As a wedding photographer for almost 10 years, Lara White has always loved the business side of photography. She shares her passion for business and marketing strategies with photographers through her PhotoMint blog and recently authored a free book for photographers interested in learning how to get their images published. Follow Lara on Twitter.

Want to get published? Follow these easy 4 steps and you will be on your way to creating images that wedding magazines find irresistible.

The first thing you need to know is that wedding magazines and blogs are all about details. Their readers can never get enough details. So that right there should tell you that your submission needs to be at least 75% or more details, and you need to have that on your mind when you are shooting your next wedding that you think has a shot at getting published.

1. Plan Ahead

Take the time to plan ahead for your shoot and how to get the most out of it. Speak with the planner and the florist to get an understanding for the décor and the florals. Will there be a cool escort card table, and if so, how will you capture it prior to the guests spilling into the cocktail hour? How about ceremony details-can you get to the ceremony area prior to the guests, in time to capture how the ceremony looks prior to guests putting their purses down and otherwise cluttering up the area? Ask the catering manager to keep the reception doors closed until the reception, and that you'll be coming in for a few minutes to capture the room before the doors open.

2. Allow Plenty Of Extra Time For Capturing Details

It takes time to capture details in a way that “sells” them. Allow yourself the extra time needed to spend time in the reception finding just the right angle for capturing the centerpieces. Arrive early while the bride is just starting makeup, and you'll have plenty of time to “play” with the details in the bride's room. These can include the dress, shoes, jewelry, bouquet, invitation and other items with personal meaning.

3. Don't Be Afraid To Rearrange & Declutter

Nothing ruins a great detail shot like a half empty glass or a partially eaten plate of appetizers. Think of your detail shots like a product shot. You want the image to “sell” that detail. It's OK to rearrange things a bit or remove bits of clutter from your image. Think of yourself as styling the details. It's perfectly ok to take the salt and pepper shakers (or the table number sign if it's ugly) off the table for your shots of the centerpiece. Take the bouquet out of the cardboard delivery box and find a beautiful spot with nice lighting. It only takes a moment and will vastly improve your images.

4. Consistent Photoshop Style

If you create certain looks or styles in Photoshop, be consistent. For example if you go for a desaturated vintage look on some of your images and some of them are just in a “standard” look. Most magazines and blogs prefer to have all the images in a set done as a consistent style and look. Otherwise the overall theme and feeling of the images is lost.

The more time you spend working on mastering the art of detail shots, the better you'll become. And the better you are at capturing details, the more likely you are to find your images in the next issue of your favorite wedding magazine. If you'd like to learn more tips about getting published, check out Get Published: A Guide for Wedding Photographers.

It takes time and patience to learn to create images magazines will be interested in publishing, but it's well worth the investment of time, because your brides will love those images too.

Remember – You can pick up Lara's e-book, Get Published for free. No strings attached. I've read it and it's full of great, actionable topics. Get it now!

This guest blog post is written by Eric O'Connor, a Chicago wedding photographer, owner of Allori Photography and mylife-pages. Follow Eric on Twitter.

2012 will soon be here.

January is the perfect time to take a hard look at how to maximize profits in the upcoming year. These are a few recommendations that have helped me, follow all three and I know they'll work for you too.

1. What's in it for me?
2. Stay in Touch
3. Share the Love

What's In It For Me?

Your clients want information. They want to know every detail about their purchase. Give it to them! You are the expert. Share your knowledge and process with them. Whatever you do please don't wait until after the wedding to inform your client about the pre-design process. If you do they will feel cheated.  After they book with you make sure to take time or create a wedding album FAQ to walk them through the album process. This doesn't have to be complicated. Just a simple step by step from the day you shoot the wedding to the day you deliver their album. Set expectations and then deliver on them. It is important they understand you will be telling the story of their wedding day and you'll use as many pages as it takes to get it right. I always like to mention it gives them a great starting point. They can then customize the album to exactly what they want. Your clients will love this idea. Anytime they can take ownership in the process, you win!

Stay in Touch

Take a minute and think about the excitement leading up to the wedding. Your clients are excited about their wedding and then … BAM! … the wedding is over. It doesn't take long and they are back to real life. Catch your bride and groom in that first 30 days and their wedding day excitement will do the selling for you. You likely only have a 30 day window to take advantage of the wedding high. If 30 to 90 days go by and your bride hasn't seen pictures or a draft of her album it is much harder to add pages or sell additional albums. I make it a point to have everything to my brides 7 days after their wedding. I used to deliver images 30 days after the wedding and routinely life got in the way and the brides wouldn't even think about their album for a few more months. There were always a lot of album edits and very little pages added. Now, 7 days after their wedding they can view their Animoto slideshow, image gallery, and album pre-design right on their wedding website. I make sure to give my clients a deadline. We want to have the album completed and ready to print in 3 to 4 weeks. This helps give them a target to have their changes complete. Extra albums page sales have gone from a few or none to five, ten or more from every wedding.

Share the Love

Quick turnaround time is essential but I find coupling that with excitement from friends has really helped additional album page sales. A few years ago I emailed PDFs to my brides and they would leave me comments for changes. This was pretty efficient but didn't help me much when it came to advertising or extra album pages. I don't pay for ads in magazines and only have one ad online that I tested out this year and will discontinue Jan 1.  Word of mouth, SEO, social media, and over the top customer service do the job for me. The next iteration of album sharing was a slideshow posted on YouTube. I found I was getting quite a few hits and at the same time album sales started to increase. Brides started telling me their friends loved watching their wedding album movies. This was one of those common sense moments when the light goes on in your head. Friends of the bride love the album and they start telling the bride about their favorite pages. This process makes it harder and harder for the bride to remove or change pages.

Finally I arrived at the perfect solution, Share the Love! Wedding album movies on a post wedding website are essential to higher album page sales. With a favorites gallery, Animoto slideshow, and movie of the album, my brides have a constant flow of compliments from their friends about how much they love the wedding images and album pages. As you can see in the graphic the album movie in this wedding was viewed over 200 times in 6 weeks. I have been completely removed from the album page sales process. Yes, I have to take images my clients love but my brides' friends do the rest of the work for me. I do not meet with my clients to sell or add pages. These days they all add pages without sitting down with me.

Test out the three steps above. They are easy so don't cheat yourself and pick just one. Do all three. You will start to see a difference in sales. Click the image below to see how I display sample albums on post wedding websites.

Want to try a post wedding website? Your first site is FREE. Surprise one of your favorite clients with a wedding website with colors to match their wedding.

Some of you may recall Andy Bondurant's steamy blog post from almost a year ago called “What's Too Sexy For High School Seniors?“. Well he is back, with more advice for photographers. He is the co-founder and director of Senior Portrait Artists. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.

I recently ran across a question on the question/answer/information site Quora. Here was the question, “How can I dress like a professional photographer?”

I can hear some of the responses some of you have come up with already. “Great, another amateur, jumping into photography taking more of my clients.” But wait just a minute more, because what I found truly disturbing was the first response.

You can visit the site for the full response, but here is the first line:

“This is an awesome question. In my experience shooting events, it's less important how you dress and more important how your equipment looks.”

What?

The right equipment for the right job can make a huge difference in getting the shot you want and need. By no means does it make you a professional. In fact, it may put you out of business quicker than anything else you could do. Professional equipment is expensive, and much of it is not necessary to begin a business.

Over the past 8-10 years, I've had the blessing of having multiple opportunities each year to watch great, professional portrait photographers work on location shoots. Most of the time they have exactly what they need, when they need it. However,many times I would hear things like, “Oh, I wish I had …” Then they move on to get a great shot without the piece of equipment they just mentioned.

So what is that makes GREAT photographers GREAT? It's not the equipment, and it goes beyond just training. Here are 3 qualities I've found seems to be similar among photographers who are professional.

1. Relationship.

The best photographers seem to be able to connect with their clients quickly and efficiently. If you want to get images that truly portray a subject's personality you need that person to trust you. You need them to believe you are going to make them look incredible.

If the client doesn't trust you it shows in their eyes. It shows in their body posture.

Personality is not necessarily the biggest factor in this either. Having a fun, outgoing personality helps, but I've seen more reserved photographers do just as well as larger than life photographers.

The key to building relationship is caring. Building trust means truly and genuinely caring for the client and how they look and feel.

2. Time.

Above, I mentioned greatness is more than equipment or training. Having the right equipment and training only take you so far. Having the right equipment without enough time using it will result in sub-par images. Having the correct training without time to practice and perfect that training will lead to a less than perfect product.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers calls this the 10,000 hour rule. His premise is anyone who excels in their field has spent 10,000+ hours perfecting it before they become “known” for their skill. He references The Beatles, Bill Gates and others who fit this theory.

There is no substitute for time in photography. The more time you spend shooting, editing and perfecting, the better photographer you will be.

3. Consistency.

John Pyle wrote an article for The Collective arguing that this one point is what truly makes a professional photographer professional.

The ability to get a great shot no matter the circumstances, time of day, or the not having the “right” equipment is what sets the pro apart from the amateur.

Consistency is directly related to #2. The more time you have doing photography the more consistent product you will create.

Let me wrap up by telling you one more thing.

I'm not a photographer. Before you completely forget what I've written based on that statement, think about this: Each one of the above points (relationship, time, consistency) applies to any profession.

I don't care if you are a doctor, lawyer, lock-smith, banker or pizza maker all 3 of these qualities will be found in the great ones. It will have nothing to do with the equipment they do or don't have.

It will be about creating relationships, having time invested in their profession, and consistently giving great service and/or creating a great product.

What do you think? Is Andy right on the money about this? Discuss below!

Today's guest blog post is by Rosh Sillars, a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College of Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. He owns the creative representation firm The Rosh Group, Inc. and teaches photography at two universities and serves as a marketing and social media consultant for Synectics media. Rosh is also the coauthor of the book Linked Photographers guide to marketing and social media.Please visit his new project The Driven Business.

Is it really possible to increase dramatically your photography income?

Yes.

Photography has changed over the last 10 years. Digital cameras have made everyone a photographer; many of the basic point-and-shoot jobs have been lost. But, that doesn’t mean the opportunities are gone.

The truth is, there are more opportunities than ever. The secret is to make your competition irrelevant.

How?

Great photography and your creative ideas are the answer. Photography can be combined with writing, video, Photoshop, and other digital technologies to help you create unique offerings.

You must find your niche.

If you don’t have a good website, you are not in business. Make sure it is easy to use and well-optimized (If you don't know what that means, find out.) to attract the people who are searching for what you do. Don’t take search engine optimization lightly. Make sure you have a blog that is updated weekly with great images and text.

Get out of your home, office, or studio. Business is about people and developing relationships. Go to at least one networking event a week. Make sure you have business cards, portfolio cards, and your freshest images ready to share on your smart phone or tablet. Always have a portfolio available. You never know when opportunity will come knocking.

Follow up using the social web. Keep your new connections alive through social media. Develop new relationships using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Don’t sell to your followers, educate them. Teach them how to find leads for your business and you return the favor with opportunities and valuable introductions.

Create partnerships with companies that focus on the same target market. Develop packages and market your products in cooperation.

Don’t just sell your product. Sell the experience of working with you. You can’t hide behind your products. Photographers today need to understand that if they are going to be successful they are part of the product. Customers, in many cases, are buying the photographer more than the photography.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. It is important to protect your copyrights. If copyrights were not important, people wouldn’t be working so hard to take them from you. Keeping your copyrights will increase your income by providing more opportunities to resell your images at the appropriate time. But, the issue of copyright, business practices, and contracts doesn’t have to be an us versus them battle. Keep it simple.

Unless you photograph events, you should be using the per-image-pricing model. Your rates should be based on the value of each image, not your time. It is much easier for customers to justify a few hundred dollars per commercial image than $1,500 a day for the photographer's time. This model can easily be adjusted and applied to portraits and family photography. Each image has value; never give away a valuable CD full of images.

Don't forget to follow up.

Communicate regularly with past clients. They are the best referral sources you have, so make sure you collect e-mails and addresses. Don’t let them forget what a great experience they had working with you. Keep them up-to-date with you newest images. Give them the tools and the opportunity to refer you.

The best marketing campaign you can participate in is to regularly send hand-written thank-you notes. People like to be appreciated. Your appreciation is often rewarded with additional income.

What strategies will you employ to grow your photography income? What are you trying now? Willing to share so that can learn from each other? Post your thoughts below!

I've loved Utah-based Jonathan Canlas‘ wedding photography for quite some time. I must have come across his website quite randomly about four or five years ago. His images continue to inspire me. The moments are real and the processing is just right.

Little did I know back then that he was a wholly film-based photographer. Yes, film. Some of us may remember that medium. With digital being all the rage – I mean who isn't addicted to chimping, right? – why would a photographer eschew Photoshop actions (that can make your digital images look like they were shot on film) and other “bells and whistles.” The answer is simple. Because he can, he wants to be different and his clients love him for it.

So, take a moment to look at his work again.

Now that you are back, do you see anything different? Do the images just appear more tactile, or have more depth to them? Or, is it my imagination? I believe it is the former.

Whichever way your answer sways, if you are curious about how Jonathan Canlas photographs weddings or portrait sessions using film, you have three options to learn from him.

You see, in addition to being a successful photographer, Canlas is a wonderful teacher. For several years, Canlas has offered the Film Is Not Dead workshops for those photographers looking for a solid foundation in film photography.

Canlas has also very patiently answered questions via Formspring. You should follow him on Twitter where most of these responses show up.

The last option, is a resourceful guidebook called FIND (Film Is Not Dead). There is a dedicated website where you can order this truly comprehensive offering. Jonathan generously offered me a review copy and I just got done reading it. As a photographer who cut his teeth on Tri-X and TMAX 3200, a lot of what he had to say in the book was not new to me. As a mostly 35-mm film photographer, though, I learned a great deal about medium-format cameras. So much so that I am now actively looking for a used Yashica-Mat 124-G.

Here is a breakdown of the table of contents:

This is a 95-page e-book that is sprinkled with great wisdom and some jaw-dropping images. If you are clueless about working with film, because you simply never had the opportunity or were too intimidated, then you need to run out and get this hefty PDF. Unlike other PDFs that may discuss a particular type of digital technology that is sure to change over time, I feel what Jonathan Canlas has produced for us will be as timeless as his own work. Indeed, its his generous spirit that allows us to share his vast knowledge about a medium long thought of as “old,” or worse, “dead.”

Thanks to companies like Kodak and Ilford, who continue manufacturing film, Canlas feels strongly that he will be working in that medium for a very long time and now so can you.

Buy the Film Is Not Dead guidebook by using the code “SESHU” and receive $45 off the final price. All I ask in return is that you subscribe to the Tiffinbox newsletter. Goodies like this will only be available in the future for my newsletter subscribers so you may want to get a headstart.

Full disclosure – I received a review copy of this PDF, but I don't make a dime for mentioning it here on Tiffinbox. If you liked this review and bought the PDF, please come back here and post your comments. I'll try and have Jonathan swing by and answer any questions you may have.