Clipping Mask Using Squijoo.

It seems there are some technical (possibly legal) technicalities with Squijoo at the moment, but many photographers have their templates saved and want to be able to use them.  I’m nervous about the site disappearing forever (it’s down right now) so I wanted to write a quick article about how to insert photos into the templates using the clipping mask!  You can read their article on it here, however right now all their images are down.

First, you  open the template, then using the move tool, drag and place the image directly over the picture mask layer.

PC Users: press Control+G (Photoshop CS and earlier) or Control+Alt+G (Photoshop CS2 and newer)

Mac Users: press Command+G (Photoshop CS and earlier) or Command+Option+G (Photoshop CS2 and newer).

The image will automatically clip and work perfectly in the template!

*Very important: Make sure that your photo is directly ONE layer on top of the layer named “picture mask”. The best way to do this is to first select the “picture mask” layer in your template >> then go to your photo and drag it into the template*.

-Christine
Duluth MN Portrait Photographer

Photos From 85mm 1.2L Lens.

Which lens you decide to use on your camera has a big impact on how the photo turns out. A big contendor in the photography world for people who are very invested in photography is the 85mm 1.2L lens by Canon. This is the first professional level lens I invested in and I am very fond of it :).
The first thing you have to decide when picking a lens is if you want a prime lens (does not zoom in and out) or a zoom lens (has a range of how close or far you can get to the subject by rotating the lens to zoom in and out). THere are advantages and disadvantages to each (perhaps a future blog post topic 🙂 ) but one of the best and most noteworthy features of the 85mm 1.2 lens is that the aperture can reach .. *drumroll* .. f/1.2! The lowest number you usually see on a zoom lens is f/2.8 so this is quite a big difference on the prime, however you do lose the ability to zoom in and out. The f/1.2 is amazing for when you want to get as much light into the camera as possible and also if you want a very small depth of field (meaning only one thing will be sharply in focus and everything else will be blurred).
The f/1.2 is so sensitive that on my full frame sensor camera body (how far 1.2 takes you depends on a handful of factors including your camera body), if I focus on someone’s nose, their eye will be out of focus. It’s a very very narrow depth of field and very unforgiving for in focus images! There is a learning curve to harnessing this power. I would not recommend using any new equipment at a shoot that you haven’t practiced with in advance. YOu will probably get some out of focus images when you start out with this lens. I try not to go to 1.2 anymore, personally. f/2 or higher is usually ideal but if there is low light or if I want a certain look I will bump it down lower.

Anyway, I wanted to make a blog post showing image examples of photos taken on the 85mm f/1.2L lens so people could take a look and maybe it could help people make more informed purchasing decisions.

I do need to explain that I reduced the image size significantly to post to the web. Standard web size is 900×600.. the originals are around 3800×5700 so they don’t reflect the same quality as they do out of the camera but I hope it gives a good idea.. especially since the originals are better :). If you would like to see a full resolution version of anything just ask in the comments! I am happy to post!

Anyway, without further ado….

^f/3.5

^f/2.8

^f/1.8

^f/1.2 – wide open!

f/1.8

^f/1.4 – close to wide open :)! If you’re shooting this low you must nail the focus spot!

^f/2.5

f/1.4. I was able to take a photo with one fairly dim light on @ 1.4.. this low aperture also created a very nice bokeh effect on the Christmas tree.

^f/1.8 (This lens is great for Christmas lights!).

^f/2

^f/1.8

f/1.6. Notice how narrow the focus is.. the arm is in focus and his entire body is blurred.. there’s about a foot between what is in focus and what isn’t. If the aperture were higher (around f/4+) the arm and body would both be in focus.

^f/1.8

f/1.8. Loving how blurred the background is! Notice how even the front of the scarf is blurred.. 1.8 is not a very large depth of field.

f/1.8

^Here’s one at f/1.2 – this is as low as it can go. I am going to do another blog post soon zooming in so you can see the eyes are in focus but even the nose is out of focus. It still looks okay zoomed out but if you zoom in you’ll see how sensitive the focus is.

^f/2.8

^Wide open at f/1.2. To do this shot over I would have used a higher aperture since her hair is blurred out but I still love this photo :).

^Another photo taken at f/1.2. I’m trying to include a lot at 1.2 since a lot of people are curious about what photos like at that aperture.

f/1.8 portrait

^f/1.4

^Here’s a shot taken at a higher aperture of f/4. As youc an see.. still plenty of lovely bokeh :).

^f/2.2

^f/2.2

f/2

^f/2.2

^This is a full res version of an image taken at f/1.2 – click on it to see full detail.

To see zoomed in versions of the photos to see how the depth of field looks up close at f/1.2 check out this article.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Senior and Family Photographer Website
Duluth Photographer Blog
Duluth Senior and Family Photographer Facebook Account

Why your photos are blurry (with image examples)

One long time mystery amongst people who take photos is “why are my photos blurry?”. The answer is much more simple than you probably realize but will take a moment to explain.

Photo from December 2010 😉 – camera settings this photo was taken at are listed later in this article.

There are 3 major components which determine how your photographs turn out.. one of those components is what your shutter speed is.

What is a shutter?
Picture a stage with curtains that open and close. This is, essentially, what a shutter is. It opens and closes (this is a video of a shutter opening and closing). The shutter is the sound you hear when you take photos – you can hear it open and close. Sometimes it opens and closes very fast and sometimes it opens and closes very slowly. When the “curtain” (shutter) is open, it captures ALL movement in the photo up until it closes. Hence, when it opens and closes fast it “freezes” the moment and does not capture any blur; when it opens and closes slowly, it captures a lot of movement.

The shutter is responsible for 2 things:

1. It contributes to how light or dark the photo is

2. It is the reason your photos turn out blurry or not blurry (*from motion blur – Photos being out of focus can make them blurry in an “out of focus” way which is not due to the shutter).

If you are getting motion blur in your photos there is one simple answer for it: Your shutter is staying open too long.

So, what causes the shutter to stay open for too long?

Low lighting.

Now that I’ve said that you’ve probably realized that most of your blurred photos were taken indoors or at night.

Why does it stay open long in low lighting? Because the longer the shutter is open, the more light it lets in. Photos NEED light. If there isn’t much light, your camera needs to do things to make sure it gets enough light, otherwise you will be left with a black photo.

The photo at the top of the page was taken at the following settings: f/3.2 ISO 640 Shutter speed 1/8 (aka too slow!!!!).. that means it was open for 1/8th of a second which sounds fast but it isn’t fast enough for kids who move around. I usually try to stay around at least 1/100, and ideally a little higher, when photographing kids (what speed you set changes based on your lens and what you are photographing; things that are sitting still can be photographed at a lower shutter speed but you still have to shoot fast enough to avoid camera shake from your hands unless you are using a tripod).

How to Avoid Motion Blur in Your Photography

The easiest and most simple way to avoid motion blur in your photos is to get more light! Take your photos outside or closer to a window. You can also just turn more lights on inside but then you might want to be aware of your white balance because a lot of photos taken indoors will have an orange/red tint due to incorrect white balance (<– article about that tint and how to avoid it).

The last option is to use your flash. Most professional photographers will agree that the flash built into your camera is not good and actually hurts your photos. My rule for using in-camera flash is only use it if the alternative is a super blurry or black photo. A photo with flash is better than a blurry or dark photo. The other option for flash is to buy an external flash – one you can take off the camera and diffuse it. This is the ideal option if you need to use flash (I will write more on this later!). I try to shoot outdoors as much as possible :).

If you own a DSLR there is another option for eliminating motion blur: Set your own settings and tell the shutter what its speed needs to be.

There are two modes in which you can do this:

TV Mode. TV mode is found on your dial and it is “shutter priority mode”. Shutter priority means that all other settings are formed around your shutter speed.. so you tell your camera what your shutter speed needs to be, and it figures everything else out for you. It is a good setting for people starting out with their DSLRs – however there can be consequences to this such as your camera may bump up your ISO, causing your photos to be grainy, or shoot at too high or low of an aperture, losing the “blur” effect or giving you too much of a blur effect.. however you can guarantee they won’t have motion blur 🙂 and sometimes you have to made decisions like that (ie I’ll have a grainy photo instead of a blurred photo) because when there’s not enough light, something’s gotta give.

M Mode (Manual Mode). This is ideal. This is the mode most professional photographers shoot in. You tell your camera exactly what the settings need to be and it shoots at that regardless of what it would want to do in auto mode. You set the shutter speed (if you’re getting motion blur you increase the shutter speed), you set the aperture, you set the ISO.. you can understand what is happening in the photo and what the outcome of the photo will be based on your settings, however it requires more knowledge than TV mode so it’s perfectly fine to start with TV mode and keep working towards M mode.

The fun part of understanding how the shutter affects your photos is that you can use it to intentionally capture motion blur and make some interesting photos! Leaving the shutter open on purpose is called Bulb Photography.

To do bulb photography you must put your camera on a tripod so it stays perfectly still (otherwise there will be camera shake which will hurt the photo) and then have the subject move around while you leave the shutter open and capture all the movement.

Here are some examples of the camera being on a tripod with the shutter left open:

f/3.2 ISO 6400, shutter: 1/25.

Notice in the bottom right photo you can see 2 red streaks in the background – those are the taillights of a car :).
Settings: f/11 ISO 500, shutter speed 4 seconds (shutter was open for 4 seconds).

Settings: f/11 ISO 500, shutter speed 7 seconds (shutter was open for 7 seconds). I was wearing all black to minimize being seen and did additional editing to completely “disappear” from behind the sparkler otherwise you would see me as motion blur in the background :).

(My white balance is off in this photo which is why it has a red/orange tint).

Most photos of the sky at night are done on a tripod with the shutter left open.. it allows the camera to pick up many stars. When I do exposures like this, the camera “sees” many more stars than I can.

—–
Fast shutter speed:

Just to contrast these photos with slow shutter speeds, here is an “action shot” frozen because of the fast shutter speed

ISO 100, f/9.0, shutter speed: 1/320 Please ignore the harsh lighting :p I only posted to show a photo taken with a fast shutter speed 🙂 she is mid-jump and there is no motion blur! At a low shutter speed there would be a ton of motion blur.

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Senior Photographer Website
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Telephoto Distortion and Perspective and How It Affects Your Images

Guest blog post from Christopher Fisher – my husband and occasional second shooter for large groups and weddings :).

Telephoto Distortion and zooming with your feet

Photographers often talk about “zooming with their feet”. If they are using a fixed lens or their telephoto lens and it cannot capture the size of subject they desire, they just move [with their feet] closer or further away from their subject.  To the new photographer, they may not realize that zooming with their feet might compromise the composition of their photo.  While the subject might be brought to size, the background will look significantly different.

This difference is due to an effect called telephoto distortion. A human eye (or a camera) is a small fixed point to which an image is projected. This can be visualized in the below diagram:

While a tree may be several times the size of a person, the image of a tree is focused into a single point:  the human eye or camera lens. If the person walks closer to the tree, the subject appears larger. If the human being walks away from the tree, the subject appears smaller.

Look at the different figures. In the first figure, only a small section of the tree is visible. In the second figure, the entire height of the tree and more can be seen. Let’s see what each figure will see from the eye’s perspective.

Now let’s add a second subject:

-Post by Christopher Fisher

-Christine Ann Photography
Duluth MN Photographer Website
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Why Your Photos Have An Orange, Red, Blue, or Purple Tint – White Balance and How to Set It (With Images)

Have you ever taken a photo that turned out extremely orange, red, or blue?  It seems inevitable, especially when you’re indoors.. however there is a very simple way to fix/prevent this!  You have fallen victim to auto white balance.  On auto white balance your camera is trying to guess your lighting situation.. sometimes it does a good job and sometimes it does not.  If you simply tell your camera what your lighting situation is instead of it guessing you can get much more accurate colors.
The times I most notice incorrect white balance is when I’m indoors and my photos turn out red/orange.  I remember a few years ago I took some Christmas photos and the coloring seemed off on all of them.. and I had no idea why or how to fix it (most of them were turned to black and white).  Put simply, the white balance is off.

All I need to do to fix this is go into my camera and tell it my white balance is “tungsten” or “fluorescent” (depending on what type of lighting is in the room).
This is the easiest way to try to get it right in camera however there are a few other options:

1.  Use a grey card.  You take a photo with the grey card in the photo, then take the rest without it and later, in your editing software, you can use the “white balance dropper” tool to select the grey card and tell your program what your white balance truly was and it adjusts the photo based on that.
2.  Adjust it in an editing program.  Most editing programs have ability to “warm” the image or “cool” it down and these sliders help a lot to fix WB.
In the following image, the first one is straight out of the camera, unedited (VERY blue) and the second edit is my edit adjustment in Lightroom, adjusted only with the “WB slider”.. I moved the WB from “as shot” to “auto” (LR tries to predict what the auto wb should be) and then I slightly tweaked the slider from there.  Super easy.

3.  Adjust WB in camera based on the presets such as “daylight” “cloudy” tungsten” “shade” etc.

After seeing how blue the first shot came out I changed the WB to (I believe?) tungsten and this is how it affected the image.. this image is unedited.

4.  Custom set your WB by telling your camera which temperature to shoot at.  The range on my camera is from 2500 (cool) to 10000 (very warm) .. I can set it at any increment of 100 between those 2 numbers.

Most photographers use the presets (cloudy/flash/etc) or set the temperature manually and then tweak it by hand during editing if necessary.

White Balance presets (ie:  daylight, cloudy, shade, flash etc):

Auto White Balance:

Auto White Balance ^.

Daylight:

^ Daylight.

Tungsten:

^ Tungsten.

Fluorescent:

^ Fluorescent.

As you can see,  the presets are pretty useful and accurate.. they are also very simple and make a big difference in the image.

If you select “color temp” you can manually enter what temperature you want the image to be taken at.  The range on my camera is 2500-10000 and it is measured in Kelvin.

2500 Kelvin – very “cool”:

^  2500 Kelvin.

3500 Kelvin:

^3500 Kelvin.

4500 Kelvin:

^4500 Kelvin.

9500 Kelvin:

^9500 Kelvin.

So as you can see there are many options when choosing how to set your white balance.  I feel that auto white balance often does a pretty good job but I usually use a preset (daylight, shade, flash, tungsten etc) and tweak during editing.. but everyone needs to try out different options and find for themselves what works the best for them and their style.

Hope this helps everyone in understanding what white balance is and how to accommodate it in your images to reflect the look you want!

Here is an excellent chart to summarize everything and make it concrete:

–Christine Ann
Duluth MN Photographer
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Instantly Improve Your Editing With Layer Masks

There are about 5 million different things you can do to edit a photo in Photoshop.  Some of the things you learn will be totally pointless and some will be invaluable.  I am going to brush up on one of the most valuable editing techniques (in my opinion):  how to add a layer mask to your layers and why they are important.  This will benefit you in so many ways!  And it is SO EASY! Learning new things in Photoshop is always intimidating but this is literally something you can do in a couple clicks.  (To summarize:  you layer 2 photos on top of each other, click the layer mask button, select a black or white paintbrush to hide/reveal the bottom image and that’s it!). Directions for adding a layer mask: Open up a photo in Photoshop.  Pick another photo to layer on top of it (you can just copy and paste it on top).  Click on the top layer so it is highlighted and then click the square with a circle inside it at the bottom of the layer palette (The layer palette is where you see all your layers towards the right side of Photoshop).  The icon I am referencing, if you hover your mouse over the top of it it will say “add layer mask”.  It looks like this: Click on the white box that appears next to your top layer. That’s it! You are done, you’ve applied a layer mask! Now how do you use it?  Also very easy.  Select the paintbrush icon and make the color that it paints white.  (Image below shows where to select the paintbrush and where to change the color of it at). Paint wherever you’d like to reveal the image below and you will reveal the image beneath it!  If you make a mistake simply change the “white” color of the brush to black and it brings back the original image. ^ Example Photos: Color photo on bottom, black and white photo on top, layer mask selected (you select it by just clicking on it), select the paintbrush and make it black and just start painting.. it will reveal the photo beneath it.  If you make a mistake and want to bring the black and white image back, simply turn it white, like in the second photo.  :). Boom.  Done :). This method is perfect for head swaps (place the new face underneath the one you want to change and reveal the photo below it).  It is also perfect for doing selective coloring (adding color to black and white images).  You can change the background of your photo by adding a nice background behind the image and masking the original background off.  You can edit things out like power lines by moving the bottom image a few centimeters to the right and masking  them out.  There are so many possibilities! TIPS: 1.  You can change the opacity of your brush.. so if you only want to kind of reveal the background but not entirely, just set the opacity of your brush 50% (vs 100% and it will only bring 50% of the background in and leave 50% of the original intact.  You can also build on it by changing it to 10% and doing another round, bringing it to 60% revealed).  It looks much  more natural if you build up in that way vs just doing it at 100%! 2.  If you right click on the “background” (the bottom) layer and select “layer from background” you “unlock” the layer and can now move it around.  You need to be sure to highlight (click on) this layer when you want to apply changes to it (such as moving it.  You can move it using the move tool).. and then when you want to apply the layer mask with the white and black brush, be sure to click the white box next to the top photo :).  Any changes you make will occur on whatever is highlighted in the layer’s palette. 3.  There is a learning curve to using layer masks in a realistic way.. such as when you get to the edges you need to make the brush smaller and that it really  helps to lower the opacity of the brush to blend it better.  But after a few rounds of practicing you’ll start learning how to do it better and better. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! -Christine Ann [website] Duluth Photographer Christine Ann Photography Facebook Maternity, newborn, senior, wedding, family, children, portrait photography.

1 Tip Which Will Improve Your Color Pop/Selective Color Images

I frequent many photography forums and one topic that comes up often is “color selection” or “color pop” edits.  This is when you have a black and white images and you bring back color on just a couple select spots.  These images are not often well received by lot of pros.  I am amongst this group 🙂 but they do have their place :).
I think the worst part about color selection is just how harsh the color is in the image.  It doesn’t flow well.  This is when I created my own way of doing color selection photos, where you just bring back about half of the color instead of all the color.  It makes a huge difference!  And I definitely much prefer the subtle color to the sharp, vivid color.

How do you accomplish this?  If you are layering a color image over a black and white image and erasing, then erase away at around 30-40% opacity.
If you are using a layer mask, set your paintbrush to around 30-40% opacity.  tada!  Very simple indeed.  This will make a huge difference in how the photo looks after you edit it.

One other tip I have is to pick just one focal point to selective color..a lot of people go a little crazy with their brush and bring back half the image so it’s half color and half black and white.  This looks a bit odd and unnatural and also there is no real concept behind it.  Usually you want to color pop something with meaning or symbolism or a concept (not always but like usually just an item vs a shirt).  In the sample image I am posting here I decided to have 2 color pops so they would balance each other out more but notice the items I picked were small so it doesn’t overwhelm the photo.  I believe my opacity for this image was around 30%.. to do it again I  might bump it up a bit higher, but you get the idea.

This is the image at 100% opacity.. this is the full color image brought back to the black and white image, and this is what most photographers who do color pop do:

^ Color brought back at full strength.

And the photo shown below is the same image with the color brought back around 30% opacity.  It might even be more like 20%. It is a little bit dull but it looks so much less distracting and more natural.. I much prefer it to the full color photo.

^Color brought back around 20-30% strength.

For one more example I’ll show one brought back around 50% opacity.

^Color brought back around 50% strength. This is my favorite edit of the three (I might tone it down a notch but overall the color isn’t too overbearing and “sharp” and it blends much better than at full strength – in my opinion anyway!).

As with all things in photography, which is better is subjective.  Surely there are people who prefer the first to the second.  If you do like the first you could even play around with bringing back the color around 70%-80% so it’s just not so vivid and contrasting.  While I’m not a huge fan of color pop photos, I do find myself much more receptive to them when done in a more subtle manner, just thought/style I would share with everyone :).

-Christine Ann
Duluth Minnesota Photographer
Website
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Unedited Photos from T2i + 50mm Lens.

This blog is specifically dedicated to showing images straight from the T2i + 50mm lens.  This is the combo I used for a few years before upgrading to the Mark II 5D + 85mm 1.2L lens.  I got the upgrade about 2 years ago (a little less..) and have barely touched my T2i since (though I do still use the 50mm sometimes).  I picked up my T2i for the first time in a couple years and was surprised by how much better of photos I could get off it than I was ever able to before.  I could not have intentionally gotten as clear and nice of photos (though I did get some lucky ones!) when I used this combo about 2 years ago.  The equipment didn’t change, but I have :).  And I speculate if I pick it up in 2 more years they’ll be even better.  This isn’t to say you can’t get “nicer” photos on nicer equipment, but I recently compared photos from the Mark II 5d + 85mm 1.2L lens to photos on the Mark II 5D + 50mm 1.8 lens to photos on the T2i + 50mm 1.8 lens (IE:  $3,000 camera + $2,000 lens to $3,000 camera + $100 lens to $700 camera + $100 lens) and the results were not all that different from one another.  I was incredibly surprised!  You can see the image comparisons here:  https://christineannphotos.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/photos-taken-with-canon-rebel-t2i-50mm-1-8-lens/ keeping in mind they are unedited and you need to click them to see the full detail of each photo.
The point in all this is that if your photos are out of focus or not sharp it is almost definitely you and not your equipment.  I read a post from someone who has sent back the same 50mm 1.8 lens used in this blog post 2 times, got it a third time and was wondering if she should send it back again or get a different lens all together.  I can assure everyone it was not the lens any of those 3 times, it’s a lack of understanding how to use your camera and how/where to pose people and why.   You can give an artist crappy supplies and they can make something beautiful; you can give someone who is not an artist high end supplies and they will not be able to do much with it.  Focus your energy on practicing, improving, and learning how to use the equipment you have and how to edit.  My one piece of advice regarding equipment is that the kit lens is junk and if you only own a kit lens, it’s time to at least upgrade to the 50mm 1.8.. it is around $100 and you will see a quality improvement!  That is one thing my test shots did show.. a noticeable difference in quality regarding the kit lens to 50mm lens.  Anyway these are some images I have gotten off the T2i in the last couple months (most being from the last few days specifically for some blogs I want to do on starter equipment) they are unedited and I could further improve them by doing some editing 🙂 but then you wouldn’t know what is due to the equipment and what is due to the editing so I will leave them alone.

Unedited images from the T2i + 50mm lens  *CLICK EACH IMAGE FOR FULL DETAIL*:

*Click images for full detail.. the thumbnails look fuzzier than they are*.

*Click images for full detail*

*Click images for full detail*

*Click images for full detail*.

*Click images for full detail.. the thumbnails look fuzzy*.

*Click images for full detail*.

*Click images for full detail*.

*Click images for full detail*.

*Click images for full detail*.

-Christine Ann
Christine Ann Photography Web Site
Christine Ann Photography Facebook

Image Comparisons T2i VS Mark II; 85mm 1.2 vs 50mm 1.8 vs Kit Lens

A hot topic in the photography world is does better equipment = better photos? I started on the Canon Rebel XSI + kit lens (18-55mm), acquired a similar-quality telephoto  lens (55-250mm), acquired the 50mm 1.8, upgraded cameras to the T2i, …

Step-By-Step Guide For Starting A Photography Business

I got my first DSLR almost 4 years ago.  I started out taking a couple hundred photos a month for awhile, then thousands a month towards the end!  My husband along the way encouraged me to start a business but I wasn’t comfortable doing so.. I wanted my images to reflect a certain quality to them before launching as a business and it’s very intimidating to branch out like that!  So finally (after 5 years..) I did get to that point where I felt ready to become a business (if you are unsure about if you are ready or not take a look at my article “When To Become A Professional Photographer” for some extra insights) I just had no idea where to start or what to do next.  This is a step-by-step guide for what I did, based on my state laws (ALL state laws are different for the legalities aspect of it).  You should consult with a lawyer to be sure you are doing everything legally necessary for you and within your state.  There may also be additional things you would choose – or need – to do but this is just what I did, in its respective order!

1.  Decided on a business name.  I did not think this would be as complicated as it was!  Finally I read a blog post that basically said “just use your own name for your business – you are your brand – stop overthinking it!” and decided to roll with it :).
2.  Registered my business name.  Every state has different laws on this.  Some do not require registration if your last name is in the business, some do; be sure to check your state laws to see if you need to register your name before using the name.  Someone else may be legally registered with your name and you may lose all your work (& be in legal trouble!) if you’ve been creating web sites & business cards under their name.  I used my first and middle name and my state required me to legally register my name.
3.  Decide what type of business you want to be.  Are you a sole-proprietor, partnership, LLC, corporation?  You need to figure it out and register as such.  I decided to become an LLC to keep my business life separate from my personal life.  It cost around $130 and is a one time fee,  however I have to renew my registration every year.
4.  Filed for a tax ID number with the federal government.  I was told that I could use my social security number but they recommend having a federal tax ID number so that you don’t need to give your number out.  A lot of places will ask you for this number (your business bank account, paypal, your web site, anyone who goes into business with you etc).
5.  Filed for a sales tax ID.  You only need one if you are selling things, such as prints, that you would charge a sales tax on.  In my state, even if you sell ONE item one time, you need to pay taxes on it.
6.  Filed for a state tax ID.. so the state can get their taxes from me.
7.  Tried out a few different web sites to decide which web site I wanted to commit to.  Most sites have a free trial so I built multiple web sites before committing.  My favorite site was photodeck.com it was truly a beautiful site.  However for all of the features I wanted, it would have cost $30 a month and for a starting out business, it was too much.  The site that had all the features I wanted for $120 a year ($10/month) is zenfolio.  It is right-click disabled, has a built-in blog, you can order prints from the site (there is an option for them to fulfill with their own lab or you can fulfill with your own lab), password-protected galleries for clients to view their sessions on, ability to download (for free or for a cost – whatever you want to do!) files from your site if you enable it for your customer, custom domain, slideshow.  They have a free site you can start with but you don’t have access to all of these features with the free account.  If you choose to use zenfolio, you can use a referral code from me NKY-FXQ-YCP which saves us both 10%!
8.  Got a custom domain name on godaddy.com.  This removed “zenfolio” from my website and makes it look more professional.
9.  Went through all my photos –  countless files! and built a folder filled with portfolio photos so that I had a way to show my work.
10.  Decided a pricing structure.  This was WAY WAY harder than I thought it would be!  I tweaked it several times after creating it and am still working to find the “right” number!
11.  Built my web site and linked it with my custom domain.
12.  Started multiple business accounts:  a new email address for business, a flickr account, a facebook account. linkd in, tumblr, google account, paypal, a blog (the one on my site plus this one).
13.  Started a mailing list.  Read a lot of advice to do this from the start 🙂 to retain people interested in your business and keep them interested.
14.  Got a google voice number to link with my business so I can keep business separate from personal.
15.  Ordered business cards.
16.  Ordered test prints from multiple printing labs to find my favorite lab to do business with.
17.  Started a banking account for my business.
18.  Created a watermark and logo.  (I’m currently redoing them with a graphic designer as I don’t feel like mine are all that grand but they did the job for starting out!).  Remember with photography you have to build a brand.  Part of your “brand” is your watermark/logo.
19.  Get forms that your client will sign to give permission to use their images for marketing and relieve you of responsibility from the session if they get injured or whatever.  Also will need property release forms if you shoot on private property, and print release forms if you plan to give them permission to print your images (do not confuse this for copyright release!).
20.  Began marketing.  (Also much harder than I anticipated). You are a business now, yay! But now you have to figure out how to get people to know about you! I have read it takes on average, about 2 years – and even as much as 5 years – to gain a clientele.. so be creative and patient.

I would also add to the list find a lawyer to consult with and an accountant/bookkeeper to help with taxes and numbers.  I have family that is helping out with each of these jobs for me :).

I do have more social media accounts to create – quite a few more – but this got everything in motion.  Honestly there are endlessly more things you could do and things I have done since starting up but this is just what got me started :).
Now I just have to keep up with filing taxes multiple times a year and keeping everything updated with the government!
Starting a business has been way – way – more work than I anticipated but it feels really good to be doing something that I love to do and once you get started you  just figure it out as you go and it gets figured out!

-Christine Ann
Duluth Photographer
www.facebook.com/christineannphotos