The Photographer S Mba

If you have finally taken the leap with your photography and gone into business–or if you are considering it– The Photographer’s MBA will prove a helpful guide in navigating the often confusing and occasionally frustrating territories of business, marketing, pricing, and contracts. Photographer Sal Cincotta, who runs a highly successful portrait, senior, and wedding photography business, deftly leads you through “the other 90%” of the job of a photographer. In this book, you will: Consider what kind of business entity is best suited for you, such as a sole proprietorship, S-Corp, or LLC Learn about the critical importance of both business plans and marketing plans, and how they will help you reach your short-term and long-term goals Understand branding’s elements and how to define your own brand so that you stand out from the crowd Assess your social media strategy to optimize your presence online, and learn about search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your findability Tackle costs, pricing, and contracts (including copyright and model releases) At the end of each chapter, Sal offers a Next Steps section, containing exercises that challenge you to actively implement the overall lessons in the book. By helping you create a solid plan, a strategy you can implement, and a vision for your business, The Photographer’s MBA gets you well on your way to creating and sustaining a photography business that will grow and succeed for years to come.

For those photographers looking to start a business—or expand their current business—to include the lucrative high school senior portrait market, The Photographer’s MBA: Senior High School Portraiture is a complete resource that dives deep into every aspect of the genre. Unlike other books that only cover one part of the business, photographer Sal Cincotta, who leads a highly successful portrait and wedding photography business, covers them all, including everything from shooting, posing, lighting, and post-production, to all the details on the business side: from creating business and marketing plans to pricing, costs, branding, and sales. Learn how to effectively define your style through your approach to lighting, equipment, posing, and post-production Understand every aspect of the senior portrait “ambassador program”—what this referral program is, and how this essential component of the senior portrait business will help you succeed Create business and marketing plans that will provide focus for your business and allow you to reach both your short-term and long-term goals Assess your website, branding, and social media strategies, and learn how to improve your findability online Tackle the pricing and sales process, and ensure that you are creating the best experience possible for your clients The book also offers a Next Steps section at the end of key chapters, which contains exercises that challenge you to actively implement the overall lessons in the book. By helping you create a solid plan, a strategy you can implement, and a vision for your business, The Photographer’s MBA: Senior High School Portraiture gets you well on your way to creating and sustaining a high school portraiture business that will grow and succeed for years to come.

Cabinet cards were America’s main format for photographic portraiture throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Standardized at 6½ x 4¼ inches, they were just large enough to reveal extensive detail, leading to the incorporation of elaborate poses, backdrops, and props. Inexpensive and sold by the dozen, they transformed getting one’s portrait made from a formal event taken up once or twice in a lifetime into a commonplace practice shared with friends. The cards reinforced middle-class Americans’ sense of family. They allowed people to show off their material achievements and comforts, and the best cards projected an informal immediacy that encouraged viewers to feel emotionally connected with those portrayed. The experience even led sitters to act out before the camera. By making photographs an easygoing fact of life, the cards forecast the snapshot and today’s ubiquitous photo sharing. Organized by senior curator John Rohrbach, Acting Out is the first ever in-depth examination of the cabinet card phenomena. Full-color plates include over 100 cards at full size, providing a highly entertaining collection of these early versions of the selfie and ultimately demonstrating how cabinet cards made photography modern. Published in association with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Tentative exhibition dates (postponed due to COVID-19): Amon Carter Museum of American Art: August 2020 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA): 2021

From shooting formal family portraits in a dimly lit church to capturing lively candids at a bustling reception, this valuable reference presents 100 tips for handling the process from start to finish—choosing the best equipment, capturing the best moments on film, and enhancing and presenting them afterwards. Numerous professionals offer valuable advice for digital wedding photography, giving technical guidance on lighting, exposure and metering, and color management, as well as ideas for scouting locations, dealing with nervous brides, and photographing large groups. Ample time is spent on the many aspects of posing and lighting—for both formal and informal situations—with an eye toward enhancing the efficiency of the shoot and the natural beauty of the resulting images.

The material in this book is the result of asking each of the 10 photographers a series of 14 questions carefully designed to get to the heart of the matters of creativity and profitibility. As each profiled photographer has a distinctive style, background, and personality, the resulting answers will engage, inspire, and educate readers on all aspects of the task of creating stand-out imagery in a field in which only the best survive and thrive.

Master the demanding lighting needs for weddings of any variety with this comprehensive guide from an industry expert. All the basics are covered, including how to choose and use the right equipment, how to control light and shadow while outdoors, how to utilize ambient room light and natural light, and how to ensure the best color balance for each image. Technical tips from 40 top wedding photographers cover such specifics as producing window-light images and using such tools as scrims, umbrellas, and gobos. With the right lighting know-how, a photographer can capture with ease the candid looks and pure emotions of the wedding party.