The Pictage Blog

Written by Jared Platt

Jared is a professional photographer and photographic educator. He studied photography at Arizona State University where he earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in Photography. He teaches college photography courses as well as workshops for professional photographers and provides online education for photographers and photo enthusiast throughout the world.

Jared Platt will be speaking and leading a shooting workshop at PartnerCon this November. For more details and to see the full schedule, visit www.partnercon.pictage.com.

**Jared will also be offering The Lightroom Workflow Workshop to PartnerCon attendees on Monday November 8th in New Orleans FREE OF CHARGE. Seats are limited. You must be registered for PartnerCon to be eligible to sign up. Stay tuned for Sign Up details.**

Using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 3 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

I try to stay out of Photoshop as much as possible. Why? Because Photoshop is like an addictive habit and once I am in there, I will spend way too much time on a photograph. So, my general rule of thumb is to only go into Photoshop when someone is paying me to do so.

So, that means that when I have an image that needs just a little bit of help, some of the localized adjustments that I used to do in Photoshop, I must do somewhere else. I can do most of them in Lightroom, without having to open Photoshop, and as a bonus, they are all sync-able from one image to the next.

In this video tutorial, I go through the process of working on an image with the adjustment brush to fix and enhance the image without ever going into photoshop.

Enjoy. For more photography and Lightroom tips, go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

To learn more about the best workflow methods and Adobe Lightroom, go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com. Jared’s Adobe Lightroom Workflow Workshop Tour is coming to your city this fall and winter. Those of you heading out to New Orleans for PartnerCon this November can take The Lightroom Workflow Workshop while you are there FREE OF CHARGE, compliments of Pictage. The New Orleans Lightroom Workflow Workshop is on Monday November 8th from 9 am to 4 pm.

Register for PartnerCon and get an entire day workshop with Jared Platt and conquer your workflow demons. Register now because the workshop seats are limited and you don’t want to miss this incredible offer.

Written by Jeff Youngren of The Youngrens

Jeff and Erin Youngren are international wedding and lifestyle photographers running one of the fastest growing boutique studios in the competitive Southern California market. Although based in San Diego, their deeply emotional style and passionate partnership has taken them from the streets of San Francisco to the canals of Venice to the family suburbs of Chicago to photograph extraordinary weddings and incredible couples. As leaders in the photographic community, they are passionate about helping other photographers build viable, authentic businesses, while building a photography community built on integrity and honest leadership.

Thanks to Jeff for letting us use this FAQ post on the Pictage Blog. You can see this post and more like it in the FAQ category on The Youngren’s blog.

Confession: I’ve been avoiding this question…

We’re totally digging on our Uservoice page and stoked on all the thoughtful questions people have been asking and voting on, and this is one that has slowly risen to the top, and now I simply can’t ignore it.

The truth is that the answer to this question is super simple for me to state with a quick do this, this, and this, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the most helpful way of explaining this. So, I’m going to do my best to give you some solid tips & tricks to get the skin tones in your images to look more natural and authentic.

All things being equal, your clients will 1) be the most happy with their images and 2) look their best if their skin looks as “naturally” perfect as possible. As much as a photographer cares about the artistry, backgrounds, light, and composition of his or her images (all very important) the thing most clients care about is looking beautiful and natural.

Simply stated, the best way to get your clients to look their best and have the most natural skin tones is to shoot the image “properly” at the time of capture. There’s no magic post processing tricks to get natural skin tones (although there’s a bunch of Photoshop actions that try pretty hard) – it’s really all about how you capture the image.

So when you’re shooting for clean, clear, creamy skin tones, here’s three big tips straight from Casa de Youngren:

1. Shoot in RAW

This used to be a much bigger debate than it is now (referring to the RAW vs JPG debate) but now that camera processing speeds have gotten faster and storage has gotten cheaper, I don’t really see a reason why you shouldn’t be shooting RAW. There’s a ton of great reasons to shoot in RAW (just do a quick search for the RAW vs JPG debate, or check out this article on the RAW format) but the primary reasons for shooting in RAW in relation to skin tone would be 1) the ability to adjust color temperature / white balance after the fact and 2) the fact that the amount of data contained in a RAW image is exponentially greater than that contained in a JPG file.

While a majority of the time we find ourselves setting our white balance manually while we’re shooting, if we don’t nail the color temperature during the shoot, we’re able to adjust it after the fact to give the most appealing skin tones possible. In addition, since RAW files contain so much more color information, we’re able to make fine adjustments to get things perfect.

2. Great Light > Great Background

When selecting a location to shoot, if you have the ability to choose between two locations, ALWAYS choose the one with the better light over the better background. Light wins, every time. When it comes to great light, there’s two major components: 1) Quantity 2) Quality.

Quantity can be thought of as a measure of how much light is present – or how bright the light is. Generally speaking, more light is better especially for the accurate representation of colors, which is what this discussion is all about. More important, though, is Quality, which can be thought of in terms of how pleasing the light actually is. Harsh sunlight on someones face has a lot of Quantity, but not a lot of Quality. Conversely, imagine sunlight striking a giant white building on the street, reflecting off that building and producing a soft, white light that illuminates your subject in a flattering way. That’s quality light.

Use your hand. The easiest way to make a judgement about the quality of the light is to hold your hand out in front of your face, at arms length, and look at the skin on the palm of your hand. That soft, pinkish skin is similar to facial skin, so the palm of your hand will tell you how someone’s skin tone will look in the light you’re choosing. Move your hand around, and study how the light changes on your hand while turning in different directions. This is something that we do all the time – just ask our clients. When we’re walking around on a shoot, we’re constantly checking our hand and looking for a skin tone that is bright, clean, and true-to-life – not super red, green, or blue – but a fresh, balanced white.

To get an idea of what I mean, here’s a few exercises to try. First, go find a room that is dark and only illuminated by a window, and hold your palm a few feet away from the window facing toward the window. Notice that the quality of light is very even and pleasing on your hand, right? Now slowly move away from the window (where it becomes darker) and watch how that light changes quite quickly. Now go outside and find a big shady spot like the shade of a building or a tree. Stand right at the edge where the shadow ends, and hold your palm facing out away from the shadow while walking forwards and backwards (if your body is facing towards a building, for example, you’re palm will be facing towards your face away from the shadow). Notice how quickly the light changes on your hand as you move deeper into the shadow, and how nice and creamy the light is right at the border of the shadow and the harsh light. As you do this in different environments (by trees, different colored buildings, near water, near glass buildings) you’ll begin to “see” how light changes, where it’s reflecting, and where to position your subjects for the best skin tones.

Here’s a great example of this “edge of shade” concept. While shooting the fabulous Christian and Nicole recently, we found this little green corner that was filled with even shade. Plus, there was a white building across the street that was throwing white light into the shade. We placed Christian and Nicole at the very edge of the shade, let them do their fabulous thing, and boo-yeah. Gorgeous skin.

[Both images: Canon 5D Mark II. Left: ISO 100, 1/250th @ f/2.0 @ 50mm on the 50 f/1.2. Right: ISO 100, 1/320th @ f/2.0 @ 85mm on the 85 f/1.8.]

3. Exposure, Exposure, Exposure

I know, this is an obvious one, and I almost didn’t mention it, but I think that the importance of exposure can’t ever be underestimated.While the RAW format allows you to make exposure mistakes and correct them, that doesn’t mean that you should rely on that safety net when shooting. It’s always best to have a properly exposed image, straight out of the camera to begin working with, and there’s a couple of ways to accomplish this.

Use your histogram. Briefly, the histogram is a tool to help you understand what types of light are present in your image from a data perspective, and will help guide you to create a proper exposure. It’s an outline of how much of the image is comprised of darkness and how much is comprised of lightness, and all the levels in the middle. Here’s a link to a great discussion on understanding your histogram.

Buy or borrow a handheld light meter. Light meters are a necessity with studio light setups, but they definitely have their place for shooting in natural light, too. While I’m not saying you need to go out and buy a light meter, it would definitely be worth your time to borrow one from a friend and just carry it around to a few shoots and observe some solid data about the light that you’re in, and how the light meter suggests you expose your shots. All cameras have a light meter built into them, but they only measure reflective light amounts, meaning the light that hits an object, bounces off of it, and then hits the camera’s meter. A handheld light meter will tell you more information about the ambient light in your scene that would be hitting your clients directly, which is much more valuable information. I’ve got the Sekonic L-358, and it’s great. You can borrow it from me anytime, in exchange for a bottle of Ridge wine, my favorite.

Overexpose. But just a little bit. If there’s any “tricks” that we do, it’s that we tend to overexpose skin tones a touch, by about 1/3 stop, all the time. When your eye sees an image, it confuses brightness for smoothness, so if we overexpose for skin, we’ll get it looking a little brighter and therefore a little smoother and appealing. This is a really delicate thing as if you overexpose by too much (say, a full stop) you’re going to get into some issues with white balance. So use this trick sparingly, and with practice.

Hopefully this helps – if you have any follow-up questions, or if I can clarify anything, please be sure to leave a comment. And of course, if you’ve got a burning question you’ve been dying to ask, head on over to our UserVoice page and ask away (or vote for the questions your interested in!)

And because posts are always cooler with images, here’s a sneek-peek of Shannon & Dwayne’s engagement session that we’ll be featuring next week right here! And since this post is all about skin tones, here’s some technical data for you.

[Canon 5D Mark II, ISO 400, 1/250th @ f/2.0 @ 85mm on the 85 f/1.8. Taken just after the sun dipped below the horizon, to my rear.]

Be sure to check out our other FAQ Posts:

• FAQ Fridays: An Introduction
• FAQ: What’s in our bag?
• FAQ: Who designed our blog?
• FAQ: Preparing Images for the Blog
• FAQ: Backing up your Images
• FAQ: Reader Questions
• FAQ: Website Design with ShowIt Sites
• FAQ: Finding Your Style
• FAQ: Second Shooting
• iChat Q&A with Colorati
• FAQ: Traveling with (Nice) Cameras
• FAQ: Reader Questions II
• FAQ: Ask Us Some Questions!
• FAQ: How do I Price Myself?
• FAQ: Reading List for Photographers
• FAQ: Image Voting on our Blog
• FAQ: Natural Skin Tones

If you can’t tell, we’re very excited to announce this year’s PartnerCon schedule. We’ve lined up some of the industry’s best to teach you about topics from business & marketing, organization & workflow, to selling more & working less, including 30 speaking sessions and 23 shooting workshops.

PartnerCon NOLA is not only about taking a closer look at “Where Y’at?”… the underlying value of this gathering is our community. With 500 seats available (that we’re sure will fill up fast) there is no doubt you’ll walk away not only inspired by our instructors, but by the new friends you’ve made.

Check out this film, created by Ron Dawson of Dare Dreamer Media ( http://daredreamer.net/ )

We hope to see you there!

To see the full schedule, click here. To reserve your spot, click here.

Written by Scott Anderson

As Senior Community Manager at Pictage, Scott Anderson proclaims to have the best job ever.  In addition to helping build a nationwide community of professional photographers, he photographs weddings and portrait sessions for clients throughout Southern California.

I think it’s safe to say that none of us strive to fail. But the bigger question is, when we do fail, how do we react?  Not every project or new business endeavour is going to be a runaway success — this is one (of the many) harsh realities of being an entrepreneur among the creative class (and if you read this blog, you fall within this demographic).  Failure has often proven to be the bitter pill that a business owner occasionally swallows in order to ensure increased productivity and future success.  Not meeting various stretch goals, or watching initiatives fall flat, are (ironically) attributes of a healthy growing business. And, as professional photographers and business owners, I encourage you to acknowledge failure as a positive force in the growth of your business, and your learning process.

Successfully failing involves learning from mistakes and trying new plans and strategies; it’s about abolishing fear (no doubt one of the hardest things to do) and engaging in calculated risk-taking endeavours; it’s about allowing failure to wake you up from a complacent stupor and become an inspired business leader.

While the concept of failing can seem extremely intimidating, it can actually represent an incredibly positive force in the development of your business. It teaches us where we go wrong, and because of the consequences, ensures that we aim to never make the same mistake twice.  I regard my many failures as fundamental lessons that could never be taught through any college course or graduate program.  The key is to reflect on these failures, grow from them….and MOVE ON quickly (wallowing in the failure is a productivity drain).

Complacency Killer
Failure is a veritable slap in the face, without which we risk slipping into complacency. A successful photography business requires a constant influx of creative energy in order to deal with the array of problems and challenges that arise on a daily basis. Falling into complacency will see a business change from a setting of dynamic action to a stagnant and uninspired one. Failure is the slap in the face we need to remind us to wake up, learn from our mistakes and do better in the future. There’s nothing quite like the sting of failure to jump-start you into action.

Never Plan to Fail, However, be Prepared for Failure
All your business’ goals, strategies and plans should be geared for uncompromising success.  But (the inevitable “but”) it’s fundamental to be prepared in the event that you fall short of these goals. Consider taking a step back and evaluating where it is your business went wrong and learn from these mistakes. Failure offers indispensable life lessons that are worthless if you don’t pay attention.

Fear
One of the biggest challenges to overcome in our line of business is fear (fear of raising our prices, fear of not meeting client expectations, fear of making the leap to full time, etc). The difference between a competent business and one that’s successful is often the absence of fear and the presence of risk-taking. Taking measured risks in business can fuel immense success.  Even if you fail, you can take away a valuable lesson and try a different strategy next time. Some of the biggest success stories in business began with a failure that led to a different path (i.e., Coca Cola, Virgin, IBM,…)

I encourage you to take some time and consider your past failures.  Learn from the highly valuable, relevant lessons and spin them into future success and growth of your photography business.

We encourage you to share your experiences in the comments.  What was one of your recent failures and what did you learn?

Written by Jared Platt
Jared is a professional photographer and photographic educator. He studied photography at Arizona State University where he earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in Photography. He teaches college photography courses as well as workshops for professional photographers and provides online education for photographers and photo enthusiast throughout the world.

Collecting images for various uses is made even easier with the addition of the Target Collection feature in Lightroom 3. This is just a quick tip on how to use this new feature. I use it to collect images for clients and vendors alike as well as for workshops and examples, etc. It is a fantastic feature, small as it may be, it really is a great addition to the Lightroom.

Using Target Collections in Adobe Lightroom 3 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

For more information about my workshops, go to jaredplattworkshops.com. My next workshop is in LA on August 19, 2010. Sign up on the web at www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Here is another article that, by glancing at the title, immediately caught our eye. For any business, small or large, social media is becoming a part of the greater marketing picture. Whether or not you use it is your choice. If you do, here are some tips on how to do it right. This article was written with language specifically tailored to a corporate company, but that doesn’t change the overall message.

Thank you to Mashable.com for the consistent interesting and educational content.

Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.

If there’s one thing that keeps social media marketers up at night, it’s the ever-present threat of a PR disaster. By now, every marketer is well-aware of how quickly dissatisfied consumers can turn to the social airwaves to vent about a brand. Nestle, BP, Domino’s, Southwest Airlines, and many other brands have witnessed the unbridled power of social media as a platform for disgruntled consumers to rally around an anti-brand cause.

You can never fully “control” what your customers say about your brand on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and forums — nor would you want to. After all, the biggest benefit of social media is to allow your customers to express their opinions and talk about your products and services among themselves, creating a loyal fan base that spreads the word about your brand to their friends and family. However, there are several actionable strategies you can take to avoid — or circumvent — a negative PR storm about your brand online.

Here are five tips to give your brand the best possible chance at avoiding a social media PR debacle, and strategies for quickly handling problems if they arise.

1. Create a Social Media Policy/Community Management Plan

Every brand participating in social media should have a clear policy and community management plan in place. Map out crucial “Terms of Service” such as:

What’s not tolerated in conversations about your brand. Things like foul and abusive language, threats against individuals, hateful speech, flame comments about products or services, and similar comments are best handled as strictly forbidden. Make sure this plan maps to the Terms of Service for each channel in which you are active, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or YouTube, all of which have their own guidelines on unacceptable content.

Hire a community manager or qualified agency partner who monitors your brand’s entire social media presence on the web. Your lead community manager should be in constant contact with the PR and marketing departments, and have clear escalation lines to the customer support team for hot-button issues. The community manager should not only monitor and manage your branded communities in Facebook, Twitter, and corporate blogs, but also use social media monitoring tools to find out where else your brand is being discussed online, such as third-party blogs and forums.

The community manager should work with the executive and PR teams to decide who will respond to which type of comments. High-level “red alerts” need to be handled by a top executive, preferably someone both knowledgeable and accountable to your customer base. The PR team should, of course, be integral in crafting all outbound communications, but in rapid-response situations it’s best to have a key executive who’s already provided his or her willingness to be accountable and available.

To continue reading this article and more like it click here.

Written by Christopher Lin of Lin & Jirsa Photography

Lin and Jirsa Photography is an Orange County, CA based wedding photography studio specializing in creative lighting, photojournalism, and unique post production.  The team consists of 3 brothers (two Lins and a Jirsa), who have combined their backgrounds in photography and graphic design with their passion for documenting love stories to create a unique product and service.  In addition to shooting, the team provides insights, tutorials, and tips on their photography education site SLR Lounge.

“Top 10″ tips on the net, for any subject, can be a big fat waste of time. They often present a high-level overview of existing content, stating obvious points without really teaching anyone anything. To avoid this pitfall when discussing tips for engagement photography, we decided to stay away from obvious tips, such as “choose the right lighting, choose the right location, be personable, etc,” as these are all things that almost every photographer is already doing and therefore not worth rehashing. Instead, we want to focus on the less-obvious, often-overlooked aspects of an engagement shoot that can help you improve your overall product and avoid some of the “what-could-go-wrongs” during your shoots.

10 Overlooked Engagement Photography Tips

1) Start with a Basic Portrait Session – What differentiates your photography style from others is probably not how well you take basic portraits, but it’s important to get your session started with some. First off, your couple gets warmed up, loose, and used to the camera in a quite, low-key location. Secondly, it gives you a chance to assess your subject and watch out for certain details. For example, are you going to have to look out for double chins? Is he a “blinker?” Having a slow, relaxed start can help you determine what you might have to watch for during the entire session. Thirdly, these are actually very important shots. As much as we all love stunning, artistic photography, we need a few basic portraits for mom, for their wedding website, or even for their invitations. Lastly, these can look pretty good if you choose the right background and the right lighting.

2) Let Clients Chimp – Chimping is a popular (and kinda ridiculous) term for looking at the pictures in the LCD of the camera. Although these images aren’t yet finished in post production, it’s important to have the clients see what you’re getting, not for every single shot, but at least for the images that focus on expressions and close-ups. In the end, it’s their opinion that matters. You could go the entire session thinking that you’re getting great stuff with great lighting but not noticing an awkward smile that he’s making, a wardrobe malfunction, or other small details. Most people are their own worst critics and it’s better take note of their insecurities and “flaws” during the shoot than to notice it after.

3) Bring the Right Gear – This tip is border-line too obvious to include in this article, but it’s worth noting that not everyone requires the same amount of equipment; and, moreover, not every shoot requires the same equipment. If your style is more “lifestyle,” where you’re finding locations with the ideal lighting and focusing on expressions, posing, and getting clean, crisp, natural images, you may not need all of your flash gear, your tripods, and multiple lenses. However, if your style involves playing around with creative, off-camera flash, HDRs, and other techniques, you’ll probably need a lot more gear. It’s important to determine what kind of style you are going for before the session and plan accordingly.

4) Bring an Assistant - A good assistant will not only relieve some of the strain of carrying your equipment but will also perform critical lighting tasks, like holding reflectors to bring out the shadows under eyes. A good assistant can also ensure that all equipment is accounted for; and a good assistant will help watch for the details, like stray hairs or random objects in the background.

Here’s an HDR shot that is difficult to execute without a tripod, which might be too heavy to lug around for one photographer for an entire shoot:

Here’s a portrait that required two flashes and a hot light, a very difficult shot to execute without an assistant:

5) Have a Backup Plan - Any photographer, heck any person, will tell you that things hardly ever go as planned. If you show up for your favorite location and it’s closed for whatever reason, what do you do? Having a backup plan is important for avoiding the panic of finding a new location on-the-spot. The possibility of getting kicked out, inclement weather, and traffic/road closures are also things to consider in your planning.

6) Visit Fewer Locations - Many clients are going to literally want the world for their engagement sessions. They might want beach shots, city shots, night shots, and nature shots all in one session. While client satisfaction should always be a top priority, it’s important to take your time with each location. There’s already so much to think about without the time pressure; and being rushed increases the risk of something going wrong. Taking your time and focusing on the right expressions, ideal backgrounds, and perfect settings in one or two locations creates a better product and a more enjoyable overall experience than cramming in multiple locations in a few hours.

7) Take Fewer Shots – In line with the cliche “less is more,” this point is a branch off of the previous point. Taking your time to create thought-out, creative, high-quality imagery produces a better overall product than spamming your subjects and coming away with hundreds of average shots. This also goes back to allowing your clients to chimp in order to make sure that both you and your clients are happy with the results.

8) Ensure Proper Client Preparation - It goes without saying that happy, relaxed, and up-beat clients will likely photograph better than clients in the opposite mindset. As obvious as this is, the steps to helping clients stay happy throughout the session aren’t as clear. Every photographer will have his or her own methods, but here are a few general tips. First off, if your session is going through dinner, suggest that they eat prior to the shoot and maybe even pack a snack. If there’s even the slightest chance of it being cold, make sure they bring a jacket and maybe even have a backup in your car. It’s amazing how many sessions end early because the clients get too cold. The list can go on and on, but it’s important to anticipate the possible dilemmas and plan accordingly.

9) Have The End Product in Mind - If your client is ordering a 20 page sign in book, you might need more photos than if they’re looking for one picture to blow up at their reception. Furthermore, if they’re looking to create a book, you might cater the shots to fit well in your style of books. For example, some photographers might take more sequenced shots to place in a row; or some might look for more variety in locations. In contrast, if you’re looking for that one, stunning shot to be enlarged for their reception, you might need to shoot with that in mind. Without changing your natural style too much, knowing the final product helps ensure that you’re delivering the right photos for the end product.

10) Stay Flexible - Photography ideas that stem from the client are sometimes cheesy and sometimes (actually, often times) just plain bad. On the other hand, they can be great and even inspirational. Regardless of the idea, it’s your ability to accommodate, modify, and improve their ideas to match their personalities and their style that will determine the overall client satisfaction.

We hope you learned, or were reminded of, a few things in this article, and as always, we would love a friendly discussion of engagement photography tips in the comments below.

Written by Guy Kawasaki on the American Express Open Forum

Editor’s Note: The Pictage Community Team not only loves to blog but loves to read what others are blogging about. A few of our favorite blogs and forums are Mashable.com, Alltop.com, and American Express Open Forums. When visiting these sites we come across articles that make us think of you, the photographer community, and we just can’t help but share them.

Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an ‘online magazine rack’ of popular topics on the web. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Many entrepreneurs believe that the lack of capital is their primary problem. If only they had a fat bank balance, they could kick butt. As a venture capitalist, I’ve seen what happens when companies raise substantial capital. It’s not pretty—in fact, my theory is that too much money is worse than too little. Here’s why.

1. Expenses expand to the level of funding.

Funny how this works: companies create projections that use the money that they have. The availability of money makes them think of ways to spend it, so there’s less emphasis on doing the right things the right way. The logic becomes, “Our investors gave us this money to invest, not to collect interest in the bank. They want us to scale up and go for it, so we should spend it. We know we’ll meet our milestones, and our competition is a joke, so we’ll always be able to get more money.”

2. Money creates a false sense of security.

Companies divide the amount of money that they have by their monthly expenses. This figure is a company’s “runway” or the number of months that it can survive. There are three problems with this calculation: first, expenses always rise, so the number of months decreases. Second, products are always late, so that any revenue that company counted on to extend the runway don’t materialize. Third, just because a company has the money doesn’t mean that investors won’t ask for it back. Trust me: I’ve seen it happen, and no one was more shocked than the management of the company.

3. Money makes companies hire “proven” people.

When companies don’t have money, they hire unproven people who are young, inexperienced, cheap and smart. When companies have money, they hire proven people from existing companies who are old, experience, expensive and lucky. These folks are accustomed to secretaries, first-class travel, and staying in the Four Seasons. You read it here first: proven people are over-rated. Oh, their resumes are great, and they look great on your website, but they didn’t cause the success of their former companies. They just happened to be there when these organizations succeeded.

To read the rest of this article (and more like it) click here.

Written by Maria Ogneva on Mashable.com

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Attensity, a social media engagement and voice-of-customer platform that helps the social enterprise serve and collaborate with the social customer. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @attensity360, or find her musings on her personal blog and her company’s blog.

Whether you are actively developing a social media presence for your brand or just dipping your toe in the deep and ever-changing ocean of social media chatter, you probably realize that monitoring and measurement are quite important. Although there is no shortage of social media monitoring tools, each one is a bit different in its approach, methodology, metrics, depth of analysis, channels measured, reports and UI. The existence of this many tools and the fragmentation of the tools market is evidence of the fact that the space is not quite mature, and doesn’t yet have a set of agreed-upon metrics and best practices.

In your search for the right tool(s), you should be looking to both monitor and measure your brand on social media. The two terms are used somewhat interchangeably, and although there is some overlap and similarity in business goals, monitoring and measurement are distinct processes. Let’s take a look at each one in a bit more detail.

Social Media Monitoring

Monitoring (or perhaps the more evocative definition is “listening”) is the process of continuous and immediate discovery of conversations with the purpose of learning, engaging, helping and collaborating. You can do this with anyone, whether it’s your customers, prospects, industry thought leaders, former customers, partners or others. There are also different cues to listen for and different ways to engage. Typically, monitoring has a stronger real-time implication than measurement, as one of the purposes is to track keywords as they appear, with the goal of quick reaction.

To continue reading, visit Mashable.com or click here.

Written by Jared Platt

Jared is a professional photographer and photographic educator. He studied photography at Arizona State University where he earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in Photography. He teaches college photography courses as well as workshops for professional photographers and provides online education for photographers and photo enthusiast throughout the world.

Adding keywords to your images makes finding them later on extremely simple, but most people don’t do it because it takes too much time. Well, Lightroom has made it simple. With the right tools and method of keywording, you can get it done quickly. And a 15 minutes now can save you hours later. So start keywording!

For more information about my workshops, go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Keywording in Adobe Lightroom 3 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

THE LIGHTROOM WORKFLOW WORKSHOP and PUG TOUR:

The Lightroom Workflow Workshop Tour is coming to your city. I will be speaking at the local PUG groups and then holding a workshop in each city the following day. I am looking forward to meeting you all and teaching you everything I know about speeding up your workflow. First stops are: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Vegas. Go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com to learn more and to book your seat.

To learn more about the best workflow methods and Adobe Lightroom, go to www.jaredplatt.com .