SteelOrchid Photography

Author: UncleMike

  • Networking

    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…

  • New Wedding Packages

    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

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

  • Slide Shows to Music

    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).
    YouTube Full screen button

    Pictures To Exe Basics:

    Part One

    Part Two

    How to use Pan and Zoom in PTE:

    Let us have your comments.

    Enjoy.

  • New Fine Art Shop – Zen to Magento

    Some of you will have noticed we have been operating a Fine Art Print Store for a little while.  Our current version is based on the Open Source, osCommerce spin off, Zen-Cart.This is a mature and sophisticated platform and offers a method of integrating with Gallery 2, which we use for our Client Galleries. The shop, in fact, grew almost as a side effect of using Zen as the eCommerce part of our galleries. The integration module eventually proved to cause more problems than it cured and Gallery’s own Checkout plug in (extended by:  Alec Myers) had improved to the point of doing everything we needed for the gallery. So we severed the link between Zen and Gallery each now working entirely independently of each other.

    Zen-Cart has grown over many years and is now (V1.38) rather unwieldy and often counterintuitive both for users and administrators. With the promise/threat of a brand new version I started to look at the possibility of improving the user experience making the shop easier and more fun to use. The new version 2 of Zen Cart has some impressive features but it is seriously behind schedule and would likely require a complete fresh start in customizing it.

    (more…)