Some times, one white balance just doesn’t cut it.  Have you ever processed a RAW image only to discover that setting the proper white balance for the landscape resulted in a pale or even yellowish sky?  One possible culprit is that you’re working on an image with two distinct white balances: one for the sky and one for the landscape.  In the above image, selecting a correct white balance for the sandstone walls resulted in water that was an unnatural, dingy yellow color.  Luckily, there are a couple of tools that make it quick and easy to correct this issue.

If you’re using Lightroom 4, the adjustment brush can be utilized to easily apply local white balance corrections.  Simply select the adjustment brush, set all the options to zero and then move the white balance slider to the appropriate setting.  If you don’t get it right the first time, no big deal.  Once you’ve used the brush to “paint” on the effect you can always go back and edit the results.  In the slot canyon image above, I used this technique to cool off the water and return it to a more natural looking state.  You can use this same technique to selectively reduce noise, increase (or decrease) sharpening, saturation, contrast, clarity and more.  It’s really a simple but very powerful tool.

Another option that allows an easy fix is Nik Software’s Viveza 2 plug-in for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.  This works in a similar manner but instead of using a brush to “paint” in the effect, you use a Control Point to easily select only the color range with which you need to work.  I prefer to use this method to fix problem skies as the Control Points make it very easy to also darken the sky and add a touch of saturation – both of which I often do to give skies a little more zing.  Yes, zing.  I used this technique on the image below and it resulted in an image with a much more natural yet impactful sky.

In my experience, neither technique works best 100% of the time.  I find that I’ll try one and if it doesn’t work as desired, I’ll try the other.  It’s certainly beneficial to have both tools in your toolbox.  Give it a shot and let me know what works best for you!

Buy Adobe Lightroom 4

Buy Nik Software Complete Collection including Viveza 2 (Use coupon code “BEDGE” at checkout to save 15%)

This post sponsored by Google.

Last week Jane, a former guided client, sent me a photo she’d just made and asked for my opinion of it.  The photo, seen above, immediately intrigued me.  The weathered old wall and headstones were full of interesting texture and the shadow of a cross with a crow perched on top as if he were a guardian of the graveyard had tremendous impact.  It struck me as a brilliant candidate for a black and white conversion.  I emailed Jane and asked her permission to work on it.  In addition to doing the conversion I promised I would send her a description of what I did and why I did it to help her understand the logic behind my decisions.  Luckily, she gave me the go ahead.  Please note: The images on this page are copyrighted and do not belong to me.

I imported the photo to Lightroom 3 and then went to work with Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 to do the black and white conversion.  Once there, I did a custom conversion rather than relying on one of the presets.  I began by increasing the brightness of the highlights while slightly decreasing the brightness of the mid-tones and shadows.  Next I increased global contrast to give more separation between the tones.  I also used the “Amplify Whites” slider to give the brighter tones a bit more punch.  Lastly, I increased structure by 10% in all three tones to enhance the texture of the stone.  I experimented with colored filters but none of them added anything to the overall scene.

After doing the conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2 I switched to Viveza 2 to do some additional fine tuning.  First, I increased global contrast by 4% which made the shadows just a bit too dark for my liking.  So, I used the shadows slider to lighten them up and bring a little bit more detail back into the darkest areas.  Not too much though, as I generally liked the overall stark contrast.  I then used control points to select only the headstones, which I darkened by a few points and increased the contrast so the names would stand out more distinctively.  I dropped a couple control points on the wall behind the tombstones and lightened that area using the brightness slider.  I did this so the tombstones would contrast more sharply with the wall, causing them to become even more prominent in the image.  Finally, I decreased the warmth by about 5% to give the image a very slight blue (cool) color cast.  I felt the image needed cooler tones to convey the chilly mood of the scene.

When all was said and done I’d spent a total of about five minutes on the conversion.  I emailed it to Jane with a description of my workflow and her response was, “Whoa! It is brilliant Bret.”  Needless to say, she was overjoyed.  Most importantly, she had her own photo in a “before and after” tutorial that she could refer to the next time she found herself “stuck” in a processing rut.  Some times we’re just too close to our own images, or maybe we lack the digital darkroom skills, to be able to effectively translate the vision in our mind into a finished photograph.  On these occasions it might be a good idea to put that image aside for a few days and come back to it with fresh eyes.  Or, maybe, we could ask a friend to work on it for us.  The outside perspective we gain might be all that’s needed to help us break through whatever barriers had been holding us back.

I’d like to extend a sincere thank you to Jane Lyons for allowing me to muck around with her photograph and share the results here on my blog. Thanks, Jane!

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got an image you’ve been struggling with and you’d like me to take a crack at it.  Send me an email at bret (at) bretedge (dot) com and I may take a run at it!

Ever get bored and go archive diving, only to find an image that totally blows your mind? I usually don’t find much when I’m digging around in the dumpster but tonight, oh tonight, I stumbled across an intimate scene from Redwoods National Park that made me giddy. The color version didn’t appeal to me as it was essentially just various shades of green. As I studied the image I noticed that the clovers were darker than the non-clover (no idea what kind of plant it is) and my brain kicked into monochrome mode.  I thought, “What if I converted this to black and white with a lot of contrast that would make the dark clovers darker and the light plant lighter?”  So, that’s exactly what I did using Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2.

I don’t often start my monochrome conversions with one of the presets that are included with Silver Efex Pro 2 but this time the “Push Process N+1.5″.  I made a few minor tweaks to the image at this point, the most significant of which was eliminating the grain automatically added by the preset.  I don’t mind grain in some black and white photos but in this one I didn’t want to add grain at the expense of fine detail.  I also added a little more structure to the highlights and mid-tones.

At this point the image was oh-so-close to what I’d visualized but I still wanted more contrast between the clovers and lighter plant.  I pulled the photo into Nik Software Viveza 2 and used carefully placed control points on the lighter leaves to brighten them up a bit more with consideration given to not going too far and losing highlight detail.  Then, I dropped a few more control points on the clovers and darkened them while also increasing the contrast a wee little bit.

This image is loaded with texture and I really wanted to accentuate it in the black and white version.  The easiest way I’ve found to do this is to use the Tonal Contrast filter in Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4.  As I’ve said in previous tutorials the native preset is way too much unless you’re a fan of overcooked HDR looking photography.  The Tonal Contrast filter allows you to independently control the contrast of highlights, mid-tones and shadows with the simple flick of a slider.  I increased the highlight contrast by 15 points, the mid-tone contrast by 10 points and the shadow contrast by 15 points.  There’s the texture I wanted!

I spent more time working on this image than I do on most but I think it was time well spent.  I’m slowly assembling a portfolio of monochrome images I’m exceptionally proud of and this one will be a nice addition to the collection.

CAN YOU IDENTIFY THE PLANT THAT ISN’T A CLOVER?  IF SO, PLEASE DO SO IN THE COMMENTS.  FIRST PERSON TO CORRECTLY IDENTIFY IT WINS A 5″ X 7″ PRINT IN A MUSEUM WHITE 8″ X 10″ MAT. (SORRY, SHIPPING ONLY WITHIN THE U.S. AS THE INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING COST IS PROHIBITIVE)

I’m not much of a computer geek.  I don’t enjoy spending hours in front of a monitor manipulating my images.  I’d rather be outside hiking, mountain biking or making more photographs.  Sure, I enjoy the creative endeavor of post-processing my images but when that involves more than about five minutes of work I quickly start to lose interest.  But, every once in a while an image comes along that leaves me no choice but to get down and dirty in the digital darkroom.  The image you see above, of the Fisher Towers and La Sal Mountains reflecting in the Colorado River, is one such image.

Last night I saw clouds developing over the mountains with a reasonably clear western horizon.  Hoping for an epic sunset I threw all my camera gear into the FJ and headed east on the River Road after excusing myself early from a parent/teacher meeting at my son’s school.  Priorities, right?  I arrived on location thirty minutes before sunset and scrambled down the steep embankment still wearing chinos and a pair of casual boots whose soles offered little to no grip in the loose dirt.  I was pleasantly surprised to only land on my butt one time before arriving at the edge of the mighty Colorado River.  Naturally, just as I got my tripod and camera in position the sun moved behind a cloud that killed the warm, late afternoon light.  So, I did what nature photographers do – I waited.  Luck was with me as an unseen, narrow gap on the horizon allowed sunset light to squeak through at just the last moment.  The snowcapped La Sals lit up with alpenglow and clouds streaking overhead turned a rich reddish-pink.  The dynamic range was a bit too much for my Canon 5D Mark II to handle but was easily controlled with a Singh-Ray 3 stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter.  I also used a Singh-Ray Vari ND filter at about 1/2 power to extend the shutter speed to 8 seconds, thus smoothing out some small, wind driven ripples in the water.  An interesting side effect of the long exposure was more color in the clouds than could be seen with the naked eye and a bit of movement that is difficult to discern at this small size.

Back home, I eagerly imported the photos into Lightroom 3.  Of the series I found only one that was razor sharp.  The others were a bit soft, most likely due to movement introduced during the long exposures while handholding the GND filter in front of the lens.  I made my initial edits in Lightroom, very slightly decreasing the exposure and brightness, increasing clarity by 20 points and vibrance by 10, a slight curves adjustment and a few tweaks to the HSL (hue/saturation/luminance) panel.  Better, but not quite there.  The sky and foreground were both too bright but I couldn’t make a global adjustment as each required its own independent adjustment to maintain exposure consistency.  Enter Lightroom’s mega-awesome digital grad filter!  I used one on the sky and another on the foreground.  Much better!  With the base image looking pretty good it was time to do some more work using Nik Software Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 4.

First up, Viveza 2.  I made a few minor global adjustments by increasing the contrast and saturation by 4 points, and structure by 20 points.  I decreased the shadows slider by 6 points, which resulted in deeper, richer shadows.  One of the first issues that needed to be resolved was the color temperature of the sky.  The clouds were nice and red, just as I’d remembered from a couple hours earlier.  The area of open sky, however, was a dingy gray – not the soft blue it should have been.  In Lightroom, using a white balance of 3,600 produced the correct color in open sky but the rest of the landscape and sky was far too cool.  With a white balance of 5,500, everything else looked good except the open sky.  I’d opted for a white balance of 5,500 since the majority of the scene looked good at this temperature.  In Viveza 2 I dropped a couple control points on the open sky, linked the points, and then made a few adjustments to bring back the soft blue sky.  Notably, I reduced the brightness, added saturation and, this is the main adjustment, decreased the warmth by about 20 points.  Voila – the blue sky triumphantly returns!  Since the blue sky was also reflecting in the water at the bottom of the image I copied a control point from the sky and dropped it on the area of water that reflected the sky.

At this point the image was coming along quite nicely but it still needed a little “ooomph”, which is a technical term I learned years ago.  I opened the photo in Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4 and used one of my favorite filters, Tonal Contrast, to independently increase contrast in the highlights, mid-tones and shadows.  The highlights already looked pretty good so I only gave them a boost of about 10.  Mid-tones and shadows were a little flat, though.  I increased each about 15 points, which gave them the “zing” (another very tehcnical term) I wanted.  The shadows, especially, came alive.  Muddy shadows are those that have detail but lack contrast.  The Tonal Contrast filter makes it super easy to clean them up.  I also used the Brilliance/Warmth filter in Color Efex Pro 4 to give the colors a little bit more “pop” (yep, you guessed it – yet another techno term).  I increased global saturation and perceptual saturation by 5 points each.

Back in Lightroom 3 I again applied two digital GND filters to reduce the exposure of the sky by about 1/2 stop and the foreground reflection by about 1/3 stop as I still thought they were each a bit brighter than I liked.  I guess I was going for a “dark and moody” look.  With those final touches in place I sat back, blinked for the first time in fifteen minutes, and took a big swig of iced tea.  There on the monitor before me was an image I was satisfied to have created in the field and perfected at my desk.

It took about fifteen minutes to completely process the image from start to finish, which is about three times as long as I typically spend post-processing a photo.  But, when an image has potential I just don’t have the heart to give up on it.  I can’t really call this a tutorial but I do hope you found the breakdown of my workflow somewhat beneficial.  I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.  Just leave a comment and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.

Also, if you’re convinced that you need Nik Software’s Viveza 2 or Color Efex Pro 4, I encourage you to visit their website and download a trial of the software.  If you like it and want to invest in it, use coupon code “BEDGE” at checkout for a 15% discount.

I’ve lived in Moab for over six years and have been photographing the area for ten.  There are a few locations I’ve photographed over and over and each time I’ve been skunked.  One such location is Double Arch in the Windows area of Arches National Park.  Double Arch is at the end of long, curving, tall sandstone fin and never receives sweet sunrise or sunset light.  By the time it falls fully into morning light the sun is high in the sky and the light rather harsh.  At sunset the light comes from directly behind and does shed a warm glow on the interior of the arch but the top arch is completely in shade and the sky behind the arch too bright.  Hmm, this is quite the dilemma.

Is it possible to make a quality image in nice light at Double Arch?  The answer is emphatically yes, although it does come with a caveat – if all the right elements don’t align at the same time you’re going to walk away empty handed.  Here’s my recipe for a killer photograph of Double Arch:

Mix one summer morning, between two to three hours after sunrise with a sky filled with fluffy clouds and sunlight diffused through very thin clouds to the east AND reflecting onto the landscape below.  Take away a tour bus filled with foreign park visitors eager to have their photo taken below the Indiana Jones Arch.  Find an interesting, uncluttered composition.  Make one perfect exposure that captures the full range of tones from highlight to shadows.  Bake the whole scrumptious thing for 10-15 minutes in Adobe Lightroom, Nik Software Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 3.  Finish with a sprinkling of Nik Sharpener Pro 3 before presenting to the world for consumption.

If I may be serious for a moment, there is a bit of a lesson to be learned here.  Ten years.  Ten years it took me to finally make a photograph of Double Arch that I feel is worthy of inclusion in my portfolio.  I have no idea how many times I visited Double Arch during that time.  Two dozen?  Maybe more?  I’m learning that there are great rewards offered to the persistent.  No matter how spectacular a location is, it’s all too easy to give up when things don’t go our way after a few attempts.  Keep after it and one glorious morning you may well receive a wonderful gift for having faith in Mother Nature.

This image is available as a fine art print, canvas gallery wrap or archival plaque in sizes up to 32″ x 48″.  Please email me if you’d like to inquire about purchasing a print.

I went out to Arches National Park to photograph sunrise on Sunday morning.  The conditions looked perfect – clear to the east, dramatic skies to the west and a thunderstorm on Saturday night that dumped heavy rain in town was certain to have filled sandstone potholes to the brim, leaving them ready to catch crystal clear reflections.  I arrived at the Courthouse Towers area with plenty of time to find just the right pothole.  I wandered out onto the slickrock and was disappointed to find that the rain we had in town never made it to Arches.  The potholes were all bone dry.  I scurried about and found some yucca plants to use in the foreground just as sunrise light washed over The Organ and the Three Gossips.  My images were good but certainly not stellar.

Disappointed, I packed up and drove through the park toward the Windows area.  I’ve been to Arches hundreds of times but this time two unnamed sandstone towers caught my eye as they were spotlighted against an angry sky.  I knew the light wouldn’t last long.  I quickly found a place to park, grabbed my tripod and camera and dashed across the desert to compose an image – just as the light on the towers faded.  Clearly, I wasn’t meant to make any dramatic images today.

Dejected, I began the walk of shame back to my truck below overcast skies.  Almost to the road I spied a collection of small fallen oak leaves at the edge of a sand dune, some of which retained their rich brown color while others had faded to grayish-white.  Ah, the contrast.  But wait, that texture! Oh, and the patterns created by the veins snaking through each little leaf!  Could there be a photo hidden in that mish mash of leaves?  I’d better stop to examine them, just in case.  Hmm, all I’ve got with me is my trusty 16-35mm lens.  I’ve got a few minutes to kill.  Lens cap off, camera on, ISO cranked up to 400 to enable handholding the camera.  Click. Click, click, click.  Just a few frames before one tiny raindrop, and then another, and then a few more fell from the clouds.  I made it back to my truck before a brief but intense downpour quenched the thirsty desert.

I went out looking for a dramatic grand landscape.  I kept an open mind, as I always endeavor to do, and when an even sweeter opportunity presented itself, I was able to see it.

Image was made using a Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 II lens, handheld.  Photographed in RAW, imported to Adobe Lightroom 3 for initial editing and finished in Nik Software Viveza 2 and Color Efex Pro 3 before being sized for web and then sharpened using Nik Sharpener Pro 3.

After crawling out of the cave I’d apparently been living in and downloading Mac OS 10.6 to replace the not-retro-enough-to-be-cool OS 10.5 I was running on my iMac, I was able to download Nik Software’s latest high dynamic range imaging software, HDR Efex Pro 2.  Lately I’ve been expanding the dynamic range of my images by hand blending multiple exposures in Photoshop using techniques I learned in Sean Bagshaw’s fantastic video tutorial, “Processing for Extended Dynamic Range“.  Off topic, but if you’ve never checked out Sean’s work I highly recommend you take the time to do so.  Not only is he an incredibly nice and quite humble guy, but he happens to be one of the very best landscape photographers in the entire Pacific Northwest region.

Getting back on topic, now that I’ve got HDR Efex Pro 2 on my iMac I thought I’d take it for a test drive on some recent images from the Tetons and on an old one from Moab that’s been sitting dormant on my hard drive for a couple of years.  The photo you see above is the result of my first experiment.  No doubt you all recognize the location: Schwabacher Landing.  I’ve visited this spot several times over the years and until this trip had never produced an image there that was worth a crap.  Better late than never, I guess.

I’m not a fan of HDR images that look like HDR images.  I prefer mine to fall within the realm of reality.  The first thing I noticed about HDR Efex Pro 2 is that it also seems to favor reality.  I’m sure you can use it for evil, er…that crazy surreal looking HDR, but the default settings lean toward realism.  Once the initial HDR merge is done you’re presented with the base image.  There are three main panels on the right side of the HDR Efex Pro 2 software that you’ll use to process your image: Tone Compression, Tonality and Color.  These three panels are where most of the magic happens.  Below them you’ll find Selective Adjustments and Finishing.  I’m still developing an efficient workflow but so far I find Selective Adjustments to be of little value.   I prefer to use Nik Viveza 2 to make selective adjustments after the final HDR image has been rendered.  Next, let’s briefly touch on each of the remaining panels.

Tone Compression – Here you’ll find adjustments for tone compression, method strength and HDR method.  One of the most useful new features is “HDR method”, as it allows you to choose from three different categories by simply clicking a button to make changes to your image.  The HDR method categories are: depth, detail and drama.  Again, the defaults are pretty conservative and they generally create a more realistic image.  You can get all kinds of grungy here if that’s your thing but it’s just as easy to keep it real.  Without going into great detail I can’t fully explain what each of these adjustments does but the title of each one should offer a bit of a clue.  I recommend you play with each adjustment on a few of your images to see what effect it has on your photo.  The changes are real time and can easily be reset if you don’t like what you see.

Tonality – Here you’ll find sliders for Exposure, Contrast and Structure, with sub-sliders for shadows and highlights, blacks and whites under Exposure and Contrast, respectively.  These are pretty self-explanatory and again, they work in real time.

Color – Saturation, Temperature and Tint sliders.  One more time, these need no explanation.  One word of advice: a little goes a long way.

Finishing – Just as the name implies, the adjustments you’ll find here are more local, less global.  They are: vignette, graduated neutral density filter, and levels and curves.  Vignette and levels and curves do just what you think they’d do.  So does the graduated neutral density filter, except that it does it better than you’re imagining!  Not only can you control the density of the filter at the top AND bottom of the image, you can control the blend, rotation and the vertical positioning.  All of this is accomplished using simple sliders.  It may not sound like much but once you use it a couple times you’ll be blown away by the power it wields.

I’ve given you just enough information to whet your appetite.  If you’re curious enough to try out HDR Efex Pro 2, and I really think you should, visit the Nik Software website to download a fully functioning, free 15 day trial.  Run a few images through it and decide for yourself whether it’s worth the investment.  If you do pull the trigger, use coupon code “BEDGE” at checkout to receive a 15% discount off the retail price.  Give it a shot, then come back and leave a comment with your initial impressions of HDR Efex Pro 2.

I’m a professional photographer and I have a confession to make. I use my iPhone camera more often than my 5D Mark II.  It’s true.  My iPhone is with me about 100% of the time.  The 5DII – not so much.  It just isn’t practical to lug around a bulky, three pound camera everywhere I go.  As a result, it isn’t uncommon to find me pointing my iPhone at a nuclear sunset, a funky tree or a buddy shredding on his mountain bike.  The photo above was made last night while guiding a couple clients on a lovely afternoon in Arches National Park.  I used two apps: Autostitch to create a pano from several frames and Nik Software’s Snapseed to process the image on my iPhone.  Photoshop? What’s that?

No doubt many of my colleagues find this amusing, maybe even annoying.  I don’t care.  You see, I believe that even serious photographers can improve their skills using an iPhone, point and shoot or other unsophisticated little camera.  I enjoy the process of making photographs.  I get fired up when I’m able to make a photograph of a beautiful, fleeting moment in nature.  Sure, given the opportunity, I’d reach for the 5DII.  When it isn’t available but my iPhone is, should I just not make an image?  There are times I just sit back and enjoy the moment.  Not every sunset needs to be photographed.  But, there are also occasions when I’m stoked to have my iPhone so I can share the moment with friends and family.

When you first became serious about photography, what one thing helped you to become a better photographer?  Was it reading how-to books and articles?  Was it trolling internet photo forums?  Maybe it was sitting at the local bookstore flipping through the pages of some famous photographer’s coffee table book?  No?  Let me guess – it was getting out as often as possible to make photographs, wasn’t it?  That’s what worked for me and in conversation with my workshop clients, the act of making images has consistently been a key factor in improving one’s ability to see and to compose a dynamic photograph.  Given that logic, isn’t it safe to assume that making photographs with any camera on a regular basis is bound to make you a better photographer, even if it is just a silly little iPhone?

Way back in the days of old, I’d head out on a road trip to an iconic national park with a couple dozen rolls of Velvia triple bagged in Ziplocs in the cooler.  Images of Delicate Arch framing the snowcapped La Sal Mountains, wildflowers dancing in alpine meadows below Mount Rainier or the rugged Tetons reflecting in a beaver pool at  Schwabacher Landing inspired an impressionable young me.  I wanted to make my own photographs of these gorgeous locations.  For thousands of novice landscape photographers, the ritual of reproducing photos we’ve all seen a million times is a valuable learning experience.  We discover things like sweet morning light, how aperture controls depth of field and how shutter speed can turn a powerful waterfall into a delicate strand of white silk.

Flash forward a bunch of years and I continue to find myself drawn to photographing the national parks.  Moreover, I still find value in photographing the icons.  I guess some things never change, although I no longer have to stress over the possibility of dank cooler water infiltrating my precious Ziploc’d Velvia film!

How can making images at a location that has likely been photographed hundreds of thousands of times possibly be of value to an experienced landscape photographer?  Easy – challenge yourself to create a unique photograph.  Perhaps it’s a composition that strays from the common perspective, or shooting at sunrise instead of sunset or maybe venturing out in unusual weather.

Whether we want them to or not, photographs of  landscape icons saturate our memory.  Close your eyes and think of the Maroon Bells.  Chances are your mind’s eye took you to an autumn photograph of symmetrical peaks awash in alpenglow above vibrant yellow aspens and the whole scene reflecting in the tranquil waters of an alpine lake.  Now imagine Mesa Arch.  American Basin. Half Dome.  Toroweap.  Sit back and enjoy the slideshow!  My point is, most of the images you envisioned were probably the common ones most photographers have seen over and over and over again.  They’re in calendars. On postcards. In magazines and travel brochures and posters.  We’re used to seeing them and when we visit one of these iconic locations ourselves, it’s all too easy to show up and set up in the well worn tripod holes of those who have come before us.  Honestly, I don’t have an issue with this.  These places are popular for good reason.  But if you’re willing to take a chance, you might just find an even more interesting, more dynamic image right around the corner.

What do you stand to gain?  Well, there’s the obvious – an uncommon image from a common location.  More importantly, this exercise teaches you to expand your vision.  As we approach a new scene we’re usually presented with at least one obvious composition.  If it’s obvious to you, it’s probably obvious to everybody else.  Make a mental note of it but allow yourself to continue exploring the scene.  What if you move 50′ to the left or right?  Maybe a long lens would work to isolate an interesting scene within the scene?  What would it look like in a different season, or at a different time of day?  Or, go a totally different direction, as I once did at the Maroon Bells, and find something truly unique at your feet.  The options are endless!

Every image in this post was photographed in RAW, imported to and processed in Adobe Lightroom 3 and finished using Nik Software’s Complete Collection (Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 3, Sharpener Pro 2 and, on the black and white image, Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.)  This is my standard workflow for every image I process.  If you’d like to try out the Nik plug-in’s for Lightroom please visit the Nik Software website and download the free, 15 day fully functioning trial software.  If you like it and decide to invest in Nik Software plug-in’s, use coupon code “BEDGE” for a 15% discount at checkout.  And, your purchase helps support this site.

I’m going to state the obvious: without clients, there would be no professional photographers.  Most of us spend inordinate amounts of time marketing to potential clients, trying to get a foot in the door with a photo editor or art consultant.  These folks are notoriously busy.  They’re not easy to reach and when you finally do, you’d better knock ‘em dead with your pitch as it is unlikely you’ll get a second chance.

Let’s assume you’ve already got them on the hook and they’ve done business with you.  Now that you’re “in”, you can sit back and wait for them to send you new business, right?  While you could certainly try this approach I’m willing to bet you won’t find wild success with it.  What you should really be doing is building and nurturing a relationship with your new client.

We all like to feel important.  We like to be appreciated and to know that we’re needed.  It’s just human nature.  Your clients are no different.  What can you do to let them know that you genuinely appreciate their business?  I’ve italicized “genuine” for a reason: if you aren’t sincere, it’ll show.  Send the same “thanks for your business” email that you send to all of your clients and they’ll see right through it.  Send them a handwritten thank you card, instead.  You’ll probably be the only photographer who does and they will remember the effort.  On a similar note, send a thoughtful holiday card to your clients each year.

Last year one of the art consultants with whom I’ve done quite a bit of business inquired about images of Colorado with a specific interest in the Denver skyline.  I sent her what I have and asked her if it would be okay to share her request with a couple friends whose Colorado portfolios are much deeper than my own.  She ended up buying a number of images from my friends – and none from me – but the good will it bought me was tremendous.  I’ve since done more business with her and my friends have also referred clients to me who were in need of Utah images.  Win-win!

You never know where a small initial sale will lead.  My most lucrative client relationship began as a $135 stock image sale.  I delivered the image promptly and I followed up to ask if I could answer any questions or help in any other way.  A couple weeks later I sent a handwritten “thank you” card.  A few months later I got an email asking for more images for a new project.  I quickly responded with a submission and thanked them for thinking of me.  Those images were seen by an administrator in the same organization who was looking for images for a different project.  My client recommended me and I was offered an assignment.  I later learned that they didn’t even consider another photographer for the project because of the glowing recommendation I’d received!  Since then I’ve done thousands of dollars in business with the client including stock image sales, fine art prints and assignments.

After two years of trying to schedule a meeting with a local organization I finally succeeded in getting a few minutes before their committee.  I was trying to convince them to sell my small matted prints through a few of their retail outlets.  The meeting went well and though they loved my work, they didn’t feel there was a large enough market for my prints.  I sent a “thank you” card.  Handwritten, of course.  A few weeks later I received an email from them.  They were interested in using some of my images in their annual calendar.  Funny thing is, I’d been trying to get images in their calendar for ten years. Ten years!  They used three of my images the first year and are using more in the 2014 calendar.  They’ve also used a few images on their website and in a brochure.  I don’t know whether I would have earned their business without the card but it certainly didn’t hurt my prospects.

The bottom line is this: treat your clients and wanna-be clients with respect and show appreciation for their time and business.  Go a little above and beyond what the next guy is likely to do.  Respond quickly to your emails.  Find small, unobtrusive ways to make your clients feel special.  Don’t forget that a small client today can be a huge client a few months from now.  Most importantly, be genuine and fair in everything you do.  Your clients will respect, and remember, you for the effort.

What have you done to build relationships with your clients that have helped to increase sales?