Business Practice

What to do for 2002

For many of us, business is winding down and we have time to reflect on ways to improve in the future. With a little effort noting practices and products to research, utilizing helpful websites and defining your goals, you can make a positive impact on your business for 2002. My Goals and Objectives list includes: things I need to research, implement or purchase, yearly financial goals and career goals. I overhaul the list annually and do spot checks throughout the year adding and deleting as necessary. As a dedicated researcher and believer in the power of list-making I can offer the following tips to use while creating your own.

PRACTICES AND PRODUCTS- If you are a member of an internet specialty group such as the popular Yahoo Equine Photographers list, you may read of business or photography practices and products you weren't aware of. For instance, it was through an Equine Photographers group discussion that I was compelled to research "releases". As I wanted to use images in my portfolio, I needed to understand what exactly releases were. Through my research I learned that a model release is what the subject signs to allow the photograph to be used commercially as in your portfolio, products or advertisements. When you release your copyright to allow clients to advertise their horse, a usage license protects both photographer and client as it states what is intended and what is allowed to be done with the image and specifies the rights purchased.

In the daily handling of business matters, make note of what works and what doesn't. Off-season is perfect for spending time overhauling your paperwork and forms. If a client has a hard time understanding your paper or how to order a print, a bit of research to eventually correct this confusion improves your sales and service. If you feel your work was published or used without your permission, confirm that your paperwork would stand the legal test if you need to take it to court.

Purchases of photography and business equipment are expensive additions that affect your profit and work style. When I bought my Nikon f100, I knew I was getting the right camera for me because I had researched my needs and the cameras features. Two years later, I am still loving that camera and have begun research on the 80-400 VR lens and possibly a dedicated negative scanner. Putting a little thought and effort before the purchase, saves frustration and finances later.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EquinePhotographers

WEBSITES-To find helpful websites, use a search engine that thinks like you do. When I began surfing, I used Lycos, but now find that Yahoo more often matches my query.
Refine your search, for example, I was searching for information on Fair Use and how it affected the scanning and posting of images by my non-commercial clients. For my first query I input "fair use guidelines" and hit search. Lots of libraries and universities sites referring to student use appeared on the screen. I searched again under "fair use guidelines personal web pages" , now most of the sites just referred to the guidelines, no description as to what they were. I knew what I wanted, but how to tell the search engine? For my final try, I searched on, "copyright law fair use images". With these keywords, I located several law universities and government sites that fully explained what I was looking for. Fair use is complicated and can be very subjective when legal determinations are sought. The outcome of my search indicated the need for me to have a written policy to educate my non-commercial clients. Regarding web searches, If at first you don't succeed, try again....I often compare search engines to librarians....some know right away what book you need and some don't.

http://www.squirrelnet.com/
This is a plain-speaking website that invites you to "gather your information here" and information they have! They list their top 20 search engine picks, I just may have to try their top choice, Overture (formerly known as goto.com) at www.overture.com

BUSINESS GOALS-All business should have goals, whether short term like "clean off the desk" or long term like "I want to go digital by 2004". Keep your focus and take the small steps each day, never pass up the opportunity to take that small step when it is presented. Writing goals down and posting the list near your work area is a good way to keep them in mind. I also have a fondness for inspirational quotes which offer a meditative quality to my thoughts as I go about my daily life.

http://www.topachievement.com
Top Achievement offers a quote-a-day mailing that is really inspiring, their website offers a wealth of self-improvement resources.

It's not easy creating and organizing a personal Goals and Objectives list, but next to a formal business plan, it is one of the most necessary aspects of a successful venture.
Use your downtime wisely, what you put into growing your business is what you get back. Make 2002 your year to shine!

Rebecca Baucus
www.Rebecca.Baucus.com
It's not just the camera...

DIGITAL CONNECTION:

Don't Look a GIF Horse in the Mouth...

Whether sending through email or posting images to Web pages, your first decision after "which one?" should be: How should you format those images?

Raw images from digital cameras or scanners have files sizes that are just too big to be quickly downloaded over the Web, even after reducing dimensions, compression is necessary.Compression does not decrease the dimensions of your images, it just reduces the size of the file and with greater degrees will affect the quality. The standard image compression formats for the web are GIF and JPEG.

So the question remains, is GIF or JPEG the better format to use? The final answer: It depends. It depends on the type of image you're working with, how small the image file needs to be, the way you want it to download and how it displays. Photographs and graphics with lots of color fields, and particularly colors that blend and fade into one another, are generally best served by JPEG. Titles and solid color graphics are generally best as a GIF. For animations, slide shows and other motion effects, the only choice is GIF. So it pays to know how to best optimize images for your needs with either format.

JPEGs
The Joint Photographic Experts Group created the JPEG format to create even better image compression for the web. As any image compression causes loss in the details. The visual loss that occurs in jpegs can be seen around the edges in a blurring effect (pixels of 'splatter'). This blurring in some photos can ruin the important details; faces become distorted and details like text often become illegible. For most anyone with a digital camera or image downloading software, the jpeg or jpg file format for photos should be pretty familiar. There are several reasons for this, the most important being that they tend to look best for photos while creating relatively smaller file sizes. Some graphics programs show the compression saving options on screen before the save, in this way you can distinguish the need for quality vs loading time.

GIFs
Graphic Interchange Format files, do not blur. In fact, at 256 colors, gifs very clear crisp near perfect duplications of the original images that are very hard to distinguish from the original larger files they came from. However, the gif compression algorithms that tell, line by line, your computer how to display web images are 'wordy'. This means that they take twice as many bits as jpegs to pass that information on, thus often becoming twice the file size. So the most important factor in making small gif files is finding the right balance between the many options you have with the format.

Options such as:

Colors: the color palette options for gif 'web optimized' file saving in the more recent Adobe PhotoShop programs (the "Save for Web" features) are the best yet. You can choose from not only the number, but also from 'web ready' colors which offers a palette to play with. You can even individually remove those colors you find less effective than others in the overall image output.

Dithering: this feature mixes colors to approximate colors it removes from the total number of saved colors. You are also offered options to render this as a pattern, noise or diffuse it. The variations you choose will differ depending on the image being compressed.

Lossy: this further compresses images sizes by selectively discarding file information, meaning that your picture degrades further.

Color Reduction Algorithm Selections: the formats here, Selective, Perceptual, Adaptive or Web each have a moderate variation on final file size but more importantly will affect how the image looks combined with the three other more mitigating factors.

An image's compression format shapes the way web browsers can download it. Interlaced GIFs appear first with poor resolution and then improve in resolution until the entire image has arrived, allowing the viewer to get a quick idea of what the picture will look like while waiting for the rest. JPEGs can only arrive linearly, from the top row to the bottom row. Transparent backgrounds are another GIF specific feature, image cutouts and titles are easily transferred onto various web page backgrounds.

Clearly gifs have a great deal of flexibility in saving small images for many uses. However, the fact remains that the jpg method of color approximation more often then not can be optimized to a smaller file size than that same image in the gif format. Thus jpg became the default file saving option on most photo image downloading software. The primary reason gif compression technology hasn't gone the way of most other large technology dinosaurs is because it's not. It still makes the web legible whenever details such as text 'images' crop up (those cute web buttons you use everywhere!), and is still the primary way to save animated images. With skillful manipulation of the many compression options gifs have, they can be indistinguishable from their counterpart, the jpg. For the web, both are equally useful and necessary. For the photographer, knowing the difference and how to optimize compression and image display for both formats increases the ease of viewing on websites and through email for clients.

(yes that's a gif!)

webmaster@one-horse.net
One Horse Productions: www.one-horse.net

MARKETING INSIGHTS:

Taking A Look “Outside The Box”

In sitting down to write my first column for our EPNet Newsletter, I began to think about the last 25 years of my professional life. I realize now that it was certainly a gradual evolution that took many different turns for me.

I know, too, that the most significant aspect of my professional life has been that I have done my best to think “outside the box,” sometimes radically. I’d like to help you think “outside the box” too.

“Marketing” as defined by Webster’s dictionary is the process of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. And a product or service is considered marketable when wanted by a “Potential Purchaser.”

So, with the above said, let’s make a list right here and now of the most important thing you have to market.

Lists may vary, but I’m betting that the first thing you put at the top of your list is “images of horses”, right?

I would like to challenge you to alter your thinking just a bit and put “YOU” at the top of this list.

At this point in time, I can promise you that if you agree that YOU should be at the top of this list and you plan your marketing approach with this in mind, it will be YOU that your “Potential Purchaser” chooses over and over again. It will be YOU that your “Potential Purchaser” chooses above even the most beautiful photo you can take of even the most beautiful horse. That is because until you market YOU, you cannot maximize your marketing potential.

Here are 3 things your “Potential Customer” EXPECTS from YOU:

1. Quality
2. Quick Turnaround
3. A professional, friendly attitude

If you can honestly say that you are not only living up to, but exceeding what the above list implies, you are probably halfway to strategizing marketing solutions to put YOU in the mind of the “Potential Purchaser.”

Here’s a statement I’d like you to think about for the next 30 days: “People like to do business with people they LIKE; they like to do business with friends.”

And one more: “If you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

Now that I’ve got you thinking “outside the box,” next time we’ll explore that old saying from Madison Avenue: “Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak.”

In the meantime, write me a letter about a “solution” you found for a purchaser that caused them to say “thank you” with a smile (please type “EPNet” in the e-mail subject heading). And, if you have a specific marketing question that you’d like answered privately, please indicate so inside your e-mail. Write to me at SusanGHoltzman@aol.com.

Best regards,
Susan G. Holtzman Marketing Strategies & Solutions
“Helping People Get What They Want”