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John Harrington, Photographer, Author, & Editor of Photo Business News joins host Scott Sheppard for an informative discussion about creating and maintaining your online reputation within forum communities, social networks, and blogging for business. John begins the discussion with some tips about monitoring feedback on sites such as Yelp.com and TheKnot.com to see what your clients are saying about you, as comments on these widely used forums could negatively impact your business. On the flip side, be sure to encourage your clients to leave positive comments and referrals on these sites to increase your exposure. Setting up Google Alerts can be a quick, free, and effective way to get a view and links to online content discussing your name and your company.

John reminds us that often if your clients are happy they will tell 3 other people, if your clients are unhappy it’s likely they will tell 10+ people and these easy to access, free, online forums and sites are a quick way for them to get the word out about yourwork. John discusses his journey through social networks and how his blog became a resource for many photographers. Blogging and social networking can be a critical success factor, but once you start a blog and build an audience it becomes a regular component of your workload or it can begin to work against you. Determine who your audience will be, your peers, your clients, etc. and maintain relevant content.

John also warns us that you should consider your overall social network presence when joining sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace, and others. Is it wise to separate your personal friends from professional contacts and their links, comments, and how even possibly images can impact how the world sees you professionally? A quick Google search on your name, can bring up some interesting results.

For more information about John’s work visit: http://www.johnharrington.com/ or his blog at: http://www.photobusinessnews.com, http://www.assignmentconstruct.com/.

The McNamara Report on Inside Digital Photo with Michael J. McNamara
This week’s topic: The art of home printing falls to the Artisan?

Lots of reports out in the last few months suggesting that home printing is on the decline. But is it really, or are certain survey groups playing the numbers game? The fact is that the percentage of prints made at home has declined over the last few years—not really the number of prints made, which is up on all fronts including in brick and mortar stores and online processing sites. That was predictable as stores ramped up their digital printing capabilities and the broadband internet allowed click up to pick up services. Early experiences with home printing turned photographers off, just like early experiences with low res digital cameras. Lots of wasted paper and ink too.

The latest wave of intelligent printers could change all of that. The state of the economy might even drive more people to print at home when the realize the quality, longevity, and price of prints is better than from the store. Store prints made on silver halide print machines are cheap in quantity, but don’t have the color brilliance and display longevity of prints made by most new Epson and HP models which last up to four times longer. Canon lags behind on this one. Smart processors in units such as the new Epson Artisan 800 can fix image directly from memory cards and output nearly perfect prints on the first try, or fix up old and faded prints.

The new photo printers are filled with easy to use image enhancing features that can produce brilliant prints to your home digital darkroom. By giving you control over the final output, the resulting prints can definately look better than anything available through a service lab and the customizations and ability to print on various media make these a viable option for any photographer.

Read more insights and analysis from Mike McNamara on: http://www.mcnamarareport.com

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Mike Wong, Product Manager, onOne Software joins host Scott Sheppard for some information on their latest plug-ins - which are now compatible with Adobe CS4, Lightroom 2, and Aperture 2.1 compatible. Mike explains onOne’s roadmap to complete support for the newest versions so that photographers can continue to use these tools and find even more efficient ways to apply the plug-ins within their workflow.

Mike also discusses some of the development and latest features available in their recent release of PhotoFrame 4 Standard & Professional Edition, which is their first set of apps that fully support the latest software versions.

For more information, examples, & details visit: http://www.ononesoftware.com/

The McNamara Report on Inside Digital Photo with Michael J. McNamara
This week’s topic: New Leica S2 37.5MP DSLR

Mike explains some details of the recently announced Leica S2, shown at Photokina last month. Leica’s latest addition was one of the show’s hottest announcements and Mike provides analysis on this first of its kind, with a larger than 35mm CCD sensor (30×45mm vs 36×24mm, 56% larger) 3:2 aspect ratio Leica pro format sensor, and a totally new lens lineup that includes; 24mm ultrawide, 30mm tilt and shift, 35mm wide, 70mm f/2.5 standard (should give approx 50mm field of view on 35mm system), 30-90 zoom, 100mm short tele, 120mm macro, 180mm telephoto, 350mm telephoto. All will have leaf shutters built, a benefit for flash sync. It also has a dedicated hot shoe, but no info about external dedicated flash yet.

Read more insights and analysis from Mike McNamara on: http://www.mcnamarareport.com/sony-a900-dslr-takes-steady-aim-at-pros/

Jain Lemos - Photography Publishing Consultant joins Inside Digital Photo with some tips and insights about how to develop documentary and book projects for photographers. Jain, whose broad background also includes her own photography work, has extensive experience representing photographers to publishing companies and shares some ideas on how to pitch your book concept. Most publishing companies are less concerned about the overall look of the book than they are with information about the market’s demand and audience for the image topics.

Jain explains that photographers should first ask themselves "What is the marketability of the concept and topics of the book?". Many times this is overlooked in addition to the amount of time the concept will take to actually hit the shelves so overall shelflife of the topics are also critical to a book’s success. Jain encourages photographers to contact her with your idea for some feedback before embarking on the project. Jain describes her rates and some of the benefits of working with her to bring your vision to fruition.

For more information about Jain, visit her website at: http://jain-lemos.blogspot.com/