Hi guys, today I wanna stress out the importance of websites and why making your own website is helpful on our youth sports photography business. Yes indeed, a website. Today, as you can observe, websites have transformed to not only become a good source of information that we use for utilizing our research and communication, but has come up to become a good and effective way point for businesses as well. On this review, I will point out the reasons why you should make your own website as a tool to succeed on youth sports photography business.

Like any other website out there, all these serves to be- as the entry point towards the business, the institution itself, the products and services being offered and the information needed to get across the people/ consumers. Make your own website and observe the high traffic of clients and potential customers inquiring about your services. Well, as for my case for example, having a website is just an extremely useful tool when it comes to my photography business because you get to show your clients exactly what past work of yours looks like, and they can have an expectation set as far as you know what they’re work will look like and an anticipation of that is just not achieved when you do not have a website.

The important thing that you should remember when you make your own website guys is be very clear with the message that you want to get across your customers. Be specific, be direct and be honest. Your products and services reflects your business and it is essential that what you have on your websites is what the customers will get. Also, I want to share that on my website I’m running different specials- right now I’m running a 10 dollar off coupon, I changed that up during the year, and also I listed them up into an email list, so that I can send my customers updates on my website and for new and upcoming seasons and what also may be coming ahead.

Make your own websites now, you may want to check out my website if you wanna know a little bit more about what in it and all that.. It’s ultimateteammontage.com, also you can learn more about becoming a better youth sports photography at cmpstudios.com If you have any comments question or if you need a website for you in a short time at a reasonable price please don’t hesitate to reach me and I’m very much willing to help you any time.

Hey, hey everyone welcome back. OK guys, here’s a quick review that I have for you, about the portable power system from alien bees – the Vagabond 2. This is somewhat related to the previous review I made last October regarding the essential tools that we need as photographers to excel in the youth sports photography business. As I have mentioned from my previous article last October, lighting in photography serves as a great deal for our business, and I introduced you the excellent lighting equipments from alien bees, affordable must have gadgets at a very reasonable price packages.

Now to get the most out of your lighting tools, of course we need a steady and stable amount of power outage to supply our lighting equipments. And with this, I couldn’t think of any better product to share with you guys but to have one of Alien Bees amazing portable power system, the Vagabond 2.

The Vagabond 2 is a very helpful tool to have on our side because whenever we find ourselves somewhere isolated, where the plugs and power outlets are hard to reach or the extension cords are just not long enough; the vagabond 2 portable power system from alien bees does the job for you. Portable power systems from alien bees are known for being one of the best and most reliable out puttage of power/electricity, it has very consistent power output and it works well with the alien bees lighting equipments. For a nifty price of $300.00 including shipping, the Vagabond 2 is practically unbeatable and I have not seen anyone who can put up together a system, building it from scratch or anyone that sells anything close to it that will give you that type of portable power.

Save yourself the time, headache, and searching. Get the Vagabond 2 portable power system from alien bees or any other vagabond shop and start experiencing the freedom of shooting your subjects anytime, anywhere.

Thanks for reading along guys, talk you nextime!

Hello guys, I’m back, here’s a few products for all you photo enthusiasts like me and to those who are inclined in the business of youth sports photography. New photographers are very ,uch welcome as you will learn tips on how you can make an up sell or make your existing packages more versatile and offer more choices to your customers. If you visit mpix.com, you can browse along and see for yourself the packages they have such as; a Magazine covers, fancy Keychains, memorable Tickets, display Magnets, Trading cards, and Buttons all available to give customers more choices and treasure the fun with their photos.

You can put up different products on your order form for people to appreciate and putting up different packages is one best way that surely customers enjoy.

Magazine covers is one of the things that people like to have, at Mpix.com, you can see they already have available themes put up together as a magazine cover that you can order. All you have to do if your interested is place your order, fill up a few things and upload your photo. It’s that easy. Well, I usually sell magazine covers anywhere from $20 to $25 in my area, or add a few additional bucks if you live outside my area.
Keychains are also a fairly popular product that people enjoy, like the buttons. It’s nice to have a keychain around anywhere we go and on it is a picture of your kid that makes it really cool compared to the ordinary ones outhere. For keychains, my pricing falls anywhere between $10 to $12 and it depends on where you live also.

I have lots of friends who had lots of success with Tickets, I personally don’t do tickets but I’ve heard that they do sell quite well. You could probably consider this to have in your package and for pricing this falls pretty well along $20 per sheet. That’ll give you 4 to 6 tickets for $20. Ofcourse you can always visit mpix and they’ll print them for you.

Magnets are also popular to have in your line up, you can always get customers who will love these things on their ref, after all every household has one ref on their kitchen right? so this would be an easy sell for you to consider having. I tend to charge around $14 to $17 for a magnet and it depends on where you live at.

Trading cards, for my experience, out of 10 customers, I usually get 2 who orders trading cards. It’s pretty good to have this product with you. Not only it is popular like the wallets, you’ll get a steady requests from your customers I can say that. However, you have to be careful on how you price those, I wouldn’t price them too low, I tend to price them up on the higher side because anytime you put up their stats, you can’t avoid human errors and get something wrong eventually having you to reprint those photos again. Trading cards requires some manual labor, that is why I normally sell trading cards for $30 or $10 which I sell a sheet for.

Finally, Buttons! This is a must have product on your packages. Even more popular than trading cards because people just love to have these around on they‘re outfit, bags, or anywhere they can pin this button on to. It’s perfect for kids, teens and grown ups as well. I usually sell these about $8 to $12 depending on where you live.

You can always put up packages of these products, or you can also make your own variation. My youth sports photography packages tend to range from around $30 to $60 per package and it varies on the type of products there is on the package.

Alright, I hope this has been useful guys, feel free to post any comments or suggestions and If you wanna learn more about the tips and know-how’s on this site, click on the link below and we’ll be glad to share more info’s to you. thanks!

Hello once again guys, I wanna talk to you about the different tools that can help you with your photography studies and other matters on today’s digital world of photography. Web tools such as my blog right here is a useful source of information not just just for professional photographers, but also for the new ones and photography enthusiasts who are passionate about studying photography.

I definitely would recommend to anyone DPreview.com as one of the best website tool for all photographers out there wanting to know more, learn more, and share their valued information to everyone on the web. What’s great about dpreview is that they have everything from reviews, to tips, end to end of just about any camera you see these days, you can find a review on dpreview.

Dpreview.com is a very useful and helpful website tool that provides not only real time and actual reviews of cameras, you can also find instruction manuals if you have lost yours or quick references/guides, and valuable information on shooting photos are all on their website. From professional cameras to point and shoot cameras, you’ll find useful information available on dpreview.com.

I mainly use dpreview for cameras I’m looking at buying, and if friends ask me for suggestions on what camera is best to buy, or budget wise – worth it, I refer them to dpreview.  Also, it gives me a fair market value for the price of these cameras when I want to buy  one.

I hope I shared another useful tool with you guys, if you guys have any comments feel free to respond below. You can know more about photography studies by checking out my blogs where I post fresh new contents on a weekly or monthly basis.

Alright, talk to you guys next time.

Leave your comments, feedback or any suggestions below. Thanks!

Hello everyone welcome back. This probably is one of the basic things or the first thing you must know when you are into team photography or youth sports photography, is to know properly how to shoot and deliver good quality team shots.

I know this technique can be learn by oneself without proper training but there are a few rules I wanna share with you guys that would make it easier for you when shooting team photography.

Now, in youth sports photography, the first thing you should probably do is communicate first with the coaches and staffs of the team, and there are times that the parents, uncles and aunties will come over and assist you on helping the kids to behave and pose-up properly for the pictorial. This is very time consuming on your part and best for you to do is be in charge and set the guidelines first before shooting the photos.

Team photography may vary from one team to another. My set up usually involves 2 rows only but if the team is really big, I make it into 3 rows. The first row is where you want it properly delivered, (these is the front row seats as they say and you wanna make it really look good coz this is the part where team photos are noticed at). What I do is i have the shorter ones on the first row; where one leg kneels down (leg must be straight to give best posture of the player) and both hands are together or on top of each other on the other leg (this gives a serious and more professional look of the team). And for the second row, the tall ones get to occupy the middle and descends accordingly and equally from left to right. For the coaches and staff I usually put them on the sides coz they don’t smile most of the times (before we see them on the middle of the team, front row seats right?).

By the way, one more thing that I do is I set the first row on an even number and the second row as an odd number because this gives more emphasis to the players in the back (you want to try to avoid the heads of the front row players to stand in vertical with the heads on the second row). With this set up you get a more accurate and nice looking team photography of the people on the back.

Next is that, you can place some of the teams accessories like baseball gloves, pom-poms or a basketball ball on the players on the 1st row seats to make the team’s photograph really stand out as a team. Avoid shooting where there’s an imbalance on the teams player like for example one player has a sun visor or a cap, best that you have everyone one wear one or everyone removes it coz it will look funny if only one player is wearing one.

And finally, take about 5 to 6 shots of the team to get that perfect shot you want, because you can never tell and make one shot perfect. There would be times when you have someone blinking or not properly smiling that’s why.

I hope this has been useful again guys, I’ll see you again next time. Thanks for reading along.

Hey Everyone, welcome back. Here’s a quick review I wanna share with you about youth sports photography. I want to discuss today the importance of action shots and high-end products that you can use to sell or upsell your action shot pictures.

Normally, if you go out and take action shots you can sell them for about $5 to $10 per picture easily (depending on the size of course). Now, if you sell them at a size of 4×6 or 5×7, there would be people or customers that would want something special or out of the ordinary.

Wall Clings from Mpix (visit mpix.com to know more about this review) is a perfect example of that “something special” that you can offer to your customers. Pricing depends on the size the customers want. For a really good wall cling, I would probably charge it at around $300 but I make sure to it that my customers really get the professional quality product they paid for.

This is just a quick tip for you guys on how you can maximize those action shots taken, perhaps for customers who would want more out of their action shots, this is a perfect product for an upsell to your customers.

Thanks for reading along guys. Hope this was useful and feel free to post any comment or suggestions below this post.

In general, a histogram is a graphical display of tabular frequencies. Histograms are mainly used to plot density of data and are often used for density estimation. In photography, the histogram chart  is a graph that represents the maximum range of light values your camera can capture, in 256 steps (0 = Pure Black, and 255 = Pure White). The histogram looks like a mountain peak or it can sometimes be a series of peaks. The left part of the histogram represents the maximum dark values that your camera can capture while the right side represents the maximum white values it can capture. The peak of the histogram (the highest point mostly at the center) is a value that represents the colors, you cannot control this part so its just there to show you information. In using histograms, we are more concerned with the left and right sides since these are the areas we have much control over.

Plainly speaking, the histograms left and right sides tells you about the lightness and the darkness of an image. If your image is too dark, the light values on the left of the histogram will be clipped off.  If its too light, then the clipping would occur in the right part of the histogram. Knowing this, you can start using the histogram to detect whether the image you took is well exposed or if its poorly exposed.

I hope this has helped you with your photography, you may also watch the video to learn more about the histogram and how to use it to get better exposed photos.  Thanks for your time and good luck with your photography.