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Search Engine Optimization

Lesson 16 from: How to Be a Commercial Photographer

Rob Grimm, Gary Martin, Aaron Nace

Search Engine Optimization

Lesson 16 from: How to Be a Commercial Photographer

Rob Grimm, Gary Martin, Aaron Nace

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Lesson Info

16. Search Engine Optimization

Next Lesson: Equipment Overview

Lesson Info

Search Engine Optimization

So s e o. Um, there's probably, you know, an entire day or two that someone could spend on that. I'm gonna take you through how we approach s CEO. Does anyone know what that is? So, Theo, easiest way I can describe this is you know how people organically find you on the Internet and they do this through basically seven things. It's the meta tags, the content images, the headings, title pages, the U R l and the links that you have embedded in your website. So everyone here just about has a website just correct. Have any of you really put thought into where all this is in the back end of your website? A formula in terms of how you are going to approach it and what people are gonna search for to find you and then take that is no eso. Honestly, which is fine, because I didn't think about it for a long time, either. And search s CEO was something that was to me seemed big and scary, and it's like more than digital stuff that I'm I'm not familiar with. I don't have time for, but it's really ...

critical and working with somebody like Gary is phenomenal at s a l. This is something where he has really helped me understand that this side of the business and really make the website work so we can make our business grow. So just real quick, just kind of blow through these and I'm gonna focus on title pages page titles specifically with your blog's but real quick meta tags. That's not something you would ever see on your website. It's kind of hidden in the code. And that's something you set up in the back end so checked out whatever service you're using, um, if you've created it in, like WordPress or but something like squarespace, check to see how you set up your meta tags. And if you just Google, how do I set up my meta tags correctly? You'll get an explanation on that. Um, content. That's just the words that are in your Web site specifically probably in your blawg images. How many of you rename your images with a formula and then I put him to your website. So right now, everybody in the Internet search I m g underscore 001 dot jp g see what comes up. The only thing that these people have in common is that they have no idea how to properly label their photos when they up close. How many millions do you think just came up right now? Because there's a lot I like, how many images air named? I do it on a weekly basis, and it's completely different. There's just a random assortment of photos that summer vulgar summer wedding summer. You can see like there's nothing in common with these photos. So if you if you aren't re labelling these and I'll get to this in a second and they're just going in there loss. Because if you look at Google like you search something and then at the top there search, there's images, there's videos. There's all these different ways to filter. So images is just one of those ways that it's filtered. And if you aren't key wording and labeling your images with something like Seattle portrait photography, then your name, then they're just gonna be lost, and no one's ever gonna find that in a search. When I initially started renaming all my human just to put them on the web, I was using Rob Graham and I was using also my job number. It was just kind of already part of the of the image name. And I thought that that was gonna be fine. It's Rob Graham and it says here I am. It didn't help me at all. I needed to put in keywords. And this is something very Tommy key words about what I do and how people are gonna be searching for a photographer in my room. I needed to put that in the title off my images and then put them on the Web. It makes it visible. And not only does it make a visible tribespeople to me, Yeah, so something with, like, headings, title pages, the URL if you can get a good girl. I mean, they're kind of few and far between, like Seattle portrait photography. You know, if you were one of the first ones to get that. So if I search for Seattle portrait photography and I have the u. R L Seattle portrait photography, that's just one of the seven things that I get credit for that Google's going to say. Okay, this is probably relevant. Hey, Gerri, For those of us who don't have direct access to you on, um, any resource is that you can recommend off the top of your head. You know what? I studied the back end of Google analytics. Um, so Google Analytics, If you have a Google account, it's free with that. It's it's intimidating. If you look at Google analytics, I'm gonna get into how we use squarespace and how that has basically replaced me using Google analytics because they've made it so easy for us to dio. So I kind of get that second. The nice thing is, as you know, the Web has really developed. It's become much easier. Initially, it was really difficult, and it's just overwhelming kind of Pandora's box. Now it's really gotten much more concise, and it's easier to figure out, and there are consultants that can help you do S CEO. Some are really expensive and rip off, and others are much more reasonable. They'll understand where you're coming from. It's not a bad idea to talk to one of those people just to help you kind of get your head wrapped around it. They can often set you up on the right path and give you the right formula and then let Ugo It's not like you have to work with that consultant every day that you're trying to update your website, you know, help them use them to help you get a formula, and then you can run from there. I would just say Be cautious, though, because it's if it's not at the top of your list, you don't necessarily have the budget for that. Yeah, there's one thing specifically that I'm gonna go over that is going to really help you guys that has this kind of movies. Oh, gonna be free, which is even better so and also then links so links that you have embedded. So if I make a block post and it is relevant to, let's say, a venue that I used in my Seattle portrait or wedding based photography put that link and embedded because the more you can connect to the rest of the Web, Google gives you credit for that and whatever algorithm they're using and just wanted to give a shout out that if people want to know more about S e. O creativelive actually has a class on S e 04 photographer. So let's see the instructor was Matt. Hell. So if you go over to our course catalog, you can find that under Matt Hill. And also even better get the consultant, go to creative life. That's we find all the good information anyway. Nice. One of the things I do is I have, ah, document with just all the tags so I could just copy paste tax into every single photo. That's a great idea in mind. You just go to it. You grab what you need. You plop it on your not just retyping every single time. All the tags. Yeah. Have you something like light room? You could batch process on just export that way into the exact resolution that would the weapons you build the metadata, right? The tags right into the metadata. All right, So what we do primarily as we focus, um, and use our blawg to basically I think it think of it as feeding the internet keywords. Right. So our blawg, I kind of treat is our own instagram, and there's a few things that we do. Um I don't go into detail with, you know, long blawg explanations with a lot of text because Who's reading on the Internet now? No. One visual. You want to be entertained. You want to see videos, videos, pictures, videos. You have two key word. Google owns YouTube and Love searching for itself. So make sure your YouTube videos are also key word as well. Our on video. The same thing. So keyword one. Your blog's title. That's really, I think, the most important thing. That's what's been helping us gain visibility. So our block title, How many of you guys put thought into what you name your blog's title? What? What? What is something that you name your block title? Well, if it's a wedding, well, if it's a wedding, I'll label the couple's first names. Um, the venue, the place. And then, um, I'll usually put my city with putting photographer or wedding photography effort. So I would say you've gotten a couple key words, right? Think of your future clients. None of your future clients. They're gonna know your old clients names, and therefore they're not gonna search warm so that yeah, it helps when you say, like Robin Gary, Special Wedding Day. Seattle. That's that's that's gonna describe the block content, but that's not gonna come up in a search Feet. It was so think of that. So the way that I would approach it is, I guess, rename it to fit exactly what you're doing. And it's really three things. Your geography, like portrait photography or wedding photography. And then maybe your name, Um, and we'll get to kind of how we do it. So if you search like we kind of rub and I talked, I'm like, Okay, what do we really want to be known for? He specializes in liquor, beer liquids and its commercial, and it's photography. So in some of the block, titles will be labeled something like specific, like Tank Seven or the specific thing that we did. But I always mix in Chicago or ST Louis commercial photography on Ben. What exactly we're doing. So if you notice if you search commercial liquor photography, we aren't the number one but were the 2nd 3rd 4th 5th So our website isn't coming up as the home page, but the Blawg titles are, and I'm treating those blawg titles as little Many websites that I'm publishing that are key worded correctly, and if you notice the images that pop up 123 out of the six, so 50% of the images that air popped up. I've labeled those correctly, and those are popping up, so we're kind of dominating commercial liquor photography. And those are only three words. If you can get it down to two words, get down to one word photography and have your name come up when you hit the ball out of the park. So we don't have Number one but were dominating the top 10. And Gary is taking the Blawg, and he's using that as a way to constantly keep the Internet fresh with our name versus the website that has the you know, the website itself doesn't change a ton. We're not adding new images to it every day, which means it's not staying at the top of the list. The block, however, changes on a regular basis because we're always adding content, were always adding video, always having little stories about images that we just shot our jobs. We just did so that keeps it fresh. That keeps us continuing to roll in time, which we shouldn't tell people about giving away all our secrets. I know it was crazy. So then another thing, even even more specific. Chicago commercial liquor photography. So 1234 were the top four. And then again. So I've been added the geography of where we are. So if somebody let's say I'm thinking as an art buyer, maybe I just an art buyer searching for Chicago commercial liquor photographers if they are, If they happen to do that and they're not on workbook or those other places, then there's a pretty good chance that they're going to find this. So we're guessing. We're trying to figure out what our clients are doing, how they're searching and what you were talking to them. We're asking them some questions to try to figure out it's not just a blind guest, but at the same time, we're trying to get in their heads and figure out how do they search for talent? And how can we come up at the top of that search question? Yeah, if you're trying to reach a global audience, are you limiting yourself by sticking in those keywords and giving yourself more of a location? I think you have to start by geography, Um, because unless you're your studio is global. I mean, think of where you're at if you're in us. If you're in Seattle here in Chicago, I mean, there's a radius of your customers. So, you know, think about that. Think about Chicago's usually what starts our block title. It's what starts are headings, that's what it's what's embedded in the content of what I write. So I repeat those words both in the page. Titles, headings, content. I'm putting links if we if we shot something for a client and putting links that I'm taking that blawg title and I'm just copying, pasting that you are L into social media into Facebook. So the image pops up. But I didn't upload that image to Facebook. Therefore, they don't now have the rights to steal it. Because Facebook, I guess, can do that. I don't know. Maybe, who knows? We're also playing off the fact that for us, Chicago Chicago is like Mecca for commercial food and beverage photographers. It's a really solid town because of the client basis there, So we want to build that market, Um, and people who are hiring studio photographers generally, they know that the studio doesn't travel, you know it's a big, expensive thing to have a studio. So, you know, kind of playing up our region doesn't hurt us at all. It In fact, we're working on national and international brands, but we know that they have to come to us. They're either gonna come to our Chicago studio or a ST Louis studio. So kind of putting that out there it really, In some ways, it helps us because it gives them a sense of where we are and how that how they can get to us because most of time, they're gonna be traveling to see us. So I think once you get on the front page in your visible with geography, what you do your name, then you know, start doing things in labeling that, like, just commercial photography. Because, I mean, that is we've left out Chicago. So somebody's just searching for that, like Chicago food commercial photography. But this is our approach. Keep in mind like a guy like Cory Rich. His work takes him all over the world. My work. I work for brands all over the world. They come to me and it's the nature of our photography. It's studio versus outdoor So you know Korean, I would approach our marketing and our key wording on a website completely differently as a result of that. So just kind of wrapping up, be very specific and everything you put on your website with words be diligent and I mean the frequency at which you do it. I mean, blogging is Converium. Everyone's like I'm gonna start a blawg and then like there, like every day for a week now damn amount of content. So, like it doesn't happen because it doesn't have to be every day, but you know, a couple times a week because you get credit for new content feeding your website Google, whatever. Search engine likes new content, so keep that, In fact, I would say Don't do it every day for a while, when we were really trying to push social media several years ago, we were doing an image of the day which a lot of photographers were doing, and it is a drain to try to come up with a new image every day to put something on there, to remember, to do it, to have the time to do it. When you're doing other stuff, it's one of those things that after a few months I was totally fed up with it, and I wanted nothing to do with the image of the day again. It's just too much to set a realistic expectation for yourself. Give yourself a regiment and a schedule to put information out there. But don't put an unrealistic expectation where you're never gonna be able to maintain it. It's just know what some of the limitations are. And to put something out there every single day for me and I'm gonna happen, that's it. That's a limitation without question. And also don't have something like Instagram B. This is me being visible because you're not searchable. You're not visible whatsoever. Unless somebody sees stumbles upon that photo itself. You're not gonna come up in the instagram search with your photo because it re labels that photo renames. Who knows what it does? It randomly put the name on her up. It uses its own algorithm, huh? Name or whatever. Look at that. Something new to learn every day. So, yeah, constantly monitor and do random searches, and I'm I'm always testing the waters and seeing what's coming up. I'll show you in our specific website. We use squarespace. There's a way to see exactly what people are searching. There also is in Google Analytics, So use that if you're not on squarespace so again, location, type of work. You know the name photography or switch that with photographer a swell because not everyone searches photography. They search for Seattle leading photographer so they don't want to say photography. Switch it up. Shouldn't be the same title every time. But you should take those words and interchangeable again. Google Analytics. That's a free service. Um, had been using Google analytics until Squarespace came out with their squarespace five platform, which changed the game. And we completely abandoned our custom website that we had built for us and we switched everything to square space, and we were able to almost mimic in about 1/2 a day exactly what her old website looked like. Change it over within about 10 hours. This is where my experience and the money of three down the drain is really gonna benefit you guys. Um, we spent about 15 grand working on a new website with a web developer and it took several months. It was a lot of back and forth and at the end of it, what I thought was going to be fantastic had a lot of problems on the back end and we turned to Squarespace. And within 1/2 a day, do you really didn't have about 1/2 a day? He was able to replicate our website almost identically with a very efficient back end. A whole list of problems that we had went away and it didn't cost us anything. Huge time saver. So look into something like Squarespace. I can't tell you how much I wish I would have known that before and I built the site and not even 18 months later, I switched to Squarespace. So I put 15 grand into something that didn't even give me 18 months worth of life. That's a lot of money to report on the gonna use someone, a friend or someone you find to actually build you a website. Just be cautious because there's so many services out there that will allow you to do it that will allow you to update it. You're not reliant on someone else because they want to basically get you on a monthly payment like, Okay, You want to update it, Send me some money and I'll update it when I get to it. No, you won't update it like instantly. So you know, they're gonna tell you about all these great things that they can do for you when they build the site. But at the end of the day, they're hooking you on the back end. They want you to be a repeat customer and, you know, kind of be beholden to them in terms of, ah, Web hosting and the back end, as changes need to be made, That's not what you want is a photographer. You want to be flexible, and you want to be able to do it yourself. If you wake up at three in the morning, can't sleep when we have a jump on your website and fix it. You can't call your you know, your web developer through in the morning and say, Hey, I want I want to make some changes here. Keep yourself very limber with your website, but know how to do it yourself. I can't stress that enough. It's really important. So this is how I approach how I would urge you to approach when you're looking and shopping for a website. If you want to change it, I wouldn't rely on someone else ever to do it. Um, I think in today's age is easy enough for anyone to do it. They've made it super simple. Um, how is it for me to change the layouts if you want to change your theme? Um, how easy is it for you to do that in the year? Because chances are I've I got tired of my website maybe four or five times in the span of two years. Like I gotta change it, you know? So, like, how easy is it going to be for you to do that? Works on all devices. It's not flash based, or there's ah, mobile version for it. Html. Five. Look for that. That it's gonna work on everything because a lot of people view our website on an IOS device or the other one android, and that was a problem we have with the Web developer. We don't develop separately for mobile devices that we did for the Web, just as a whole nother layer of complication that you just you don't need it headache again going back to Rob's with website that he had built. There wasn't anywhere for us to put in the metadata. No, where they didn't exist anywhere. So, you know, look for that. If you've had someone build your website, ask them where they put it or if they put it, um, it can be kind of a hassle. So yeah, I made some mistakes. That website How easy is it to monitor traffic? Just make sure before you sign up for something. Squarespace has basically something like Google analytics built in that I'm gonna go over next. How can I tell what's working? You know, again, this is in the analytics part. What's what's working? What are people searching for? How are people finding me that's variable about valuable information? You need to know how to do that. So really, if you're getting the message from what he's talking about, the back end of the website is incredibly important. It's critical. It's how you make sure that your message is really getting out there and it tells you if your message really is getting out there and what what formulas you're using are really working so that back in I can tell you how important the back end of the website is. Yeah, so just I know that probably doesn't look like much, but I wanted to show this when you log in. This is kind of what you see. It's very visual. If I want to move a picture like that ice cream photo to be the 1st 1 I really just grab it and I move it. It's It's very intuitive. It's easy to use. It's awesome. So the analytics, this is probably the most important thing. This is why I really, really love squarespace because that I don't have to go to somewhere else like Google Analytics. Um, the overview gives me an hourly daily weekly monthly. Um, look at how many page requests we have. It tells us exactly what sites air referring us and I was actually able to, uh, to see I saw this is maybe, like, eight months ago, I saw that 8% of our traffic was coming from a website. Um, I won't say the websites name, but it's a shopping website. I'm like, Okay, so I was able to click on the link someone had taken one of our images of a watch, and we're using that to sell just to sell watches. So I contacted them. And I'm like, OK, where should I send the invoice to? Because you are using are copyrighted image to sell and make a profit and, uh, they immediately took it down and and I don't want They don't want us to send a man who wants to do it. So I mean, kind of indirectly, I didn't think that was going to be one way that I used the refers feature on Squarespace, but I was able to quickly see like, OK, things off. We shouldn't have 7% coming from one website, So it was a great way to, you know, to find piracy. So he was stealing our image basically and using it for a way for them to make money, not us. So through the back end were able to find it in Bustem. And that's, you know, that's a really nice feature again, popular content. I can see which pages people are going to, which pages people are spending the most time on this is gonna help. You know, if your blog's a hit or not, it tells you how to make changes, What's working and how to make changes would be refers to have someone that basically taking your image Teoh promote their watch, selling or whatever. I mean, even if they took it and try to read name, but they can't change the metadata. And what they did was they were using the Digital Media Copyright Act. So someone had actually embedded where our image was on our website, and we're using that, um, one of their cure readers is that what's they want to call it? They're hiding behind this copyright act. Um, they were using That's they didn't They could have taken our image and renamed it and it would have been gone, and I would never have found it. But they had actually taken where our image waas and embedded it. And we're basically taxing our website. Every time they clicked on that image, we were getting traffic. So oh, kind of sneaky business going on out there. Hard to find, uh, also with queries. Aiken. I can tell exactly how people are finding Rob how they're misspelling his name, finding Rob grom. So, like I can tell. Like if people are searching for Rob Grim, Chicago Rob Graham Photography. Well, give me that exact number of queries which ones? Air top hits so that I can use those keywords and put them in the content. I can put them in the page. Titles is just one big, just one big cycle. Figure out what words people are using, then embed them everywhere in your Web site and one of the seven different areas. Questions. It's a lot of info in it. Has a ton of info is kind of overwhelming. I don't really have a question. It was just something I saw a corner my I just now with popular content, it says Popular content. What pages? The generating Triple X hits. Oh, that is how many like I just didn't would never come across a change to say, Hey, this is we're not an X rated sites by any stretch of the check out that part of our web now it just yeah, just a random number. Like how many hits? X amount, what I was going for. His X amount of hits. Not hard core heads, funny, and then the last one was detailed activity, specifically where people you can see if you know people love us. In Argentina, people love us. In Romania, you can see where people are viewing from, um, that we're celebrating our wares in Argentina and Bolivia season. Cool. Well, any questions? Because that basically wraps up the morning part. So if we want to go to the Interwebs or the audience, yeah, we'll take. We'll take some questions. Looks like Kari's got one. Um, I was just wondering what kind of results you guys noticed when you switched over to square spaces for as insane like it was, It took maybe how fast? So when I first started working for robbers when, um, I address the issue with the website is like, Hey, like I did these searches, Um, you know, ABC, you're nowhere to be found. I can't even find you with searching Rob Crimp. Guess how that made me feel after dropping tons of cash, trying to go through this whole thing, working through problems and being reassured and said Ababa and then finding I have all these problems and Gary comes in like do you're not even visible. You were, like, invisible on the Web, like, yeah, he almost broke the Internet. I did. I was broken for everybody. So yeah, it it's not gonna I can't say like a specific time. It depends on where you are and how much competition you have and what they're doing. So search, You know, if you live in Seattle, search Seattle wedding photographers, see who comes up first, search their website. And if you're on something like so far, you can go to view page source and look at the actual keywords they use. You can basically steal their information. Is information on how to do that? Well, you can use your information in order to set up your own formula. That's gonna hopefully elevate you above them, right? It's amazing how much information is actually there on the web. You just gonna take a little time and start to read it and figure it out. Thank you about so you're doing this search your target audience are art directors. Okay, so you're doing all of this search engine optimization so that when that art director goes and does a Google search, your name pops up. OK, so you're not worried about the local high school senior who's trying to search your goal is to get your Google search up to the top so that that art director, its's kind of suit it's kind of twofold. We used Facebook to drive traffic like I don't care like I wanted toe have being awesome photo on Facebook and for our audience to click on it. And once they click on it, that basically gives us points with Google because someone went to that. So then we get points for being more relevant and traffic is going up. So, yes, were key wording that so if by chance and art director were to search for that, I don't exactly know how many are, um then we would be found, but we're using something like Facebook or Twitter to get our audience that way. That maybe wants to learn is like education, like you guys to then go to our website and, like, basically, give us points for that. Does that make sense? The high school senior in reality isn't gonna be able to afford me. Number one. They don't have a project for me to work on to. If they did, they wouldn't be able to afford May. I want them to be able to find me and find inspiration and made you know I love this business. And if they're excited about it and they want to find this for inspiration, that's great. But yet what we're doing is everything we possibly can to target potential clients. It's our directors are buyers with. That's who we want. If our audience, if I was a high school portrait photographer than my page titles on my block titles would be heist Awesome High School Portrait photography, Kick Ass High School port. I would search those different adjectives that I think that high school is probably gonna use, um, and then and plug goes into my page titles into my content and also in my photos of the awesome Kick Ass Kick Ass Photographer. Other questions. Um, do you retain total copyright ownership of all your images? Number one question in the number two, um, can you talk about your process for registering your copyright with, you know, whatever the copyright office is, what you're Yeah, that's that's a hard one. We absolutely put copyright on everything without question. Um, you can register everything you do with the copyright office. It is a laborious process, and it takes a long time. I don't do it on a regular basis. I will admit that it's something that I probably should do. But you are fairly well protected in the fact that you can show your result copyright. You can show that you generated the image. There's so much information that comes out of the camera and the way you you tagged that image initially that you can prove that it's yours. Um, that's where I, you know, I put my trust in my faith in many ways and also in the fact that that I've got something like SNP behind me. And I know that that you know, somebody like that is gonna fight for more rights or not gonna what that's meant be stolen. Someone's gonna steal your photography, use it for something. We see it happen all the time. I also write for F stoppers, and it's just a constant thing. The Lee Morris, the owner and starter of staffers, gets his images stolen all the time. It because everyone knows his images. He finds out about it somehow quickly, somebody tells him, But you know, I mean, we could put watermarks over all of our stuff, but that's going to it's gonna hurt the experience like I don't want to see a watermark. No, I don't someone. There's always a way to steal the image and use it for simple. But there's also another element art directors do. You go to my site with some great frequency and they'll taken image and they put it in the layout and they'll they'll use it as an example that they're gonna then turn to the coin and say, OK, this is some of that stuff that we're thinking about. This is a type of style that we want to create for you. So in that sense, I want our directors to be able to have access to my image because at the end of the day, it means I've got a very good chance of getting the job. I can't tell you how many times has happened. I didn't even know a photographer and art buyer. Our director was looking at my work. They had swiped some stuff they put in until layout. They put it as part of their creative brief and they sold it, and as a result, not only did I get to bid on the job. I got the job. So you know, that is when it works to your benefit big time, you know? Are there any questions on the Interwebs? There are the 1st 1 up. Is Daniel Lopez joining us again from Switzerland asking. How often do you recommend updating your website with fresh images or even a new look for the overall site? Do the blogging twice a week, maybe one. If you have the images to do it again, it goes back toe. One bad image. Don't put up something that's not going to be representative of your brand. And that might hurt you. Get a second opinion. But it doesn't all have to be your work either. Um, you know, if you like something else like that your friends doing, then you know, put that up, you get permission, I'll expand a now of it. I don't change with look of my website very often at all. I'll change content, I'll add to it. But I am very happy with where that look is, and it's probably gonna stay that way for several more years. We probably won't give it a whole refresher like Gary was saying. he got tired of his and changed his a couple of times. I don't feel that way. Like for me. I really like the way our current website goes, and I like the fact that people come back to it. It has a consistent feel. They're kind of knowing it is Rob Groom. So in that sense is becoming part of my branding. There are other things that we change on a regular basis. We're adding to the block a couple times a week. We go in the workbook with great regularity, and we change that. We're going to drip books with great regularity, and we change the images that are on there because those sites, they move you in rankings according to new new content that you put up there. So if you leave them alone and don't do anything, you're gonna drop off really fast. So as you're expanding and doing multiple different facets of marketing, you've got to know that each facet has a different time schedule. And keep that keep that in mind and getting into part of your of your routine. You just have to sit down and make sure that you allow time to update workbook once a month and the block twice a week and drip up maybe once every two weeks. There's there's kind of a schedule for everything and just put it on your calendar. Make sure it pops up at the appropriate time and you just sit down, knock it out and clear by are a had asked if you could give us an example of a good S CEO title for an image getting that goes back to I think I would start with geography where your this is for each image. You would name each image this like totally not tags. But in the title, right? Yeah. So, like, uh, geography underscore, um, maybe what it is. Underscore. Um, you're name underscore than photography. Underscore cause that's gonna come up like you saw when you search for Chicago commercial liquor photography. You noticed that there were images embedded in the search and ours were 50% of those. So those nets weren't necessarily in that block post. Those were maybe in a different block post, but those came up as a search result. Okay, I just want to make sure it wasn't attack. It was he my image that's up there right now on the screen that might be titled Chicago Commercial Liquor Photography. Scotch. Rob Groom. I don't exactly remember with titles, but it could be something along that lines. It's definitely not zeros or one. Really Okay, Awesome. I am todo that going back to the earlier topic of your portfolio. Uh, it was a question from Super Simon asking if you should put the client's logo or name or brand on the image that you produce on your website or in your printed book, or is that kind of name dropping? No, Actually, we have a place on our site. If you go to it, it's tears. So it's It's a specific place where you can see how the image was used in the actual ad, um, in the portfolio itself, I want the image to do the talking, not the you know, the ad headline. So when it comes to the portfolio or the body of the website, I don't have that information on there. It's branded. If you see a bottle of whatever Topeka, you're going to see that if you see it's Bacardi, it says Bacardi on it so that in that sense of branding is already doing the talking, but I want the images that are in the portfolio to be as clean as possible. There is a section for terrorist Most photographers put that and it helps art fires. Know that you actually did this for a project. It helps give you validity because, really, I mean, anybody can go on by a bottle and put it on set and do a nice shot of it. That doesn't mean that you did it for an ad. Having a terrorist section shows that you've actually done, and it just helps drive drive validity to us. A photographer, not I wouldn't call it name dropping.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Example_Production_Book-RGG_Photo.pdf
Photo_Assistant_Guide-RGG_PHOTO.pdf

Free Bonus Materials

Digital Swag Bag.pdf
Day 1 Presentation Slides.pdf
Day 2 Presentation Slides.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Totoo
 

I have gratefully been watching this tutorial for free online, and as always CreativeLIVE has done an awesome job in bringing one of the best instructors of the trade and his creative team to help us improve and enjoy a higher level of understanding and performance in the skills we would like to achieve. I am humbled as always and ever so grateful. I would love to purchase the course myself, but since I live abroad, it is practically impossible, I hope those who can, would. I would just like to add one of the most interesting things I have learnt from this course is the careful attention these guys are paying to minute details and the amount of patience it takes to achieve their goals in each project. Stay inspiring, Totoo in China

Ivan
 

Outstanding course! I'm a former creative director, now photographer full time and have had the unique experience working with studio photographers for commercial products in the past. This course is right on and very close to my experiences, and now that I'm behind the camera, it's nice to see some of those trade secrets revealed. Commercial work is fussy and you often have to sweat the details, but the results can be astonishing and rewarding. Rob and Gary do an excellent job explaining the ins and outs, without any pretention or hold-back on secrets. Something that's always annoyed me in the past, photographers never liked revealing their process. It's great fun watching Rob and Gary work a shoot, and Aaron Nace is beyond amazing in his retouching skills. I don't expect to break into this field, but I wanted to learn how things are done, for my own personal projects. I particularly enjoyed learning how they get the look of ice, ice crystals, and frost on the sides of glass bottles. I purchased several items from Trengrove, as they suggested. Their acrylic products are not cheap, but the quality is amazing and I'm very pleased and looking forward to experimenting. Thanks to all at Creative Live, RGG studios and Aaron Nace for this presentation.

Doors of Imagination Photography
 

This course is outstanding. I would consider it an advanced level. Having a good understanding of the technical aspects of photography and lighting is recommended. Rob Grimm takes you into two real product shoots. These were not canned demonstrations, but the real thing including working to get the lighting setup just right. The postproduction section with Aaron Nace was enlightening. This does require a good preliminary understanding of Photoshop. It was amazing to watch them build the final images for the client in real time. This is by far my favorite course to date.

Student Work

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