YouTube has partnered with director Ridley Scott (Bladerunner, Thelma and Louise, Black Hawk Down) to produce a feature motion picture based on images captured by photographers worldwide.

The project asks participants to “capture a snapshot of your life on camera” on July 24, and upload the clips by the 31st.

It will be featured at the Sundance Film Festival, and 20 participants will be invited to attend the premiere.

If you’re feeling creative on that Saturday, this would be a fun project.

A Valuable Grand Prize:

• A custom framed certificate to display in your studio
• An award icon to display on your website
• A backlink to your website (Although your customers won’t see it, one-way backlinks build your Google page rank)

In addition, for each photo you submit, you will be entered to win:

• A private website analysis by JD’s online marketing team (a $300 value).

Entering is Easy:

• Any style photography or previous award winners are eligible
• Each photographer can submit up to 10 images
• Images should be submitted as a .jpg file at least 1Mb
• Images will be blind-panel judged by a group of industry experts
• You must own the images and have rights to display them commercially
• You agree to allow JD use your images for any marketing or advertising purposes, each time JD uses your image, you will be given credit.

You can submit your images in two ways:

1. As email attachments sent to Chelsea by March 14, 2010.
2. If the images are on your studio website, email Chelsea a link to the file.

Send in your images today!

During our spring open house at JDPI, Mark Lemon gave a step-by-step presentation on how to improve your search engine ranking in Google. You can download a PDF version of the Powerpoint here.

Topics include:

• What is SEO?
• What are keywords?
• Link building

If you’re interested in learning more about SEO, this is a great introduction and set of tools I can highly recommend.

The lab will be closed Dec 24th through Jan 3rd.

We will ship until Dec 22nd, or on Dec 23rd only if requested.

UPS will deliver on Dec 24th.

Happy Holidays,

Tom, Molly, John & Robin Hicks
and the staff at JD Photo Imaging

Did you know that:

• That China will soon become the #1 English speaking country in the world?
• That the average high school student sends over 2,000 text messages a month?

A fascinating new video is making the rounds on the Internet. Created by Karl Fisch, Jeff Brenman, and Scott McLeod, it describes how technology is changing our world.

The original version, created in 2007 is called “Shift Happens.” It focuses on how global changes (not just technology) are impacting our lives. According to the authors:

These videos have been viewed well over 20 millions times by audiences large and small, educational, corporate and everything in between. It’s been shown to the leaders of our national defense and to incoming congressmen. It’s been shown by university presidents and kindergarten teachers, televangelists and politicians, folks just trying to make a buck and those trying to save the world.

If you have 5 minutes to spare, I definitely recommend you watch the latest video. It will remind you where you need to focus your marketing efforts. If you have 10 minutes, watch them both. You won’t be disappointed.

Joe Bologna Sterling will host a showing of original photography by the world renowned photographer Marco Mancinelli from October 9th – 11th 4-8pm.

Joe Bologna Sterling’s studio is located at 2135 17 Mile, Sterling Heights, 48310.

Please come and support this local Michigan photographer. Marco will be on hand to answer any questions you may have. Framed works and prints will be available for sale.

Marco Mancinelli was Michigan Photographer of the Year 1999 and Detroit Photographer of the Year 1999, 2001, 2002. For more information, visit his website at www.marcomancinelli.com.

In Building your e-mail address list - Part 1, I explain how to build your e-mail list from past customers, friends and referrals.

Once you’ve added all the people you know to your e-mailing list, it’s time to start adding people you’ve never even met. These are folks who’ve visited your website and want to learn more about you.

To gather their e-mail address, you need to:

• Put a professional contact form page on your website. Use a “Contact me” menu option or button in the upper right-hand corner of every page to link to your form. Don’t just show your e-mail address - make it easy for potential customers to contact you by e-mail.
• Put an e-mail newsletter sign-up form on every page of your website. Link to the sign-up form from your Facebook page, and put a link to it at the bottom of e-mails you send out daily.

The two tools I recommend for this are Wufoo and Vertical Response. Wufoo lets you create a professional contact form on your website, then collects the e-mail addresses in an easy-to-use file you can import into Vertical Response. Vertical Response lets you create a professional e-mail newsletter sign-up form you can put on every page, collects e-mail addresses, and automatically adds them to your e-mail newsletter list.

Sound confusing? Here are the steps:

1. Open a free Vertical Response account. Upload every e-mail address you have into your master list.
2. While in the List tab, create a new e-mail newsletter opt-in form. design the form, then copy and paste the code into every page on your website. If you aren’t comfortable modifying your website, you should have your web designer do it for you.
3. At the bottom of every e-mail you send out (even for personal notes), put a link to the e-mail newsletter opt-in form. You’ll be surprised how many people will take the time to click the link and join your mailing list.
4. Open a free Wufoo account. Design a contact page, then copy and paste the code into your contact page on your website. If you already have a contact page (some website templates have them pre-installed), whenever you answer an e-mail, make sure you manually copy the e-mail address to your vertical response master e-mail list.
5. When you’re ready to send your first e-mail newsletter in Vertical Response, you’ll have a master list including past customers, friends, family, anyone who has contacted you, and anyone who signed up for your email newsletter. If you use Wufoo, you can easily download the list of everyone who has contacted you from your website, then upload it into your Vertical response master list (don’t worry - Vertical Response weeds out the duplicates automatically).

Note that while both Wufoo and Vertical Response are free to use, when it is time to send out an e-mail newsletter, Vertical Response charges 1.5 cents per e-mail sent. Since they also throw out duplicates, that is a pretty good bargain.

If you are diligent about building your e-mail marketing list, you should see it grow by dozens of people every month. Because it is inexpensive to send e-mail newsletters to these folks, you’ll soon find that your e-mail list is your most important marketing tool.

UPDATE:

I just received this great link from Vertical Response to an article called 29 Ways to Collect E-Mail Addresses for Your Business. This is a great list you can copy and check off for your studio.

If you haven’t been following What the Duck over the last few years, you don’t know what you’re missing. Aaron Johnson is cranky, fearless and occasionally brilliant as he skewers photographers, clients, models and basically anything in the photographic industry.

Think of it as Dilbert for the pro photog- rapher crowd.

If you need to waste an hour this weekend, check out the archives of past strips here, here, and here.

I don’t see enough funny photography around the lab, so here are a couple of links to inspire you.

Fun Wedding photos

More fun wedding photos

Fun graduation photos

Fun family portraits

Of course, I’m not suggesting you show your subjects in a bad light. But if you find yourself with clients that are having a good time, don’t be afraid to try a couple of unique shots.

Remember, they are just pixels. If you waste a few, don’t worry about it…the camera will make more.

Jay Goltz, writing for the New York Times Small Business section, has an interesting take on the first half of 2009. Basically he says that

Breaking even is the new profitable!

I agree with Jay. If you’re still in business today, you’ve survived the worst of the recession (I don’t like to use the d-word). So now is the time to start thinking about 2010 and beyond:

• Do you have a high-quality website with lots of examples of your work, own your own URL, and use as your e-mail address (no @aol or @earthlink e-mails) ?
• Do you have a 2010 marketing plan that includes low-cost guerrilla marketing techniques, e-mail marketing, and social networking?
• Have you outsourced as much of your work as possible so that your workday is focused on either shooting or marketing?

Instead of dwelling on how tough times are today, think of this as an opportunity to get a leg up on the competition. Your worst competitors will soon be out of business. That means when the economy turns around, only your best competition will still be around. If you start planning today, you’ll be ready to compete with them.

It’s time to turn our minds around. Anything bad has already happened - let’s get ready for 2010.