Busy! BUSY! And more BUSY!!!!

This was a very busy weekend, it started out with a shoot Friday, a Wedding on Saturday, and moving on Sunday. The wedding Saturday was a small wedding, but it was a nice time for the guest, the DJ was great and played exactly the music the party requested, a lot of Pearl Jam. The reception was held at the Mill Race Banquet Center, a really nice place for a small reception or party, the food they served looked really good, the lighting was good for the candid’s and we did formals outside. All in all it was a pretty good day and location for a wedding.

I’d like to mention a few services we offer that people don’t always know that we offer. We offer Family, Christmas, Maternity, Glamour, Maternity, and Boudoir (pin-up) photography in addition to or Wedding Photography services. We also are available for Senior Portraits and parties.

I’m going to keep it short this week, I’ve got a lot of other stuff to get done this week. Getting ready for a couple Halloween Parties and themed portraits sessions.

Size and Effects

It was a little wet Sunday, but Saturday was a great day for a wedding. Over the weekend I heard an interesting collection of wedding songs. The one that I heard that I had to laugh at was “The Big Bopper’s Wedding” You have to be a little older to really know who I’m talking about, and remember “Chantilly Lace” but if you get the chance check out the song. Before you ask, it was not played at a wedding, but I could see it being played at one with a real sense of humor. I’ll have to blog sometime on a few other funny songs, and serious ones that we’ve heard. Being in the wedding party (sort in it at least) we hear things, and one of the father/daughter dances we heard this season the father composed the song for, which we thought was really neat.

We just took a large order for prints and got asked the old age question. How Big is an 8x10, now before you laugh, you would be surprised how may times I get asked that question. To set the record straight, one side of the print is eight (8) inches long and the other is ten (10) inches long. Another thing I get asked is about cropping, All the images we take are in format you are used to seeing that dates from the 35 mm film days, you can call it 2:3 ratio or a 4x6 size for this example. An 8x10 no matter how you will not perfectly fit into this ratio, the math would mean you would have to go to a 8x12 size print to have a full frame print. This is where cropping comes into play. You have to lose 2 inches to fit onto an 8x10 sheet. If you look at a lot of our proofs you will notice that there is extra room at the top and bottom, this is why. Same goes for 11x14’s and 5x7’s, the math just does not equal up. Every now and then a picture will just not crop to a different ratio and fit the way someone would like onto the page.

Okay now for another fun thing which we like to do is meet with you to show you your pictures before you order, now we can’t always do this, and the web is a good thing for that. But what we can do in person is actually show you how the pictures will crop, and some of the effect we can offer. If you look through our galleries you can get an idea of this. If you can’t meet up again that is fine, we will do the best we can to select the best cropping for your images. One thing people ask, do we charge extra for effects, the answer is no, however we ask that you do accept the fact that we only do those effect on 5x7 or larger images only because they don’t show up as well. Collages are only available on 8x10’s or larger and limited to 3 images on one sheet for this same reason.

I love it that people are reading my blog, I would like to take this chance to ask you to make a comment or two about what you read so I can get a little input about what you like.

The above images is an album page taken from a wedding where the young daughter or the bride was given a ring along with a set of vows pledging to be a good father and to cherish her like she was his own. A very touching scene to witness, she was so excited!!

To DVD or NOT to DVD

Had a busy weekend with a shoot Saturday evening, and spent Sunday preparing for a move, I wasn’t going to do a blog entry this week but I got a few minutes between jobs and thought why not.

During one of my relaxing moments this weekend I was going through some older photography magazines from the PPA (professional Photographers of America) they had an article on brides that get just a CD or DVD of their wedding shoots. Well the short of the article was that if you get just the DVD you never wind up getting any prints. This is one of the reasons but not the real reason that all of our packages included prints. I want my couples to have a professionally done product, it might not be all their pictures, or an album but I want them to have something to hold and to show to others. I also don’t want the only photographs they get to be printed at a grocery store or super-department store.

On our packages that include albums and a lot of proof prints we INCLUDE a DVD copy of the entire wedding. I don’t think this distracts from the prints, and I would hope it is really just used as an archive or to email the images to friends and family and not their finished prints.

I take pride in the images we make for our clients, and would hope that they see the value in professionally printed prints. The debate has been brought to me before not to offer a DVD set of images in my packages, which I feel is not the best solution for us. What I did do, which some people have had issues with is remove the ability to get the DVD on my lower end packages. Simply upgrading to the next package up will get you the ability to get a DVD set of images plus the upgrade gets you a lot more to boot, for instance 100 proofs and an engagement/boudoir session plus extra time at the wedding. Also our price for prints is very fair if you choose not to get one.

Labor Day - Festivals and All

This is a great time of the year with Labor Day, Festivals, Halloween, and Fall Leaves.. Of course we plan on getting in our share of these between the fall weddings and events we are scheduled to shoot. I love the fall colors for weddings, I'm not sure what I like better, the new life of Spring or the wonderful fall colors.

I have to admit I also love the fun of the summer time, and the bright holiday light of winter. Maybe it's just LIFE that leaves me with the urge to take more and more pictures.

I've added some galleries to our web site today, be sure to check them out.

• http://starrphotos.net/airshowslide/
• http://starrphotos.net/packslide
• http://starrphotos.net/parkslide/
• http://starrphotos.net/zooslide/

Waiting!!

It was a busy weekend with an early afternoon wedding on Saturday. A great time was had by all. We had a lovely couple and attendants to photograph, The chocolate fountain was GREAT, and the food was good. Above is a picture we captured of our lovely bride being nervous right before her walk down the isle. She hid her shakey knees well!

Last week I devoted some time on another blog for brides to be, more so than a what this blog is this new one is meant to give tips to brides/grooms to be. Although I still suggest reading through this one a little just to see what we have been up to. There might be a Photography TIP blog in the future if there is any interest in it. What spawned the wedding tip blog is a few of our brides requesting more and more information about what other couples are doing and what other vendors offer.

I am working on a Book or booklet to hand out to couples that are looking for photographers and other vendors, in order to get the most out of their pictures. It's not going to be a sales pitch for us, but more a resource for brides looking for vendors and photographers. I know not everyone that gets it will even be able to consider us for their photographer and that is fine, it will be packed with what to look for and ask your photographer, your DJ, your minister, and so on. Plus it till have a section for suggestions for different and unique twists to your wedding and reception. If you are in a hurry and can't wait I could use a few proofreaders, and test readers. It's getting enough info that it could be a book to publish someday.

I got some good response from last weeks picture on my blog for Maternity portraits and looking forward to meeting a couple mothers to be.

Exciting stuff in the works!

This weekend we did some networking and formed a little bit of a partnership with a Mary Kay Reprehensive. It really isn’t a partnership as you would think of it, just a more help for each other’s clients. She is offering some very nice gifts along with training you how to put on your makeup for you and your girls/mothers and friends.

Being a photographer we see a lot of need for a few tips, especially in the area we covered in out last week’s photo tip section. Learning how to stay dry, and keeping reflections down is something everyone really needs to know. Don’t ask me any questions about make up, you can contact her directly at (859) 866-6514 or her web site at www.marykay.com/cbleier her name is Catherine Bleir If you call her tell her I sent you. If you book a party with her and are one of our wedding clients I’ll give you a 50$ credit towards prints.

This is a selfish thing for me to do, I want to see your pictures turn out their best.

I would love to find a wedding planner or two that would like to trade referrals, working with a planner can help a bride maintain sanity on her wedding day, and help a lot with getting people where they need to be.

The image above is an image from the past. A fun image from one of our past brides.. Funny thing with weddings is the fact that we get these shoots a year or better down the road, and then we get to photography the babies. I love watching our wedding families grow. This one was taken in their home where they were comfortable, using our backdrops and lights for the Studio look and feel.

We have clients that start their photography with us with and Engagement session, some do a Boudoir session, then their wedding, maternity, baby portraits and family portraits with us. It's great to become a small part of their family in this way and watch them grow.

A blur of a weekend - Parties and more...

We had an interesting weekend, Started out with a Birthday party Friday Night, and then it was Monday morning 10 minutes later. We had a some good shooting all weekend and got some great pictures I’m sure our clients will appreciate. The above images in from a shoot about 2 weeks ago at Ault Park, I posted one ohter image from it, This images was taken in under a shade arc in the garden, I used a little fill flash to take out the shadows and make the couple stand out. I could see cropping in a little more although I like this image as is.

I got a chance to play around myself with some lighting Saturday morning. Tried out some new wireless flash triggers that worked great. My model for the morning still had breakfast on is face, but it wasn’t worth the fight to wash his face, and I was very lucky that he fit me into his very tight schedule during a commercial break of Phines and Pherb (I probably slaughtered the spelling) but this is what you expect with a 5 year old on a Saturday morning the weekend before school starts up.

Okay as promised I’m taking a little time to go over a little of the lighting techniques that we find useful. One of the toughest areas of lighting that we encounter are mirrors and shiny alters. Like anyone that has shot any pictures around these, you know that you are very likely to get a BRIGHT ball of light reflected back at you from a shiny surface, it could be polished wood, brass, a mirror or even a sweaty forehead. Well the forehead you can wipe off, and even apply a little make up to make it NOT SHINE. But what do you do for a mirrored surface?

A couple things come to mind, short of not using a flash there are still things you can do. If you think of the light striking your subject and the reflective surface, your on camera flash is a really small spot of light, and being small, it tends to reflect brightly off of surfaces. If the light was as big as your subject it would be a very even light, completely flooding the entire scene. One thing we do is try to make the light source bigger. This doesn’t mean getting a huge light, sometimes it is a simple as an umbrella in front of our flash. Other times we reflect the light off of something. Maybe we will use a reflector, but more commonly a ceiling or wall. If we prevent the flash from directly hitting the reflective surface it won’t be as bright of a reflection. Now simply aiming our flash a the ceiling works wonders, but will cause some issues in it’s self. The eye sockets are the most noticeable, they will be dark, so when aiming at the ceiling we use a little reflector mounted on our flash. On the Canon 580IIex there is a built in little card for this. This will not fix the whole issue and might cause a reflection from your subject.

This is going to take some experimentation on your part to get it working the way you expect it. Something we do, is not just bouncing off a ceiling. Think about direction the light is traveling. If you bounce off a wall to light the subject and there is a mirror behind them, your flash will not hit the reflective surface but will light up your subject. Also think about the wall behind you.

I know this is not a lot of help to our point and shoot fans as you can’t do a lot to control the direction of your flash. Although there are things you can try, you can put a piece of tissue over the flash part of the camera (thin) and experiment with that effect to defuse the light some and make it softer.

Also besides bouncing flash to move it, you can take your flash off camera to change the direction of lighting, but that is beyond what a short tip can do for you.