Monday, February 28, 2011

Photo Tip #2

Move It From The Middle:

  • Don't be afraid to shoot your subject off centered. This technique works well especially when the background compliments & adds to the subject. Since most cameras focus on what's in the center, remember to lock your focus in on the subject & pan over to add more of what's around the area.



Here are a couple of my NYC images from a couple of years ago.  These are a examples of not shooting to the center. 

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Photo Tips

I was recently asked by one of our blog readers if I would give photography tips that may help make your shots stand out. I've always said I'm not a very good teacher, but what a great blog idea it would be. I thought hard about how I would present this idea.  I decided that over 1 month's time I would post a daily photography tip. I will not only give technical photo tips  but maybe even something business related info as well. I've learned most everything through the years by trial & error. What works & what doesn't. So if this is something that interest you then please check back everyday to learn a little about photography.


Photo Tip #1
Use Flash Outdoors-
  • Even outdoors, using the flash setting on your camera will improve the overall quality of your image. This is known as a fill flash.  Depending on the lighting,  using a flash in the sun will reduce the appearance of circles  or "raccoon eyes" on your subjects.  It will also make the subjects eye color pop. There are other ways of getting around not using a flash by using reflectors & bouncing light. For a quick fix I recommend just manually turning on your flash.
If you're not sure this technique will work, then take two different photos. One with flash & one without. That way you're safe. 



Little Fireman

I guess it wouldn't be hard to guess what this little guys dad does for a living. This is the second time we've had Captin Laminack's gear in our studio. A couple of years prior, we did a very similar session with his older brother. 









CD

One question I seem to get a lot of is "do you give a CD with all the photos to your customers"?  Well the answer to that is yes & no.  
  • We do offer a disk archive cd with all your images from your session. This disk is useful with those without good fast internet service.  It's also good to be able to look back at every photo, even the ones you perhaps didn't purchase for the wall.  The archive disk will not allow you to print, email or process images at the local photo labs. 
  • We do not currently offer a cd of high resolution images for a couple of reasons. You may notice that our sitting fee & enlargement prices are well below the average cost of most individual photographers. We have such reasonable prices that our hope is that you will like your images enough to purchase enlargements. All of the images from your session are edited & ready to order via our online ordering system. We take pride in the quality we present to our customers. If we gave a disk, customers would be forced to make homemade copies or less than perfect reprints from the local photo lab. The photos you give or hang on the wall represent our business and we want to make sure they are the best quality possible.
I see a lot of the new photographers in the area are simply just giving a disk away without offering enlargements/copies for their customers. The processing aspect of the business is very time consuming & perhaps some businesses don't have the time or maybe the resources to get quality prints in the customers hands.    Click Here to see a full list of print sizes & gift products we are offering. If you don't see something on the list you are interested in, let me know & we'll find it for you.



Friday, February 25, 2011

Red-Necks R Us

This will be my final post on some great "red-neck fixes" that I found. Hope you have laughed a little at some of these cool pics. 





Mason

My nephew Mason will be turning 3 very soon & we had chose a rustic setting for his birthday pics. this year.  Here were a few of my favorites from the session.














This Week In Instagram

These are a few of my images I published in the iPhone app Instagram this week. Most of the time I will title each of the pics I post. Those can be found under the pics.

Big Brother




Missing
The Depot





The Edits #48

Here's another image comparison for you. With a 6 month old you really have to take whatever shot they will give you since they really start to become very active. I quickly grabbed this candid shot to later see the diaper showing. Not necessarily the easiest of edits but I think I managed to make it less noticeable.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

More Redneck Fixes

If you have ever used any of these tactics to fix something....you might be a red neck!





Sunday, February 20, 2011

Felts on Face Book

Click Here to add us to your liked Face Book pages. We recently created our official FB business page & we'll let you know the latest offers & blog up-dates.

The Edits #47

From time to time I'll give you a look at different edits that can be applied to one photo to dress it up a bit. Here's an example of  using one unfiltered photo & the various filters we can apply to it.
This particular customer wanted a large print made but wanted to first see some different treatments on it first.  This is what we came up with.
Normal un-filtered original.
Color image with textured overlay around the edges.

Same overlay but removed the saturation from the entire photo. 

Sepia tone

Black & White

Color with darker edges. Overall image has more contrast as well.
This is just an example of some of the treatments we can apply to an average looking photo. It's interesting that some customers are very partial to the normal un-treated photos & others may order all photos with different effects applied.

While I'm showing off this awesome family....
This session took place after Christmas so mom was really interested in sending out New Year cards using some of the photos. Using the Urban 1 & 2 locations shown on the site, we did two different styles.  The idea was to have the front of the card with their normal attire & the back to have a completly different feel/theme. Great idea. Right off the heel of Ranger mania, they decided to all wear jerseys of their favorite team! We chose the more contemporary location for that. Here's a few images we captured that day.


The back of the card.
This was the front to to their New Year card.




Senior Class of 2019