Author Archive for Guest – Page 14

Top 10 Tips to Ensure Your Clients Feel Appreciated: by Georgia McCabe

ThanksIt is tempting in tough fiscal times to tighten up spending, use far fewer billable hours and cut to barebones services for our clients. This is a particularly easy solution in photography, where much of our profit is derived from a product that can be easily delivered wirelessly or by mail. At times we overlook the difference that we make by creating a personal connection between our studio and clients.

If you wish to maintain and even grow your customer base in difficult times, you must be better, more creative and more appreciative than other studios who may be scaling back. If you display effective methods of appreciation for clients, they will stand by you and refer you to their friends and associates. Read More→

Finding Your Feet: Getting Started in Photography: by Jacob Lucas

Many people ask me how I got started in photography as well as why I got started. The answer to both is that I’m a very visual person. It’s just my nature. The scale doesn’t matter either – it could be as simple as a bumblebee on a flower during a warm spring day, or a vibrant sunset panning across the ocean for hundreds of miles.

I picked up a camera because I was moved by these scenes and wanted to capture them as I saw them. During the time of my life when I moved from Australia to Seattle my surroundings changed so incredibly that something compelled me to photograph it all. Seattle is my muse and I love her for it – it’s changed my life for the better on many different levels. In short, the pacific north-west and Seattle is both how and why I became a photographer.

Seattle

This is the first post in a series of fortnightly posts on how to get started in photography which I’m calling “Finding Your Feet”. I intend the series to be impartial and gear-agnostic; hopefully what I have learned since I picked up a camera and recall throughout the series will help you too. It’s not going to sell you on a particular model of SLR camera or anything at all like that; it’s to help you find your own muse so that you too will want to take photographs and learn all about photography. I really think that is the key here… and it’s something completely intangible which a lot of people find troubling because how does one learn to want something? It doesn’t need to be a drastic life changing event… it can be something small like the first snow of winter, or a family vacation. Be cognisant of something that makes you step back in awe and say to yourself, I want to photograph this; and run with it. Read More→

Take My CD and Print? Photographer’s Excellent Response to Client: by Pro Studio Supply

Pro Studio Supply Logo

Here’s a great article our friends over at Pro Studio Supply wanted to share with the CurrentPhotographer.com community. Enjoy!

A tip for those of you planning weddings: To print every single wedding picture we have would only cost $104 at Walgreen’s. Skip the print package and just get the CD-Rom!  – Janet

Woe to photographers who have clients like Janet.  Photographer M. Bubba Blume of Insomniac Designs Photography offers an excellent response for educating the customer who questions why she should pay him to print photographs when she could get them printed from the CD at a low-cost processor.

‎Thanks Janet!

Photo Price ImageOf course, Walgreen’s uses the cheapest paper and processing they can get away with and the result is prints that won’t be around in 50 years.

You’ve spent the money on a professional photographer. You’ve trusted him with creating the memories and capturing the moments of one of the most important days in your lives. Why not trust that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to prints?

Sure, you won’t pay 19 cents a print. But you shouldn’t. I can spend 4 or 5 hours working on one image to make it as perfect as I can get it. Most images don’t get that kind of time, which is true, but they do get some time. They all get color corrected and balanced lighting. Go ahead and print that on some cheap paper and see how they turn out. Read More→

Silly Things Customers Have Said to Photographers: by Dominic Lee and Friends

  1. Can you take people out and touch them up? (from Paul Cooper)
  2. Pointing to the 20×16 in the price list for 500 Euro, customer asks “how much is it for one? I don’t need 20!”
  3. In the middle of a family session, the Dad steps forward and hands me his own digital camera, “take one with this I’d like to email it to all our relations”.
  4. Customer: How much is it?
    Photog: The sitting fee is 65 Euro
    Customer: Would it be any cheaper if we stand? (from Richie Gavin)
  5. I’d like a disc of high res proofs so I can zoom in on the faces, I promise I wont print them myself!
  6. Customer: I’ve come to collect my wedding album from 15 years ago
    Photog: Do you mind me asking why you left it so long?
    Customer: Do you have any idea what it’s like to find parking around here? (from Fran Gavin)
  7. I presume you will throw in a set of high-resolution files so I can make my own album & give out copies to my friends; I’m a bit of a dab hand at Photoshop myself you know! (from Michael McKay)
  8. I know you, you did my sister! (a girl who bumped into a wedding photographer in a pub).
  9. Customer looking at the previews, “My ears are far too big” (from Andrea Siffert)
  10. Customer looking at previews, what’s that mark on my face? Photographer stares back at the woman’s face and says retouching is free but plastic surgery is extra! Read More→

A Flickr Viewer for the iPad: by Pamela Flora

FlickrStudio AppThe iPad’s roomy 9.5” display makes it perfect for displaying and viewing photos, but to date, there is a dearth of Flickr apps to take advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate with regard to viewing photos. Of course, you can always view Flickr in Safari, but the iPhone has a number of Flickr apps to take advantage of Flickr functionality, and in my opinion, the iPad should too.

148Apps recently reviewed one of the few Flickr apps available in the iTunes store for the iPad, Flickr Studio, priced at $4.99. While the app does not yet incorporate full Flickr functionality (it is a viewer, and doesn’t allow the user to upload photos to Flickr – YET), the in-depth review at 148Apps hints that future updates will likely correct this lack of functionality.

FlickrStudio iPad App Screen

As a viewer for Flickr photos, 148Apps gives modestly high marks to the app: Read More→

How To Alter Colors During a Photo Shoot: by Guy Van Hooveld

My experience with corporate shoots is that sometimes, the environment is not exactly like the customer has described it, or does not really provides the kind of colors or light allowing to deliver the message you need. That is the reason why I use equipment to modify the look of a specific scene during the photo shoot. Some coloring is of course always possible in post production, but I am not a Photoshop freak, and I prefer to get the results right the first time, and to minimize post production.

First Example

This example was a shooting session in a control center. A few pictures were expected for a press file, showing the “hi-tech” look of the dispatching center. When I arrived on location, I was impressed by the “clean” aspect of the room, a bit like a hospital. I decided to use color filters on strobes to give a more dramatic aspect to the pictures. After some tests I decided to go for dark blue, to give a “night” impression.

Let’s just follow the different steps:

Just for information, the used equipment was:

  • Nikon D3 camera with 24-70 2.8 lens on a tripod with hydrostatic head
  • Radio controlled shutter
  • Radio controlled strobes
  • 600Ws Strobes with color filter and barn doors, with digital energy selection
  • Lightmeter to determine exposure

A first picture to show the environment as it was

Read More→