Inspired Photo Blog

As 2005 draws to a close, I realize I have much to be thankful for this year. I have some of the best clients any self-employed person could ever want. They are supportive, kind and all of them have great stories.

This summer I decided that I wanted to be completely caught up with my workload before the start of a new year. Something I have not been able to accomplish for 3 years now. I have couples wanting custom designed Queensberry albums whose wedding dates were in 2002! Life stood in the way for most of them. New jobs that required relocating to strange lands, some purchased new homes that exhausted their emotional and financial resources and many heard the patter of little feet. It’s so easy to put off today what can be done in a few months.

When October started, I made a concerted effort to organize all my clients and get the fire put under them to finish what we started. This meant a whole month of designing albums, sending layouts back and forth, revisions and watching that Christmas deadline for album delivery looming ever closer. Finally, I hit my goal of getting all 16 albums signed off on and production could begin! Next was putting together all the album orders with the various title pages and color choices, cover options and sizes. I began uploading my orders to the Queensberry facility in New Zealand.

Next were the prints. I had to assemble a master sheet with each image that was in my couple’s albums which included the custom print sizes. Each image was opened meticulously, one by one in Photoshop and enhanced, color corrected and retouched to become a part of these couple’s heirloom albums. Each album took at least 1-2 full days of print production. These were uploaded to the professional lab and were delivered in less than a week. Once the albums started to arrive, then I needed to match up the prints to the albums, custom trim each photo by hand and carefully mount each photo by hand, into their respective places.

Every time I thought I was getting close, a new obstacle would be dropped in my way. The server crashed at the Queensberry production facility. That meant any orders during a certain time period would have to be reordered. This also meant that they were out of the production schedule and I lost valuable time and any delays this time of year could mean a couple not receiving their album for Christmas. Glitches in the album software surfaced, reports indicating print sizes showed the wrong sizes, photos were randomly dropped and not caught until the album was being put together. At one point 6 of my albums were held up at Customs. Why? Because of Homeland Security restrictions. I had to send over a copy of my Social Security card, my Master Business License and all sorts of business information. Even up to 3 days ago, I was facing hurdles that would threaten to bring this carefully orchestrated madness to a crawling halt. In the end…I did it! 16 albums. Beautiful, Queensberry heirloom wedding albums were finished and ready for delivery.

The phone calls were made and appointments set up. My beautiful wife volunteered to hand deliver 8 wedding albums to couples who had to work or couldn’t make it over to pick up their albums. The rest slowly trickled in all day long and I was able to reconnect with these special couples. Reliving their wedding day and listening to their memories and stories made me realize how much I love what I do and how important these wedding day stories are to the lives of my couples and their children. I am truly blessed to have been a part of so many people’s lives. They are my friends.

So, changing the subject and adding more photos for those who feel photos speak louder than words…I thought I’d share my personal Christmas card with you. Since it’s impossible to nail down all 5 of us at one time in any one place, we decided to set up a simple black background in our dining room and photograph each family member one at a time. Here is my wife enjoying a well deserved Cheetos snack between shoots.

This is the final design that I came up with in Photoshop. A composite of our 5 headshots and some creative tinkering in Photoshop. These were printed up on metallic paper and really looked quite spectacular. Note to self: Get some metallic prints made to show couples, very cool indeed.

No matter where you are this holiday season, I hope you are able to enjoy the warmth of family and loved ones. Be safe as you travel about and remember, Santa knows you’ve been naughty!

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The delivery of the mail each day brings new magazines. This time of year, there are a lot of lists about the “best of 2005″ including photography books. This one caught my eye simply because of the cover. It’s a book on the work of Richard Avedon. What caught my eye was the natural light studio that is shown in this image.

I’ve always been enthralled with the beauty, quality and simplicity of the natural light portraits from the late 1800’s. Matthew Brady, Civil War photographer, used to travel with a canvas tent that he would set up and use for natural light portraits. There is something magical about natural light.

My dream is to have a North Light studio. Why north light? Because it’s indirect and constant. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the winter, it travels to it’s furthest point south, but direct light never comes from the north. The light that comes from the north is a soft indirect light from the north sky and it’s beautiful. You still need to employ the techniques of the craft, such as knowing how to “see” light and use light modifiers. But it’s such a amazing, simple quality of light.

One of these days, my dream is to have a studio once again and have a section of it constructed to do natural, north light portraits. I can’t imagine finding a studio like the one shown in Richard Avedon’s photograph, but dreams are what inspire us and motivate us to move through life. Stay tuned…

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One of the services I offer my clients is retouching. I try to keep this to a minimum, simply because it’s overused and abused by so many photographers to hide sloppy technique. For the most part, retouching is saved for art prints which will be framed and wedding album prints. For my commercial clients, retouching has become a necessary aspect of the industry.

For detailed retouching, I use a Wacom Tablet. This marvelous device allows me to use a pen with touch sensitivity on a special tablet mimicking pencil and paper. The level of control is unparalleled with the added benefit of substantially reducing repetitive stress injuries. Wacom is a local company, based right here in Vancouver, Washington. I decided to call them and find out about replacing the plastic tip of the pen, called a nib.

Nib is the pointed end part of a pen, which distributes the ink on the writing surface. A pointed or projecting part of an object.

They had two new replacement nibs that caught my attention. One has two springs, which gives the tip a responsive feel, similar to a brush. The other tip has a felt piece on the end, for enhanced retouching techniques. As soon as my spring tip arrived, I replaced my hard plastic nib and started working in Photoshop. Unbelievable does not begin to describe the new freedom and responsiveness. Now you’ll have to pry my tablet from my hands, because it’s never going to leave my workstation.

Here is a print I was working on this afternoon for Holly-Kate and Kyle. Wonderful couple from Seattle who were married in Vancouver and had their reception at Vancouver’s Pearson Air Museum. This image will go into their wedding album and they asked if I could retouch the hanger doors so they were open. Luckily, we had an image of the hanger doors in the open position that I could draw from for my project. Here are the before and after images.

Image before retouching

Image after retouching with hanger doors opened and walls cleaned up

This is where my years of retouching at a commercial advertising studio in Los Angeles have really come in handy. Today’s photographer not only has to be well versed in digital cameras, shooting and lighting techniques, but post production retouching skills that look natural. My new nib from Wacom certainly made that job more pleasurable and I hope the results show it!

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