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Lifestyle Photography

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Art Becker 1

Art Becker is a multi-faceted photographer based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He believes that photography is about sharing a moment and he uses his Nikon camera with Nikkor lenses to capture his subjects. To see more of his work, visit his liveBooks website now: www.artbeckerphoto.com.

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Being a photographer is my job, but it’s also a part of my life. I’m passionate about what I do and I want those who see my work to be moved by it. It’s my hope they will experience what I’ve experienced and “get” what it is I’m trying to say. If I accomplish that, my career will have been worthwhile.

The bonus is, I get to create cool moments as I go along. In some mysterious way maybe it changes a life, an outlook, a mood or even just a few minutes in the day. That is enough for me.

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Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

AB: Simply, Creative, Graphic. I wouldn’t change anything about it.

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Q: How often do you typically update your website?

AB: Choosing the photos that I display on my homepage is simple. The choices I make are based on the visual impact of each image. It has to have a strong composition and light to attract the viewers. The first image – the little girl peeking over the edge, the story behind it is to take a look inside. The second  – there’s beauty in the clouds, just look up. Third – out of a plane window with natural light creating the composition. And last, the magic of twilight – my favorite time of day to photograph.

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Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

AB: How often do I change the images? At very least once a week. It’s my belief in order to keep your existing audience coming back. To attract new ones, I create new imagery for them to view.

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Q: What is your favorite new feature of liveBooks8?

AB: One of the best features of my new website is that it’s easy to navigate. You simply click on portfolios and view the images of your choice. My older clients love it and new clients are sending me requests. I couldn’t ask for better results than that.

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Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

AB: The one piece of advice if you are creating a new site is to keep it simple, make it visually driven and easy for a client to, as I say, “Find Art”.

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Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.

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Lou Bopp 11

I am a still photographer and director based in St. Louis and New York City. My aesthetic is driven by authentic, textural, emotive moments, whether I am shooting stills and or motion assets. My style and feel of the two assets are consistent, which is paramount for most brands.

Like most people, I loved taking photos growing up and got my first break by being in the right place at the right time when the Berlin Wall came down, which led to a freelance gig at a newspaper, a wire service, etc. The next big break was landing the highly coveted internship at Sports Illustrated. That brought me to NYC and killed the drive of wanting to shoot sports. From there, I assisted for 2 years and the went out on my own and curated a clientele base and honed in on my personal aesthetic, which is always evolving.

I specialize in shooting authenticity-driven imagery for regional to global brands and agencies, working on projects such as: image brand libraries, advertising campaigns, editorial, digital assets for web, print, outdoor, broadcast, etc.

Partial client list includes Mississippi Tourism, Marley Coffee, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, AMD, Deutsche Bank, Intel, Nike, AMEX, American Airlines, GE, Disney World, Time Warner, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, J. Walter Thomas, People Magazine, AG Edwards, CDW, Y & R, Fleishman-Hillard, McCann-Erickson, FutureBrand, etc.

And I have an image on the USPS stamp…to be introduces and issued on March 31st, 2017.

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Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

LB: Intuitive. Clean. Informative.

Time is precious for any client and we didn’t want people to think about how the site works, it needed to be intuitive. The goal is to be sensitive to people’s time and let them view the images efficiently. Gone are the days, with us at least, for sites with all the bells & whistles, sound, moving targets to click on, etc. Art buyers/creatives have enough going on in their lives, it’s our task to help them and we believe that ease and simplicity is key.

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Q: How often do you typically update your website?

LB: Pretty often, at least once a month if not more. It has to be updated and be fresh. It’s alive, it’s a living breathing organism and we have to keep feeding it!

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Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

LB: I yield to my agent and then we discuss. There are images that tend to rise to the top of the heap.

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Q: What is your favorite new feature of liveBooks8?

LB: The backend workflow is a lot deeper than before. The SEO is key, the rotating home page, it’s faster all around. That’s a few of the faves, hard to pick just one…which is good!

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Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

LB: For me, the backend workflow is key. If I’m going to update content as often as I do, it has to be a good user experience, not something that I dread. I’ve had those dreaded websites and blogs in the past, think WordPress, sigh.

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Cameron Karsten is both a photographer and film-maker. His work ranges from portraiture to lifestyle photography. He had worked for clients such as Discovery Channel, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines, and Microsoft. To see more of Cameron’s work, visit his liveBooks8 site: www.cameronkarsten.com.

I began my career as a writer, spending my twenties backpacking around the world in search of stories, characters, and experiences. I began a blog, attained followers, sold travel articles, and by the advice of someone, I was encouraged to post photographs with my written stories. At this time, digital photography was gaining momentum, so I traded in my Nikon film camera for a small point-and-shoot. I kept writing but slowly overtime, I had the desire to tell stories with photos instead of words. This led to a 2-year program in commercial photography, which led to assisting and digital-teching for professional photographers, which has now grown into a career as a commercial photographer. I still write and have a love for the craft, but I now shoot motion alongside my photography. When I step back, they’re all a form of storytelling, so I’m grateful for each trade.

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Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

CK: When I switched platforms to the new liveBooks8 I was seeking something clean, simple, and bold. These would be the three words I’d use, and maybe throw in elegant as well.

Grundens recreational and commercial fishing clothing line in Florida Keys

Q: How often do you typically update your website?

CK: Typically I update my website every couple of months, but it also depends if new work I finish fits within my projects and portfolios. Sometimes it’s sooner, sometimes it’s later, but I look at it and analyze the content every few days, seeking a better edit or a new perspective that’ll improve my presentation. But I admit; I am my own worst editor.

Puget Sound Restoration Fund CSA volunteer oyster harvest - Port Madison, Bainbridge Island, WA

Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

CK: I want the homepage images that represent my projects and portfolios to be striking and to me that carries a sense of emotion with regards to light, shadow, and lines. Most of them are during sunrise or sunset, or are dramatic in the sense of scale and design. Obviously, I’m looking to attract creative directors, art buyers and project managers to dig deeper into my website whether it’s a personal project or commissioned portraiture.

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Q: What is your favorite new feature of liveBooks8?

CK: My favorite new feature of liveBooks8 is the fullscreen homepage allowing the images to be big and bold. I want the first glance at my website to be striking and be utilizing the full screen with scrolling images, this becomes effective.

Bone Fishing in Belize off Ambergris Caye, TripAdvisors top island in the world

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

CK: If I could offer advice on designing a website, I’d say utilize peers and professionals to help you edit your work. I’ve put my photography in front of many peers and strangers, receiving a whole gamut of feedback. It has shaped how I present my work, as well as helped hone my skills as a storyteller. The liveBooks8 support staff was also diligent throughout the process of transitioning my website to the new platform, which I appreciate and I’m grateful for.

Grundens recreational and commercial fishing clothing line in Florida Keys

 

Puget Sound Restoration Fund CSA volunteer oyster harvest - Port Madison, Bainbridge Island, WA

Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.

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Brian DeMello is a lifestyle photographer that has dedicated his career to photographing various outlets. From photographing foods to beauty products, his work portfolio ranges far more than your typical photographer. To see more of his work, visit his liveBooks8 website: www.briandemello.com

Reminiscing on my childhood, photography was always something that grabbed my attention. Whether I was looking through my great grandparents exotic vacation photos, flipping through the pages of National Geographic, or pestering the photographer who was taking my little league baseball photos, I could be easily entertained for hours by the process and results of photography. Fast forwarding past my high school and college years, I found myself working for a small graphic design shop in Newport, R.I. It was here that I found myself working alongside some of the top sailing and marine photographers in the world. Taking inspiration from seeing their work on a daily basis, I began investing more and more time and money into developing my own portfolio. Over the years I’ve found that I enjoy different styles of photography for different reasons. Early on in my career I struggled with the complexities of lighting studio work. These days I’m infatuated with the subtleties and analytics of complex lighting. A lot of the imagery that I produce will never see the light of day because it’s only purpose is for my exploration of a style, subject, or technique. On the flip side of my commercial work and explorations, I’m constantly developing a body of fine art images that is very personal and introspective. The development and evolution of this work has become a priceless escape from the din of everyday life. I hope to one day incorporate the fine art images into a series of books, but time will tell.

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Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

BD: Efficient – it allows the viewer to choose the exact path they want to travel right from the landing page, but also introduces them to my other work at the same time. Both of those aspects were foundational in redesigning my website.
Simple – the website isn’t meant to waste the viewer’s time. It’s easy to navigate.
Precise – it gives a client/potential client a sense of clarity on what to expect when working together

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Q: How often do you typically update your website?

BD: Keeping fresh and new images on my site is very important to how I promote my work. I try to keep on a schedule of populating my site with 5-10 new images at a time or in a ballpark of once every 2-3 months. One of the final stages of my editing workflow is to upload a web-optimized image to my liveBooks image gallery. This ensures that when I’m ready to include new image in my portfolio, it’s already waiting for me on the back-end of the site. With the new liveBooks8 platform being accessible from my iPhone and iPad, I’m able to plan and accomplish the evolution of my website from anywhere and importantly keep the website up to speed with my social media teasers. That being said, I try to regularly post teaser images on social media as often as I feel the work is strong enough. That regularity varies from twice a week to once every other week depending on what project I’m pursuing. For me, this keeps a steady flow of “fresh teaser images” venturing out into the world without spamming my contacts with “updated website promos”.

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Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

BD: Choosing images is difficult. Period.
Like it or not, photographers develop emotional connections to their imagery. For a photographer, the memories that surround the production of any given image permanently become part of that photograph. I’ve always had the confounding ability to remember incredible detail about my experiences as a photographer. The odor of garlic emanating from the kitchen at an on-location editorial shoot, the amazing humor of a fitness model as she holds a difficult pose, the stench of a burnt out water pump in a small studio. I remember the good and the bad alike. So when it come time to select images for a portfolio, art gallery, or the homepage of my website, the process is the same: I make 4×6 inch prints of every image in consideration then all the images are laid out in the studio floor. I can spend hours to days arranging and reworking until I have a selection and arrangement of images that work well together. I find that working with a jumble of images all but eliminates the personal memories that I have associated with each individual image. Sometimes I work the prints by myself, but for projects with a larger scope or impact, I’ll bring in other photographer friends to have second opinions.

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Q: What is your favorite new feature of liveBooks8?

BD: That’s easy! The ability to work on my website from my iPad has proven to be quite a welcome aspect of the liveBooks8 platform. Having almost total control over the website design was a bit daunting at first because there was a fair amount to learn about the new interface. (Although I’m tech savvy, I have minimal web design knowledge). After spending a little bit of time “walking around” the design interface and menus, I had fairly quickly developed the foundation of what is now my functioning website. With that learning curve conquered, the ability to work on a mobile device quickly took hold. Over the course of a train ride from Boston to Washington DC and back to Boston, I has designed and organized an entirely new website on my iPad. A few extra minutes with Lily from Tech Support to clarify some SEO lingo and the finishing touches were done.

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Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

BD: Think, take your time, and think some more! Be analytical! You are going to be judged on how your website carries your brand just as much as how it carries your portfolio. Put yourself in your clients’ shoes (and just as importantly, your prospective clients’ shoes) when you are designing your site. Think about how they work and how you can make their job and life easier. Being a photographer is who you are, but making a client’s life better is what you do. Don’t rush that…Take your time!

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Have a website you’d like us to feature? Email us at social@livebooks.com.

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