If a piece of software is in beta, I usually wait for it to launch and only then post about it. That's probably because I have been burned before. An enthusiastic developer emailed me (now years ago) and told me about a program that on paper looked great but what I didn't realize was it hadn't found any funding and it wasn't even being tested. It was a bit of a pipe dream, but I was much too eager to announce it and so I did. Well, when it never came to pass, I looked a little foolish. But live and learn, right?

This time, though, I made very sure that the piece of software I was approached about was legit and it was being beta tested.

About a year ago, Daniel Usenko, a photographer based in Seattle, Washington, released two tutorials for wedding photographers (though after viewing them, I've to say that they apply to portrait photographers as well): The Perfect Shot & The Perfect Edit (use TIFFINBOX to get those at 50% off).

I get the distinct feeling that Daniel is the kind of guy who sees a problem and is off looking for a solution right away. Take a look at the clips on the page showing you both tutorials and I am willing to bet you'll learn something new.

Now, Daniel is tinkering with album design and wants to make that process fast and as painless as possible. I suspect it was a slow and agonizing for him personally and he figured out a solution. Well, that solution is called SmartAlbums. Check out the demos below:

The 1-minute version:

SmartAlbums 1-Minute Demo from Pixellu on Vimeo.

The 5-minute version:

SmartAlbums Beta Demo (5 min) from Pixellu on Vimeo.

This is still in beta, but Daniel tells me that it will ship in two to five weeks. In other words, by the end of this year! Sign up to beta test it here.

In the next few weeks, I am going to interview Daniel. Do me a favor please. Once you get access to this program, please use it. Then come back here and comment. What did you like about it? What could be different or better? Your questions will help me during my chat with him. So will you do that for me? This is where you beta test SmartAlbums.

So there I was wedged in between my two kids at the very back of a mini-van. You know those seats really only meant for munchkins and not adults. I got there because the other seats were already occupied. We were returning back home from a trip when we got stuck in rush hour traffic. Not able to move inside the car or outside. What fun, right? When that happens I usually get antsy. And so do my kids. So to keep them entertained, I took my camera out and we started playing with light.

Yes, all three of us took turns making images. I set the ISO, a slow shutter speed and an aperture of f/8 or so. Then as the car moved, we each took turns swinging the camera wildly around. Kept us busy, entertained and for the kids, definitely intrigued. Here's what we came up with:

This is one of the tips the folks at Photography Concentrate (that's Rob & Lauren Lim) suggest in their new ebook, The Creativity Field Guide.

I was sent a copy to review and I immediately fell in love with it. I think it's absolutely fantastic for those who are starting out in photography or even seasoned pros who just need a little jolt of inspiration to get going again.

Look, we all get stuck. When it comes to writing, I've suggested you dive into Irresistible Words. Many of you took my advice and love the course.

But what do you do when you are in a photographic rut? We've all been there haven't we? We end up photographing a wedding from the same perspective or it's a portrait of a family that doesn't personally inspire you. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to get out and start making images again. But what do you photograph, how do you photograph it or where do you go to photograph? Right?

That's where the helpful Creativity Field Guide comes in to rescue you. Flip the pages around to an exercise or a quote and let that process in turn inspire you to pick up your camera and make images you love again.

True to their brand, Rob and Lauren Lim have a gorgeously designed PDF. Colorful pages, tons of images and examples, wonderful pull quotes from master photographers and lots of practical advice make this a guide you will want to refer to again and again. I know it will be something I use every day.

The Creativity Field Guide will normally sell for $15.95 (which in itself is a bargain), but you can get it at a 40% discount for $9.57, now through Thursday, November 21st. Buy it now, be inspired. You even get a 60-day money back guarantee. Such a sweet deal!

Mahesh Bhat, a photographer and author of Unsung and Bangalore: First Person Singular is also a teacher at The One School Goa.

Bangalore, India was home for Mahesh, so when I heard he had started teaching photography in Goa, I was curious to learn more about his new adventure.

Mahesh heads the photography department of a relatively new educational establishment, for those interested in creative fields such as photography, mass communication and multimedia. It's the first of its kind to be totally dedicated to nurturing creative minds in India and beyond. The school is located in North Goa, away from the hustle, bustle and stress of big cities (just check out the images of what the students are experiencing every day!). The school offers a 3-year graduate diploma program. It's an intensive program, Mahesh tells me, modeled after the Santa Fe Workshops or the Maine Media Workshops + College.

I had a chance to speak with Mahesh about The One School Goa. So, listen in:

As we wrapped up our chat, I wondered if I could speak with a few of the school's current students to get their views on the school and what it means to pursue a career in the creative arts.

A few days later, Mahesh connected with Shantanu Sheorey, the school's founder and a few students. Shantanu is a highly acclaimed commercial photographer with a long history in the industry. I was pleasantly surprised to see his own son enrolled as a student at The One School Goa.

Take a moment to listen to that conversation here:

This is the approach to the school:

Dinesh Khanna, acclaimed photographer and educator sits down to critique a student's work:

Paddy fields right outside the school's gate!

I know I can't wait to visit The One School Goa!

If you have been using Google Analytics for any length of time to measure your photography website’s performance, then first of all, congratulations. Google Analytics is a free metrics tool and the industry standard for measuring how visitors use your website including how many people come, how often, and to what pages. You may have noticed a data point called bounce rate, and gently ignored it (no offense bounce rate).

The main dashboard of Google Analytics shows the average bounce rate for your whole site.

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

Should Bounce Rate Be High or Low?

Bounce rate should be as low as possible, indicating potential customers are viewing multiple pages of your site and therefore more likely to hire you.

It’s hard to quantify what is a high bounce rate since that depends on many factors including the type of page, how users came to that page, and what is on the page. If you’re only sharing your page with family and friends, you may have a low 25% bounce rate but are not really growing your business. You may have a high 90% bounce rate, but are getting nationwide press and converting a lot of sales from those visitors. Thus, it boils down to relative bounce rate. How does the bounce rate of your homepage compare to that of your pricing page or an individual blog post? What actions can you take to improve one page to increase the click through that your other pages are getting?

Bounce Rate for Individual Pages

Google Analytics displays bounce rate data for every page of your site. Find this report in the left navigation under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

The Pages report in Google Analytics shows bounce rate data.

In the above report for my business articles blog we see that the homepage has a 53.44% bounce rate. That means over half of my audience reaches my homepage but does not click on an article. This bounce rate is lower that the site average of 68.21% bounce.

Item #2 in the above list is a product page and has a higher bounce rate than Item #3, an article containing lots of links. I may conclude that adding more links to my product page can help retain customers.

What Influences Bounce Rate?

Traffic comes to your website in three ways:

• Direct – 99% of direct traffic is from email, 1% is from bookmarks
• Referral – links from other sites on the Internet including social media
• Search Engines

Each of these ways can influence how visitors use your site, and if they will view multiple pages. If you have a large percentage of traffic from an email newsletter, then your bounce rate may be high. This is because people click on a link in your email, they see what they expected (like a recent photo session), then leave the page without clicking anything. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Sites with a lot of traffic from Pinterest may have a high bounce rate since the user is simply browsing (perhaps for newborn poses) and might not even be in your target market or geographic location. I would not expect those people to click around to other pages of your site. Sites with a lot of blog posts ranking in search engines, the average visitor may check out the article they were searching for (like backyard wedding photo ideas) and then leave right away. Again, your webpage served its purpose.

How to Reduce Bounce Rate

Here’s the key to getting people to stick around your website, and click across multiple pages without bouncing off your site:

Give visitors additional links to click on every webpage

Here’s a little experiment to help you figure out what links to place across your site. Write down the top 3 pages of your site you want users to visit most. It may be a blog post you wrote exceptionally well, perhaps an important photo gallery that showcases your work wonderfully, and certainly it will be your contact and/or pricing page.

Now pick a random page from your website. How easy is it for users to get from that random page to one of your top 3 pages? Place links to these hot spots from the top, middle and bottom of the page.

Homepage – Many photography homepages have almost no text, and a single link to a gallery site or a blog site. That simply dumps users into a bunch of content, often times your most recent work and not necessarily your best work. Instead, display individual links to your most important blog posts right on the homepage. With this approach, users have a clear path to the best pages and are more likely to click.

Blog Post – Visitors find blog posts through many sources, especially search engines and social media. Since these potential clients didn’t navigate through the homepage, photographers need to reiterate important information like contact information and links to relevant pages. Orchard Cove Photography hired me to create a SEO-friendly blog post and you’ll see how I included tons of links at the end (and at the beginning) in order to keep interested customers from bouncing.

Does Bounce Rate Matter?

The very important question that comes out of all this is whether or not photographers should measure, monitor, and care about reducing bounce rate. I don’t ever look at my bounce rate.

The goal is to define clear customer paths from each and every page of your site. Start with your five top traffic pages. Pretend each page is the starting point for your potential customer because they came from Google or Facebook. Figure out what you want them to do next and make that a clear navigation point on the page. If you want them to hire you then add a big graphic that says “Book a Session Now” and link it to your contact page.

After making changes to your five top traffic pages, wait a week and see if the bounce rate declined. I hope you will be pleasantly surprised.

Weddings are chaos.

No one listens to you. No one does what you want. Everyone will be in the wrong place at the wrong time, they won't stand the right way, they won't look the right way, they'll care too much or too little, and anytime you're about to get the perfect shot with the perfect mood, someone will step right into your frame and ruin it.

But if you believe in the power of a gaze, a glance, a curve of the neck, or a slope of a back – if you believe in warm bodies and beating hearts and living, breathing people, then know that this chaos is not only beyond our control, but it's really the best thing around, because it's the direct and inseparable result of people who are fully present.

And if you want images that live and breathe with people so full of life, they burst through the frame, here's the real secret: It's really about trust.

Not just your client's trust in you, though. Your trust in them. In yourself. In letting go and letting things happen and finding the something in the nothing and the perfection in the flaws. You have to accept what's in front of your eyes, because that's where you'll find the magic. The chaos is the surprise. The unexpected is the revelation. Presence is not the perfect look we've seen a thousand times before. It's the single expression we'll never see again.

Photographically, presence is as much a creation as it is found. In the simplest terms, it's matching. When the expression of the subject pairs effectively with the elements in the frame, our minds will fill in the gaps and flood the picture with meaning. It's not just about a good expression or a bad expression. It's about the right expression for the right circumstance. It's the effect of the entire picture. Sure, a lot photos capture the powerful and the evocative. But even more are about taking the ordinary and showing it in just the right way to make it resonate. Life, even at it's plainest, really is beautiful.

So if presence is more than some certain expression and any look can potentially be the look, then presence is life off script. Both for your subjects and for you, which takes us back to trust.

People say you need your clients to trust you. And you do need them to get along and go along. But that's only half of it. They may trust you enough to do the right thing. But do you trust them enough to go ahead and do it? You have to build the space to stumble. Even to fall. Because as much as we are building trust for our clients, we need to instill it in ourselves. We have to know we can take the chances living off script necessitates.

All too often, we undermine our own endeavors. From the moment we open our doors, launch our site, and start cashing the checks, we fall prey to a cycle of need. We sell from the mind and not from the heart. We show what we think will sell, and we say what we think people want to hear. Every time we do this, we build up the walls of doubt, severing our vision from the product we create, until the risk to take the road less traveled becomes too large a leap to make.

Trust is necessary from the very start. You have to open yourself up and invite people into your world. You have to let them see their own potential and your own dreams. You have to be willing to accept the rejection, because as important as it is to fulfill the needs of others and get the sale, it is no less vital that we do it the best way we know how.

Here are nine ways to create images that are full of life:

1. Show What You Want To Shoot

Nothing makes a shot more lifeless than shooting moments you don't care about in a way that doesn't matter to you. If there's something you want to do, you're not going to get people to hire you to do it if you don't show it. And while you're at it, share a little bit about who you are and what you believe. Sure, go ahead and explain yourself in a way your client appreciates, but make sure it's something you can get behind.

2. Let People Know What You Need

No one wants to spend their days trying to figure out what you're after. In fact, they won't. They'll just get lost in the shuffle. It's up to you to make it work. If you don't want everyone mugging for the camera, tell your couples how you work. If you want people to ignore you, let them know. When you let clients understand what you need to get what they want, they'll be happy to spread the word.

3. If They're OK, You're OK

Never make people self-aware. Never make them self-conscious. Make it clear you like your clients for who they are, being the way they are. There's no such thing as wrong. Great images, after all, reflect the true character of the subject, and that doesn't happen if we try to squeeze them into a mold.

4. Create A Good Schedule

There is no way possible to get involved too early in the logistics. Bad logistics kill wedding days. If portraits need 3 hours, start talking about it early. If you want someone in the dress by a certain time or to wait to get into the dress until a certain time, let it be known. The better the day stays on track, the less time people will spend thinking about how to catch up and the more they'll be in the moment.

5. Troubleshoot Now

Write out every problem you run into and every reason you don't get what you want. Now write out a way to solve each one. Go try them. Some problems can't be fixed, but many can. You won't lose anything for trying, but you might gain everything. Great people make things work. If you don't take shot lists, saying it sounds a whole lot better before someone hands you one. If you want a groom to act naturally with the bride, keep the heckling groomsmen away. If you want to keep people from hugging your couple all through your photo shoot, keep them away from the crowd, and if you have to snake through a crowd, let your couple know to get through quickly. Keep working on the best solutions, keep thinking of the best phrases to use, and keep building your playbook.

6. Relaxed Is Good For Posing

There's a reason fashion photographers say “beautiful” all of the time. Have you ever stood in front of a camera? Time feels like molasses, your hands feel like unnecessary appendages, you keep wondering how you look, and moving naturally becomes the most self-conscious act in the world. But there's an easy way out. Talk. Stay as connected with your couples as you want them to be with you or each other. Need to buy some time, while you adjust your camera? Ask them some questions. Need them to look at you? Share a thought. Need them calm? Have them think about something. And let them know they're doing a good job. That's doubly true when they really are.

7. Find Out Who They Are And What They Need

They say better forgiveness than permission, but that doesn't mean you don't want to see what your couples need. Letting people know they're cared for and learning how they see the world lets you think about an approach you're comfortable with before you're put on the spot. Learning about your client doesn't make them your creative director. It means you can trust them, because you know you're on the same page, and they can trust you, because they know you care. Remember, people gravitate towards what they already believe. If someone has doubts, they'll see everything that goes wrong. That can spiral out of control fast. If they feel secure, they'll see everything that's right, and that will keep them relaxed and happy.

8. Look Broadly

The body is fantastically expressive. It takes the smallest of things to clue people in as to what's going on. It can be a dangling arm, crossed legs, a tilted head, or a hand on a face. A small gesture can say it all, so don't just look at faces. Watch for the way people move. Watch for any clue that lets you know how someone feels.

9. Watch For The Light And Mood

Light is full of mood. Think moody. Think heavy. Think dreamy. Think weightless. Each one is associated with a certain look. Very often, you only need a hint of expression if you have a lot of feel. A viewer doesn't see a picture like a judge at the Olympics. It's not a breakdown of each individual element to see how they stack up. It's the total effect that counts, and the right atmosphere can carry the day. With that said, it's also very possible to drown real emotion in a sea of visuals. Always be aware as to how powerful and engaging the expressions are. Sometimes, simple and tight can say it all. Other times, you need more.