Buxton March 2011

Ok, so what AM I on about Buxton? Well I have just returned from a week of full on residential training with a bunch of mega talented photographers, three gorgeous models and four hardy souls called trainers. We also filled a kitchen full of food and consumed about a lake of red wine. We think of it as creative lubricant ;)

So what does happen when you lock the aforementioned in a large country house in the middle of nowhere for a week with creative lubricant on hand?

Well the first thing we did was consume some wine.....did I mention we had wine? But then we did get down to the serious business at hand. Learning! As Mark Pearson commented to clients yesterday, people assume that because we are professional photographers that we know it all.....we don't, and who do we go to when we need an answer? Well this is our chance to leave any baggage at the door on the way in and bare our souls. And there were a few laid bare and hopefully a problem shared became a problem halved (or more since there were so many of us!)

The first morning saw the lovely Julie Oswin lead a group on shooting a bride in the landscape. This was a complete revolution to me as Julie set out to do the exact opposite of everthing I had ever been taught. I'd have been running for the shade while Julie popped Maria, our gorgeous bride for the morning in full sun, backlit! Wow, day one and first lightbulb moment! No longer shall I scurry for shade when there is light like that to be used!

From there we also explored in the studio with the wonderful Richie Crossley who is quite, quite mad as well as having a wealth of photographic talent and experience. It does not get much higher in this industry than Vogue Italy and that is the standard of Richies work. I've never been in safer hands and Richies giggles all week despite having a cold were a real highlight.

We talked long into the nights on everything from album design to sales and pricing and all the other business "stuff" that takes over our lives. If I had to add up the years of experience in the house last week it would be a very scary number indeed!

We shot boudoir with Paul Haley (who organised the whole week and deserves a medal!) We shot off camera flash with our resident DJ and image processing expert Sean McCormack. We were also blessed with great weather (it was still March and could have been freezing) and very hardy and super talented models who braved the elements to shoot editorial and art nude in stunning landscapes for us. Thanks to Steve and Richie for leading those sessions.

Back inside to end the week on a real high for me. I had some time with the gorgeous Lily and wanted something a bit special. I spoke to Richie and got some great advice about having a starting point and letting the creativity run from that starting point. So armed with his laptop and "inspirations" files I went hunting. It took me less than a minute to find my starting point, a Helmut Newton inspired shot and off I went. The style seemed to suit me and Lily got right into it and here is where it took us. (Thanks to Mac for the light holding duties :))

The value of the week spent with my peers simpy cannot be underestimated. I have learned techniques, I have learned business skills but most importantly I know a lot of very kind and wonderful people that I did not know this time last week. And for that I am extremely grateful.

More to come on the value of training and how to value training itself.

New digital package launched

I have launched a new digital only package for those couple who don't require a wedding album. Available to couples getting married at a single venue and it includes 5 hours coverage by me and a folder with several of your favourite images and the high res DVD of the fully photoshopped images from the day.

Why did I launch this product now?

Well quite simply, because I listen!

The last two wedding fayres I have exhibited at, couples told me that they were going to have a friend shoot their wedding images. Sorry guys and gals unless your friend has been around weddings for a long time they are simply not the best placed person to do it. Nor are they likely to be equipped for the job and they won't have access to the professional range of products I do. And they won't have insurance either.

And the other reason is because of people like this :-
http://www.u.tv/News/Couples-left-heartbroken-by-wedding-snapper/1df92be6-d13d-4d64-82e6-a468030a2d78

So I have introduced a £500 digital package to help to take the risk out of these situations. Why trust your wedding photography to anyone other than a fully insured photographer who is qualified, experienced and equipped to do the job?

Click on the title to follow the link :)

Discussion Time

I was exhibiting at a wedding fayre on Sunday and the first couple I talked to came out with the immortal line "We are not looking at photographers, we have a friend doing it"

So let me share my response to them :-

I am not here to convince you of the error of your ways but I will educate you to the risks you are taking. It's then down to you to make your choice but at least you will be making that choice from an informed position.

Your friend might have a big black camera, I have some decent knives and pots and pans......does that make me a chef or does it make me someone who owns knives, pots and pans? Would you ask me to cook your wedding breakfast because I own those?

Does your friend know about weddings? Do they know what comes next and where to be to capture it? Do they know the 6 essential shots to be taken during a ceremony? Or will they just shoot everything in the hope that something might be right?

Do they know how to design an album, whether a shot should be landscape for a double page spread or portrait for a single and do they know how to shoot complimentarty images of similar tones so it will work as a cohesive album? Or will they simply stick a load of pictures together? Do they have access to the albums that pros do?

Lets look at that camera again, what's the max aperture they can shoot at? What is the highest ISO they can shoot at. Do you like blur in your images? What is the slowest shutter speed you really need to keep people sharp again?

And you had best ask your venue about insurance because your friend won't have any and if someone trips over their gear or is injured doing something at their direction.....errm you could be very out of pocket with that one. And at the end of the day, if they ruin the lot, lose the cards, have the camera stolen (It has happened) then you have nothing and no recourse either.

So there you go, risks explained.

Good luck with your choice and I hope you have a great day and you get the memories to go with it and you don't end up falling out with your friend.

I've linked this post to an article written by a venue owner who spells out the difference from their observations. Well worth a read. Just click on this blog title to be taken straight to it or paste from the link below.

http://southalleden.com/farmweddingblog/2011/02/why-you-should-never-skimp-on-wedding-photography/

Slideshow for Aisling and Robin

Why does my wedding photography cost so much?

It is a question I see posted on bridal forums and I have been asked it a few times myself so I thought I should really address it here.

Like any self employed business, photographers have overheads. Take your electrician, builder or plumber as an example. You expect them to have to pay for a van, tools, business cards, phone etc and so do we. We need to pay for a vehicle to come to your wedding so it had better be a reliable one! We need to pay for our cameras and lenses and trust me when I say they are not cheap. My own camera bag contains £10K of cameras, lenses and flashguns.

Why so much kit?
Yes you can easily get by with less than I carry but trust me, I don’t carry around all that kit for my health, it weighs a ton! It’s all there to provide my clients with the first rate service they expect. I don’t have one camera body, I have two. I need two simply because I cannot take the risk that one may just malfunction or pack up altogether at a wedding. If I drop it, it could be the end of the photography. So I don’t take the risk and I have two identical camera bodies. Those need replacing every 2-3 years. The lenses last a lot longer but I also have backup lenses in my big black bag. If one lens develops a fault it will be while I am working so I have a selection of prime lenses I can switch to that covers the zoom lenses. Again, I don’t take the risk of not providing the service. Same with flashguns, two of those are nestling side by side.

The cameras are on a three year replacement and the lenses are costed over five. So over a 5 year period I will write off £10K of equipment. That’s £2K a year I need to budget for their replacement. And that cost is spread over the amount of weddings I expect to shoot. If I shoot 40 a year, then £50 of each wedding needs to go on equipment.

Oh and it is all insured…as am I. The insurance is for equipment, public liability and professional indemnity. That means if I fail to photograph your wedding, you are covered!

The other one that I include is training. Now you might be surprised to find that there is a bit of the budget set aside for training but it is continuous professional development and if I don’t keep my skills up to date then my product and my service suffer so it is an integral part of my business. As is sourcing new products. I try to offer premium quality products at as reasonable a cost as I can so I go hunting on your behalf. Trade shows and album suppliers are on my radar and I keep up to date with their offerings.

Then there is the marketing, wedding fayres, sample albums, website costs, leaflets for the wedding fayres. Again a cost to the business.

I also have to pay my accountant at the end of the year which is actually one I like because over the years I have saved more than I have paid!

And last but certainly not least there is the cost of the album, prints, canvas that you order as part of your package.

And after all that has been paid the Government immediately run off with at least 25% of what is left.

Now let’s have a little look at some of the other things that I do that you might not consider.

One thing I don’t do is turn up on the day of your wedding unprepared. It is absolutely vital that I plan properly for your wedding and I leave nothing to chance. As well as meeting with you at least twice before your big day I also visit the venue(s) If you are getting married in Church or Chapel I also take the time to meet with your Vicar or Priest. It is important for them to know I am going about my work in a professional manner. The ceremony itself is a very important moment and it is always beneficial for the person conducting your ceremony to know that I am professional and discrete. I will also attend your rehearsal so I can walk through it with you.

I also work out the route between venues and the time it takes to make that trip. I work with the wedding planner at your reception venue to make sure we have allowed plenty of time to fit in your photography and make sure you are ready and available to begin your wedding breakfast on time. I will liaise with your DJ/band to make sure your first dance is planned and takes place on time.

After the big day when my feet have recovered, I am hard at work at the computer processing your images. We usually shoot around 800 images on the day and I work through them selecting out the very best ones for you. Those are then corrected for exposure, colour balance and crops before exporting to be processed individually. Yes I really do individually process around 300 images. That takes almost a whole day to complete.

Then you pick out the ones you would like for your album and I get to work on your album design. All the albums have their own software and that takes me around 4-5 hours to go through the design and make sure it works as a coherent album.

So when you add up all the time I spend on your wedding it comes to around 4 days of work.

I hope that you can now appreciate just what does go into planning your wedding photography and producing your album. It IS a fantastic job and when I see the look on couples faces when they see their album it makes every minute worthwhile. I would not swap it for another job and being part of your wedding is honestly an honour and a privilege

Thoughts on album design

One of my winter projects has been working on album design. How on earth can you spend time actually studying album design? I hear you ask. Surely it’s a case of shooting a load of images and then just sticking them in a book?

Errm no, that’s not really how it works so let me go into a little more detail about how I think about albums. It is fundamental to understand certain principles like how our eyes actually move over pages. Top left to bottom right is normal for us here in the Western World so I won’t use a design that goes bottom left to top right. It is counter intuitive and therefore won’t sit right. So with the mechanics sorted ( there is a bit more to it than that but you get the idea) let’s get onto the shooting.

Firstly I want to know if the album is portrait, landscape or square because that will influence which way round I hold the camera for certain shots. I know, for example that the ring exchanges are going to be shot from the back of the venue so ¾ length and portrait will be best for a portrait album. If, however I want to use a ring exchange shot in a landscape or square album for a background on a double page spread, it’s best shot in landscape……see where I am going with this?

I actually have a very good idea what the final album will look like before I have even picked up the camera. This is what we call shooting for the album.

Same goes for bridal prep shots. Our bride has something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue? Great! That’s a page in the album. Four shots?…..nope make that eight. Shooting both ways round allows me to place those images anywhere I want for a 2 landscape/2 portrait page. I will also shoot all four with a very similar background so there are no overall distractions to the subjects.

On the subject of backgrounds it is also important when shooting images of our lovely couples to keep the images we want to use on facing pages of the same overall tone. There is no point in putting a deep red toned image next to one that is green. They just won’t work. There are complimentary colours and there are clashing colours and we need to be aware of these and shoot enough of the same or complimentary tones to make the album work.

Black and white images can work very well in an album but are usually best suited to reportage or candid shots. A page or two of smaller black and whites can work really well in storytelling the events of the day but should not really be mixed with colour images. So we need to make sure we shoot enough quality candid images both of our couple and their families to complete those pages.

So this is where the plan of the day meets the vision of the finished product. We shoot our bridal prep images to fit the pages as described above, we shoot our ceremony shots to fit the album the best way depending on what shape it is. Our couple are shot in locations we know will work with the design and our candid shots are produced with those black and white images in mind.

Add the plans of the timings, who we are shooting where and when and with what equipment and hopefully you can appreciate just some of the planning that goes into making that wedding album that you will love for years to come.

New year and new horizons

I am utterly delighted to announce that I will be joining Mark Pearson and Paul Brown as a lead photographer at Mark's photography business Mark Pearson Photography based in Leeds.

http://www.markpearsonphotography.co.uk/blog/archives/2290

The role of a lead photographer means that I take on the responsibility for the couple on the day and make sure that we look after our clients exactly the way that Mark has been doing for 20 years now. Mark has a fantastic reputation for customer service for a very good reason and venues that have been asking for his assistance for years can now be assured of that service from not one, but a team of photographers working to the same high standards.

So where does that leave Alison Bailey Photography? Quite simply, business as usual but......here's the great thing.....I can also call upon all these extra resources :)
So I already have weddings in 2011 and 2012 where I know who I will be working with, I have the resources to call upon to ensure that my clients also benefit from this great service.

So 2011 and beyond offer new horizons for all of us and some great deals for our clients with all this extra expertise as we bring our skills together.

Bring it on