SteelOrchid Photography

Category: Thoughts

For day to day things that seem worth commenting on at the time…

  • 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…

  • More on the new store

    The new Magento based store is now fully working (except for the PayPal account, of course) and we will have enough fine art prints available in the new range of sizes to open the store on the 8th March  2009.

    Getting the store (B.T.W. which term do people prefer: store or shop?)  up and running was relatively straightforward but far from simple. The documentation is not the most comprehensive I have seen but in its favour it has an active forum where you are very likely to find a solution to most any common problems and the software is pretty much “feature complete” “right-out-of-the-box”.  So for basic use it is simply a matter of choosing a theme and away you go! That is assuming you are running it on your own server. If, like us, you are running on a shared host you need a provider who is either very understanding, like ours, or one that is optimised for Magento. It is rather demanding of the server. We think we have ours configured for our use.

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  • 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.

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  • HP rules OK!

    Hewlett Packard were top of my customer services list last week. My B9180 printer sprang a nasty surprise when it spat out a couple of its tiny pizza wheels a few weeks ago. That didn’t stop it making prints, but we decided to contact HP before the warranty runs out in August. A quick phone call to the call centre somewhere in the Asian continent brought forth the question…”can you fax your receipt?”…yes we did that…they called back a day or two later with the question “do you have a digital camera”…..which we thought was a bit odd. The reply being in the affirmative, we were asked to photograph the damage and email the pictures. That duly done, another phone call told us to expect a new printer being delivered within a few days. (more…)

  • Fine Art Photography… an art in its own right

    Many photographers choose to specialise in only one area of photography, so it might be surprising to find social and commercial photography hand in hand with fine art on our site. But are they really as different as chalk and cheese? and what exactly is fine art photography? Well, I guess the wikipedia definition is a good starting point…

    “Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created to fulfill the creative vision of the artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism and commercial photography. Photojournalism is to promote an editorial point of view. Commercial photography’s main focus being to sell a product or service. The final creative reason for a fine art photograph is the photograph itself. It is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those besides the photographer who behold it.”

    Commercial Photography is any kind of photography where money changes hands! so commercial can be fine art and fine art can be commercial.  For me, the fine art side of my life is a way of immersing myself in my own imagination, whereas in the wedding and business side of our work, the taste and requirements of the client and type of usage often can dictate the brief.

    Photoshop has become a major tool in the process of creating fine art prints and I have learned and still am learning how to interpret an image in different ways just for the sake of itself and my own creative need. This is a case in point. The photograph below has been enhanced with Photoshop, bringing in a new sky and interpreting the picture as I felt and remembered it, rather than as the camera recorded it.

    Stannage Edge

    The picture below shows what the camera actually recorded. The beautiful light that I saw streaking across the foreground has been almost lost and the sky is bright and featureless. Some dodging and burning of the foreground areas coupled with dropping in a new sky were necessary to interpret the landscape as I had felt it on the day.

    Stannage Edge before

    The good thing about all of this is that there is a spin-off. Learn how to use editing tools to interpret a flower photograph beautifully and you also learn how to interpret other subjects. The processes have so much in common. Looking for beautiful light in landscape photography also helps you to see and appreciate (and create) lighting in all other areas of photography.

    At SteelOrchid, we can also use our photo-editing and interpreting skills to offer beautiful fine art wedding photographs on the best textured or matte finished art papers. A great way to display these is in archival window mounts in portfolio boxes, a welcome alternative to the traditional album.

    Fine Art prints have been prized in the USA for decades, but only recently are they gaining recognition in the UK. Prices are rising at the rate of 7% per year and so buying fine art photos can be an investment as well as buying something that is personal and not mass produced. Ink prints on art papers are now so stable that they can outlast traditional photographs and other types of printing by many decades. We have a growing selection of fine art prints for sale here.

  • Footprints in the Snow

    Just as we thought that winter was relinquishing its icy grip on the North West, it reared its head for perhaps a final time this year with a moderate fall of snow on the Pennines. Waking up on Easter Sunday to four inches of snow outside our house meant that there would be at least six inches a mile or so up the valley at Dovestones. It gave me the perfect excuse to have a quick breakfast, don some warm clothing and hiking boots and dash out with my camera to enjoy something that is becoming increasingly rare – the opportunity to take pictures for myself!!

    Above Dovestones

    I love all kinds of photography and, for me, taking photographs for a living isn’t like real work, but most of our professional work involves photographing people and it certainly isn’t usual for the phone to ring with the request “it’s snowing – can you take some pictures of the landscape for me?” so Sunday allowed me a day to indulge in my first love, photographing the land. I didn’t need to feel guilty – with wedding album orders to fulfil, it’s difficult to indulge in a day off sometimes even at the weekend, but this was Easter weekend and I promised myself I’d work and catch up tomorrow. (more…)

  • AFIAP – was it worth it?

    The beginning of February was a landmark for us…after five years of international competition; we were both awarded the distinction of AFIAP – not one to share, but one each! It stands for (at least the English translation from the French) “Artist of the International Federation of Photographic Art”.

    Heroes of the Ice

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  • Hello world!

    Welcome to our new blog. Easiest install I have ever done