There are tons of issues facing photographers in todays connected world. Increasingly, professional shooters are finding themselves needing to know more and more about technology in order to remain relevant and competitive. Not only do photographers need to know the basics of their craft (light, composition, exposure, etc.) but they also need to be technically savvy about things such as megapixels, cropped-frame vs full-frame sensors, noise reduction software, digital asset management software, digital retouching, and the list goes on and on.
I realize I’m painting a somewhat bleak picture, but really it’s not that bad. In fact learning that stuff is actually fun in some cases. One thing I didn’t mention above was search engine optimization, also known as SEO. This is the practice of creating web pages (and blog posts) in a way so that the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc) can find them easily. You see, you could be the best photographer in your city, but if a potential client Googles, say, “Wedding Photographer, Anytown USA”, and your website doesn’t come up… or comes up AFTER your competitor (who’s photography sucks), guess who’s getting the job.
But there IS HOPE!!! In this interview, I have an in-depth chat with John Pozadzides (aka John P). Not only is he a SEO Ninja, but he also runs a company that aims to bring REALTIME web traffic analytics to your website or blog. That means, using their software you can literally watch people bounce around your site in realtime… and even open a chat window to freak them out! John gives some golden tips that photographers can start using today to begin increasing their search engine rankings.
You can find out more about John over on his very popular and SEO friendly blog “One Man’s Blog”, and be sure to check out Woopra.
