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We are thrilled to have just wrapped up our first ever Instagram contest – we absolutely loved seeing all of the amazing photos! We wanted to share with you the winning snaps (the decision was incredibly difficult!)

This photo by Stephane Malassine is absolutely gorgeous – it makes us feel tranquil and relaxed, and the colors are so incredibly vibrant! Check out more of his work at his website: www.malassine.com and on Instagram: @s.malassine

We are mesmerized by this pic from Greg Anthon – the colors, the way he expertly captures a wave at its peak, and the clean lines. See more of his unique style on Instagram: @greganthon.

Our third winner is this breathtaking snap by Jamie Chan in Bali, Indonesia. Check her out at www.jamiecphotos.com and on Instagram: @jamiecphotos.

Stay tuned for our next Instagram contest – and thanks to all those that participated!

Guest post by liveBooks client Kike Calvo. 

This post is the latest in the Drones and Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Special Series, which profiles interesting information, thoughts and research into using drones, UAVs or remotely piloted vehicles for journalism and photography, that I learn about during my travels.

Pictured: Upgraded DJI Phantom 1. Photo © Nano Calvo.

If there is a question that gets asked over and over in the many emails I get in response to my Drones and Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Special Series, it is “What gear and components do you use in your on-going process of becoming a proficient aerial photographer and filmmaker?” I will devote today’s column to discussing one of my basic rigs.

One of my unmanned vehicles of choice is the DJI Phantom, both Phantom 1 and Phantom 2. My decision is based on size, portability, and reliability. With the knowledge that experts from DSLRpros bring to the table, I have upgraded my system to include the following:

Photo © Nano Calvo

Futaba Control Radio

“The Futaba remote control gives the Phantom nearly twice the range of the standard RC remote,” said DSLRpros Associate Josh Hohendorf. “In addition to increasing range, the connection with the craft is much stronger and reduces interference from foreign frequencies that would otherwise disrupt the flight of the craft. It offers a variety of programmable controls that photographers and cinematographers alike can customize their remote to suit their specific shooting needs.”

“The Futaba can save an unlimited number of settings for any unlimited number of crafts. Controlling the camera is also superior to the standard RC system. There are two range selectors. One knob for large-scale range selection and another wheel for smooth, fine tuning within that range.”

Photo © Nano Calvo

Carbon Fiber Propellers

For awhile I debated whether I should be adding these or not. I finally went with them. “Carbon Fiber props are a must have for anyone using the phantom to capture visual content,” said Hohendorf. “The props are far superior to the standard plastic propellers in every way. Their rigidity prevents them from bending and warping like the plastic propellers. In addition, the rigid design translates into overall handling performances of the craft. It can achieve faster speed, harder maneuvers, and greater altitudes. The propellers are also precision balanced. This results in a far greater efficiency over the standard plastic propellers. The craft will fly several minutes longer with the lighter and more balanced propeller. A standard propeller will produce a great deal of vibration into the frame of the craft. This means that the video being recorded will display these vibrations in the form of ‘jello’ on the screen. The balanced carbon propeller will eliminate any vibration into the craft and result in clean and clear visual content.”

Warning: I suggest not installing carbon fiber propellers until you have become a proficient pilot, with a thorough understanding of the dynamics and operations of your craft, as these propellers can be more dangerous than plastic ones due to their superior strength.

To read the full article, check out the original source: So You Want to Shoot Aerial Photography Using Drones?

To learn more about drones, please visit: Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Photographer Wayne Kaulbach took his family and went on the trip of a lifetime around the world for nine months – capturing some pretty incredible moments along the way. We love his story and images so much that we had to share.

Q: What inspired your trip?

WK: The inspiration for our trip came about when my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May of 2012 (she has thankfully fully recovered). We just sat down as a family and decided life is much too precious and short and that we should embark on a Round The World trip that we dubbed “9 Months of Sundays.” We took our daughter Chloe (who was 14 when we left on December 2nd, 2013) and our son Noah (who turned 12 on December 5th of our trip). Our eldest daughter, Litia, was busy with University studies. Another inspiration for the trip was to try to follow the “mindful living” philosophy and live in the moment.

Q: Which countries did you visit?

WK: We flew from Vancouver, British Columbia on the morning of December 2nd to Seattle, and then on to Tokyo, Japan. We spent five days in Tokyo and then flew to Bangkok, Thailand. In Thailand we volunteered at an Elephant Nature Park north of Chiang Mai for one week and then made our way by train down south to spend Christmas and New Years on Koh Lanta. January 6th, 2014 we flew to Kolkata, India where we spent six weeks mostly in Rajasthan broken up by a flight up to Kathmandu, Nepal. Mid-February we flew to Nairobi, Kenya and started a 30-day trek that took us through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa. On April 1st we flew to Rome and embarked on the European portion of our travel. We visited Barcelona (took in a Barcelona football game and saw Messi), Rome, Sora, Florence, and Venice. The month of May we spent in Ljubljana, Solvenia – amazing city! June found us in Budapest, Prague, Salzburg, Munich, Wroclaw, Poland, Berlin and a flight to London on June 21st to celebrate our daughter’s 15th birthday. End of June, July and all of August we spent in Paris and flew back to Canada the beginning of September 2014.

Q: What was your main focus/inspiration for the pictures you took?

WK: I love to photograph street/editorial images and I just love to photograph people. My wife and I have owned a natural light portrait business – Skylight Images – for the past 20 years so it was nice to have a break from our business but we simply could not put our cameras down as we are both very passionate to create photographs. We shot lots of candid work and also approached people and asked to photograph them. We also left our bulky Canon gear at home and I traveled with Fujifilm’s X-Pro 1 mirror-less system with a 35mm F1.4 R and my wife took the Fujifilm X-E2 with 23mm F1.4 lens. Each of our camera bags were approximately 6 x 8 x 4 inches. It was a liberating experience and I do not feel that we compromised on quality. The only time we really missed the gear we left behind was in the Serengeti – a longer lens would have been useful.

Q: Do you have a favorite image from the series? If so, which one and why?

WK: It’s challenging to pick a favorite image but I’m partial to the image that opens my website (shown below): Dysturb (candid street image taken on the streets of Paris).

Q: It appears you made a conscious choice to have these photos in black and white. Did you know that going into it or was that a decision you made in editing?

WK: The Paris Series that won Best Feature Album at our National Convention in Canada in May of 2015 did (originally) have some color images that looked good on their own but as a series I decided to go with a black and white theme. Perhaps channeling the great French street photographers I admire so much: Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I generally default to black and white with my street work but some images just look better in color.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the two awards you won for this series?

WK: I won the Beast Feature Album – 1st in Class, Professional Photographers of Canada in May of 2015.  Everyday I would wander different sections of Paris on foot/bike or transit and photograph.

WK: I also won 2nd place for Life International Magazine, Interconnections for “Dysturb” photographed in Paris, April 2015. I was admiring the backdrop of Dysturb and brought in a foreground element with the sign. I waited about five minutes for my subject to walk through the scene.

Q: Do you have any other projects that you’re working on for the rest of the year?

WK: Upcoming projects include three photography tours I will be conducting. The first is 18 days in India: Rajasthan and Taj Mahal, January, 2016. The second is eight days in Venice in April, 2016. And finally, I will be doing eight days in New York City in June of 2016. Please contact me at wkaulbach@shaw.ca for more information. I have over 10 years part-time experience teaching Street and Travel photography at Langara College and and Focal Point here in Vancouver, Canada.

To read more about Wayne and his family’s trip, check out his wife’s blog about the experience, and see more of Wayne’s photography here: www.wkaulbach.com

As a photographer you are providing an extremely valuable service to your clients. Whether you’re capturing once-in-a-lifetime moments like weddings, births, or graduations, snapping stunning landscapes, or creating powerful imagery for editorial campaigns, your photography is an expression of who you are as a creative. Blogging is a key aspect of developing and maintaining your brand and voice as a photographer, and there are numerous benefits to blogging regularly for your business. Below we’ve compiled some of the benefits of blogging, some quick and easy tips for getting started with a blog, and how to leverage your blog effectively for your business.

Benefits of Blogging

While your website is extremely important to showcase your business, work, and experience, a blog is a less formal way to showcase who you are, why you’re a photographer, and the type of value you can provide a prospective client. Since a blog should be updated much more frequently than a website, it allows you to showcase all your work in a more real-time fashion, plus you don’t have to be so concerned about picking and choosing your absolute best photos and can have more flexibility in showing off a variety of your work.

Blogs do wonders for your search engine optimization (SEO). Since good blogs are frequently updated with lots of interesting content, Google is constantly having to come back to your blog and catalog that content. A well-maintained and frequently updated blog can immensely improve your rankings with search engines – especially if your blog is connected to your website!

Additionally, a blog is an extremely effective way to establish your personal brand as a photographer. You can develop a unique voice thanks to the narrative style that blogging allows that will be easily recognizable by your clients.

Tips for Blogging

• Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Starting and maintaining a blog is definitely a lot of work, especially for busy creatives. Make sure that you have a plan of action when you start up your blog so that you can post frequently. A blog that is never updated is worse than a non-existent blog.
• Create an editorial calendar. Before you launch yourself into blogging, it would be great to brainstorm some ideas of what you will be writing about in the coming weeks and months – and even drafting up your first few posts. That way, when life inevitably gets busy you already have a plan of attack for your blog.
• Before you launch your blog, make sure to write out clear objectives about you your audience is, what you hope to achieve with your blog, and how you will measure your “success.” Are you simply trying to hone your unique voice? Gain more traffic to your website and ultimately get more business? Improve your SEO rankings? Knowing the reasons why you are starting your blog in the first place will help keep your posts consistent and on the right track.
• If you’re ever stuck on what to write about, maybe start with some of these basic ideas: your recent work, your most interesting work, your personal journey as a photographer, a behind-the-scenes look at one of your shoots. The key is to be authentic and engaging with your audience so that they want to keep coming back to read your new content.

Blogging for Your Business

Once you’re ready and prepared to start up your blog, make sure that you have all the measures in place for it to effectively boost your business. Setup some sort of tracking metric, such as Google Analytics, so that you can track your blog analytics just like you would with your website. This will give you good insight into which posts generate buzz and are most popular with your audience. Utilize your social media channels to cross-promote your new blog posts. No one will know about it unless you tell them, plus this is also an additional way for you to track which posts seem to get shared most often. Don’t forget to optimize your blog for Google just as you would with your website – with descriptive, meaningful titles that actually describe the content of your post. Lastly, have an RSS feed so that your readers can subscribe to your blog and stay on top of your new content.

There’s no doubt that in this day and age having a blog for any type of business is extremely important. And because blogs are so heavily image-centric, it is especially relevant for photographers. What are some of your best practices for blogging? Do you have any unique tips that you’ve learned over the years?

Additional Resources:

How to Start a Photography Blog in 2018

The Secrets of Successful Photography Blogging

Blogging for Photographers