I was a substitute at a BNI meeting the other day. One of the members, Tony Meier, was going on vacation and asked if I could represent him at the meeting. I was looking forward to the meeting since I had been a member of the group for two years and had not been able to attend for quite a while.

I got to the meeting early and saw quite a few familiar faces. It was fun catching up with the members who were in the group when I left. I also met some of the new members.

The commercials

As part of the meeting each attendee stands up and gives a 30 second commercial about their business. I was prepared to give a commercial for Tony and one for myself. I had done it many times before during the two years I was an active member.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how nervous I became as my turn got closer. The butterflies in the stomach started churning and I could feel my pulse in my stomach.

Butterflies are a bad thing

After this relatively short period of absence from the group my comfort level had changed dramatically. Standing up and speaking in front of a crowd has never been my strong point. When I first joined the group and had to stand up and do my commercial I was very nervous. Those nerves lasted a while until I got to know the group and had some practice with my commercial. By the time I left the group I was much more comfortable giving my commercial even to groups I was attending for the first time.

I’ve continued attending other networking functions since leaving the group, but few of them require giving a commercial of any length. When I returned to the BNI group I didn’t think I would be so nervous during the commercials.

Keep up on it

In reality most things require regular practice to not lose a comfort level or “edge” whether it’s a sport, cooking, photography, or public speaking. The more you do something, the easier it becomes. You learn to work through the issues and the tough challenges and they become part of your experience. Stop doing something for a while and those experiences fade and you have to relearn them. They may not take as long to learn the second time around, but you are bound to make a few of the same mistakes along the way.

While I still feel comfortable at the other networking events I attend, I obviously need to get out a little more and exercise the public speaking role. It’s not the funnest thing I can think of, but becoming more comfortable speaking to people can have big benefits when trying to run a small business.

Miscellaneous bni, commercial, speaking, speech

And it only takes a few steps to actually get there. That’s right, all those other architectural photographers in Seattle wish they had organic Google rankings like I have. Here’s how to actually see it.

1. Go to the Google Home Page.
2. Type this in the search field exactly “seattle architectural photographers“. Yes it needs the “s” on the end of photographer.
3. Click the “Google Search” button. As of the writing of this article I’m the 4th listing after local businesses.
4. Now click the “Show options…” link in the upper left, just above the business listings.
5. Then click on the “Images from the page” link that shows up on the left.

Whew. That wasn’t too hard. Here’s what I see when I do those steps. I took the liberty of removing all the distracting elements from the page, which really were not important.

If you change your search term to “seattle architectural photographer” I come in second.

Now to get all my competitions clients to drop them and hire me because I rank so well on Google. I should probably also try to figure out WHY I’m getting such good rankings. I used to be way down in the list even without doing the extra things.

Thanks to my pal Will Austin for pointing this out.

Miscellaneous, News google, rank, search

I have three clients this year that are entering projects I photographed into competitions put on by the Master Builders Association (MBA), the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) and the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA). Between the three clients there are 8 projects being entered. Below you can see the client and an image or two from their project.

Tehnhulzen Remodeling

Kitchen under $75,000

  

Bath under $40,000

  

Bath $40,000 - $75,000

Major Remodel $300,000

    

Unknown Category at press time

Irons Brothers Construction

Kitchen $75,000 - $125,000

Commercial Tenant Improvement

  

Singleton Construction

Major Remodel

    

The BIAW and NKBA awards are being announced tonight, June 17. The MBA awards will be handed out on Saturday at the Lynwood Convention Center. I will be attending with my wife and will be very excited to see how many awards my clients receive. I will post a follow-up on Sunday or Monday.

News, Recent Work

Apparently I do. I didn’t remember creating it, but when I posted to Faith Sheridan’s Blog an image of myself came up that surprised me. I was not expecting my image to show up just by posting a comment since this was the first time I had commented and certainly had not uploaded an image for use on her site.

I right-clicked on the link to see where the image was coming from and the root URL was http://www.gravatar.com.

After going to the site they define gravatar as: a “globally recognized avatar”. What that means is they provide one location to store your avatar or personal representation of yourself for use on other web sites. The web site has to be enabled to use the gravatar. There is more information on gravatar on wikipedia.

It is a great concept to have one location to store your personal image. If more sites took advantage of the service it would cut down on the number of places you have to upload a new profile picture.

Miscellaneous avatar, gravatar

I have been shooting some jewelry for a local client that is using Etsy to showcase her designs. The pieces are very nicely done, but aren’t going to sell for thousands of dollars, so I need to be quick and efficient to manage costs. Click the images to see larger versions.

    

I decided to use my Canon 580EX flashes as they are easy to set up and very easy to change light output from the camera mounted flash. Using “hot-shoe” flashes allows the ability to change setups quickly and easily. With the ability to control light output of the off-camera flash units from the on-camera unit I don’t have to move around if the light isn’t quite right. I just make the changes at the camera and just before the next picture the changes are relayed to the off-camera units.

  

Being able to move quickly also lets us try out different sets and backgrounds and quickly determine if it will work. All of our images are taken at the clients house, so the small size is also a benefit.

    

All of these images were captured with a 24-70mm lens which also allows macro work for getting in very close to capture the details of the smaller objects like clasps.

As mentioned above these images are destined for Etsy.com. To ensure my client has the best presentation I reviewed Etsy’s image quidelines and how images are actually displayed on their site. They have several different image sizes they use on their site, and they also crop the first image for each piece into a square format that is used as a thumbnail in search results.

When I deliver images to the client I specify the first image to upload and I ensure it is cropped in such a way so the thumbnail that Etsy creates won’t cut off her piece and make it hard to see.

Having a good understanding of image standards and programming comes in handy at times and ensures my clients images look their best at all times.

Digital Photography, Recent Work hot-shoe flash, jewelry