I’ve recently had a few inquiries about lenses that I use, and I figured I’d throw a few thoughts down. First and foremost, I’ve never been one that is all about gear. Don’t get me wrong, having good gear is important to our job and livelihood, but cameras/lenses are just tools to get us where we want creatively. I like to use the right lens or camera for the right job.

So many people put so much emphasis on what gear you are using, but most importantly is what you are putting in front of your camera. I have shots in my portfolio from a point and shoot.

That said, in the realm of digital, I use Canon gear because A: it’s great and B: I got into the photography game when they were a leg up ahead of Nikon. Started investing into the lenses/bodies and have had no need to switch. Since then, Nikon has definitely caught up so either are great. I wouldn’t buy anything else in the dSLR world besides either of those. (Leica is definitely awesome, but I don’t feel like they play in the same realm.)

On to lenses, I’ve posted a little before, but a few years ago. I’ve even simplified my shooting, and use less lenses in the lifestyle arena. I prefer the fixed focal length lenses for the most part. Since I’ve been shooting more film, I only have 2 lenses for my Contax G2’s, the 28mm and the 45mm, but I primarily only use the 45mm. Below are a couple samples(click here to see the whole shoot: http://nonk.it/dYyrrF):

In the Canon Digital world, Here’s an overview:

Canon 20mm f2.8
I love this lens for close dynamic type of shots or landscapes. It has a great dynamic to it that you can pull a lot of story into. It also has a natural vignette that I like. It does distort a bit, but if used in the right context it works to your advantage. Here are a couple of examples:

Canon 35mm f1.4L
This lens is great for shooting group lifestyle. You can fit a lot more into the frame, while still being in a close proximity to the subjects. The downside is it does distort when you get closer, and at certain angles. Something to be aware of. Samples below:

Canon 50mm f1.2L
I bought this lens a while back, used it for a bit, then shelved it for a while. I’ve recently started to shoot it a lot more because it has less distortion for shooting one person closer up. Great lens all around though. Samples below:

Canon 70-2oomm f2.8L ISII
I use this lens if I want to get a really compressed look. This leans more into the fashion lifestyle side. Samples below:

After the Make Better Pictures, and Show the Right People talk I did last week in Portland, I decided to share my recommended reading list with you all in blog form. This is a list of books that have helped shape my perspective in life and business.

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferazzi
This book was amazing in learning how to best network and build relationships with people. Keith focuses on giving and helping people without any pretense for reciprocation. Built on a philosophy of when you give to people it will be given back to you. Maybe from someone else or that person. It’s an idea of something I truly believe. If you give and help people it will come back to you. This book is one of my faves. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/ee2Hpr

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris
This one is a great concept of designing your life and having it’s elements work for you to what you desire. Some of his concepts are a little overboard, but overall the book is a great read and changes the way you think about designing your life and lifestyle. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/evJYol

The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
A basic well done study on economics of business and the culture of how trends/products hit their “tipping points”. Malcom talks about the different types of people that aid in the process. A good mind shifter in thinking big. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/fJ6ceF

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
Yet another fave of mine. Malcom does a study on successful people, why and how they’ve become that way. He talks about opportunity, hard work and talent. One of my favorite chapters is the 10,000 rule which many people have come to talk about. The idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practicing your craft to hit your tipping point of where enter into professionalism and success. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/hzW6g7

A Million Miles and a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
A book recommended to me by my homie Jeff Holt. This book shapes your perspective on creating better life experiences, essentially a better story. Experiences come through in our art and the more we make memorable moments in our lives the better our stories become. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/i4Vp2j

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kawasaki
Robert has many books on the subject of money, but learning and understanding how money works is a key essential in running a business. He talks about learning to see cashflow and how it works. This series of books goes hand in hand with the 4-Hour Work week. Learning how to use money to give you financial freedom and design the lifestyle you want to live. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/ffIdiO

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Creating a life of art isn’t an easy process. In The War of Art, Steven talks about the resistance and how it keeps us from creating. The resistance being that thing inside of us that makes us want to be lazy instead of getting to work. A perfect read for any artist. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/f0GmXb

The Brand Called YOU by Peter Montoya
In the business of a freelance artist, YOU are the brand. Everything you do is a projection of who you are and what your brand represents. This is a great read to help understand the idea of a personal brand and it’s outlets. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/faG2Ot

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck
Yet another great idea, but a little over the top in some areas. Still a great quick read on using the world of social media, blogging, and the web 2.0 world to boost your brand. Youtube stars have taken this idea to a whole other level. Pick it up here: http://nonk.it/h6kPhj

I’ll be doing a talk this coming January 11th, 2011 in Portland for the ASMP. I’ll be talking about making better pictures, and showing the right people. In the end, running a successful photography business breaks down to making better images, and showing more people. The key is the right people. Here’s a rough breakdown of what we’ll be covering. If you’re around Seattle, or Portland would be great to see you!

Making Better Pictures, and Showing the Right people

1. Shooting better pictures is ultimately what gets you hired and is YOUR product. You must have a great product to sell.
A: Curating your vision- Curate great photographs that you like, and break them down to why you like them. (inspired.nickonken.com)
B: ABS Theory- Always Be Shooting. This is the only thing that will make you better. Clicking the camera. Expanding your Default. Exercising the Decision Making muscle
C: 10,000 hours of hard work- Malcom Gladwell’s theory of putting in the time to take you through the artistic journey.
E: Testing- How to Set up a Test
F: Shoot Vertical, Not Lateral

2. Showing the right People
A: Getting your ducks in a row first- Create your portfolios, your website, your brand(developing a visual style before you invest in branding), and working with a consultant
B: Hiring a graphic designer
C: Editing
D: Creating a client driven website- Breakdown of my website, and what features I included and why.
E: Creating your own Branding Imagery- Iconic images you’ve shot that represent who you are. These are integrated into your promo pieces and brand extensions.
F: Promo Pieces- e-promos and Printed Promos. Samples of what I’ve done in the past
G: Creative Buying Decision makers
H: List creation- Agency Access

3. The Creative Journey
A: Transitions, Passions, and Sacrifices- Juggling the beginning years to get to where you want to be. Sacrificing and fitting the puzzle pieces together to make achieve the end goal.
B: There’s no such thing as Fairy Dust, Only you can make Shit happen, You Gotta Wannit- Pushing through the resistance. Making it is not easy.
C: Lifestyle Design: Inspired by the 4 hour work week, designing your lifestyle as to what success means to you. Everything stems from this.
D: Creating Personal work- mine is travel photography. creating my book, and the process of. Photo Trekking.

4. Business & Numbers
A: Big Jobs, and little jobs- Difference in mentalities
B: Get Producer
C: What Low-Balling does

ASMP info and Register here:

http://asmp.org/education/event/info?id=149
The Event will be held January 11th at Michael Jones Studio, 1937 N.W. Quimby St. Portland

Since I’m working on prepping a couple upcoming talks, I decided to browse through the past entries of my blog and pull some links to educational posts that have pertain to the Business of Photography, Creative Theory, the artistic journey, etc.

Exercising the Decision Making Muscle

http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/10/exercising-the-decision-making-muscle.html

Why I Feel My Website was a Good Investment
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/09/why-i-feel-my-website-was-a-good-investment.html

Thoughts Behind the All New nickonken.com
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/02/thoughts-behind-the-all-new-nickonken-com.html

How to Set Up a Test
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-set-up-a-test.html

The Ridiculous Amount Of Work
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/04/the-rediculous-amount-of-work.html

Shoot Vertical Not Lateral
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/04/shoot-vertical-not-lateral.html

You Gotta Wannit
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/04/you-gotta-wannit.html

Only You Can Make S*#$ Happen
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/01/only-you-can-make-s-happen.html

New School Vs. Old School Adapt & Change or Get Left Behind
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/01/new-school-vs-old-school-adapt-change-or-get-left-behind-2.html

2 Rules of the Photography Game
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/08/2-rules-of-the-photography-game.html

nickonken 2010 Promo
http://nickonken.com/blog/2010/04/nickonken_2010_promo.html

The Secret is Seeing
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/11/the-secret-is-seeing.html

Expanding Your Default
http://nickonken.com/blog/2008/10/expanding-your-default.html

ABS Theory
http://nickonken.com/blog/2008/09/abs-theory.html

Transitions, Passions, and Sacrifices
http://nickonken.com/blog/2008/09/transitions-passions-and-sacrifices.html

There’s No Such Thing as Fairy Dust
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-fairy-dust.html

Lifestyle Design
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/10/lifestyle-design.html

10,000 Hours of Hard Work
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/01/10000-hour-of-hard-work.html

Your Own Branding Imagery
http://nickonken.com/blog/2009/02/your-own-branding-imagery.html

Reps, My New Rep, and the Process
http://nickonken.com/blog/2008/08/reps-my-new-rep-and-the-process.html

Testing for your Book
http://nickonken.com/blog/2008/09/testing-for-your-book.html

A Few Thoughts on Lenses
http://nickonken.com/blog/2011/03/a-few-thoughts-on-lenses.html

Last week, I was shooting a big 5 day campaign shoot out in San Francisco, and something quite unfortunate happened. After the 3rd shoot day, we went to a studio location to scout it out. We parked our suburban outside for no more than 20 minutes with all our gear/laptop bags. We made sure to lock the doors, but we returned 20 minutes later to find the back window shattered, with my laptop bag/passport, my client’s laptop bag/purse with all credit cards, passports, and ID’s, and my producer’s purse with all credit cards/ID’s, GONE. There’s no worse feeling that getting robbed, thus the feeling of feeling violated. Thank God the really expensive bag of cameras sitting right next to my laptop bag was still there.

This is definitely a good slap in the face reminder that it can happen to anyone, and on a huge job no less. More than the camera gear still being left in the car, thank God that Jeff happened to ride in a different vehicle and took the 3 days worth of our job with him and we didn’t leave the drives in my laptop bag like we usually do. Never the less, on multiple day shoots we always leave a hard drive with a copy of each day’s work in the hotel room. We would have only lost one day’s worth of work had we kept, but when there’s thousands of production dollars riding on a day’s worth of shooting that’s still a lot to lose. It’s a reminder to always split up the production HD’s when leaving set, even back to the hotel. A reminder to always keep an HD of the job on you or in separate rooms. A reminder to not get sloppy and forget to do these things.

Here’s an overview of how we back up on set on a travel job:
1: Jeff(digital tech), is always backing up 2 copies on set, upon download, and a 3rd through out the day. Even if he’s copying cards, we never erase a card until we have 2 copies on hard drive. You never know when something might corrupt.
2: When the day is done, separate the drives and have Jeff carrying one on his person, and/or someone else with one or in the digital bag.
3: Upon returning to the hotel, we create a 3rd/4th copy on the drive at the hotel to leave in the room in case something happens during the day. ie: Getting the laptop bag stolen
4: When returning back home, we split up the copies. Jeff will take one home with him, then ship it to me and I will take the other 2 copies with me.

ChronoSync is a great program to backup/copy/sync copies of jobs. We also use the mini G-Tech 500gb portable drives on set to capture to.

Sometimes we get sloppy and lazy to do these things, but we just got a strong reminder to keep it up.

Now I’m off to deal with the inconvenience of getting a replacement passport and visas.

As much as I love living in NYC, I was feeling the need to get out in the open somewhere and shoot something for myself for a change. I called up some model friends, grabbed Melinda my stylist, and Holt for a little assistance and flew out to LA for a little desert road trip adventure. My goal was to shoot film for the whole test, and shoot whatever comes to mind. We drove up through Lancaster, through Barstow, and off to Vegas over 3 days. What a great trip!

Seeing Differently: I’m really realizing how shooting film really makes you think and see in a completely different way. You need to have the confidence that you are getting the shots you want without being able to see it right there. Trust the light meter, it’s usually right. (I use a handheld Sekonic). Since the cost of film and the processing is so freaking expensive, you edit more in your head before even taking a shot, and when you do take the shot you really think about what you’re shooting. I think it’s a great exercise to push the default of what you shoot. I actually had to refrain a little from pulling the MKIII dig out of the bag, but I ended up with some great and different photos. Shoot a few rolls of film even for a look of your shoot. Challenge yourself not to touch the digital.

I was really going for a raw gritty feeling on this. Something a little different than the normal nickonken style, but yet it still falls within who I am. Pretty excited about the results. I shot the Contax G2 with the 45mm lens, and 25 rolls of Kodak 400VC with a lil NC sprinkled in.

Check out the full story here: http://www.nickonken.com/Stories/DesertFreedom/

Testing is a huge part of getting started in the world of photography, and is also vital to staying alive creatively along the way. When you’re more established, testing keeps you fresh and relevant to the current world of photography. I’ve talked about the ABS theory, (Always Be Shooting) in the fact of always shooting for yourself for those reasons, and to expand your default(bag of tricks) for real jobs. Shooting a test can be very simple, or very complex depending on what level and how much money you have to invest. When I first started, testing was grabbing a good looking friend, going out into a great location and practicing. Now my test consist of flying a whole crew into a great location including hair/makeup, stylist, models, assistants, etc. I thought I’d throw down a few tips, and insights for setting up a test when you’re starting out.

When you’re starting out it’s a bit fuzzy where to start or what to do. Keep in mind, you are only as good as your portfolio, and your portfolio not only helps you get jobs, but helps you get talent to work with you. By talent, I mean Hair/makeup artist, stylists, and models. If you want people to work with you, they need to see something that gives them the confidence that if they put their time in, they will get some great images for their portfolios, so that is where you can start. If people aren’t interested in working with you, then the first place you should look is the quality of your work, which is what should do the selling.

Now that said, it can feel like a catch 22 because if you don’t have the work to show for, you need to create it, but to create it you need to have good work to get people to work with you. You find that all along the way especially getting the big ad jobs where people want to see high production value work. The trick is to learn to produce at an exponential value than the production elements you have to work with. You’re style and what you are drawn to also means lighting is different for what you like. It’s a personal preference, but some lighting requires more work/assistants than other lighting. You have to decide what you want to do and get the gear to pull it off. Sometimes that cost money.

When I first got interested in shooting people, I pulled some inspiration shots I found from other photographers that I could try and mimic then just grabbed a cute friend, walked around the city and experimented with natural light. Starting out with friends gives you the flexibility to learn to direct, and practice lighting without feeling too uncomfortable. You have to know your camera and know how to create the exposures/lighting you want without it being a distraction to the model. Lighting and directing are two different elements and if you don’t know how your camera works and how to light when working with a model you don’t know can get distracting for them. A big part of working with people, is interacting and directing your subject. If you’re too busy trying to figure out how to work your camera you can lose that rapport.

Ok that said, once you’ve practiced with a few friends and feel comfortable with what you’re doing, you can take it to the next level and bring in some other elements like hair/makeup, agency models, styling etc. You can pick up a cheap template website from places like bludomain.com to package your work in order to show other people. Making connections with hair and makeup artists can be tricky, but if you ask around your network someone probably knows someone. You can find people starting out that want to build their books. Sometimes you can find them at the department store makeup counters. Once you find someone who wants to collaborate with you, then do a couple tests with friends to add to your book. Remember, styling is very keep. Keep it simple.

If you want to take it from there, you can find modeling agencies in your local city. Call them up and tell them you want work with them and test some new models. Show them your website/book. If they aren’t interested, then ask for feedback on your work. What you can improve on to get some models from them. They are going to look at your work and want to be confident that if they give you one of their models, you will produce great images for them.

That’s entry level testing. The more testing and practicing you do, the more elaborate your connecting will get. And your work will evolve.

Enter the next level…

The above process can take a couple years depending on how fast you learn, and how often you can test. Once you have an established book, the more higher production value tests you can do. The higher level of talent you can convince to work with you. It took me a few years to get to this level of production for my tests because of money and how far along my work was. Here is a schematic of the process:

If you build relationships with hair, makeup, and stylists, you can work with them and build your team and they can work with you on tests, and real jobs. The more production value concepts you do, you will have to shell out money to make them. Naturally if you can negotiate high production value elements for free, then you’re creating higher value for less hard costs. You also have to examine the concept and content of what you want to shoot to determine the production elements that you need. Higher end commercial lifestyle requires good models that you can only typically find in NY, LA, or Miami. Therefore if you want to have a great location AND great models, you probably have to fly those models in to the location from one of those cities. Same with Hair, Makeup, and wardrobe styling. I shot a test in Colorado last year with the help of my good friend Jeff Holt. We came up with a concept, and he helped me produce it. The whole test cost me $3000 and that was with everyone working in trade for portfolio images. We had hard costs such as flights to get everyone there, food, rental trucks, hotels, and a few other expenses. The images we created from this shoot, have helped me to get higher paying advertising work, so it was well worth the investment. (see the images here: http://bit.ly/Colorado_SnowAdventure) Big tests like this need a lot of planning and preproduction to make them happen. I start with a concept, figure out the elements I need then we start working on securing and scheduling those elements for the shoot dates.

I still do lower profile tests, such as the film test of Loli I just shot in Prague. I found her through A Small World, emailed her with my website and asked her if she wanted to do a test when I was in Prague. She liked my work and was happy to work with me, and even helped me line up a hair/makeup artist there which I paid a little money to(sometimes you have to if you’re in a city where you have no connections.) Since I typically shoot with natural light, assistants aren’t a necessity so I was able to do this with me, a camera, Loli, and a makeup artist. Besides the costs of getting to Prague, this test probably cost me $600(half of which was my film processing costs) Check it out here. http://bit.ly/LoliSmokes_Prague

This is a recent test I shot in Tulum, Mexico. http://bit.ly/Devon_Tulum

In the end, your concept dictates the amount of production that is needed to create the images you want. The beauty of what we do, is that the world is our oyster. We can wake up, think of something to create, and go do it. You can test for free, or you can put money into it. (naturally you have to spend money to make money, so the more you put in, the more value you will get in the end).

This month I’m excited to announce the launch of my new educational travel photography book, Photo Trekking. It’s a collection of my travel photographs from around the world and the stories around them. It’s amazing how long it takes to publish a book. Here’s a little background on how the book came about.

Long story short. A couple years ago, I had some travel photo promo books I had done with Blurb. My photography consultant, Amanda Sosa Stone, had used them as examples in her seminars. Randomly enough she was at Photo Plus giving a seminar and an editor from what now is a small publisher called Random House saw the work in book form and got in touch with me about writing a book. Something I was very excited about, it still took us 6 months to write a pitch for it to even get sold in to get published. Come August of 2008, we received great news that the book was greenlit. From there, the March 2009 deadline to write the manuscript and curate the imagery was looming. Amongst the growing business of my commercial photography world, we managed to get everything turned in on time. It’s amazing that from that point of turning in the manuscript and content, it takes one year from that point till the book hits the stands. It has to go through manuscript edits, my approvals of edits, book design/layout, printing in asia, marketing and PR channels, and many other stages that I’m probably unaware of,  which brings us to where we’re at this month: The official release! (oh and forgot to mention the 5 years and 33 countries it took to shoot all the images in the book)

So THAT is why I’m proud and excited to announce the release and release party for Photo Trekking! I’m going to be throwing a release party here in New York City on March 19th. It’s an open invite, but you must RSVP to get in the door and you can do that here:

http://www.nickonken.com/phototrekkingparty/

Photo Trekking is a compilation of the work I’ve shot all around the world from my non-profit adventures, to my short stint of living in Paris. It’s mostly comprised of photos, but in addition to that, I’ve written stories around the images and have a few chapters with my shooting methods and lots of tips.

To see more on the book and/or pre-order it check out the book page: http://www.phototrekkingthebook.com

Lighting Essentials has written a nice little review of the book here.

Next to launching the new website, which has been getting some rave reviews I’m excited to launch the new blog, Shoptalk. My boys over at We The Media did a rockin’ job. They’ve done some killer work for big brands in the blog department. Definitely recommend them. It’s got some new features that were thought through from a usability standpoint, and some design features I haven’t seen done yet in a photography blog, namely the scrolling content under my logo tag in the top left, and the static footer that allows all the navigation to be done in a pop up nav box. This feature makes it easy to browse the blog by topic or time of posting. We’ve also included live search so you can see the archive of posts pop up as you type a keyword. Also integrated is a pop up nave for my social media profile links.

Naturally as the nature of Shoptalk is to share the things I’ve learned and thought about along this artistic journey of a career. It’s to serve as a resource and to give back to the photography community. Many people have commented, and emailed in about how much they’ve learned from the blog, and that’s my hopes for what it may be, so thanks to you for reading and being a part.

I also thought I’d take a second to highlight some of my favorite and most read posts over the last couple of years

1. Only You Can Make S#%@ Happen!
2. Expanding Your Default
3. ABS Theory
4. Two Rules of the Photography Game
5. The Importance of Branding
6. The Secret is Seeing…
7. Your Own Branding Imagery

Feel free to comment some of your favorite posts to share with other readers.

Today is the official launch of my new website that I’ve been working for the past 7 months, and I’m super stoked. It was designed by my peeps over at Knowawall who designed a number of talented photographers. My background in design influenced many logical points that were thought about going into it. I thought I would share some of those with you.

The first perspective was the state of the industry and where it’s headed. As this website was a pretty penny, and a huge investment for me I didn’t want to take it lightly. I have a feeling that the printed portfolios will diminish in 5 years. Right now the printed portfolios are still very much in play and website portfolios are creeping their way in. Will printed portfolios completely go away? I doubt it, but photographers are getting booked more and more straight from their websites. Why not make it easy for potential clients to see big images, and fast?

Taking that into account, we broke it all down to those objectives(big images & fast). Having that design background has given me the ability to look at it from an Art Director/Art Buyer’s(my target market) receiving/viewing perspective. I do it all the time when looking at other photography sites. There are so many sites that my adult ADD quickly vetoes(chasing thumbnails, single loading images, crap design, etc.) I’m sure most AD’s & AB’s have the same issues. The first thing I took into account was my target market. Art Directors, Art Buyers, and Photo Editors at ad agencies and magazines. They are super busy people, and they don’t have much time to make their way through a site that is hard to navigate and slow to load. They are typically working from a fast broadband connection with at least a 20 inch screen. Sometimes smaller, but a majority have at least that. And the last thing, who doesn’t want to see HUGE images?

In my brief to the design team, we created the site to that target market. The site is a combination of flash and PHP scripting which allows url linking to specific galleries and parts of the site. The flash allows the images to be scaleable based on the viewer’s monitor, whether it’s a 13 inch laptop or a 30 inch cinema. (which is awesome when you land on the home page and click the full screen button. The site becomes a screen saver with full screen images) The developers created a special algorithm to have the images loading ahead of the viewer, and following them where ever they go in the galleries. We developed the horizontal scrolling stories because it compliments my story driven work. The design is intentionally minimal visually because it is really all about showcasing the images. The navigation shows in every part of the portfolio website.

Here are a few features I’d like to highlight and why we did them.

•Full Screen(button top right next to search, subtly there without being distracting)
This feature is a definite must with flash capabilities. It creates a dynamic user experience not having to view it in a browser window. Try it out. It also works as a great branded screen saver if you leave the site on the home page in full screen mode)

•Keyword search
Including a keyword search, is partially for my own use in addition art directors and art buyers. There is a database of 2400 images on the site that can be searched through. This was a huge undertaking in that my whole library had to be organized and keyworded. Even at that, we still ended up having to blanket shoots with certain words pertaining to that shoot.

•Lightbox
The lightbox feature works in conjunction with the keyword search. It’s for both me and clients, and anyone for that matter. You can create your own lightbox of images to send to a friend, or for art buyers to send their art directors, etc. I can create front end lightboxes to send certain potential clients looking for certain images.

•Easy navigation
Simple navigation is the most key thing you can integrate into a website. Make it EASY for your viewer to get through your site. Have it static in every page, don’t make them chase things, and make it intuitive for a 3 year old) In the gallery nav, we included many options. You can click the next arrow, which snaps to the next image, you can use your arrow keys, you can click anywhere on the thumbnail bar, or grab the box as the scroll bar without having to chase it. You can also click on the “view all” to see all the images in the gallery. Click on any image and it will take you directly there.

•Social Media
As Social Media is rapidly integrating into our web 2.0 world, I wanted to integrate into the functionality. You can now tweet, facebook, stumble upon, and/or email any link within the site as well as tweet any image. I’ve also included links to my facebook public profile, and twitter pages.

•Image Download
Many clients like to comp ad mockups with your images if they’re considering you for a campaign. Regardless of how you do it, people are going to snag your images whether that’s saving them or screen shotting them. I’ve made it easy by including a download option that lets the viewer download a watermarked image for comping purposes. I’m not a fan of watermarking images on websites. It takes away from the image.

•Image license request:
Licensing images is another great source of income. I want to make it easy for people to inquire, if they are interested in using an image. Clicking the “license” link will create an email to me with the image ID info. I can then have my agent negotiate the licensing if it’s an advertising use. (if the image is licensable, the word “license” will appear in the image rollover nav.)

•Video galleries
As we all know, video is creeping into our little photography world. As I’ve only done a few stop motion projects at this time, I wanted to make room to grow and integrate video into the brand.

•News, Behind the Scenes, and Profile
I wanted to create a news section to showcase any press or exciting new endeavors that may come about. Behind the scenes are always fun and a great way for clients to see what it’s like to work on set with you. It’s also a great brand extension. The profile page has a great new cheeky bio written by my copywriter friend Dave.

•Blog
The new blog has new functionalities, that I will specially highlight in an upcoming post. It was created by my homies over at We The Media in Portland. They can do some insane things with Word Press.

•Backend Content Management System(CMS)
The biggest asset of this site, is the part you can’t see, and a majority of why it costs a pretty penny. The whole backend allows me to have a database of images that I can create galleries on the fly, update and change content, add new news clips, behind the scenes videos and pics, etc. It’s all keyword searchable and makes it so I can update all the content myself without having to get the developers to do it every time I want to add something.

•iPhone Website
As we all know, so many creatives out there have iPhones, and I wanted to make my new site iPhone friendly. I hired my friends over at AG Design in Mexico to cook up a special iPhone website that draws the galleries from the main website. It’s great because all I have to do is change the galleries in one place. When you hit my website from an iPhone it automatically redirects you to the mobile site.

Nothings ever perfect, but I am super excited to have this site working for me. Think ahead, take your target market in to account when building your site and make it easy for them to understand what it is that you do.