In praise of suppliers

It's all too easy to shout from the rooftops when suppliers let us down and there have been a few here and there but altogether I have very few complaints about most of the suppliers I've used in the last few years.

But a bit of praise for a few this week :)

Loxley Colour, where I got 200 trifold leaflets printed. Not only is the printing and material utterly superb but I called them to ask if they could send it to my office rather than H/A. Not a problem, delivered next day. Thank you Loxley, great job.

JT Hughes in Stockport who did my shirts (sorry I'm a laydee that should be blouses) double checked my logo because it's a bit awkward and actually sent me a photo of what it looked like embroidered before doing all 10. Superb.

Vistaprint. I had the rather late idea of doing some decent contact cards for this weekend and who do you turn to when you need last minute orders? Vistaprint! Not as heavyweight or glossy as Loxley but for decent quality quickly from a template you really can't beat them.

Ebay! Yes I forgot one thing. When I ordered my bannerstand I forgot the lighting. So I hit ebay and 2 days later it's delivered. The folks who do my business cards could not get one for 5 working days. They should try ebay! :)

So it's all here, all looking good and I'm ready.

Thanks to lots of other people.

The Postman always rings twice

Well he'd better ring a bit more than that :) Waiting for a light fitting for my display stand, trifolds from Loxley and contact cards from Vistaprint, oh and that ink I ran out of on the admin printer!

Tomorrow's job is to compile a list of everything I need for my wedding fayre on Sunday and start packing it into boxes. I have more flyers to print too. Thanks to some prudent planning about 6 weeks ago nothing is too rushed, I just need a few deliveries to arrive on time..........

producing flyers

I decided I wanted some flyers for an upcoming Wedding Fayre. I wanted to make the flyer by way of a collaboration between myself as a photographer and the venue. Co promoting each as a partnership because it is a lovely venue and one where I could happily shoot on a regular basis. The very kind of venue I want to establish a good working relationship with. So these flyers I can use for the Wedding Fayre and I can also ask the venue if I can leave some with them.

So how to go about it? Yes I could use my local source where I get my business cards done but a bit pricey especially with the design fees. I could go to Loxley where I'm getting trifolds printed, again a bit pricey for what I want as a limited run.

So off to do some research and bingo! HP do a brochure paper, double sided glossy and perfect for the job. £12 for 50 sheets. Now we are talking! So having designed the trifold leaflets myself I'm getting a bit better at designing marketing material in Photoshop so off I went and an hour or two later emerged from my office triumphant.

One slight snag is that I really have to print them on my photo printer, an HP B9180 and the ink for that baby is not cheap. I tried it on my admin printer a Canon and the grass on the front page came out positively luminous and the bride had a bit of an orange glow to her!

I'm a happy bunny though being able to print my own :)

I've been busy again. Trifold leaflets today. I decided it was time to get some trifold leaflets from Loxley Colour so I've designed two today, one for weddings and the other for boudoir.

Off to the printer's tomorrow, onwards and upwards!

Monkey Business

Well, I've been edificated :)

Mark Cleghorn was in good form today and with a room full of photographers we were treated to some great content. The business of photography with some cool new marketing ideas that I'll be working on. Shooting window lit portraits in a setting mocked up so we know how to shoot some lovely dramatic shots if we have a wet wedding to contend with. Last but not least workflow and a real treat, a preview of Photoshop CS5.

Content aware fill is AWESOME!

I didn't upgrade CS3 to CS4 but I think I might have to raid the piggy bank in a few months once any initial bugs are ironed out :)

Content aware fill is basically a function where I can fill a frame with something that is missing. To explain when that may be handy. Shoot an image of a bride and groom in portrait orientation and it's not straight. Yep, I can straighten it but then I need to crop out the white bits so I lose the piece of the image diagonally opposite. Now that bit could be important if I had framed it correctly and it can be a real problem. Content aware fill is a little piece of magic that can fill in the white bits with what should be there. Unbelievable!

For anyone not yet with Mark's Phototraining4U online training. Join. Now! The first year is £199 but with over 300 training films (most around 20 mins) available with such subjects as shooting skills, photoshop skills and business ideas. Lighting tutorials, kit reviews...... It's about the price of a cup of coffee a day. And you get a £100 credit to spend at Loxley Colour.

Year two is cheaper at £99 and still fantastic value. Training where and when you need it and on the subjects you want. It really is a no brainer!

http://www.phototraining4u.com/dap/a/?a=461

More edification

Off to a seminar on Wednesday this week. Mark Cleghorn's "Monkey Business"

It's a great format. About 30 photographers in a room and Mark presents business ideas, shooting ideas and usually one specialist topic each tour he does.

The whole thing is cost managed and that's done with the generous help of his sponsors including Loxley and On One software along with Lastolite and Quantum. So they bring along all the latest goodies for us to play with as well.

I'm usually lucky enough to meet up some some of my photography buddies who are among the most generous people you could hope to meet.

So not much photography from me this week but more to come soon.........promise! :)

And a little bit more Boudoir

To be perfectly honest, I could be here for some time uploading the various images of Rebecca from Wednesday.

In total we got through two make up sessions and an unbelievable 7 sets between 9am and 4pm. It's that work ethic that really sets apart the professional models. That and looking damnably gorgeous :)

The new Boudoir section of my website is now live and populated with these images and more. A huge thank you once more to Rebecca and Sarah for their patience hard work and not killing me for turning the wind machine on! www.alisonbaileyphotography.co.uk

Boudoir

One reason for the collaboration with Rebecca and Sarah on Wednesday was to shoot some Boudoir style shots for the new section of my website. I took some lovely pics at Trevor and Fayes but I do think it a little disingenuous to go using pics that other people have set up as marketing material. I did like shooting with Rebecca though so forgive me Trevor and Faye for pinching the same model.

The new section of the website can now go live with my own images.

OK I promised you tigers and here she is!

Rebecca Amy lit by a projector with tiger stripes. Another advantage of shooting with the Nikons. High ISO images that look like this! These were shot at ISO 3200 at f2.8 and 1/50 sec. The timing had to be spot on with Sarah guiding the projector on Rebecca's body, Rebecca moving slowly through some great poses and me just hitting the shutter at the right times.

I got this idea from a training session that Mark Cleghorn did on http://www.phototraining4u.co.uk/ which is a fabulous resource for photographers.

So I adapted Mark's idea and asked Sarah to make me a tiger. Cat like eye makeup and hair like a mane was perfect for the look I wanted. Rebecca was a star as usual, even when I put the wind machine on. Photographers, please don't use a wind machine for more than a minute on a nude model, they will freeze!

One with the wind machine on.

The studio was InFocus studios in Marple, it's a great location and with a huge infinity cove and two black fully curtained walls and more lights that anyone could use in one session. Great facilities and the best bit is that it's only a few minutes from my house. :)

Another image from yesterdays shoot with Rebecca Amy. I really ought to say a big thank you to our MUA (Make Up Artist) Sarah Morten without whom these would have been a whole lot more difficult. Sarah mucked in quite happily looking after Rebecca and holding video lights and projectors for me.

Truly, the unsung heroes (heroines) of a photography shoot, the MUA is the person who applies the style, the vision that I had in my head to start with and has the vision themselves to pull it together.

Thank you Sarah. x

Good photography is worth paying for!

Thankfully that's not just my opinion but the opinion of 22% of Brides in a recent Shutterfly survey.

Unfortunately the good ladies didn't realise it until the wedding was done and dusted! Sorry Ladies it's too late then!

Shutterfly asked ladies married in the last 12 months and 19% said they should have spent less on the dress and the food and 22% said they should have spent more on the memories.

To that end I have a handout that I will be giving out at Wedding Fayres from now on. It's three volumes, Vol 1 is FAQ's Vol 2 is a guide to getting married and Vol3 is why you should consider a pro and what to expect to pay and just as importantly what you should expect for the money.

The average spend on a wedding is some £22,000 and the only things left after the champagne has gone and the car has driven off are you wedding rings, your marriage certificate and your photos.

Treasure them all well.

I had the pleasure to shoot the gorgeous Rebecca Amy today. Boudoir in the morning and in the studio in the afternoon. The studio shoot I really enjoyed because I could give free reign to my thought process in there without having to make the best of a location as we do shooting weddings. It's a different process in the studio but I stick to the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid! So this is shot with just one light. For the techie among you, that was a Bowens 500W head on full with a spot attachment. High and left to camera. Very very little work needed doing on images with Rebecca, at times I was struggling to get focus on closer shots because her skin and Sarah's make up skills had given me such a smooth surface I could not focus! I was having to get focus off the edge of her eyes where I could find some contrast. And that's with 51 point AF!

Thank you so much ladies :)
Lots more to come including the boudoir shots and the tiger stripes!

Why should I book a pro?

It's hard to put that one into words without appearing somwhat either snobbish or deluded!

If I tell you that I spent more on cameras, lenses and flashes than I did on the car then I run the risk of appearing to say that so long as you have that big black camera you can do the job.

If I say that it takes years, not months and certainly not a one day course to be become proficient then I appear to be what some call protectionist. After all, we all need to start somewhere right?

When I found this article I thought "Brilliant!" it illustrates perfectly, using pictures, why a well intentioned friend with a big black camera may not be the best person to capture your wedding day.

Kindly reproduced with the permission of Seattle Bride Magazine.

http://www.seattlebridemag.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=4BFD6D878E9541A0BA4ECDFFB23704C9&AudID=2A616914A2194119BFE70CB02436B2F6

Fun and games in the dark

So the D700's had their first official wedding workout yesterday with Alan and Neil's civil partnership. An absolute hoot with Neil's family coming down from Scotland for the occasion, lots of laughter ensued.

And how did I fare with the D700's? Well pretty good for a first day and a lot more to come I'm sure. Tried out auto ISO and still fluffed a few exposures here and there due to the indoors/outdoors nature of these events but nothing that was a mile off and certainly not the woeful underexposure I have suffered from in the past. Someone has switched on the light!

The 105mm macro also got a good run out shooting details so here are a few from last night. I could shoot all of these in a dark hall with no flash and none of them have had any noise reduction. In fact they are not even sharpened from RAW!

The champagne bottle is shot at ISO 6400, no NR, nothing.....yet it is quite acceptable quality and prints up at A4 with no problem. A good test for forthcoming album images.

Macro shots too

All in all a really good day. I am going to love shooting available light bridal prep with these. Oh yes I am! :)

Just home from a cracking day working with Jamie. Shooting a civil partnership and Alan and Neil were fabulous. They both got through some some lenghty vows with no mistakes. Unfortunately the registrars have a no photography rule. We could shoot them coming in and going out but there is a blanket ban on photography during the ceremony. We had a very good chat with the registrars and I can fully understand their stance. They have a very important job to do and it is not best served by a photographer resting a len on their shoulder. So thay have a no photography rule. That impacts negatively on those of us who have respect for the occasion, who can pick a shot or two without having to adversely impact on the registrars. So we were very limited in the shots we could take but the lead registrar did let me take some pics of them actually signing which was most welcome.

It will live with me though the image of Neil's face, over Alan's shoulder, embracing after they exchanged vows and rings. It was an image that just begged to be taken and I was not allowed to take it. It will never be replaced, it can never be replayed. All I can do is hope that photographers learn to behave so we don't all end up being penalised.

Here we go here we go........

Batteries all charged and the first wedding of the season beckons. A civil partnership on Saturday with Jamie (weddings by James) First chance to put the D700's through their paces and being a civil partnership means different setups for us. Done my homework and I hope I have a few good ideas that will help Jamie on the day. Sounds very much like we should have some fun and integrating on the day is all part of the job. There is a balance to be had between being a wallflower to get those candids and being in the thick of it to get some order out of chaos. A bit of both is usually required and it's knowing which to do and when that helps make the day go smoothly.

Here we go, here we go, here we go.....:)

More boudoir on the way

Booked the gorgeous RebeccaAmy for a shoot on the 14th so looking forward to shooting some more classic boudoir images.

Also booked a studio for the afternoon and have some ideas I want to explore that involve tigers!

Watch this space! :)