Today we took delivery of our first greetings cards, printed for us by Advantage Digital Print in Dorchester. Subjects range from landscape and seascape to flowers amd all are left blank inside for your special message. We’ll have them available for purchase as soon as we can on our fine art section.

Here is just a taster….

Networking is an odd pastime, where diverse people meet at strange times and attack each other with business cards. Each trying to foist upon another stranger services that neither party has any interest in might seem to be a waste of time but…

…It is considered by many to be the most cost effective method of getting new clients.

To that end I have been regularly dragging myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to meet with other tired and grumpy equally convinced (or misguided) business people hoping to boost their business in these difficult times.

It has been fascinating so far but has it brought in any new business?

I’m still working on it…

A visit to the spring 2010 Whitby Goths Festival almost back-fired. We dressed gothic and ended up posing for everyone else…but did manage to get in a few shots of our own. We arrived on the Saturday and were pleased and relieved that the recent cold weather had changed to warm sunshine. Finding a parking place in Whitby during the fesival is a bit of a problem but we eventually found ourselves a spot about half a mile north of the town. As we walked along the cliff top towards the whalebones, we encountered more and more curiously dressed people, from steam punk and lolly to emo, romantic, hippy and Victorian…anything goes so long as it’s weird and preferably with a corset (worn on top not as as under-garment). No-one seemed to bat an eyelid as we walked along, so perhaps we looked weird enough too.

Descending the steps towards the harbour I was pleased that I was wearing comfy boots as it was clear I was going to be on my feet all day. Everywhere and anywhere that had a place to sit was already occupied…I turned my attention to the crowds, trying to pick out some of the most interesting characters to photograph. It was at this point that the lovely bright warm sunshine became a curse….bright sunlight and photography don’t always go well together….bright sunlight means harsh shadows and this was not at all what I was looking for…gothic photos need atmosphere…on that Saturday afternoon there was none!

On the Sunday we rose before dawn…as people who know me will confirm, I am not naturally a dawn person…and the dawn on Sunday was very very cold. Arriving in the town, we saw a young goth staggering back to her hotel, presumably after a really good night out! When we reached the pier, I was disappointed to see that two photographers (from Northumberland it turned out) had beaten me to it and were standing in just the place I wanted to photograph, with their tripods firmly planted and most definitely not inclined to move. Still, they were nice chaps and we stood together chatting until I had turned blue with cold and the dawn had fizzled out like a damp squib (I never saw a damp squib but that’s what they tell me it was like).

However, from then on, our day just got better and by lunchtime I was well and truly hooked on gothic and determined to go back for a longer stay next time.

Here are just a few shots from the occasion…

Forgot to say…I edited them a bit! and BTW, the scary looking chap bottom left is Mike, but I promise he doesn’t look like that when we’re photographing weddings (unless you’re having a gothic wedding that is).

It’s been a while since we posted about our new recession beating packages. Well, the wait is almost over. While we looked at the pricing structure in detail for our budget conscious deals we realised that we could also offer a complete package for those for whom nothing but the very best will do.

Our new wedding photography mini site will go live in the next few days with options for our

• Simply Wedding Photos, a complete professional wedding photography package that includes high-quality print-ready images on CD from only £300.
• Luxury Wedding Photography Service, which is essentially a selection of our existing packages with a few more options available.
• Bespoke Wedding Photography Service, with the highest quality exclusive wedding albums and an unprecedented level of personal service.

Update: 23 February 2010: the new wedding services are now live.

Following on from the high and low key options, here are some different ways to present family portraiture, in duo or triple frames.

Achieving a balance is the key to success and choosing images from the shoot that work together and help to tell the story of the day.

Colour and monochrome images in the same frame can look good together, especially where the colour is kept soft without too much saturation.

This is a very informal “low-key” photograph of John…and he just loved having his photograph taken. The secret of good portrait photography is to capture the essence of your model – whether posed or unposed, to bring out their character in the fraction of a second that it takes for the sensor to record the image.

My previous Blog of baby Georgia shows what is known as a  “High Key” effect. The predominant tones are light coloured, tending to white, making the result more dramatic,  but keeping a light, airy, happy, clean interpretation.

Both High Key images and Low Key images make an intensive use of contrast, but in a very different way, in order to interpret the image. Everyone has a camera these days and even camera phones are capable of good quality results, but it’s the ability to interpret the resulting images that makes dedicated professionals that little bit different.

When making decisions about the processing of my portrait of John, I knew that I wanted to bring out his dark characterful face in the best way I could. I examined the raw colour file and decided that colour was definitely out – this had to be low key and it had to be monochrome. The decision about post processing is about finding the best way to interpret the mood that the picture will ultimately convey to the viewer. Low key portraits are full of drama with dark rich tones. Although the photo of John is essentially a happy one, low key can also be used to great effect to introduce a dark and brooding atmosphere to suitable subjects. Low key images, although predominantly dark, do need some areas of bright highlight to contrast strongly with the black tones and it was essential here to ensure that the sparkle in John’s eyes wasn’t lost.

Georgia

We just love photographing babies…from their tiny hands and feet, to delicate skin tones, fine eyelashes and huge innocent eyes. Every baby shows his or her own character, and we do our utmost to bring that out at your photo session. Our high resolution photos can be enlarged to fill wall sized canvas or we can supply single or multi-aperture framed prints of timeless elegant design…and how about a modern approach by sandwiching the photo between two layers of glass to have prode of place on your mantlepiece? Lifestyle shoots with baby provide lots of real-life photographs of happy unposed moments shared with your family and photobooks from the session have become very affordable. Just ask for our price list.

Post-processing

We have advanced editing capabilities and can interpret the original image in a variety of ways, like the very modern high-key version below…and you might even consider timeless black and white or toned sepia…we have the skill to produce any of these effects – just ask!

Georgia - high key

Welcome to the new year. The naughties have gone (did anyone ever really use that name?) and hopefully the worst of the recession with it.
Personally the last few months have been some of the busiest I have known (so apologies for the dearth of postings) but we have still found time to think about how we can help those who are still feeling the pinch, without compromising on our high standards. We believe we have found some alternative wedding photography pricing formats that you may find interesting.
We have not forgotten those who are not contemplating the leap into marital bliss. We are re-arranging our portrait services, bringing them right-up-to-date by focussing on a Lifestyle approach.
We have some new products under development and others we have refined enough to offer to our commercial clients.
I’m looking forward to 2010 and it promises to be an exciting year.
The website will be updated as we roll out these innovations.

Have a great New Year everyone.

Hope to see you soon.

Mike

We’ve done a couple of charity events for Breast Cancer Care recently. Here’s a photo from one. If you have a charity event coming up, check with us to see how you can get photos of the event and make a little profit for the charity by booking us at SteelOrchid.

There is an increasing tendency for wedding clients to buy a CD of images to accompany their album. This way, they can choose their favourite pictures for the wedding album but continue to share the wider selection of images that we supply, with family and friends, via the internet and by making slide shows. We give a discount on the full price of album and CD for couples wanting to do this, as we only have to process the images once.

A lovely way to share pictures is by setting them to your favourite music, so we are putting together some tips to help you to do this.

We are starting off by showing you how to make use of a superb piece of software that we use to produce many of our own slide-shows, to show your images with music on a computer or TV.

The software is called Pictures To Exe and is very inexpensive – it’s available from WnSoft.
For those who are not familiar with YouTube click on the second button from the right at the bottom of the player to make it full screen (see inset).

Pictures To Exe Basics:

Part One

Part Two

How to use Pan and Zoom in PTE:

Let us have your comments.

Enjoy.