This week has been marked on my calendar for many months now.  Tomorrow my patient and understanding wife will take me to the jetport extra early where I’ll board a flight to Seattle.  I’ll be there a week, where I’ll stay with one of my oldest and best friends and get to see some others from our old home.  

It’s ironic that with the weather so nice in Portland that I’m going to a place where the weather is rainy.  But, I’m on vacation.  We’ll be heading to Leavenworth, Washington (a bizarre but cool little Bavarian-themed town tucked into some of the most beautiful scenery you’ll ever see) to do some hiking and camping.  There, in the rainshadow of the Cascades, it’ll be cold but dry.

The trip isn’t all fun; it’s business, too.  While there I’ll be attending a couple photography seminars and spending time with a great magazine photographer, Brian Smale.  I’ll also have an opportunity to work on a personal photography project–the subject of which will be part of a later post.

Visitors to www.fitzgeraldphoto.com may have noticed some big changes recently to our site.

After ten years of Flash-based sites, we’ve gone a new direction with site utilizing html, css and javascript. If you’re techie, that means something. If you’re not, it means this: our site loads faster, it’ll work on your iphone and it loses none of the whiz-bang visual effect that Flash provided.

There’s also lots of good work to view–much of it new. If you like what you see, please follow us on Twitter or Facebook by clicking on the links on the front page. You’ll be up on the latest Fitzgerald Photo news almost as soon as we are.

Time was, only realtors and lawyers needed headshots.

Now, more than ever, we all do.

With so many people on social media platforms like Facebook–even my 75-year-old mother–and with so many businesses using them as a way to get the word out about their products and services, a great headshot is more important than ever.

That’s not to say that the headshot has to be a standard head-and-shoulders affair in front of a banker blue background. The key to a striking social media profile photo (avatar) is to create something recognizable–striking–and memorable. It should fit your personal or professional brand. If you’re a banker, then your avatar may (or may not) be a bit more traditional. A social media avatar not only has to fit within certain physical constraints (usually square). It needs to match the style and further your branding goals.

When considering a new photo for your social media profile, ask some basic questions: What are some descriptive words that you want to come to viewers’ minds when they see your image? What platform will the photos be published on? Will the photo be seen by friends, clients, or both? Do you want something abstract or human-oriented?

Armed with this information, you can not only give your photographer a good idea of which direction to take…but it’ll be easier for you to choose the best image for you.

Thanks to a lot of work by my talented wife Beth (and thanks none at all to me), I’m happy to announce the launch of the Maine Studio B website. It shows our shooting studio space, which is perfect for portraits, groups, products, food photography…..and it so happens to be available for photographers who want to book some shooting space. The prices are reasonable and the schedule of availability is on the site. The studio itself is very plain–the way it should be–and isn’t branded. We have some lighting gear available. You will have to pony up for the pizza, however. In fact, I recommend it (usually on a daily basis).