But we've also gone through a fair amount of stress at times. While most have been drama free, a handful make up for them ... and then some.  We'll spare the details here. But yikes. 

One of the biggest issues we deal with on a regular basis, even with some of our favorite models, is their failing to properly credit photos we've taken of them when they repost them to their Facebook page or other social media. For a great blog post on how serious this can be for a photographer, you should definitely read: "What Happens When a Supermodel Violates Your Copyright" by Rachel Scroggins. She gives an example of how a photo she'd taken of a supermodel she works with was posted to the model's Instagram, uncredited, and quickly went viral. The photographer has now had to deal with multiple magazines reprinting the photo without permission (or payment) etc. and having to prove to them that it really was her photo that they published. 

So here are some quick guidelines for working with us (and just about any other photographer on the planet) when it comes to sharing our work.

1. Determine whether or not the work can be shared. Generally speaking, if you are shooting TFP then you will be getting some pics from the shoot and it is OK to share them in some fashion. We make it possible for you to download the images from our site (which has a license agreement as part of the download process).  But you should ALWAYS discuss usage explicitly with any photographer you shoot with. What can you do with the photos and what can the photographer do? If you never discuss it, you can't assume that it is OK to share at will. And it definitely never gives you the right to sell the photos or have them published without involving the photographer in the transaction.

2. If you share photos, credit the photographer. This rule has two parts. First, always state, at the time you post the photo, in the description of the photo, who shot it and who holds the copyright on the photo. Second, don't cut off watermarks. If the photographer went to the trouble of putting a watermark on the photo, leave it there. It is not your decision whether to remove it.  If you want to use the image for a Facebook profile pic and need it cropped differently, contact the photographer, tell them how you want to use it and see if they can give you a copy cropped to the right dimensions with their watermark intact. They will love you for it. 

3. Link the photo to the photographer wherever possible. There are multiple benefits to you and to the photographer from providing good links on the photos you post. Chances are that if you post a link to the photographer, the photographer is more likely to post links to you. That improves site traffic to both of your pages, and helps you get found on search queries online. It also means that you stand a better chance of getting published. If someone who wants to use the image in their publication sees the image AND knows how to contact the photographer for permission, they are more likely to publish you. 

4. Share high quality images. Never do screen captures of the photos posted on the photographer's website or in a client gallery. Why would you want a low quality version of your image posted anywhere when you can get a high quality version formatted specifically for posting on social media? We are always shocked and appalled when we discover screen captures of our photos posted on our models' Facebook pages (often with borders around the image where they didn't crop their screen capture very well). 

Unfortunately, we have worked with many models over the years who we enjoyed shooting with, who we got fantastic images with, and who we would otherwise have loved to shoot with again ... but who failed to follow basic etiquette by violating one or more of the guidelines above when they posted photos from the shoot. On numerous occasions we've had to contact them to discuss the matter, which we never like to do. We also notice how models treat the other photographers they work with and avoid working with models who we can see don't respect these standards. 

On the other hand, models who credit our photos, post links, help us by only posting quality copies of our images, etc., are much more likely to get additional shoots from us and referrals to our other photographer friends. 

MercediesMercedies | www.adagio-images.com | www.facebook.com/adagioimages #modeling #gorgeous

Based on our experience over the years, we've compiled the following five rules we stick to for modeling shoots.

1. I don't shoot alone with models.  This is for everyone's safety.  We will always have someone else at the shoot.  This may be a photo assistant, makeup artist, stylist, chaperone, etc.  Often my photo assistant will be my wife. For models who are under 18, we will only shoot with you if we have met your parents, have a signed model release from them, and they are with you at the shoot or have sent an escort/chaperone who is an adult (over 18) that they have approved of in advance.

2. I don't shoot anything I can't show to my wife or my mother.

3. Based on rule #1 I am asked about chaperones a lot.  Generally speaking, chaperones are fine.  However chaperones in general and boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses in particular need to understand that their role at the shoot is to either work as an assistant on the set or stay out of the way.  If we feel that your chaperone is throwing off the chemistry on the set we may ask them to step aside.

4. Everyone needs to get something out of the shoot.  When we are deciding what to shoot, it needs to be a concept that everyone will benefit from.  If not, then someone is being taken advantage of and that isn't fair and I don't want to be on either side of that equation.

5. Everyone has to have fun.

A couple philosophies in addition to the rules: 

• Safety First: We want you to be safe and feel safe when you are working with us. The rules above were designed to help keep us both safe. We can recommend a number of other tips for keeping modeling safe. Just ask. 
• Give Credit where Credit is Due: for purposes of networking, getting found, driving site traffic, and helping everyone get something out of the shoot, we recommend that everyone share and promote the shoots we do together and credit each other. See another blog post with more details on this here.

If you feel the rules and philosophies above are fair, then please apply to work with me. Now taking applications, access yours by clicking here.

Check out our modeling page at: http://www.adagio-images.com/modeling for more information.
 

So let's take a moment to walk through how you are going to be able to view and access photos from the shoot.

Depending on the nature of our project, we may have created a public and/or a private photo gallery for sharing or viewing images. 

The client gallery will usually require you to login by providing your name and email address and then a password. The password may be for a parent gallery/group (and apply to one or more sub galleries) or each individual shoot may have its own password (especially if it was a group project).  The private gallery allows you to:

• Download images formatted for Facebook (already formatted to the right resolution to post on Facebook).
• Purchase photographic prints or products from our lab and their vendors.  This is where you will go to order a print for your portfolio book, print an image to hang on your wall, or give to your mom, etc. 
• Communicate with us about suggested crops, touch-ups we may have missed, etc.
• Mark images as favorites and share those lists with us.

The Public Gallery is where you will go to share the photos.  Our site has tools built in to help make sharing articles about the photos easier without losing the ability to protect your images from being illegally copied or printed.  We have disabled the print ordering on the public galleries because we didn't want random strangers purchasing your photos and printing them (weird / creepy), and because when it comes time to print, you will want to print only the best quality images on the best paper from the best labs anywhere (not poor quality prints on bad quality paper from the local drug store).

Some of the features we have available on our public galleries to help you share the images include:

• You can Like (Facebook), g+1, or Tweet the entire gallery
• You can Like (Facebook), g+1, Pin (Pinterest), or Tweet each individual image in the gallery (make sure you do this with the images from the public gallery and not the private client gallery). There are buttons below the image you can use. 
• There is also a "share" button in the top right corner of the page that gives you the same share features along with others including sharing a slideshow and sharing the embed code. More below on these.
• If you copy the URL for the gallery page and paste it into Facebook, it will also share the page.

These are just a few of the features we have made available to you on our website through the Public and Private galleries in order enhance your experience working with us.  We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about any of these or other features.  Thank you again for choosing Adágio Images.

Facebook is the #1 driver in improving SEO (search engine optimization) rankings.  The goal is to get found on the first page of Google for whatever your target search term is.  Having a good Facebook presence with lots of back links from FB to your website REALLY helps with this.

So we LOVE to have our clients, models, friends and others like and share the images from our public galleries on Facebook. The following are the tools that we provide on our website to help our clients, models, friends, and family share our work by way of Facebook.

Please note that we have experience a weird issue from time to time with how Facebook works with the links from our website.   For some reason, sometimes the first time the link is shared on Facebook the image doesn't come up in the post.  The link is there and will take you to the page, but no image comes up.  The workaround for this is to refresh your Facebook window and paste it again.  Weird, huh?  Please report any other issues you may encounter. 

• The easiest way to share one of our pics on Facebook is simply to login to your Facebook account, then go to the gallery on our website and click on "like", then share on your Facebook page.  It will post this as an article to your Facebook profile. 

• You may also use the share button in the top right corner of the gallery.

• You may also copy the URL for the gallery page and paste it into Facebook. If you do that, make sure you have gone from the gallery thumbnail page for image and selected the image you want to share from there.  If you click on the first image and then scroll through the images by clicking left and right sometimes the URL doesn't change and so when you copy and paste it pastes the URL for the first image you looked at instead of the image you were on when you copied the URL.

• We post many of these articles using the above methods to our own Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/adagioimages (make sure you go there and Like the page if you haven't do so already!).  If you follow that page, you can share the articles we post there with your friends and family on your personal pages (and let them find both our Facebook Page and the link to our website). 

• Finally, many of our clients have the option to login to their private gallery on our website, download a Facebook image, then upload it to their personal Facebook gallery.  If you choose to do this, please make sure that you have CLEARLY posted the (c) Bryan Pocock, Adagio Images LLC in your post as well as the other information in the caption and/or a link back to our site. These back links and credits are why we make the free Facebook downloads available as part of our service. 

For more on this topic, visit our post on Modeling SEO.

One of the goals of shooting together is to get noticed.  One of the things that we ALL can get out of our shoot is some publicity and the best publicity is to share the images in each others' circles. We want to share the images so people can find you.  And we want you to share the images with people you know so they can find us.  Remember that one of our rules for modeling shoots is that everyone gets something out of the shoot.  This article is about how best to go about this process.

So what is SEO?

The term SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization.  This means getting found by search engines (like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, ... and others).  Getting found by search engines is part science, part art.  It comes from using the right keywords, posting in the right places, and having the right back links.  The more links that a search engine finds pointing back to a particular page, the more legitimate and relevant it considers the page to be ... and therefore the higher the ranking.  The more legitimate the back link, the higher the ranking.  The more unique the keywords, the more likely the page is to show up in a search.

The goal in SEO is to get onto the first page of searches for the desired keyword. 

What does this mean for  me?

When one member of our team wins, we all win.  The more we can help drive traffic to each other, the more likely search engines will pick up on this and continue the trend.  The secret is in the back links.  If every time we post a picture, article, or post, we link it back to one or more places on each others' pages we create built in legitimacy for the post.

Here's an example of how we provide back links in our galleries:

(See the original gallery image at here.)

In this post we have posted a link to the parent directory for the image (our Steampunk Project Gallery), a link to our Facebook Page, and a link to the Facebook page of both of the models pictured in the image (Kyrie Brown and Jessica Ayn Lee).  (And if you noticed, we just did it again here). We have then shared the image as an article on our personal Facebook page, complete with all of these links.  And we then shared that link on our business Facebook page ... and then from the business Facebook page, shared it on the personal Facebook page of both of the models and the makeup artist.

Ideally, they would share this article on their own Facebook Pages, therefore share the links back to the original post and to each other. 

From there, we then pinned the image to our Steampunk board on Pinterest.  And in the description for the pin on Pinterest, we copied and pasted the entire caption shown here. So now whenever that pin is shared, the links are passed as well. 

We then shared this post on Google + by clicking on the +1 button under the image ... and tweeted the link on our twitter account.

General Tips for Sharing Images and Articles from our Site:

• We are always flattered when you tag us personally in your post.  But that doesn't drive anyone to our website.  At most, it drives people to our personal FB page - where we don't tend to share much outside our friends and where we don't tend to accept friend requests from strangers.  What we'd prefer is that they visit our website or the Adagio Images FB page.  So please reference Adágio Images, its website and FB page as much as possible whenever you post anything.
• We want to help you get found.  So if you have a link that we should include on the links, please let us know ... preferably before we start processing photos so we can embed your link in the photo's caption.
• Please include the copyright information on every image you post.  I can only protect from copyright infringement that which has been adequately marked.  It will almost always be (c) Bryan Pocock, Adagio Images LLC
• As shown above, the images have captions with credits for those people involved with the shoot as well as URL links to different websites associated with the image.  The caption often includes a title for the image, possibly a name of the shoot, credits with the name of the model, stylist, MUA, etc., links to the website and our Facebook page, and hashtags to help the image get found more easily when it is shared on other sites.  If a member of the team has a website, URL, Facebook page, etc. we may include a link to it as well.  Please include this information whenever you share an image so that we can give credit and create better back links.  We also have some hidden keywords associated with each image. 

We recently had the opportunity to take photos of a Sr. Prom group from Pineview High School.  It couldn't help but bring back some interesting memories from our own prom experiences MANY years ago.

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I can't help but remember my first Junior Prom shortly after turning 16.  I asked my date to the dance by freezing my name in a giant block of ice.  30 minutes after I left, a guy she really liked showed up in a bunny suit to ask her out.  She decided to go with me because I asked her first (and apparently that was the right thing to do) ... only she really didn't want to be there and spent most of the night avoiding me.  The lesson I learned from this is that if you are going to the dance with someone just because it's the right thing to do ... then do the right thing and actually be engaged during the evening.

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In contrast, I once asked a girl to Homecoming.  She was a great friend and was cute as could be.  I was pretty sweet on her.  And she went with me.  And we had a great time. It wasn't until months later, when she and this other fellow were voted "most likely to get married" that I found out that she had even been seeing someone else. I didn't even know they were dating. In fact they were dating seriously when she went with me to Homecoming.  Apparently I was the last to know.  They ended up getting married a couple years later.  But in contrast to my first Junior Prom date, she never let on that she didn't want to be there.  What a classy young lady.

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But enough about me and my prom memories.  Let's talk about dresses and cars.  One of the important aspects of going to prom for the young ladies is getting the perfect dress.  The girls from our group were no exception.  Each dress prettier than the next. 

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For the guys, it is often about making all the plans and getting the perfect car (or perfecting the car as best as possible).  What says more perfect than a vintage truck that you and your dad restored to pristine condition (and then waxed to perfection)?

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So what is it that is so magical about prom?  Is it the dress? The car? The tux? The corsage?  The party? Whatever it is, let's hope that it keeps on being an important part of our culture for many years to come ...

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... and that we get to keep being involved in taking pictures to record these awesome events. 

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Since then I've had the joy of working several more times with Shanna including her engagement photos, bridals, and wedding.

Unfortunately, after the wedding she moved away to Colorado and we haven't been able to work together since.  So imagine my pleasure when she contacted me because she was visiting and wanted to do another shoot.

The shoot concept was quite different from usual - take an old chair and place it in the lake ... and pose around it and on it. 

So we headed off bright and early on a Saturday morning to create our new project.  My wife, Moira, came along to assist as usual.  She is great to have along ... really easy tempered and helpful.  Shanna brought a couple of sisters as well.  As we were scouting a location at the lake to shoot, we found a spot with submerged trees and bushes ... perfect!

120421_SB_B049s 120421_SB_E152 120421_SB_A050 120421_SB_A003 120421_SB_E058 It is always fun when you get some creative people together.  We started with a general idea and then came up with something better than either had initially imagined. 

Thanks Shanna!  You are amazing.