing that we have the right to share faith publicly, and can mix it with business!  Thank you for that! I really appreciate you sharing your workflow with me.  It is SO much better and easier than mine, and I can’t wait to set it, and the other business tips you gave me, into motion! I am stoked on the marketing tools that you were able to share with me that will help get my name out there!  I can’t wait to get my blog going, and finish my website. You have such a heart for teaching, and such a sharing spirit.  I felt very blessed today! Thank you again, SO much!”

If you are interested in doing a 1-on-1 session with me, click here

When I first started the photogshootout in San Diego in September for our first “free” event, I had no idea that it would have grown to myself and Yvonne Lebrun working together and events selling out in less than 10 minutes. San Diego PhotogShootout feels like a train that is moving at supersonic speed. The events are growing, the models are hot and the number in attendance has doubled since our last event. If this were a review of how we did in 2009, I would grade everything with an A+.

Community goes deeper than just people hanging out and taking pictures. Our events are all about having fun, learning to take better images and meeting other like-minded photographers. From the shootout, we encourage our attendees to keep the community growing. It doesn’t matter if its you and a friend taking pictures for fun or grabbing a bunch of friends for an afternoon shoot. Community is Community, plain and simple!

This month, I think we surely outdid ourselves… again. How do we keep outdoing ourselves? Last time, we shot on a ranch with horses, longhorn bulls and a huge barn. This time we shot at a great location located right behind Encinitas Ranch Golf Course called the San Dieguito Heritage Museum. It’s this small piece of land that the owners have a cute passion for collecting raw, antique stuff. For example, they have an old gas station, general store, porch and some open dirt land. Our setup was specifically designed to match the 50′s “Rock-a-billy Pinup” theme. We had a few vintage hotrods donated to us from Hire Old Cars and you can’t forget about the stunning models, rock-star leadership team & the 50 workshop attendees!

The shootout leaders that covered a range of topics from compositional shooting to strobe lighting were made up of: Garrett Photography, La Vida Creations, Evan Bishop Photography, Hanssie Trainor Photography, Scott Anderson Photography & yours truly!

After all the shooting concluded, we all regrouped at Garrett Photography’s studio in Solana Beach, CA to enjoy the community and hear from presentations that were presented by Pixel2Canvas and the nights featured speaker, Tofurious.

Hair & Makeup services provided by: Kelly Sluder and Robyn Mason

At the end of our day. Our awesome sponsor, Shoot Dot Edit sponsored our evening events with providing a great space for everyone to mingle, eat great food and be inspired by Tofurious

Tofurious rocking the packed house with his workshop, “Marketing to your Target Audience through Social Marketing”

Tofuious loves our sponsor, “Dotman” from ShootDotEdit

Thank You to our leaders, models, hair & makeup team, stylists, vintage car drivers, heritage museum and the attendees! It sure was a spectacular event!! I can’t wait to see everyone at the next one!

Well, I just got home from another installment of our San Diego PhotogShootout community workshop. If your unsure of what PhotogShootout is, in simple terms we provide a place where photogrphers, models, hair & makeup artists come together to celebrate the freedom that we have to create art. The workshop was held at the San Diego Heritage Museum followed by an after party sponsored by ShootDotEdit, featuring our special guest speaker Tofurious who gave a wonderful presentation about soical media marketing for photographers.

I will be putting together a full blog post within the next week or so. For now, check out this awesome group photo of all our 50 attendees along with the leaders & models!

Thank You everyone, for making today a complete success!

A few weeks ago, I was sitting with my friend and marketing consultant, IM Effect. Through our conversation & brainstorming we formed an idea that is brilliant for Photographers to market themselves through the internet & facebook. The first idea was to allow a slideshow to play on facebook but I wanted to take it a lot further. I’m an idea guy. I love thinking of ways to make stuff collaborate and how it can benefit other people!

Showit Sites is the incredible provider of my website. Their tools are very easy to construct your very own website. If you can build a powerpoint presentation, you can build a website on showit! Now here was my idea… I want my showit site on my facebook fanpage. But how?

Here are a few reasons why YOU need to market on facebook.

Facebook Advertising: It’s very cheap and you can market it directly to your “wanted client” through keywords, age demographic, etc. I have been studying facebook ads for a few months. Most of them direct you to their outside website from facebook. THATS BAD. Here is my thought on why… Let’s say a newly engaged bride is chatting with her maid of honor on facebook, your ad pops up on her page and she clicks it and it opens a new window and takes her away from Facebook.

What you want to happen is for your ad to click to your fanpage “landing page” (we will come back to that) and it keeps her chat box open, you market to her directly through facebook and your showit site is the first thing she will see. This was my idea but I can tell you thanks to my friend David Jay, it’s a reality!

STEP 1

Go to your fanpage and at the top bar click on the “+”. Search for new application “FBML Tab”. Your coding will be placed into this box. Facebook has it’s own way of doing it called FBML or Facebook Markup Language. Luckily Spilled Milk Designs & myself did all the dirty work for ya!

When in showit, click the “share tab”. You will need the html embed code that will be seen just like this image below:

STEP 2

Your personal code will be presented just like this. See below where that bold line is? Your embed code will have that same kind of line too. Only copy that line from the showit embed code and place it into the code provided below.

<object width="800" height="540"><param name="movie" value="http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="FlashVars" VALUE="sid=10803/715&sp=home-1&fw=800&fh=541&it=0&ip=1&pc=00000d&sc=00000d&cmp=1"></param><embed src="http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf" FlashVars="sid=10803/715&sp=home-1&fw=800&fh=541&it=0&ip=1&pc=00000d&sc=00000d&bc=d4d4d4&cmp=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="800" height="540"></embed></object>

There is only one line of code that you need; the site ID line which is in bold above.

Facebook pages only allow their applications to show 760 pixels wide. Change the above code from 800 x 541 to 760 x 513

Next, go to the profile view of your Facebook page, and click the “edit page” link. Scroll all the way down until you see theWebsite-FBML application, and click on “edit.” Use the image below for reference on what to look for.

Rename the box title whatever you want and paste the code into the box below it.

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="000000" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:black;"
swfsrc='http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf?PLACE SITE ID HERE' imgsrc='IMAGE URL'
width='760' height='513' />

Where it says, “PLACE SITE ID HERE“, you’re going to paste the site ID line from above that you took from your embed code from Showit.  Make sure there is no space between the ? and the start of the site ID code.

Facebook wont allow “flash swf” files to instantly start like most sites will so we need to place an image in its place. Take a screen shot of your site, resize it to 760×513 and upload it to a image sharing site like photobucket. Take the image code and place it into the ‘IMAGE URL’ space in your code.

Click Save Changes.

STEP 3

I realized that once a facebook friend is a “fan” of your page, when they visit your fanpage they will see your wall, uploaded photos, etc. But wait, remember that bride who clicks on your facebook ad? When someone new will visit your fanpage, you want to deliver them an amazing first impression! This is easy! Once your FBML tab is created and your site works. Click on the “settings” button above your fanpage wall.

See where it says “default landing tab for everyone else”? Set your newly created fbml tab in that space. What this means is that when a new visitor clicks to your fanpage via link, advertisement, whatever… the first thing they will see is your showit site. They will be wowed by your photography and the next thing they will click on is “become a fan”! I have been working this strong and my fanpage has gained 890 fans in less than 1 month since I started it and it isn’t just friends of mine, I am getting 40% traffic is unqiue page visitors.

Okay. I really hope this helps you! If you need any further help, please throw a comment onto this post and I will answer back.

If you need some help, here is my custom fanpage

Have fun!!!!

Four months ago, I would have never thought that I would be so blessed where I would be teaming with Yvonne LeBrun to start a workshop in San Diego where the idea is to allow photographers to shoot alongside leaders who are some of San Diego’s best photographers. Our first event, the San Diego Photog GTG :: Sponsored by Photog Shootout sold out in under 3 hours and was a huge success. This month, we planned for it to be bigger, host amazing models and attempt to host an event which at first seemed impossible. The truth is that nothing is impossible with Jesus leading the way.

Our second event was held in Ramona at Split Rock Ranch. My good friend Teale of Teale Photography totally hooked us up with an amazing shooting location. I was blessed with amazing group leaders like Sara France, LaVida Creations, Evan Bishop, David Manning, Hanssie & Matthew Saville. These names are those who I once looked to as who I wanted to strive to be and today, they were so gracious in donating their time to grow our community.

When we opened registration, we were expecting another 2 hour sell-out time. When PhotogShootout texted me that all 30 seats had sold out in 10 minutues… We were in shock. What started as a group of people hanging out to shoot for a few hours & eat dinner afterwards now has become the leader in San Diego that provides a “shootout” experience. It’s my honor to now announce that we are officially, the San Diego PhotogShootout!

I was also a leader for the shootout and my group was so much fun! I’m so excited to post my images below from what I captured during the day.

I chose to turn into a journalist & capture Sara France in action while teaching the workshop attendees

Before you continue viewing the images.. Read This: We were about to start the event when one of our models dropped last minute. Right as we were finding a way to solve the issue, David Manning walks up to us and we made him our fill in model. David is a great wedding photographer in San Diego but this time, he earned an awesome, new role. I think it worked out well, David was giving pointers to the photographers from the “models” perspective and coaching everyone on seeing from a new perspective which was a great addition to our shootout! David wouldn’t have been able to pull off his good looks without our brilliant model, Megan! Thanks you two!!

After the event, we went to another ranch in Ramona for our “Ho-Down BBQ”! I was so stoked to have the opportunity to capture some of the clear night sky that was over our heads!

I think it’s so incredible that God created every single star in the universe and it lays out so perfectly!

CONTEST: WHOEVER CAN COUNT THE NUMBER OF STARS IN THIS PHOTO & POST THE # AS A COMMENT BELOW, I WILL GIVE YOU A $15 STARBUCKS or iTUNES CARD

This might make you a bit dizzy… Matthew Saville & I created Star Traces. The idea is you plant your camera on your tripod. Point the lens at the north star and open the shutter for 20-40 minutes to capture the earths rotation!!

I’m SO excited about the upcoming Photog Retreat 2010 to the Bahamas. It’s an amazing opportunity for rest & relaxation on a carnival cruise ship, fine tune your photography with an amazing exotic shootout and learn from amazing photographers, Scarlett Lillian, The Bui Brothers, Shaun Austin with KISS Books and Kylie Banks. I will also be attending the retreat as a speaker along with organizing the shootout in the Bahamas.

As a So-Cal Photographer, I totally understand that it can be tough to pay for the retreat and a flight from California to Florida. The normal price for the retreat is $850/person. I spoke with the people at photogretreat.com and worked out a deal that gives California Photographers “the goods” for the retreat!

The special price for California Photographers is, $700 for 1 photographer or $1300 for 2 photographers who attend together!! With the savings of $150 off the regular price, that now allows room in your budget to afford a flight to Florida! (First come, First serve basis)

If you want to attend, please email me your Name, E-Mail & Phone Number to info@stephenknuth.com

It was that time again to meet up with 50 amazing photographers, 6 hot models & all the rock-star group leaders. Are you not following me? It’s time for the SoCal Photog Shootout! It’s been quite the experience with this wonderful group from when I attended my first Photog Shootout with Jasmine Star in July. In September, I took part in organizing the very first San Diego Photo GTG sponsored by Photog Shootout which brought out 30 inspiring photographers. This month I was so stoked when I was asked to teach a group of photographers with Scarlett Lillian!

The shootout’s theme was “Trash the Dress”! The shootout took place at the beautiful Bella Collina Golf Course in San Clemente. Imagine all our models wearing high end wedding dresses while they were getting trashed with paint, fake blood, cake, water and dirt! The group that Scarlett Lillian & I organized was the “cake fight”. Our two models are actually engaged which made it so much more fun! I loved telling them to throw away that “want” to throw cake at each other now so that they won’t do it on their wedding day!!

I wanted to give a huge shout out to the amazing work from the brilliant makeup & hair designs from Kacee Geoffroy. If you are a bride looking for a makeup artist or a photographer in need of makeup for your shoot, you need to contact her! She is incredible!! Thank You to our “experts” Sara France & Joe Photo. Another special shout goes to Hanssie Trainor & Matthew Saville for doing an amazing job planning this event! Thanks Guys!!

Joe Photo was so great with teaching our group how to creatively pose your brides. I secretly snagged this shot of him!

The lovely, Scarlett Lillian rocked out her “fabulous & glamorous” style to our models!

These next few shots are from our “cake fight” group!

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to be a group leader for the SoCal Photog Shootout. I will explain more about it in an upcoming blog post but I couldn’t stand it anymore and I needed to show off one of my favorite images as a Teaser! I hope you enjoy this shot as much as I do & be on the lookout for an upcoming full blog post with all the images!