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Meine Weltanschauung
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There's this tree in the middle of a field along Route 53, just North of Route 23. We've been driving past it on the way to and from Kristy's folks' house for years and I've always wanted to stop to photograph it.
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| I'm looking for an abandoned building within an hour or so of Columbus that is "institutional", so wide hallways with linoleum or tile floors. School, hospital, etc.
Thanks in advance for suggestions. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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ALSO yesterday (it was a busy day) I met up with Loreta at Inniswood Metro Park in Westerville for a portrait session. She's from Lithuania, a country that I didn't really know a lot about, so I had lots of questions about it and we had a great time talking, and made some wonderful images. I hope we can work together again soon!
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| So what is all this crap, and why should I bother reading this?
I'd never heard the term "social media" before about 8 months ago. All these people started following me on Twitter who were "Social Media Experts." Apparently, Social Media is the term used to describe social networking sites + things like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, etc. Now, as with all online resources like this, it can be used for LOLCATZ or for business. At an ASMP meetup last night, there were some questions about Twitter and whether or not it's useful for a business. I'm going to try to explore this. I don't mean for this to come off as cold and impersonal. The people with whom I'm building relationships with on Twitter are my friends. Hopefully, this blog entry will not only tell you have to use Twitter to build your brand and increase your revenue, but also how to be a good member of this community. This information applies just as much for any casual interest as it does to your business. If you're not an entrepreneur, and you're into cars, follow car people. It all still applies.
Ok, so what's Twitter and how does it work?
At it's most basic level, Twitter is a platform to send and receive messages of 140 characters or less. You 'Follow' people, and they 'Follow' you back. When you 'Tweet', your 140 character message shows up for everyone that's following you. You can also send a 'Direct Message' to any of your followers. That's it, in a nutshell. It's so simple, and the simplicity (with a little imagination) is the basis for Twitter's tremendous power.
That sounds pretty simple, and lame. What's so cool about it?
First of all, Twitter is designed to be used via mobile devices. Any mobile phone that is on a carrier that supports short-codes (those 5 digit #'s to which you send text messages to vote for American Idol, or whatever) can be connected to Twitter. You can choose on a user by user basis whose tweets you want to receive on your mobile phone, or you can receive only direct messages that people send you. For smartphones like the iPhone or Blackberry, there are many options for Twitter clients. Applications that run on your phone that provide a more full feature set than is possible just interacting with Twitter through text messages.
This leads me to the second point, Twitter clients. There are tons of options for how you interact with Twitter. You can use the Twitter website, or you can use a Twitter client, an application for your phone or computer. On my desktop computer, I use Tweetdeck. It is designed to break data from Twitter up into more easy to process columns. I have a "Premium" column for people who I expect higher quality content from, an "All Friends" column for everyone else whose content I skim but may miss and a "Replies" column that shows any tweet from anyone on Twitter (whether I follow them or not) that includes '@jlh_photo', my Twitter name. You can also have a column for Direct Messages, but I also get an e-mail notification of those, so I save screen space by removing that column. EDIT (2009-06-26) : Tweetdeck is now also available for the iPhone.
Because the basis of Twitter is so simple, it's also set up to interact with as many other services as possible. Lots of platforms like Facebook have a "status update" that can be linked to your Tweets. So when I tweet, it updated LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, and a bunch of other places that I don't even remember. I've been unable to get my MySpace status sync'd with Twitter.
There are many web-based tools for Twitter as well, to help you stay organized, to help notify your followers about new posts on Flickr or your Blog, to help you find new people who share your interests to follow.
- tweetwhatyoueat.com allows you to send DM's to their account, @twye, whenever you eat something. It tracks what you eat, and you can add calorie or WeightWatchers point values to help with your diet.
- tweetwhatyouspend.com is similar, but for money (naturally).
- loudtwitter.com will take all your tweets once a day and post them all together to your blog on LiveJournal or any number of other platforms.
- twitterfeed.com will watch RSS feeds, and send a tweet when it detects a new post on your Blog, news feed, Flickr, or anything else that uses RSS.
- twitterfone.com give you a phone number that you can call to tweet, or listen to your followers tweets.
- twitpic.com gives you an email address to which you send an image, and it tweets a shortened link to it (primarily useful for tweeting cameraphone photos.)
- tr.im, bit.ly and many other URL shortening services will take your long link to something you think your followers might want to read and shorten it to the smallest possible size to save those 140 characters for an explanation of why people should follow the link.
- There's also a Greasemonkey script that you can use to quickly tweet articles from Google Reader, I use this A LOT, and my followers appreciate the articles I share.
These are just a few of the third party services available to build on Twitter's powerful basic service. Some of them like @twye and @twys are very specific, but really how you use these is only limited by your creativity.
Why would I want to use any of this?
There are disagreements about how to "do" Social Media right. I'm just going to give you my ideas on that. You use Twitter to build relationships with people. As offline, your professional relationships can be divided into two primary groups. (Potential) Clients and Colleagues. Colleagues are others in your field (I follow many photographers all over the world) with whom you can exchange news or seek and provide advice. Everyone else are potential clients. I consider marketing on Twitter to be precarious. I try to get my name into people's heads so when they need a photographer, they think of me first. Of course, the trick is to do this without being spammy ("Hey, I saw you tweeted that you are engaged! Got a photographer yet?"). This approach has paid off repeatedly since I've begun using Twitter.
So we know HOW to tweet. Tools to do more with Twitter than just tweet. And the kinds of people we want to tweet with. Now, how do we find these people?
search.twitter.com is a powerful Twitter search engine. Wedding photographer in Portland, Oregon? Search for 'engaged' and put in your zip code with a radius of 50 miles. Now you'll see any tweet with the word engaged, in that area. And there's an RSS feed for it, so you can subscribe in Google Reader and get these new tweets all the time. Follow these folks, they're potential clients. Don't bug them, just try to tweet things that will be useful to them. Local news, stuff about wedding planning, sales on wedding stuff. If you do it right, when they're ready to look for a photographer, they will check your website first.
There are blog posts a-plenty with lists of photographers that are worth following on an International level. This should be pretty self-explanatory, how to interact with colleagues. Tweet news about new cameras, sales on gear, new software you've tried out. Follow local colleagues (search.twitter.com) and trade info on local services. Renting a studio space? Check with your local photogs for feedback on the value of your various options. Size, cleanliness, quality and selection of gear. You get the idea.
A question that was asked last night was how often you use Twitter. This is not a simple question, because Twitter's not something that you sit down in front of and use exclusively. Twitter is something to use on the side, while you're doing something else (like reading Google Reader). I'm going to use tweetstats.com to try to analyze how much I tweet. Just over 57% of my tweets are "replies". That underscores the need for Twitter to be a two-way medium in order to build relationships. When someone tweets something, respond to them. When someone responds to you, engage them. My daily average is 38 tweets. Of those, about 21 are replies to someone else. The rest are going to be links to articles, links to my blog posts, links to my photos on Flickr. Ways to get people to look at my work to build my brand in their minds, or to help other photographers or ask them for help.
Keep an eye on the conversations from people you're following. You'll find other people to follow, pretty soon you'll have a decent sized network. If it starts to feel overwhelming, look into other Twitter clients like Tweetdeck.
If you "do social media right" then you will begin to represent your industry in the minds of the people that are following you, and when they need someone who does what you do (or even better, when someone they know needs you) they will go to your Twitter profile and click on the link to your website. Then your portfolio takes over with the added benefit that the potential client already has a relationship with you. You should know what to do from there!
Of course, none of this means you can't tweet the occasional video of a cat playing piano, or information about how delicious your lunch was. What you're tweeting reflects you and your personality. If all you do is tweet silly videos and banal details of your day, then you probably won't be very successful. It's no different than interacting with people personally.
One last tip: Make sure you upload an avatar image, preferably of yourself or your logo, and fill out the bio with pertinent information about yourself. This will make you more likely to get people to follow you back when you follow them.
EDIT (2009-06-26) I lied, another last tip: I've found it works better to follow back everyone who follows you, and then unfollow them if they are spammers or are irritating for whatever reason. Socialtoo.com is one service that will auto-follow anyone that follows you.
So if I've managed to convince you of the potential of Twitter, go ahead and sign up an account and try it out for yourself. And give me a follow.
I'd love to hear any feedback on this post. Leave a comment. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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A train hit a semi at the RR crossing on Rt. 161 in Linworth. No injuries.
+13 more images
Big ups to the cop that waved me back over the tape after the CSX guy bounced me. :P | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
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If you've been wanting a print of any of my images, now is the time to order it! I'm offering 11x14" prints of any of my images for $30 each, if I receive your paid order by NOON on Friday the 29th. This includes metallic paper, if you ask for it. If you want to order prints, email the names of the images to joe@jlh-photo.com as soon as possible. I will send you a PayPal invoice so you may pay online before noon on Friday, and then I will deliver the prints when they come in next week.
I have so many images available, take some time and browse through them. From here, you can browse them by set. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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I did headshots for Dan Harris (no relation) on Sunday afternoon at the Espresso Yourself Music Cafe in Powell. Dan, among other things, originated the idea of 'Tastecasting', which has grown in a very short time to include teams in 22 cities.
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Matt Porreca and I joined James Rinto and James Ashford in a visit to Southern Ohio. I'm hoping to make another visit down there, to shoot more of the abandoned Rust Belt sites, and to continue East into the more rural areas along the river.
I shot a combination of photojournalism and HDRI's.
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On May 5th, I photographed a fundraiser for St. Stephen the Martyr Church's "Bring the Sisters to Columbus." They're trying to raise money to bring 4 Mexican nuns to Columbus to minister to the people of the West side.
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| | I'm home from shooting stills on the set of a dog food commercial that was being filmed here in Columbus. It was a great experience, and I had lots of fun and met so many awesome people. Chris, the director of the commercial, is in two episodes of Lost this season. He's the Dharma doctor in 1974 who can't deliver Ethan and has to have Juliet come do it. He's in one more episode this season (I'm only guessing, but I think it's going to be a death scene). Laura, of the dog owners, played a Nurse in Repo. I'm just finishing downloading my CF cards, then I'm going to bed. I'm too old to be awake this late anymore. I will, of course, post images later as well. Got lots of cool shots of dogs doing agility obstacles and stuff. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Shalom Auslander - Foreskin's Lament | | Subject: | Print Sale | | Time: | 11:58 am |
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For a limited time, I'm offering unframed, signed 11x14" prints of any of my images for $30, two for $50. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Saturday I got the chance to do a portrait session with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) starzz's 3 year old son Nathaniel.
starzz had seen some of the stuff I've done on white seamless paper and specifically requested it.
Then we went to Scioto Park where I tried out an idea that I stole from someone, somewhere, sometime. I bought this frame at the Greater Columbus Antique Mall for $10 a month or so ago, and I think it was an excellent investment.
Nathaniel has a lot of personality and was surprisingly cooperative for a 3 year old! I'm looking forward to working with him again.
The rest of the set may be viewed on Flickr. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Images from a visit to St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio.
These images are all so much better viewed larger. You can click through to Flickr where I believe you can view larger sizes.
( 16 images ) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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Meine Weltanschauung
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