The sharing economy is disrupting industries throughout around the world! Companies like Airbnb, Relay Rides, Task Rabbit, Uber, Lyft and dozens more companies are changing the way people think and consume.

What is sharing economy?

The sharing economy is a consumer paradigm in which a person is willing to share his or her time or asset with another person. The paradigm enables people to maximally utilize the assets that they own or decide to use someone else’s assets. Airbnb helps people share apartments, Relay Rides helps people share cars, Task Rabbit helps people share their services.

Why does this matter to the wedding industry?

As a professional wedding photographer, you’re accumulating a trove of wedding images. Traditionally, the value of your wedding images has ended when you deliver them to a newlywed couple. Today, if this is all you’re doing with your wedding images, you’re leaving value on the table!

Other vendors need access to professional images of their work now more than ever. In the past other vendors could get by with a handful of nice images on a website. Today, in the age of Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, engaged couples have a heftier appetite for images. Today, vendors need to share a regular stream of fresh professional images on social media to stay relevant among engaged couples. You’re sitting on these images, and you can get something for them.

The current image share paths from photographers to other vendors are fragmented, cumbersome and, most unfortunately, do not enable the photographer to capture the full value of his or her images. I’m fixing this problem with LulaWed.com. Our new wedding directory helps photographers easily share wedding images with other vendors and capture real value from sharing.

How LulaWed helps photographers.

LulaWed allows photographers to upload albums of real wedding images and tag the venue and other vendors who participated. We find the contact info for vendors you tag in albums, email them a link to your album and encourage them to share your branded images of their work on social media.

LulaWed provides easy one click access for other vendors to share your wedding images to their Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook accounts. The images shared are branded with your logo or watermark and lead back to your listing on LulaWed. The end value to photographers is more exposure among unique social media networks and more referrals from other vendors. The end value to the other vendors is they get to share professional images of their work online.

Your marketing dream team.

Imagine if you had a marketing team of 10, 20 or even 100 people working to promote your business to engaged couples. This would be amazing and really expensive! You don’t need a marketing team promoting your business, you need other wedding vendors promoting your business.

Today's social channels allow savvy wedding businesses to build successful online followings across multiple platforms. Sharing your images on LulaWed allows other wedding vendors to market their business and yours simultaneously to unique social media networks. For example, when a couple sees your image shared on Pinterest by another vendor, the couple can click on the image back to your LulaWed listing. You keep all the credit, and you get the referral.

You never know which vendor your tagging will have a huge following on Pinterest.

By a photographer, for photographers

I worked as a professional wedding photographer for the past 12 years in California and Maine. I’ve shot over a hundred weddings and my wife’s current photography company shoots 60+ a year. I understand that brides come and go, but the industry will always be there. Take care of the individuals who can refer you and you will build a business that thrives!

Our platform is designed to require minimal effort by you to get your images shared by other vendors! We’re constantly adding new features and partnerships that make it easier for you to share images with other vendors. Recently we launched a new feature that allows you to skip the image upload process completely when you integrate your blog RSS feed. LulaWed can pull real wedding images right from your blog.

Free listing offer for Tiffinbox readers!

Tiffinbox has been a valued resource to me as a professional photographer, so I want to share the love with other readers. Right now, when you create an Enhanced listing on LulaWed, use promo TIFFINBOX to get 6 months free!

I hope LulaWed helps you get more value from your wedding images. Signup, upload weddings, tag vendors, and let me know how it goes!

Sign Up Today

David H. Wells is more than a photojournalist. He is a teacher, an avid blogger and even after years of experience creating powerful photo essays or personal projects, he is still an enthusiastic student learning the medium of video to further his goals.

Over the years of running into him at conferences or workshops he is teaching, David and I have become friends. So, when I heard he was teaching a course called “Create Powerful Photo Essays and Personal Projects,” on CreativeLive, I wasted no time to contact him via Twitter and then email to set a date and time to chat about it.

Here is the link to the personal project David mentions in the video that he is currently pursuing in India.

Are you pursuing a personal photography project? Have you completed a photo essay you want published here on Tiffinbox? If so, I want to know about it. Comment below with a link or more information. I might choose to interview you.

Lastly, don't hesitate for even a second to take David's course on CreativeLive, if you are interested in creating a photo essay or a personal project. You get to watch for free while CreativeLive is broadcasting it live from Seattle. In the event you miss it, you can always buy the course, download it and watch it in its entirety whenever you want.

I have added this course to my calendar and I'll be watching and learning from a photojournalist who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk when it comes to producing a body of work that speaks of the larger issues humanity faces. I hope you will join me in checking out “Create Powerful Photo Essays and Personal Projects.”

When Canadian photojournalist Louie Palu and co-director Devin Gallagher launched a campaign on Kickstarter to fund their film Kandahar Journals, it was very quickly funded. Still, the duo are looking to raise even more money for their project.

To date, there are 290 backers who have donated $29,000+ for the completion and distribution of this film about Louie's experiences as a photojournalist in Afghanistan.

Louie and I sat down to chat about the project. Here is that conversation:

Now today more than ever, we need to examine conflict and the policies driving it.

With only 12 more days to go, the campaign could use your financial support to get this film distributed even more widely than originally planned. As I said and as I believe, it's only through dialogue and exploration of other cultures can we approach peace, reconciliation and perhaps even an end to the war in Asia.

Louie Palu, Devin Gallagher and a small crew of other collaborators have risked life and limb to unwaveringly bring home this poignant story. Now it is our turn to honor them by supporting Kandahar Journals, before the campaign ends.

It was 2008 and I had just wrapped up working at ESPN.com as a photo editor. I remember running into Zack Arias' advice to offer headshot or business portraits.

Zack taught us all how to light (see his One Light 2.0 tutorial) but the marketing was up to me. Back then, with little to no real business sense, I dove into Twitter and offered my services to the first 20 people to respond. Yes, I offered to photograph them for free.

Twenty eager and friendly people made appointments for their portraits to be made and I obliged them. I loved the experience so much that I launched Connecticut Headshots and have been serving business executives, realtors, lawyers and a few actors.

Would I do that again? Knowing what I know now, would I offer to photograph them for free? Probably not.

For me, it came down to feeling less than confident. I gave myself a goal of 20 people before venturing out and creating a business out of it. I am learning now that there is another way.

Molly Marie and Jamie Swanson have created Profitable Portfolio Builder just for photographers like you and me.

“Portfolio building for free is like shooting yourself in the foot. It is hurting your business from the very start, and you’ll be losing out on a huge opportunity to create a client base and make money right from the start.”

Could I have used the revenue from 20 paying clients? Heck yeah!

What I was missing back when I started was a guide like Profitable Portfolio Builder that would walk me through the following:

Why the Profitable Portfolio Builder method is a better way to build your portfolio

How to get people to book portfolio building sessions with you

Exactly how to respond to people who want to book a portfolio building sessions in order to maximize the opportunity to get sales and long-term clients from the session

What you need to know and do ahead of time to get results

How to get the sale

The secret to getting powerful testimonials that influence others to book with you

Profitable Portfolio Builder also includes customizable scripts (yes friends, for those of us who are easily tongue-tied this will come in handy) to help us make the transition offering one type of photography service to another.

The only caveat Molly and Jamie offer is this: “The Profitable Portfolio Builder is based on psychology and past experience, and if you leave anything out or modify a vital part of it, it may not work.”

Are you willing to give this a try? Are you open to shifting gears and seeing what other opportunities might exist for you? I know I am glad I made the jump to also offering business portraits in Connecticut.

Please read all the way through the Profitable Portfolio Builder page to see if your current or future choice in photography would benefit from this incredible resource. As Molly says, her advice is meant for a select (but large) group of photographers. Still, there are some, like wedding photographers that this resource will not be a good fit.

It's normally $129.99, but right now and through June 29th, it’s only $79.99 (save $50!).

There is a small group of photographers who look beyond the photo industry to be inspired. They seek out leaders in other industries to keep their own businesses fresh and sharp. Are you one of those photographers?

Clearly Jeffrey Shaw is. He and Lori Nordstrom (another dynamo in the industry) are hosting Photo Success Summit on June 24-26, 2014. I urge you to sign up and listen in. Not only will it do you wonders, I suspect it will help your business grow as well.

What's more, it's 100% free!

You read that right. No catches. Nothing to buy, if you don't want to. Register here. When you claim your ticket, you'll immediately receive gifts from Michael Port, Jeremy Cowart and Sally Hogshead.

You don't believe me? Check it out.

When I spoke with Jeffrey today, he told me even the replays for each of these presentations will be available for up to 30 days … for free! So, if you are busy or booked on June 24-26, you can always dip back in and listen to the presentation at your leisure.

The Photo Success Summit, is from my memory, the first of its kind. Quite frankly, I have scheduled the Photo Success Summit presentations during the three days in order to learn and perhaps see my business from a very different perspective.

It may be time for you to do the same. Register for Photo Success Summit now.