Gearing up

Wedding have been slow this January but a lot has been going on. We have had lots of shoots and social events. We have also been busy meeting with our new brides. It looks like 2010 & 11 will be pretty busy, so book your Wedding, events and parties early.

Personally I've slacked a little on blogging, I have had albums and other order processing to keep me busy and blogging is something I always did after processing wedding pictures because it was fresh on my mind. More time behind the camera and not infront of a computer is good. I know a lot of you have been following my blogs looking for news on what we are up to and I hope you continue to do so and I'll try to keep up with my blogging a little better.

Thank you for all your referrals and kind emails, it's through word of mouth that our business started up and now continues to grow.

New Lightroom Beta Testing

Things Just get better and better.. I just god the new Lightroom 3.0 beta, it has a few nice features I like, their adjustment brush has some improvements, as seen above inside light room I was able to adjust the color of the leaves from a pale yellow to the red/oranges you see above with just a couple clicks. All this improvements in technology helps us to provide you with the best pictures that we can. I love the ability to easily improve a small thing in a picture without the overhead of running photoshop on each image, the time savings are amazing.

We are having a blast with the weather we have been having lately. Makes for some great photography. You can follow us on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgestarrphotography as well as here on our blog. The Flickr page will have more not wedding stuff than the rest of our pages. Last week we got a few really nice pictures of ducks and fall colors. This week a lot of the leaves have already dropped and the sun has not been out as much.

Other things are changing with us, for the best I hope. I've got a new photographer in training right now and I'm excited about that. We are expanding a few services we are offering and things are growning quickly and we were in need of someone else to help out. We are also adding a few new products for our portrait customers, i.e. Christmas cards, mouse pads, puzzles, etc.

With Christmas coming up its a great time for fall portraits, and family portraits for your Christmas cards. We also offer Gallery Wraps and other large prints to hang above your mantle.

Shooting Tips, Time off, and shout out's

The weekend was another great time, a little wet but nothing too bad.

This week I’m going to talk a little business. Our special of getting a free upgrade with any package booked has been a success, but it’ll be over come Thursday and won’t be back for a long time. Our regular price are a great deal, with this special some of our brides got a super great deal.

Its been a great summer so far. We are taking a little time off over the next couple weeks. All the orders we have received so far are completed, any new orders will be delayed by about a week, but shouldn’t be a real issue since those brides have all asked for more time to select their pictures. If you order from the web site your orders will be processed automatically.

Photo Tip: Since a little over a week ago when we were forced indoors at a wedding and not really a lot of time to set up the lights and all, I thought I would mention what we did to compensate for it. For some of the portraits we did we bounced our on camera (actually on a bracket that it and the camera are mounted to) off the ceiling and walls. Yes walls, one of my favorite photographs was taken with the flash pointed behind me, and bouncing off a white wall and ceiling. Using the wall like that was like using a huge soft box to provide a really soft flattering light to our bride. For some of the photographs where we bounced off the wall we also used the small white reflector that is standard on our Canon 580II flash. This little reflector also helped a lot while shooting under the tents where we were bouncing off the top of the tent. We were even forced to shoot straight on for a lot of the pictures but they turned out good. Something else I insist on for my photographers (self included) is shooting in RAW mode, that way I can use Abobe Lightroom and set a custom white balance with ease. Shooting in JPG mode does not even come close in giving me the latitude of changes we can do to the images that RAW mode does.

I’d like to take the time to compliment my team of second photographers.

Rose my wife who is a big help and someone I depend on for a lot of help at weddings and had become a great photographer know exactly what shots we need as well as a great assistant knowing what shots we need to get and making sure we don’t forget any shots. I wouldn’t call her an assistant photographer but a CO-Lead photographer.

Jeni and Terri who some of you may have meet at your wedding or may meet. They are great photographers, hard working women who both go beyond what can be expected of a photographer.

Good team members are hard to find, and harder to keep because they are good. I wouldn’t be able to provide the quality of service that we do without them. Also I’d probably be embarrassed a little going into the bridal party’s changing room.

Just a Short blog this week

Been busy this week with Family pictures. Got all the picture orders in for the SAFE deadline for getting them back before Christmas.

I'm working on redesigning our website, looking to add the ablility to purchase ART prints as well as your wedding pictures and other portraits a little easier. I also like the new format a little better, It'll be hard to give up the site as it is now since I did design it from stratch.

The new format will probably be in place sometime in January 2009.. Something to look forward to.

I've also started work on some HOW TO articles for the hobby photographers out there. Be looking for articles on Nature Photography, Macro Photography, Steroscopic Photography, Panoramic Photography, Night Photography, and might even throw in some usefull hints on doing portraits of your loved ones. They will be geared towards the DSLR's of today, but also will have some hints for the person that just has a simple point and shoot camera.

Given the free time I'll also included some locations around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky that are great to photograph.

I can't wait for warm weather again to get outdoors again with my camera