Tuesday, August 31, 2010

New Business Card

After showing my old business card to a business adviser, I finally decided that it was time to create a new one. In the past, I had emphasized bargain rates but suggested that I aim higher in the market and find a way to get my work to speak for me at the same time. So selected a picture from a family portrait shoot that I did a few months ago and then broadened my business model. I think the results are pretty good.
At least I'm getting a lot of "Oooh!" and "Ahhhh! when I show people my card.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Been busy but not writing

I've been doing so many things here lately that I haven't been keeping up with the blog. I've done a number of commercial shoots, portraits and lots of fun experiments. So I'm going to try to gradually catch up.

One of the most recent things I did was a sunrise shoot for Jacksons Foodstores. They wanted a sunrise shot of one of their stores that faces east. Also, they were looking for an golden hour effect so that the light inside the store is balanced with the light outside. That way you can see what's going on inside while viewing the outside as well. This involved me arriving at the store before sunrise and working out details with the store manager before setting up the shoot.


Then I set up my tripod, mounted the camera and set it to receive signals from my remote control. That way I could fire off pictures without worrying about camera vibrations since I didn't have to touch the camera.

In the end, I spent about and hour there and took 125 pictures as the sun slowly came up. I had a pretty wide window of opportunity to get the shots since we had cloud cover in the eastern sky.

Then back home I selected three different shots that pretty much covered all the possible light levels and sent them to the client. She selected the earliest shot but also requested that I remove the hose cart that sat below the store window. So I spent some time in Photoshop brushing it out and then re-texturing the wall behind it and drawing in the mortar lines. In the end, the customer was pretty happy.