Congratulations to all entries! Reviewing each and every entry and selecting the Top Ten Finalist was a very very difficult process and decision.

Therefore, in working with Smugmug, we have decided to do the following:

- All Top Ten Finalists will receive a free 1-year Pro Account.

- ALL ENTRIES will receive a 25% off their 1-year Pro Account. Therefore, all entries win something! Offer expires November 30, 2009. If you already have a smugmug account, you will receive $20 in referral credits which can be used upon your next renewal process.

- Top Ten Finalists and ALL ENTRIES who wish to have their Smugmug site customized by jR Customization will receive $50 off their final customization price. Offer expires April 1st, 2010.

Next steps :

1. Click here and fill out the form to receive your coupon codes. Your coupon codes will be e-mailed to you
with further instructions upon validation.

2. Please take a moment to vote for the finalists below. The winner will have their Pro Site customized.

Thank you to MCP Actions and Markham from Smugmug for supporting this wacky idea of mine!

Good luck to the Top Ten Finalists.

- jerry (jR)
jR Customization

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1. Kim Clark

A few weeks ago I was in Russia teaching an impromptu photo class to university students. I was there to help our film guy gather stories from the field. We work for an organization called OneHope which reaches out to children worldwide. One of the students asked for my site and all I could do is direct them to Flickr. I have quite a collection of photos over the past few years but have not been able to use them to the advantage of my needs and the children I work with.

I travel a lot taking photos of kids on assignment for OneHope. This past year I worked in South Africa, Honduras, Haiti and Russia. I am self-funded and considered a missionary. I need a website to display my photos and to fund my equipment needs which my budget does not cover. I also want to raise money to fund photo projects for children.

Thank you for consideration,

~Kim Clark
KimArt4children

2. Rachel Perry

My heart longs for creativity and learning and teaching. As I am nearing the end of my college career I want to find a way to merge my love for photography and the ingenuity that goes into it while serving others and helping. I want to make it so that a portion of my profits goes to charity. Each month I plan on highlighting a Non-Profit so I raise awareness. I feel that using my craft, which attracts attention, to show what is happening in our neighborhoods, our cities, and our world, could better those around me and myself.

I would love the help of fusing this into a cohesive and thoughtful website that would make it much more appealing so I can reach more people. Thank you for doing this giveaway and good luck everyone!

3. Jen Webster (Jen Webster Photography)

What a great giveaway! I am just starting out and need to get a website set up. I am the only photographer for a local non-profit and make zero money on those images since I put them on Shutterfly I would like to be able to offer them to everyone in a central location that is not down-loadable and recoup some cost for my time.
Jen Webster
Jen Webster Photography
No current website, but I do own the domain.

4. Kelly Manley

My name is Kelly Manley. I am half blind, deaf and 30 years old. The photography have always been my passion ever since I was 5 years old. Being a photographer gives me a chance to have a ìnormalî eyesight. Many people don’t always understand or see what I mean in the viewfinder. Some of them are scared to give me a chance to prove them wrong that I can do what any of other photographers with 20/20 eyesight do. I fear that my website are not as good as any of the professional/freelance photographers out there even I tried my best setting it up. All I know is that the pictures I took made people smile, feel a little emotional, remind them of a memory, or anything that made them feel. I want to be able to have a website that is professional and affect the clients the same way I shoot my pictures. I am a freelance photographer and I am proud at what I do and I think i deserve this kind of help.

5. Erica

What a fun question and what a difficult one to answer when I think of all the other photographers who could use this as much as I can.

I have been taking pictures since my mother handed me her 35 mm camera and instructed me to take her photo when I was 8 years-old. Every significant moment (not necessarily event) I have recorded whether it was beautiful or heart breaking. That, for me, is what photography is. Capturing all those moments because they tell a story.

I am a mother to a beautiful 17 month-old boy and am in the process of adopting a sibling for him. I am also the sole bread-winner in my house. During the day I work as an RN in the hospital which is often soul breaking work. In my free time I choose to capture the beauty around me. I love taking photos of families, children and volunteer my skills at events and for families experiencing loss. I would really like to have a nice site to increase business and referrals and to better advertise the wide range of services. Currently I am using a blog and it is not capable of all the things that I see on all the beautiful customize sites out there.

Thank you for your consideration and good luck making this difficult decision!

6. Jeanine Krupp

This would be so great. I would really appreciate the customization and getting some help in setting up a stellar website! I’m afraid to change things on my current blog and don’t know how to do much besides a simple post. My photo hosting site leaves A LOT to be desired. I’m watching every penny since our income is based on automotive in MI (nuff said) so I need all the help I can get. It’s hard to move forward without funding for essentials like a great website. Thanks for another great opportunity mcp and jR Customization.

7. K Stone Photography

You never know when your luck may change someone told me just the other day. I wonder, after reading this post, if November 21st will be that day?! I don’t even know if I believe in luck but maybe, maybe, someone will take a look at my website (which is a free blogspot account) and determine that this girl is in need of a website makeover and we are about to change her definition of luck!í I love photography ó I love the opportunities that come from my work ó but honestly, I would just love a bit of good luck! (What an incredible blessing that would be!)

K Stone Photography

8. Brittney Melton

I would so love (and need) and custom designed website My blog is LACKING! I just use blogspot and have tried to customize it to no avail. My husband and I just got married this past May bought a house this September and the Holidays are coming up. So, add all that up and there is just no room for making my blog look like I want it to look. I am also in the middle of renaming my business and creating a new logo. I’m just going to use my actual name as my brand – Brittney Melton – but I’m doing both graphic design and photography now and I would love to start off totally fresh with a brand new blogsite with this new name. I just had my first 2 weddings this year as a photographer, which was very exciting. I have been wanting and needing to get this going for the past couple of years it is TIME!

little side note ***I absolutely love the ìMoments Photography – http://www.louisianamoments.comî blogsite gorgeous and oh so cute!***

9. Annmarie

SMUG MUG where have you been all my life!!!!!!!!! I am in need of an extreme site makeover. HELP ME PLEASE!!!!! I am the busy mom of three little girls under the age of three (yes all in diapers still *sigh*) Who knew that in the midst of the chaos, I would be launching a photography business! It all started with the standard blogger template to keep the family posted, than the photography bug bit hard. (Taking pictures of kids and newborns will do it to you) I changed my template to one styled after a more traditional photography blog and increased the size of my photographs. But that is where its ended-as far as a blog/website. I have loads of people who lurk my blog and am getting calls and referrals, but don’t know how to get that WOW factor. I would LOVE YOU TO GIVE ME THE WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW factor!!!

10. Michelle

Hello! I feel I need a new web site for my photography business because I do not have one! I am soon to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Mass Communication emphasis in the Visual Arts. I look forward to starting my photography business pretty soon and would love to have a professional and stylish web site to help my display my photography! I love the designs SmugMug has created and would love to have them design a web site for me!
Thank you for this opportunity!

The word FREE is a very interesting one. I was thinking about this word the other day when someone asked me about FREE Photoshop Actions and FREE Web Sites. Free, by definition, means a lot of things.  For the purpose of this discussion, we will use the definition “without charge.”

Here are a few of my thoughts as it pertains to Photoshop products, training and photography.

• There are many photographers, action makers and designers who offer some FREE products.
• Free products or information can be used as a marketing tool.
• Free can be a great way for someone to try your service or products.  I offer some actions free so you can enjoy and see how my actions work. I know a company who offers webinars to teach you basic photography.  They have 1,000 people on at a time, and it is free.  But they want you to buy the videos.
• I often have businesses that want to give away free things (contests or downloads to all) on my blog. Their hope, that you visit their site.
• In the new era of blogging, for some “free” sites where everything is free, money comes from another source like advertisers.
• Free does not always mean good or great.  Some free stuff will be amazing, but some is just free.
• Free can be an ego thing.  I see this on certain forums where most members are very genuine in helping but others use offering free products or tutorials to boost their ego.
• Why are all my actions and trainings not free? This is my business.  I spend hundreds of hours on development and implementation of my actions and workshops. I provide a lot of information on my blog that is free and have free actions so that you can try my product.  While there is no obligation ever to spend a dime with me, I do have products and services for sale.
• I often see people on photography forums asking, where can I find a free action that does…  Nothing is wrong with wanting free over paid.  But what if your customer came to you and wanted a free photo session, free prints, and free canvas. How would your business do?
• Free has its place in photography too. People LOVE the word FREE. As a photographer you can offer a free 5×7 print with a session or offer free print credit of $50 or spend $1,000 get 4×6 proofs free, etc.
• Do you offer your photography completely free? What if someone wants FREE from you? Do you do free promotions?
• As a buyer of productions (like photoshop actions, textures, photography workshops, etc) how do you feel about free?  Do you only download free?  Do you have a mix of free items and paid?

Comment away – I am interested to here your perspective on FREE!

This is an opinion gathering post.  Please add your thoughts in the “comment section” of my blog.

I am not a blog stalker, but I often do end up perusing websites and blogs of well known photographers to the photographic community. People often ask me how they can get their work to look like “x” photographer.  Often I end up wondering why they want their work looking like a specific person’s.

I do not plan to “name names” here but so many break rules of photography.  I often see blown skies and even blowouts on clothing, sunspots on skin, oversaturated almost neon color, skin that has a blown red channel or lacks detail…  The biggest offender is isolated color casts, skin tone way off, or white clothing and whites of eyes has a clear color cast.

So the question I am posing to you today is when looking at the art of well known portrait and wedding photographers who have sharp shots, great background blur, solid composition, or are just famous – but who have some exposure, color issues or problems with other fundamentals – do you:

• Let it go – they are artists and once they learn the rules – they can break them.
• Art is subjective, even the technical stuff is a gray area.
• Get frustrated – these are the same issues I have and yet I would get criticized for producing the exact same image if I posted it on my website or a photography forum.
• Wonder how they do not see these imperfections in their own work.
• Wonder if they do not know how to expose properly or know how to avoid or correct color issues. Or is this their artistic intent.
• Think to myself, my work is better than theirs.  How come they are well known and I am not.
• Realize that there is more to photography than technical skills. Business skills, networking and personality often can propel a photographer further than their actual photographs.
• Think that technical skills are overrated – as a photographer I should be able to do what I want and so should they.
• Try not to look at their work – all that matters is what mine looks like.
• Other – the above where just some thoughts you may have.  Please elaborate on these or any others you have.