THe following are some resources to assist you with improving your web sites Search Engine Optimization :

The Photographers SEO Book

Eight Ways to Help Google see your Images

Presentation by Matt Cutts – Straight from Google – What you need to know

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

Ever hear your customers say “I cannot find my Proofs” ?
Ever hear your prospective customers say “What is your style of photography” ?
There is a variety of methods that can be used in displaying Portfolio and Client galleries on your smugmug site. Gallery organization and management is critical; web site visitors need ‘easy’ and ‘quick’ navigation to the galleries on your web site. Whether it be to your Portfolio galleries for potential ‘new’ customers or your Client Galleries to ‘present’ customers, both perspectives lead customer satisfaction and future business.

The following below are some variations with the Portfolio and Client gallery viewing methods:

KZ Images

Expressions Photography

Seven Gables Photography

Velvet Strand Photography

I am often ask “What the difference is between a smugmug Category, Subcategory and Gallery?”. Therefore, I created the below image to visually explain and define it.

Ok, so you have the following:
- Great photography skills – check
- Awesome photography equipment – check
- Outstanding order fulfillment process – check
- Stellar web site – check (well, depends on who designed it!)
- Great Search Engine Optimization – check

Does that all really make a difference you if you do not have exceptional customer service? Think about it for a moment. Every now and then, I will receive an email/phone call from a client regarding their web site. Sometimes I stop and ask myself, “I wonder how they treat their customers?” or “If I was their customer, would I recommend them?”

I remember years ago going through a ‘morale building event’ at work. Our manager introduced us to the philosophies of Seattles Pike Place Fish Market. Of all places, a fish market! The four key points of Seattles Pike Place Fish Market philosophy are:

* Play – have fun and create energy at home or at the office.
* Make their day – how can you engage fellow employees, customers and make each other’s day?
* Be Present – How can you make sure you are fully available and aware during conversations with people? It is about create a greater sense of intimacy between individuals.
* Choose Your Attitude – Each day you choose how you are going to act or which “side of the bed” you wake up on. The choice is yours and, the way you act, affects others.

Hence, the book – Fish! by Stephen C. Lundin

You may or may not have employees that work for you. But stop and think about the level of energy, excitement, dedication and customer commitment created at Pike Place Fish Market. How is your level of customer commitment ? Is it part of your check list ? (thanks Lawrence for the friendly reminder and yes, I love seafood!!)

Back in 2008, I had the opportunity to work with Cathy Hartman Photography on the customization of her smugmug site. At the time, her photography business was “Treasured Moments” photography.

Cathy recently contact us for ‘an extreme makeover’ to her site with new colors, banner, logo, slideshow, content and music. LT worked with the Cathy on implementing the modifications. Most importantly, LT did not have to ‘recreate’ the customization of her smugmug site. The customization is design specifically for ‘extreme makeovers’ and enhancements for photographers who change there market brand strategy. This results in both a savings in time and money and expedites the redesign process. Visit Cathy Hartman Photography to see more. Congrats to Cathy Hartman Photography on the new implementation of her market brand and “awesome” job LT!

Before – Treasured Moments Photography

After – Cathy Hartman Photography

MCP Actions develops and markets products to help photographers become more efficient with photoshop. These Photoshop Actions enhance photos and save time and in turn make photographers more profitable.
MCP Actions also provides one on one Photoshop training and group workshops to teach photographers how to edit their photographs more effectively. Visit MCP Actions to learn more…

DO you believe in Magic?

Do you believe in Magic? MCP’s Bag of Tricks for Photoshop CS2, CS3 and CS4 has more than 25 new actions to make you a believer. These actions along with over an hours worth of video tutorials will help you with color and allow you to perform magic on your images.

• Reflected Color Cast Vanisher helps you get rid of isolated color casts
• Magic See Saw, Sunburn Vanisher, Blue & Orange Skin Vanisher fix skin tones
• Color Safe Bleach & Bleach Pen take color casts off white objects, clothing, whites of eyes
• Shiny Skin Vanisher reduces shine on your subjects
• Fake Blue Sky & Sunset Sky Illusions add colorful skies where blown out skies exist
• Grass is Greener Illusion helps turn grass greener
• Use the Magical Color Finder Brushes to paint on intense, rich colors
• Fix your exposure with tools like Magic Light, Magic Dark, Magic Midtone Lifter, Magic Fill Light,
• Magic Recovery and Dynamic Range and add dimension with Magical Contrast and Clarity
• Studio Magic Spells make studio backdrops true white or black
• Pot of Gold gives a beautiful golden look while Lake Michigan Sunset Silhouette turns your sunset pictures into vivid, colorful works of art
• Presto Digital Diet instantly slims your subject

MCP’s Bag of Tricks will change the way you edit. You need to experience it to believe it.  To learn more and purchase these actions visit MCP Actions (this set is located with the Retouching Actions).

The following article is from Cindy Bracken of Shuttermom. “Find out how to start your own photography business, create a waiting-list of clients hungry for your photographic services, make money doing what you love, and make this the best year ever! ”
Check out Shuttermom University. to learn more.

A Photographer With a Bird’s-Eye View of the Economy

“Happy Friday, Everyone!
I found this interesting article about Corporate-jet photographer Charles Tack and wanted to share it. He makes around $300,000 a year photographing corporate jets for sale. What a great niche to be in! Tack, 57, photographs the jets for brokers, who use his work in sales portfolios and for advertisements in trade journals. You can read the full article and see his work by clicking on the link below:”

A Photographer With a Bird’s-Eye View of the Economy

The following is an article from Sherry Ott of Otts World. On September 8, 2006, Sherry Ott began a journey which would take her to 23 countries over 16 months. Having worked in business for 14 years, she decided to give it all up, and see what was outside of her 6 by 8 foot office. Sherry is one of the co-founders of Briefcase to Backpack which offers travel advice for career breaks or sabbaticals. I had the opportunity to customize Sherrys Global Photography smugmug site before she began her journey.

Enjoy Sherry’s work; a celebration of cultures, the diversity of landscapes, and people. Visit Global Photography to view more of Sherrys photography from around the world and visit Otts World to read more from her on-line travel journal.

Gobi Desert Landscapes – Mongolia

Mongolian Horizon

“We all live under the same sky but we don’t have the same horizon” – Konrad Adenauer

Isolation
I have been to about 90% of Asia and there’s one things that hold constant among all Asian countries; population density. There are so many people in Asia, it’s mind boggling. This population density contributes to why Asians aren’t as protective of their personal space as westerners, and they don’t like to queue. However when arriving in Mongolia I was stunned at the emptiness. The country of Mongolia has the lowest population density in the world. I had never experience emptiness like this before. We’d drive for 100km in the desert and you wouldn’t see another human being; nor a truck or car or motorcycle. However, we were never really alone as we were surrounded by the animals; camels, horses, goats, sheep, and yaks. We’d see packs of random camels grazing in the seemingly barren desert. I honestly have no idea what they were grazing on!

Kaleidoscope of Colors and Texture
As we left Ulanbatar the terrain changes from rolling green hills with gers puffing out fairy tale smoke to the pebbly brown hills of the Gobi. I saw the last tree I would see in days, and soon the desert colors and landscape seemingly changed as quickly as the turn of a kaleidoscope. I’d look at the jeep window and see a flat, brown rocky landscape. I’d look up again and see mountains in the distance and then the landscape would be greener with little blades of young grass sprouting up from the parched earth. Next my eyes would be greeted with a pebbly landscape that looked steely and gray with no sign of life. Finally I would stare out my window wondering if I had missed us shoot into orbit somehow; it looked as though we had landed on the moon. This unearthly surface was one of my favorite. Strangely the desert was more colorful than I ever would have imagined.

View Mongolian Landscape photography

No Sand in the Desert?
When you think of the desert, you think of sand – right? Not so fast, the Gobi isn’t a sandy desert. In fact, in my 12 days there, I saw very little sand (even though my camera sensor would say otherwise evidenced by all the dust particles on my photos that I had to edit!) Instead there were boulders, rocks, pebbles and dirt.

Uush Sand Dunes

There are some large sand dunes, however you had to travel to find them, they were more or a rarity than the norm. We luckily did travel to the Uush sand dunes; the dunes known for their amazing healing sand (according to the locals who would bury their bodies in it). After a long drive through the flat dusty terrain, we finally saw the dunes raise up out of the nothingness. We climbed to the top of the dune and sat down in the fine sand and took inventory of our surroundings. It was an amazing view from the top; looking down on the flat, hard desert floor. As I looked out into the distance I noticed that the brilliant blue sky disappearing into a brown haze. I asked our local host about the strange sky; a sandstorm he said. I’ve been in a lot of weather conditions all over the world, but never a sandstorm. I decided to take on the emotion of our host and stay calm and watch it get closer and closer as our sun disappeared and the wind picked up. Seemingly at the last minute he looked at us and said “We go now”, and we all proceeded to race down the huge dune to safety! It was invigorating as we ran into the ger and the sand started whistling past the door and we all took a safe cover. The desert was full of surprises!

Mongolian Safari

Desert Safari
I felt as if we were on safari at times; I had memory flashbacks to my time in Kenya, driving a bumpy jeep through barren land in search of animals. In the Gobi, it seemed as if the animals would come look at us, and we in turn would look at them as if the idea of a shared heartbeat in this empty landscape drew us together. At one point we came over a small rise in the landscape and suddenly saw a herd of lightening fast Ibex dart across the vast desert. I yelped in delight as if I had just seen a cheetah! The only thing you could see was little puffs of dust following their trails as they disappeared out of sight as fast they came into our sight. In addition to the unique Ibex sighting, there was another unusual animal in the desert; the camel. It’s important to note that camels in the Gobi desert are actually unique, I was told the Gobi is the only place you’ll find two hump camels in the world which makes them even rarer than elephants!

Nothing survives here!

The Desert Effect
As if I were on a movie set, we drive and bump our way past rotting animal carcasses, skulls, and various bones scattered on the desert floor. The bones would be so white from the sun that they seemed unreal. In fact, my first reaction to going by what looked to be a yak skull was ‘Is that for real?” As if I thought some movie director had decided to put a fake skull out in the middle of nowhere to create a ‘desert effect’. These are the times when realize that maybe there has been too much television influence on my life and not enough real life experiences! Real life in the desert is hard; especially for the animals. These were the animals that didn’t make it for one reason or another. But you can be sure that in the great ‘circle of life’ the other animals benefited from the death as evidenced by the cleanly picked skeletons. One animal’s death was another’s feast.

A few lone trees were a pleasant surprise

Mirage of Trees
After driving for miles and miles towards the sand dunes, I saw something off in the distance. The little black formations were unusual, but I assumed they were camels or horses milling together in solidarity against the elements. I kept my eye on the dark odd-shaped spots as we continued to drive closer to them. I rubbed my eyes, still fixated on the spots, realizing that these weren’t animals, nor were they people; they were trees. A strange little clump of trees had sprung up out of the dry, cracked desert floor! I wondered if I was seeing things; was this indeed a mirage? I had gone days without seeing trees and my brain was surprised to see this one time familiar image again. The unexplainable bunch of hearty trees appeared to be growing next to a dried out river bed; I imagined these tree roots sucking every last ounce of water out of the river until it was gone and only a slurping sound remained; certainly the heat was getting to me!

Distant Storms

Stormy Weather

One great thing about a desert is that you can see for miles and miles; the horizon surrounding you like a halo. However, sometime that pure horizon would be disrupted by a strange site; rain. Never once did it rain on us, however it seemed to be quite often raining around us. I felt like we existed with a giant forcefield around us ensuring the rain clouds stayed always in the distance. However, this rain forcefield did provide many fabulous opportunities to watch as the storm took on a life of its own and slowly moved across the desert gathering darkness and power.

Endless Sky
I stared out the window trying to figure out why the Mongolian sky seemed so different; unique and larger than life. After much thought I came to the conclusion that in NYC or Saigon or most of the places I’ve ever lived, you have to look up to see the sky. You have to make a special effort to view it as it’s normally such a small percentage of our overall view. However in the flat, treeless Gobi, the sky was now about 70% of my view and it was straight in front of me. I felt as if I were in one of those round-about theatres where everywhere you looked was clouds. When the sky is constantly within your line of sight, it takes on this vastness that you could feel; and this is what I’ll remember most about the Mongolian landscape.

Galt Wedding Photography

Galt Photography

Santa Rosa California area photographers Forrest and Myra Galt specialize and wedding and portrait photography.

Forrest and Myra “love photography because of the way it conveys to the viewer the image of a loved one in a pleasant or amusing way. The photograph is a record of a person or event that will not change. So often photography is overlooked by most people, they don’t see the value of it until it is too late. We strive to make the best images possible, and we enjoy the challenge of it.”

Galt Photography uses both wordpress and smugmug for their internet site. “Thanks to Jaki Good, we found Jerry Roek. He did an incredible job of designing our new web site! Our old web site was stagnant, yet I wasn’t sure how to create a new one. Jerry lead us through the process quickly and was very responsive to our questions and concerns. We highly recommend him.”

You can view their work at Galt Wedding Photography and Galt Photography.

Here is a few of my favs from Traverse City – Old Mission Peninsula from this past summer. Traverse City has been best known as the ‘cherry captial of the world’. Now Traverse City is becoming famous for its vineyards and wineries (yea – wine from Michigan!). To see more of my pictures from Traverse City, visit My Michigan albums.

I don’t want to come across like a tour agent for Traverse City, but from the lake activities to the festivals to the beaches to the golf courses to the sand dunes to the fab wineries to the art/culture in the summer months and from the skiing to the ice fishing in the winter months, the activities seem endless. Here are a few of my fav places to visit in the area:

Old Mission Peninsula

Black Star Farms Winery

Chateau Chantel Winery

Peninsula Cellars

The Bear Golf Course at Grand Traverse Resort and Spa

Traverse City Beach Bums Professional Baseball

Turtle Creek Casino

Pirates Cove Golf Course

Downtown Traverse City

Macinkaw Brewing Company

View of East Grand Traverse Bay from Old Mission Peninsula

View of East Grand Traverse Bay from Old Mission Peninsula – morning Sunrise

View of Old Mission Peninsula – Vineyard and Cherry Farm