When I was in the military, I learned a lot about core values. Everyday in bootcamp we were preached "honor, courage & commitment". These core values would follow me everywhere and we would constantly be reminded that it not only ensured that I was a better sailor but I was a better team player and I would do anything to uphold these values.
Today I still keep the values of honor courage and commitment everywhere I go but these are not my key core values as a photographer. Two weeks after I departed the military, I started to think a lot about my own life and what was important for me. I discovered that as an artist there were a built in set of core values that has always been with me and is the very fire and spirit that has given me much of my success through out life. These core values are Passion, Dedication and Commitment.
Passion is why I am an artist and a photographer. Instead of going outside as a child and play video games, I found an interest being behind the computer and learning all kinds of things. One of those things that I found a true love for was for a little program called Adobe Photoshop. I literally sat behind the computer for hours at a time attempting to make art. I never had so much fun in my life.
Passion soon followed me into the military where I learned how to become a photojournalist. It was my mentor that taught me a picture is more than a thousand words, it is something that can emotionally impact every person that sees it. A photograph should tell a powerful story and be something that only you can capture in a split second of time. My mentor was killed in action and his spirit lives on with me. Because of him, my passion is stronger than ever!
Dedication comes from my mother who came to this country from Colombia. She faced a lot of discrimination and ridicule from family on my father's side. Her life went from working as a powerful business woman to working as a waitress in a restaurant where people constantly spit in her face because of her spanish accent. She never gave up because of the will and love for my father. she soon became a business woman again and started to prove everyone who thought ill of her wrong. This dedication is something I can not describe but is most certainly linked to the passion I have for art and photography. When others would play, I would read a manual because I wanted to be the best at it. I wanted people to come to me instead of me going to them.
Commitment was a core value that I learned in the military. When I was young, I had a lot dedication and passion but there was a big lack of commitment. I had no motivation to finish a lot of things and I was suffering big time. It was my lack of commitment that drove me into the military in the first place. Commitment taught me to finish the job at any cost and to ensure that it was done right. There are no shortcuts in quality. I soon found a love for the craftsmanship that I seen come from many luxury brands such as Apple, Lexus and Rolex. I noticed how they pay attention to every detail and how these details set them apart from an industry that just slaps their products together. I am committed to not just be another photographer but a photographer that is remembered well after I am gone.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
3 Tips to Market your Graphic Design or Photography portfolio
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Are you a serious graphic design artist or a photographer that has a mind-blowing portfolio, but nobody can seem to find it? Here are tips that are vital to getting noticed in cyber space.
1.) Get on social networks and start promoting right away! Now I don’t exactly mean spamming. You want to be careful with how you promote your work because you can quickly damage your brand and reputation with nonsense. Promote yourself with dignity and class; give your audience information they want to read. This is where your creativity should really come into play. In my case I am on the following 3 social networks to help market my graphic design and photography portfolio:
- Twitter: The first thing that you will need to do here is set up a Twitter account with some name that is relevant to either your business name or the industry that you are working in. Setup your profile and take the time to truly customize it with graphics of your own. In your bio, state something simple like “Graphic Designer” or “Photographer”. Then when all is said and done, start searching for and following people related to your industry. Retweet information that you find relevant and post quality tweets that will keep folks interested in following your tweets. Any time you make an update to your website, ensure that you post it here on twitter.
- Facebook: Yes, everyone and their mom is on Facebook and I know you have an account. What you want to do here is start up a fan page account for your business. This will help keep your business to be more professional, allow Google to index more content you release on facebook related to your business and really allow you to focus in on keywords to improve your organic search results in search engines. Take your time to really focus on providing a lot of content for your info tab. Don’t forget to say often you are a photographer or a graphic designer (be liberal with those words).
- Deviant Art: There is nothing like the love of a Search Engine crawling a site that has been around for years. In this case we are talking about the largest artist community on the Internet, Deviant Art. It does not matter if you are a graphic designer or a photographer, Deviant Art is a great way to network and drive traffic to your website. Be sure to be thorough when filling out your profile and try participating in the forums and commenting on other similar artist such as your self. Try to upload your artwork slowly and often, this will help spread out your incoming traffic. Believe it or not, everything you do on Deviant Art gets indexed on Google so as Ernie Anastos stated “Keep Plucking that Chicken!”
2.) Build a Blog for your website. Yes you heard me, a BLOG! If your portfolio is all pictures with no text, how do you expect Google to understand what your website is all about? Google loves text, it thrives off of lots and lots of text so you may want to break out Microsoft Word and get to cracking on some articles that talk about your work or is related to the industry that you are working in. Now if you are thinking about copying and pasting text from another website, you may want to think again as Google does not think kindly of duplicated content and neither will your readers. Your readers should read articles and look at content on your website that will keep them there and encourage them to come back for more. This means you need to write quality content and post new content often; both users and Google bot enjoy the overwhelming sensation of fresh content!
3.) Google Places. Have you ever noticed that when you type in a business in Google, a Map will come up with a description and customer opinions of that place? Get your freelance business registered with Google places and get your friends to write some 5 star reviews about your graphic design or photography business.
Keeping these 3 tips in mind is no easy task and there is never an end to it. It is an endless cycle of being creative and providing content to both your audience and search engines. If you keep both happy, you should have a popular photography or graphic design portfolio in no time!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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