One guy had such awesome work it was amazing. Little action scenes of model train scale figurines falling off piers and stairs. Damn his work was good. Like seriously some of the most original photography I’ve seen.

I was kind of hoping there would be too many submissions and they wouldn’t get to mine. How could I stack up next to all this other great work? But they did get to mine. It was nerve wracking for sure. One guy in the audience knew me from g+.

Definitely one of the cooler local photog events I’ve been to and the price was perfect. It’s based on an idea Atlanta photog Zach Arias came up with and was organized by Matthew Ginn. Little impromptu photography events like that are awesome. Especially when they’re in SE Portland. Oh and I forgot to mention it was bring your own chair and beer. I literally have five folding camping chairs to chose from (hey, a good chair while car camping is worth it’s weight in gold) so I grabbed my best camping chair and headed down.

Events like this are a key reason I’m still in Portland. It takes some hunting but it can be a supportive community.

portland photographer pete springer

Doing some spring cleaning and ran across a bunch of photo equipment that I’m not using so it’s time for a sale! Everything is listed on craigslist — including the flash bracket in the photo. Great equipment, great prices!

Here’s are those listings:

Flash Bracket – SOLD

Studio Boom Arm – SOLD

Camera and Lens Cases

portland photographer pete springer

The irony is that the criticized photos were commissioned by clients. And the clients were happy with the results.

I think as photographers we need to stand back sometimes. Why? Because all that technical stuff about histograms and meters and ratios — clients don’t care about that. They want visually pleasing photos and they really don’t care about anything other than the results and if they can use the final photos or not.

Remember – when you get hired for a shoot, you’re shooting for the client, not yourself or other photographers. You always need to deliver the results the client wants in order to keep them happy.

And when you get a negative comment, consider the source. Not every critique is valuable or even useful.

portland photographer

My website is finally ipad friendly! The latest ipad version of the site just went online today. It’s still a bit rough (I’m slowly polishing it up but it’s obviously more limited than the regular website).

My webhost/designer relies pretty heavily on Flash so getting a non-flash website for the ipad has taken a little bit of time. The previous version was insanely clunky. That’s why I’m so excited for this version. It’s definitely an improvement.

Still can’t get the site to work properly on an android phone (tries to run the flash version but it basically freezes). Rumor is the webhost has HTML5 sites in development but they’ve been promising those since December so I’m not holding my breath. Interestingly, pinterest won’t work on a flash site so that’s one plus about the delayed HTML5 sites.

Amazing that you can’t just have one website these days. My website now has at least four versions, one each for iphone, ipad, computer, and a mangled mess of an android version. Add in a blog, FB, g+, Linkedin, etc and it’s tough to keep up!

portland swimwear photographer pete springer

Just saw one of my photos on a FB page promoting the “newest actress” for a local agency. What’s weird is that I shot that photo in 2005 — seven years ago! Maybe it’s just me, but I would be very, very skeptical of any agency that is using photos from 7 years ago to promote their new talent. Appearances change over time. That and it’s kind of a crappy photo (let’s just say I’ve become a better photographer in the last seven years).

So there are about a dozen tip-offs that you might want to be careful with this agency. Their FB link to their website is a dead end. Their actual website has no talent portfolios on it. They have several questions from talent on their FB page that are unanswered.

Oh — and my favorite. There’s a “recommendation” on their FB page calling them “the best talent agency in Portland” even though they’ve been in business for two weeks. Really? What work have they booked this month? I can assure you there are better agencies in town than Focused. Agencies who have been in business for years and years and years and weren’t created under nefarious circumstances.

What do I mean? Focused is supposedly the new incarnation of Vault Model & Artist Management — whose owner is now serving a year in prison for child sex abuse of a client.

Interestingly, Vault still has a website listing sex offender Michael Fox as the owner. And Fox is also listed as the contact for Focused. And there’s the same LA phone number for both agencies. Plus, Fox is listed as the admin and tech contact for Focused Artist Management. Is Fox running these agencies from prison?

Makes me wonder if the new “agency” isn’t simply a temporary place holder until the owner of Vault gets out of prison. After all, the first Focused post on FB was a glowing thank you to sex offender Michael Fox for all his help in the transition from Vault to Focused. That post has since been removed.

portland photographer pete springer

See what happens when I’m sitting on a bunch of great photo yet can’t post ‘em because of a request by the client? I end up SEO relapsing!

Googled “portland photographers” to see if a recent link swap had helped and sure enough, it did. Depending on how you count, I’m either number 9 or number 5 (I’m pretty sure the middle four listings are paid listings) which is pretty cool considering I was listed lower just a week ago.

Google loves links to your site. If you swap links, you don’t want it to be a direct swap (ie you provide a link to them and they provide a link to you). The best way to do it is to link to a site, and a different site links to you.

While I thought I had sworn off SEO, the reality is that little stuff like link trades done every week improves your listing because google ranks on recent posts and longevity. Having a website url for a couple of years ranks higher than newer urls. And the more you get linked to, the better your rank.

Okay, okay, I swear I have to give up this SEO stuff for good! Search engines are nice but the reality of commercial photography is that’s not where your work will come from. Let’s use this month as an example. I have three commercial shoots booked so far, all with clients I’ve worked for before. A model portfolio shoot coming up and I’m pretty sure she found me via social media. Personal shoot where the model found me on MM. Boudoir shoot where I was found on google but ultimately booked just because I was available and could turn it around fast. Oh, and bidding on two jobs in Florida based on marketing efforts.

So in reality, a decent listing for “portland photographer” on google didn’t actually get me any work. Just something to consider when working on SEO.

portland photographer pete springer

I always get written permission from clients before sharing photos online. There are rare cases though, where a client decides that they don’t want the photos shared online.

It’s a real drag when that happens.

Think about it, do you prefer a Facebook post with a photo or a comment, “Cool shoot, wish I could share photos but I can’t”? The nature of photography is visual not written. After all, a decent photo is worth at least a 1000 words.

I do understand (and respect) model/client privacy issues on the other side of this issue too. Just saying it’s a bummer when I have photos I want to share and can’t. It makes for a boring, whiny blog post too!

Would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments.

Back to a visual blog next post.

portland photographer pete springer

I’ve been following this case since last June when Michael Fox was first arrested. At the time, the guy already had a reputation as a douche bag who used his agency as a dating service. Well it’s not exactly a date when the girl is only 16 and you sexually abuse her, is it? Fortunately the courts agreed.

Portland modeling agency owner sentenced to a year in prison

The amazing part is that Fox was re-arrested for violating the terms of his release agreement just last month (wild guess – no contact with minors?) This is clearly the kind of guy you want to avoid, much less have him represent you as a model.

I’ve had a number of Vault “models” contact me in the past year and I refuse to work with them. I explain to them that I work very hard to maintain a positive reputation and associating with an agency who’s owner was arrested for sexually abusing a minor is not the reputation I want.

Anyway, there is a legitimate modeling industry in Portland and there are legitimate agencies. Take a look at this post I did back in June when Fox was initially arrested. Only thing I’d change about this post is that I’ve since worked a bunch with Sports and Lifestyle Unlimited and they’re absolutely fabulous. They’re generally the first agency I recommend to models now. Q6 and Option also remain stellar.

portland photographer pete springer

“Does your website have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d like to shoot you an email. I’ve got some recommendations for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great site and I look forward to seeing it improve over time.”

Trouble finding my contact page?!? Did you look at the title bar?!? It’s that link that says, “contact”!

It’s funny because I’m on twitter, FB (two accounts – business and personal), g+, linkedin, and I have my email and phone number listed online for anyone who is looking. I hand out business cards all the time, send promotional emails, and print postcards too. Not exactly hiding here, brilliant commenter! So it always cracks me up when people say something like, “I couldn’t find out how to contact you.” Really?

portland photographer pete springer

“My name is Pete, and I’m an SEO-aholic.”

“Hi, Pete!”

Seriously, for a while I’ve been obsessed with SEO. Always sneaking keywords into everything I can – image alt tags, link descriptions, posting on social media at times most likely to get noticed, reviewing my google analytics with a fine-tooth comb, etc, etc.

And you know what? I’m not so convinced anymore that SEO matters as much as I thought. What changed?

Well I get at least one phone call a week from someone trying to sell me SEO services. They almost always start with something like, “You’re on page 2 of a google search for ‘portland photographers’”. And for a fee, the caller will get me on page one. The irony is that depending on your monitor size, I’m sometimes listed on page one (see image above) for “portland photographer”. Size does matter when it comes to SEO.

But you know what? I’m slowly coming around to the realization that SEO doesn’t really matter for commercial photographers. Clients rarely find a commercial photographer based on google results. Instead, they usually ask for recommendations from co-workers or work with someone they’ve already worked with.

We’ve all heard this a million times, but relationships are much more important than anything else. More important than where you rank on google, more important than having insane photography skills, more important than having shitloads of friends on FB. People usually hire people they know or people recommended by people they know.

Leslie Burns (a commercial photography consultant and attorney) has long recommended you spend your efforts on direct marketing and creating relationships rather than SEO. In fact, she goes so far as to say “Fuck SEO” in her December 29th blog post (#4 on the list). I have to say, after a lot of reflection, I think she has a valid point.

So if you’re obsessed with SEO, I’d suggest you re-think it. Your best clients aren’t going to come from google searches (some clients will, but generally, the best – ie ones hiring you for shoots you really want to do – probably aren’t using google to find you).

And finally, Michael Katz points out in his awesome business blog and webinars, that it’s a lot easier to get re-hired by existing clients than to try to find new clients. The key here is to take a genuine interest in your clients.

Think about it. You’re at the grocery store and the clerk asks, “How ya’ doing?” You might give them a single word answer and forget all about it. But what if they ask, “You going anywhere for the holidays?”

That happened to me last month and I had a conversation with the grocery store clerk (he was going to Texas, I was going to California) and every time since, when I go to that store, I now say “hi” to the clerk. Even when he’s not helping me. That’s something no amount of SEO can create.

portland photographer pete springer