The series of images you will see here are by Roycin D'souza. He is a 20-year old photographer based in Mumbai. While he is also very passionate about photographing musicians in concert (he has photographed over 350 concerts), he started #TAD365 when he felt “the need of shooting more portraits of regular people from a diverse background.”

I've always been jumping around on Twitter and associating this with Twitter made so much more sense since the community gave back to me much more than I could expect.

Since June 2011, he has photographed over 285 people for the project ranging from advertising creatives, to celebrities, writers, teachers, food bloggers and chefs. Roycin quit his day job to travel to five cities in India to photograph these Twitter personalities. He says he spent everything he earned in the last 2 years to make this project a success. He adds, “I'm almost close to a millon hits for the project (on Flickr itself) and I'm travelling to Dubai tomorrow for a month to shoot and meet more people.”

“The project has a very raw element to it. I use a DIY lighting setup and travel all around the city on my Honda Activa (scooter). The people I meet are very different from each other and the shoots are even more impromptu depending on the ideas and the available time.”

Check out Roycin's blog, Facebook page and of course the #TAD365 project as well.

Do you know of other photographers working on personal projects? Feel free and introduce them to Tiffinbox. I would love to hear from them and highlight their work. Thank you!

A rather frazzled wedding photographer asked out aloud why her wordpress.com based blog/site was suddenly seeing advertisements that she hadn't approved. I quickly contacted her and let her know that because her site was (nameofherbusiness.wordpress.com) she was having WordPress dictate what goes on her site. What she has is a “managed” blog site. One easy solution would be to move to a self-hosted site.

Thankfully, there are ways to move your content over to a site that you have more control over. Also, if you are just starting out as a photographer and want to do it right, read on.

Full disclosure – not long ago, this site was hosted and managed by Typepad. In a future post, I'll go into more detail about why I moved from that managed option to a self-hosted solution.

I first came across this blog post: How To – Move From WordPress.com To WordPress.org. If that's a bit too geeky, check out the graphic below:

Like this infographic? Get more WordPress and hosting tips from Synthesis.

And, if that doesn't do it for you, you may want to sign up for this FREE 9-part course called Site Set-Up Kit. Produced by Wendy Cholbi and Pamela Wilson, it's targeted towards beginners and they promise that it will be jargon-free. Even though I publish this and other blogs using the WordPress platform, I signed up to learn something new.

Tiffinbox, for example, is a self-hosted site. That means, I pay to host it on a server owned by BlueHost.com [affiliate] and I get to decide on what gets published, including advertisements. When, not if, you start considering where to host your blog or your website, I recommend BlueHost as an option. They routinely rank high among website hosting companies and I have always found their customer service to be very prompt.

So, if you have a website or blog hosted and managed by say, Blogger, Typepad or LiveJournal, where you really do not have a way of controlling all of the content you see on your site, you should be going the self-hosted WordPress route.

Yes, there is a little bit of work involved in setting it up. So, if you have any questions about that feel free to ask in the comments section below. I am happy to help as best as I can, or, I will direct you to a resource who will address your concerns.

I just stumbled upon another blog post about setting up a self-hosted WordPress website by Michael Hyatt. Check it out too!

A Japanese proverb goes something like this: “One written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold”

Granted this is a thinly veiled commercial for an online content marketing company, but this video is a must-see for all photographers.

a) It's for photographers who don't think blogging is all that useful
b) It's for photographers who have embraced blogging but only post images on their sites and don't express themselves in words as well
c) It's for photographers who spend their time only lurking on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and don't consistently engage with their audience/target market

Now that you know WHY words can make a difference I bet you are scratching your head about HOW to go about blogging for your photography business.

First, I highly recommend Zach Prez's ebooks – Photography Blog Success AND Photography Web Marketing Guide. These two guides are filled with great information and you can't go wrong. I am plugging them here as affiliate only because I think it is worthy of being promoted because they are so useful.

Still not convinced you should write? Hit this blog post I wrote – Read, To Write. Then go read Juan Mireles' synopsis of Jasmine Star's approach and what makes her so successful.

Other awesome resources for you to consider:

Blog Topics by Chris Brogan and friends – a weekly email that will help you come up with a variety of posts if you start to suffer from writer's block. “For $9.97 a month, you get over 40 topics and tons of writing advice.”

I am a huge fan of Kristen Kalp. Her ebook, “Circus Circus” is like a laser guided missile that will hit its target – writing for your business. It's not just about blogging, though that is covered briefly. If you need help writing even a bio, an about me page, a manifesto about what you bring to your target market that is unique, then you've gotta get it.

I am just getting into this book now – Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – but it came highly recommended, so I figured I would pass that recommendation along to you as well.

Today's guest blog is by Phil Hollows, the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, the email and social media automation service and premium FeedBurner alternative. He’s also the author of “List Building for Bloggers” – the leading book on email marketing and social media for people like us. See how to set up email services on FeedBlitz and follow Phil on Twitter.

Who, you? Neglectful? No, way!

Surely I’m talking about that other guy down the street. You take great care of your clients, your art and your business. Right? What could you possibly be neglecting?

You see, while we’re all busy worrying about blog posts and Facebook and Twitter, you’re probably neglecting your site’s most important asset – its email subscribers.

You’re not alone – tens of thousands of other bloggers, businesses and enthusiasts are making the same mistake right now. Tools, themes and widgets have enabled us all to become accidental email marketers, letting a fabulous resource go to waste.

The good news is, with a little work, you can make a huge difference to how quickly your list grows, how well subscribers engage, and – ultimately – into building your business through repeat sales and referrals.

Why? Because becoming an email subscriber is work. Squiggly letters to sign up. Dual opt in. Because of this work, though, these people are really committed to you. They loved what you say enough to put themselves through this process just so that they can hear from you again – what a compliment!

So don’t neglect them. Here are a few core tips, taken from my book “List Building for Bloggers” (use the code TIFFINBOX at check out for a 40% discount) that you can put into place right now:

1. Put your email subscription form above the fold.
2. Have exactly one email subscription form; choices can confuse.
3. Incentivize visitors with a reason to sign up.
4. Deliver that reward when they do using a custom landing page or autoresponder.
5. Brand your mailings so they stick in readers minds.
6. Subscribe to your own mailings so you get the real subscriber experience.

Once your list is growing and becoming more engaged, it can be used to help reward your most committed readers. A Facebook “like” is an air kiss – casual, with no commitment. An email subscriber’s commitment gets your foot in the door. Give them the same focus and attention they’ve shown you.

You can use that commitment and that trust. For example, as well as having your content emailed to them from your blog you can:

a. Ask for referrals.

b. Offer exclusive promotions and discounts (especially during quiet times of year)

So go on. Step it up! Stop being an accidental email marketer. Take a little care and take advantage of this powerful, universal medium. You won’t regret it!

So, do you have a list of people to whom you write to regularly? What lessons have you learned from your experience? If you don't have a list, would this blog post motivate you to start one? Let us know!

Remember to use “TIFFINBOX” when you check out List Building For Bloggers and get 40% off!

A familiar lament among wedding and portrait photographers goes like this – “I found my images on another photographer's site and they are using them as their own.”

Thievery online isn't anything new. People have been, um, “borrowing” images for a long time. As one person erroneously told me, “If it's on the web, it's public domain.”

Yeah, right.

If you are a professional you'll want to protect your images. I recall Michael Grecco‘s tedious, but necessary workflow where he sends a batch of his images to the US Copyright Office ever time he wraps up a photo shoot. That takes some discipline, no doubt.

Registering your images at the US Copyright Office is the first step. But I have to wonder how many of us actively do it. When ownership of an image online does come into question, we've had TinEye for some time. You may have also used Myows (which claims to provide free online copyright protection).

Now Google wants to get into that sandbox too.

While Google doesn't offer to protect your images, it appears that this new service will help you search for them. So, if you were to have any question about where or how your images are being used, all it would take is popping them into the search engine and finding where it appears online. Given their larger database, I suspect this is going to be an important tool for photographers who are serious about their art.

Now, what else could you do to protect your images? Well, here is something that my friend Mark Higgins told me about. Instead of retaining your original file name, say, “DSC_3456.jpg,” rename it like so – “110616-smith-park-sb-001.jpg”

So, try and give each of your images a unique file name, if you can.

The other thing that might help is to use the “Alternate text” field to fill it in with text describing the image. This is easily done if you have a WordPress blog. As you upload an image, you'll be given a set of fields to fill out if you wish. The Title and Alternate Text fields (red in color in the screengrab below) are the most important as search engines count on these fields to understand and file away or index what it is they are looking at.

If the description of the image matches the content of your blog post, then search engines are more likely to link the two and give it a higher priority.

When it comes time to ascertain whether you are indeed the owner of an image or a clutch of images, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind, based on the information that you have baked into the files before they go online, that you photographed them.

There is more to search engine optimization, of course, so take the time to learn about it from the best. I highly recommend Zach Prez's Web Marketing Guide + Photography Blog Success ebooks. Yes, they are both affiliate links but I promote them only because I have found it very beneficial to me and feel they may be of use to you as well.

So, will Google's new ‘Image Search' option give photographers some peace of mind that their images aren't being used or misused anywhere outside of their control?

To give credit where credit is due, this blog post was inspired by A Photo Editor.

Update: It's nice to see other photographers discuss this new Google service. Read my friend Scott Wyden's review.