Professional Photography Tools
Equipment and Cool things that have helped me

Ok, I've won a few awards...but my success has not been a one-woman team. There are hundreds of professional photographer tools out there that are accessible to anyone, but many professional photographers prefer NOT to talk about them because they feel they might lose their competitve edge.

But you know me, I can't keep quiet about anything let alone cool photography gear and photographer gagets! So you are the lucky recipient of my blabbering - you knew there would have to be a benefit, right?

I'm not going to talk about digital cameras and lenses here, nor will I discuss photography books; but I will share other things like amazing software tools.

Learning Tools


Wow, fotoTV is by far the coolest way to get photography training. They have managed to get interviews with some of the most creative photographers around, mostly in Europe, but that's where a the true design trends start.

I found that I wanted to get out more often after viewing these photo videos. Talk about motivational! But not just interviews with photographers, full tutorials for real photography skills, like burning and dodging.

If you don't know what these techniques are any why any self-respecting photographer would NOT ever NOT use them, you need to take a peek at fotoTV.

Strobists Blog - everything you must know about inexpensive professional lighting techniques - yes even for nature and outdoor photographers. My only complaint is that the site is a blog format and not very organized. It takes hours to go find and get through the important articles.!

Learn Photoshop - Let's face it, Photoshop is the industry standard photo software, and it is the most powerful professional image editing software out there.

But this is also what makes it a challenge to learn. There are many ways to do the same things in Photoshop, but if you're not well versed in the nuances of each method and the subtle but incredibly important differences, sooner or later you will have a photographic disaster on you hands.

This is the beginners guide and I recommend all my students take this before embarking on any serious photography workshop or class.

Fun Marketing & Promo Tools



This is the cat's a** for marketing and promoting your photography - better than a static portfolio and it just leaves an indelible ikmpsression - ANIMOTO. If you've never heard of it, Animoto makes highly engaging videos of your photos, with music, transitions, and more. I gave up spending hours on the computer fiddling with transitoins, timing, uploading music from my CDs, and all that goes along with a traditional photo slidehow.

If you've ever tried to use Flash to make your videos or slideshows, you will definitely appreciate how simple Animoto makes it. They have a free program for your short videos, and several paid options for slick, professional showcases that increase the percieved value of your images. TAKE A LOOK!

More and more of your customers will be using iPhones and other smart phones so you too have to stay ahead of that game. I wrote on my blog a while ago about a very sweet iPhone gallery for Lightroom, created by Matthew at The Turning Gate.

You can create a specially formatted web page gallery for iPhones so you clients and prospects can see you work beautifully on their mobile devices. Take a look at the sample site I put up, for best results view on iPhone, then visit The Turning Gate to download the Lightroom plugin so you can make your own!


I have several more pages of goodies coming soon...