This is a guest post by Jimmy Moncrief, a wedding photographer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and co-founder of Ciderr.

Every decade there is a new technology that usually disrupts an industry. Ten years ago, there was a max exodus from film to digital due to the rapidly falling prices of digital cameras and the rapidly declining costs of post-production in digital format. Yes, I understand digital photography was around earlier than this, but digital really gained traction about ten years ago.

A couple of days ago, I was very fortunate to speak with Mike Hanline, the President of WHCC. I was fascinated by the fact that his lab went completely digital in 2000. This prescient move, was well ahead of the industry. Now, WHCC is an industry leading lab provider because they embraced new technology ahead of their time. Below are three companies that are disrupting the photography business with new technology.

“The status quo sucks.” – George Carlin

Ciderr – big brands have always used wedding registries to increase brand awareness and to increase sales. Ciderr, now gives that power to photographers and other wedding vendors. Ciderr, lets businesses upload their products and services in a registry. All high-quality wedding vendors get some variation of this email: “I love your products, but can’t afford them.” Now they can! The wedding vendor, can offer the bride and groom a personalized registry. The bride and groom pick the products and services they want, and then create their personalized registry. Then the bride and groom share the link via email, facebook, and twitter and get their friends and family to help pay for that portion of the wedding!

Pinterest – yes, it’s significantly smaller than Facebook and Twitter. The media reports traffic to be in a range of 10-15 million, while Facebook has over 850 million and Twitter has over 100 million. However, it has better referral traffic for your website. Shareholic.com reported in July that referral traffic from Pinterest was greater than Twitter, SumbleUpon, Bin and Google! Essentially, this means Pinterest might bring a smaller amount of traffic to your site, but it will be higher quality.

I love how Melisa Jill organizes and displays her photography on Pinterest.

Sticky Albums – Sticky Albums lets you create digital photo album – which your clients can save to their iPhones and iPads as a separate app. This is how the vast majority of clients want their app anyway, so it is a great convenience for the client. The best part however, is how this service helps your marketing. All the photographs include your logo! So when the client shares these pictures, your brand is being marketed.

In summary, photographers are in a great position to embrace new technology for marketing and establishing a competitive advantage. I would love to hear in the comments how photographers are using the above mentioned resources for their photography business. Also, please let me know of any other innovative businesses out there helping photographers grow their business.

Angela Pointon loves photographers and artists. She studied photography, but had a love affair with business and marketing. She decided to combine all three together when she started Steel Toe Images. She coaches and inspires photographers and other artists to kick major butt through her one-on-one sessions, blog, emails, workshops and her first book (coming soon), called “ A Swift Kick In The Pants: Business Smarts For Us Creative Types”. Follow Angela on Twitter, Facebook or her blog.

I’m here to prove one thing and one thing only: that every photographer and artist can be a good businessperson, too.

You probably haven’t led dozens of successful businesses.

You probably don’t have an MBA.

Heck, you barely consider yourself a businessperson at all. An artist? Yes. A business person, sales person and marketer? Humph.

But guess what? I’ve got good news.

There is an undeniable truth that you might not know. There is a secret the world has been hiding from you until now. There is something so unbelievably amazing; you’re going to smile when I tell you. Many really awesome artists who earn loads of money aren’t trained or academically educated in the fundamentals of business, either.

So how do they do it?

There are four things that an artist must have in order to be a good—no make that great—businessperson. And the very first thing is the most critical element you must have: Gut Instinct.

I’ve got more good news for you. We all have gut instinct.

We all have something innate in us that tells us what decisions are good, and what decisions are bad. You can choose to listen, or you can choose to ignore it to the point where you don’t recognize or even hear it anymore.

So what makes some photographers successful and others not so much?

Understanding how to listen to your gut instinct, how to decipher between instinct and fear and how to make wiser decisions in your business using gut instinct is the most critical measure of whether your business will succeed or not.

Join me on Wednesday, September 19th from 8:30 – 9:30PM east coast time for a FREE live webinar to learn all about how to listen to, understand, and utilize your gut instinct. Can’t make it on that date? Register anyway and we’ll send you a recording of the event whether you attend or not. Space is limited. Reserve your space and register now.

Want to really kick some butt? Join me for the entire series of four webinars where you’ll learn about each of the four critical elements you must have in order to succeed. Learn more and find out how to register here.

Angela & Tiffinbox are combining forces on a four part webinar series starting in September 2012. Learn more here. All money raised goes to support Tiffinbox.

This is Angela Pointon‘s third guest post on Tiffinbox. Read her first post and second post too. Follow her on Twitter and don't forget to scroll all the way down to sign up for a special event with Angela.

Arguably, visual artists are able to see the work of their competitors easier than any other industry in the world. You waltz onto their website and boom. There’s their latest stroke of brilliance.

Do you poke around the competition’s websites from time to time?

If your competitors are making a big impact using their creativity and their own marketing skills, and it’s killing your morale and confidence, I’m here to help.

There are two critical things you’re learning by looking at your competition. You just don’t realize it.

1. Blending In More.

The only thing looking at competitor sites will do is cause you to be MORE LIKE THEM. The world doesn’t want more of them. They want to be able to find unique differences between businesses. The world actually wants you to be more like yourself. Because if you’re more like them, then why should a buyer choose you over them when you’re practically identical? You have untapped talents to offer the world, and we need to start exploring and strengthening those talents.

2. Morale Deprivation.

You are your own biggest critic. Rather than cultivating a defeatist attitude by seeing things they’re doing that you’re not, challenge yourself daily to do something new… something more creative than you did yesterday. It will cause you to be introspective and to grow your own creativity. Most importantly, it will boost your self-confidence because you did it!

Limiting yourself by judging your own success against the competition is stunting your creativity’s future potential. The more you can be yourself, the more you can look at yourself, the more you can challenge yourself… THAT is what will make your business shine.

Register for a rare webinar with Angela Pointon.

Tiffinbox is presenting a rare chance to register for a three-part webinar series. Angela of Steel Toe Images will present A Swift Kick: Three Things Every Photographer Should Know About Business. Space is limited and will sell out. Learn more and register.

We've all been there. At the beginning. Where we didn't know anything, or we knew a few things about photography but were awfully rough at the edges.

Sure, we were proud of those first images but didn't know an f/stop from a door stop, didn't know our way around Lightroom or Photoshop, our wedding photography business was complicated and our album designs looked more like a quilt, a hodgepodge of images thrown onto a page.

Look, even I'll admit I have been there.

We all had to start somewhere. With practice and the right tools things just came together for me. One more thing helped – having the right mentors walk with me on this journey. I am sure you've felt this way as well – you wanted, no needed, somebody to hold your hand.

For me, Rob and Lauren of Photography Concentrate have done just that through their photography tutorials.

To celebrate the relaunch of their site they're having a mega sale! For a very limited time you can get any of their four tutorials for 30% off!! The sale is starting right now, so you can grab them today! They have:

• Simple Wedding Photography [affiliate link] (Reg. US$39.95, On Sale for only US$27.97)? An e-book that teaches you everything you need to know about photographing weddings, and the business behind it.
• Extremely Essential Camera Skills [affiliate link] (Reg. US$49.95, On Sale for only US$34.97)? A multi-media tutorial designed to help you get control over your camera, and get creative and confident with your photography. 
• Super Photo Editing Skills [affiliate link] (Reg. US$79.95, On Sale for only US$55.97)? A video tutorial that teaches you how to bring the best out of your images using Adobe Lightroom 4.
• Awesome Album Design Skills [affiliate link] (Reg. US$79.95, On Sale for only US$55.97)? A video tutorial that shows you how to quickly design beautiful albums using Adobe InDesign.

All of their tutorials are digital products available for immediate download, so you can start learning right away. The sale prices are automatically applied, so it's nice and easy to save big!

Thankfully, the photography industry has changed over the last 10 years where sharing information has become more of the norm. It's rather rare for Photography Concentrate to hold a sale like this, so, if you have been eyeing their tutorials, this is the time to get it.

Oooh, before I forget, you could win a $200 gift card to Amazon.com if you comment here.

If you buy any of the Photography Concentrate tutorials now through August 9th (when the sale ends), please come back here and let me know in the comments section below what you thought of them.

As always, I will never recommend anything to you unless I have given the products or services a try myself. Please do note that you should safely assume that all links in this post are affiliate links.

Salonee Pareek is the better half of Ramit Batra Photography. She assists Ramit at his shoots and chronicles their experiences on their blog. When not travelling, or writing, she loves to spend her time with her books and can be found on Twitter.

A few days ago, I had the chance to interact with a prospective client and a fellow wedding photographer. The interaction was around two terms – one listed above, mentioned by the photographer – the dream client; and another what the dream client said “… if someone can put their heart and soul into doing a great job of the photography”. This got me thinking about our expectations as photographers and our clients' expectations for us and how it is like walking a tightrope to manage both of these expectations.

For a photographer, perhaps, there is no greater feeling than working for a client that wants the photographer to put her heart and soul in her photography. What would my dream client be like?

Realistically, what does a client really want? This may not be a million dollar question, but is definitely worth a few thousand dollars to us photographers. Some of us went to school or college and studied the craft of photography and some of us learned it in a more hands-on manner. But most of us have developed a manner of photography, we call our own, even as it changes and develops over time. There are certain things one is willing to do, and quite a few things one is not prepare to commit. And at the end of a hard day, we all want a client that appreciates our work and sees in it, a good value for her money.

While I am in no position to generalise, I have worked for clients who have appreciated the hard work I put in, gone a few steps further and asked for suggestions as to what would help me do my job better. And some, who have at the very outset, communicated the desire to always be in control of me and directed me to work accordingly. It is the latter variety that I am wary of. Here's why: because that does not come across to me as being honest. It appears as though this person only requires a camera operator with good equipment, not someone who uses their mind to control their equipment and create photographs the way only they can.

And thus began my dream of my ideal client. And here’s what I dreamed of:

My dream client would have some awareness about photography, if not especially about wedding photography. She would see me as a professional doing her work and not merely a camera controller. She would not vanish at the mere mention of payments (quite frankly, I know a lot of fellow photographers who have had brides vanish as soon as they receive an estimate). She will want to hire me as she likes my work, and not because she thinks I would do well to ape another’s style. Most of all, she will inspire me to create not merely capture.

Wow! Now that is quite a wish-list.

About being the client’s dream photographer? That would be another day, another story.

Want to win Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck's book, “Worth Every Penny“? Comment below. Their book walks you through the steps you need to take to set up a boutique business. It's a great read, with lots of information that you can put to use right away in your photography business.

Respond to these questions below: Can you describe your dream client? What would she or he be like? What are your expectations? What, typically, are theirs? (I'll pick the best responses on August 1st. Winners will be notified by email so please use an email address you check regularly when you post your answers.)