Doing portraits in the studio is so enjoyable and makes me think of the idea of the studio portrait while doing the work. I’ve done them for a long time now but it never gets old. It’s a great tradition in photography and it’s good to have such a usable and busy studio. I think a lot of what makes a portrait real and pleasing is that it occurs in a flow of activity. And a busy studio environment is part of  that flow.

The studio wall system is finished now and it is fabulous to have the ability to create an entire room on the fly and position the walls anywhere I want them!

I was once again fortunate to have the fantastic services of makeup artist Sandy Morris. Even with good lighting and a little photoshop, there’s no substitute for having a professional makeup artist. Every face is unique and so is every personality. A great make up artist like Sandy can bring out the features that make a person’s face really sing. And the time and attention is also felt by the person being photographed–which also shows in their expressions.

Workflow and digital asset management (DAM) has been a huge focus for my studio this past year. With the help of image-management wunderkind Dane Deasy, and following the guidance of  DAM masterminds Peter Krogh and Michael Stewart, I’ve created a system for handling my images and at the same time building greater SEO for my sites.

Peter Krogh has written the bible on Digital Asset Management, The DAM Book and the 2nd edition is about to hit the shelves. I think I have a sense of how the Harry Potter fans must have felt each time Rowling was about to have another book published.

I use PhotoShelter for my online image storage. They provide bulletproof image security, both as yet another form of backup and also a totally controlled level of image download permission settings. I can easily control who can see which images and also who can download high resolution images. Beyond that, customers can search my image archive for specific keywords and those keywords are viewable to google, increasing my SEO with every image I upload.

In the old days, when customers would purchase an image, I used to attach jpegs to emails. And to show completed shoots I used to create simple galleries with Lightroom or Photo Mechanic. Now my galleries are all integrated into my larger archive and the downloading is much smoother and the customer can revisit the stored image to download from another computer, anywhere. Thanks PhotoShelter!