Photographic competitions

Here is a big comment, but I believe that all photographers calling themselves professional should be entering at least one professional photographic competition a year. If you are a member of that AIPP then it is a requirement of maintaining your membership to enter into the APPA's. Why do I say this? We have learnt so much from the competitions that we have entered and we have had a bit of success. We have also had a few disappointments along the way as well so it does balance out. I will admit we have been professional photographers for 8 years, but only started entering the competitions last year. That was definitely a mistake and in the end, slowed our progress. What better way is there than to get people with huge amounts of experience and technical skills to assess your work.

There are however, a couple of problems with the APPA's. Firstly it is very expensive to enter into the competition and secondly, and my point with this blog, is that you actually need to get the feedback from the judges to really benefit from the competition. That means you not only have the cost of entry, cost of the print and matting and the cost of posting to where ever the location is that year, you also have to travel to the judging. Costly from Townsville and there is also the time factor as well.

This is one of the reasons that I love the International Loupe Awards, (Google if interested). Entry is only $35/image, unlimited entry's and when you get the result you also get the judges feedback from between one and three of the judges. So here is my point. This is one of the images that has just come back from the International Loupe Awards.

The set up is the location shoot of a wedding at The Brewery, one of my favourite locations. We were photographing using the window light, generally in the narrow range, when I noticed the beautiful rim lighting effect that the light was having on Regina. The light is actually coming from the right and reflecting of the wall and through the window, stunning.

So what are your thought about it without cheating and checking on what the judges said about the image. (I have posted their comments below). I knew that I had problems with the reflections and when I took the image should have bracketed the image probably 2 to 3 stops under the exposure that I used. That would give me details in the highlighted areas that were blown out  in the original exposure.

Unfortunately, my Photoshop skills need work and that is one area I did get pick up on. The rest of the comments I completely missed. That being said the image scored 77, enough to score a bronze medal last year, but 3 points shy of award status this year. Still happy with the result and will think a little more about it next time. I also love this image but take on board what the judges have said.

Judges Comments:

Critique Comments:

Judge 1:   line runs directly through her nose

Judge 2:  The light on this is very nice and well handled. There a re a couple of fundamentals here though which weaken the image. Placement of the bride - just an inch back and you would not have that line going through her nose - its very distracting, you have taken the time to set this up so just note small things like this and adjust. She also looks a little stiff but her expression is relaxed. There is a lot of visible retouching which lets this down. Sometimes its good to just leave an image alone..

Judge 3: The line of the window, cut the nose of the Bride.

Finding Your Wedding Photographer

Previously, I wrote about the process of finding you wedding photographer. It is a very difficult decision, made harder by the sheer number of people calling themselves a professional photographer. There is a wide range of abilities and price differences between the photographers and I have to say, like all professions, you get what you paid for, Generally.

There is a lot more to wedding photography than being able to compose a photograph in camera. Most people that get into wedding photography, start with an interest in photography and then get asked by friends to cover a wedding. All very well, except there is a big difference to taking photos for fun and the expectation of a wedding shoot. Suddenly, if you stuff it up, there is no come back. No real way to go back and re shoot the event. Even if you had the resources, the photos are never the same.

So the basics of wedding photography begin with an understanding of the camera and it's settings. Modern cameras are amazing. Really, anyone can pick a camera up and take a really nice, well composed photographs. Cameras come with face recognition technology, large file size, incredible low light capability, motor drive, this list go on. What is does not come with is composition, lighting and posing. Your photographer has to be able to do that.

Where you separate yourself as a professional from the want to be, is in the use of light, positioning of those being photographed, exposure and in the end, how the image is finished using programs like Photoshop. On Photoshop, when you start is amazing. It can "fix" a range of photographic problems that the professional photographer should get right in camera. There is a limit to how long you can fix it in Photoshop before you get sick of it and go back to the basics of the original in camera capture. Get that right and the rest is easy, sort of.

One of the great ways of getting a good photographer is to check their professional association memberships. The Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) or Australian Commercial & Media Photographers (ACMP) are two such associations. Membership requires an assessment by fellow professional photographers as well as a continuing education and assessment process to maintain membership. This means you constantly have to remain up to date with current technology and trends in the industry.

One of the assessments is the APPA's, the AIPP's annual professional photography competition. Four images are submitted and assessed by Masters of photography, people who have been in the industry for years and have a wealth of experience. This is the best way of learning what is required as a professional photographer. Judging can be brutal, but as a learning experience there is nothing like it. Does your photographer enter the APPA's?

Silver award 2012 APPA's

For further information please contact Malcolm during office hours.

Choose your wedding photographer

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Booking your Wedding Photographer. The selection of your wedding photographer is one of the most difficult decisions that has to be made before the big day. Depending on when the wedding is, it might have to be made months or years in advance to ensure that you get who you want.  In terms of photography, the web has a huge amount of information available. This allows you to go to the photographers and scan their images to get a sense of what they are about. Have a look at what the photographer has on their website. Are the images current? What style do you like? Are you after traditional images or more candid images? Once you find a photographer with the style that you like, you need to meet them, preferably in their studios so you can see images and product first hand. Talk to them, have a look at the images they have taken, look at their products. Look for experience, associations that they are members of, gear they use. The question is, are they serious about the photography or just someone doing it for a bit of spare cash. Big question. Will they still be here in 12 months or 2 years or 5 years if something happens to one of your products?  These questions will allow you to gauge where they are in the professional world. One of the big questions is, "do I get on with them"? You spend a lot of time with your photographer on the day. You need to trust that they can do the job you have employed them for and you need to be able to get along with them. Are they great at keeping the day moving? Can they organise a lot of people into images that look great? Do they know what to look for on the day? Can they give advice on what to look, for what you need and where to go. It is a hard decision, who will photograph your wedding, but when all is said and done, all the memories that you have of your day will be the photographs. There are a couple of wedding expos coming up. One is at the Mercure and the other at the Venue. Get along and ask questions. Good luck with your choices. Summer Wedding Offer Getting married or know of someone getting married later in the year? We have several spots open from October through to December for weddings. As a special incentive we will throw in a 16x24" print valued at $300 to your package for anyone booking a wedding during this time. Education Leiden Studios is looking to do a weekend photography course that would cover basic camera function, lighting and posing on day one, image processing on day two including Lightroom and Photoshop. The course will contain a large amount of information. Expressions of interest are welcome.

May News Letter

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Wedding Season Wedding season in Townsville is now in full swing with weddings being held every weekend. We have a couple of Fridays booked as well as the traditional days. In fact we booked a Monday wedding yesterday, so they are not limited to the traditional Saturday. Your wedding photography is one of the most important aspects of the day. After it is all over and the guests have gone home, all that will remain is your memories and images captured during the day. Don't risk it. Find an accredited photographer that you get on with. It is a long day if you do not get on with them. Occasionally you get the most amazing skies that can add drama to your wedding images. We were getting ready for Alyce and Jason to go into their reception being held at the Picnic Bay Surf Lifesaving Club. We were hoping to get a good sky, but could not dream it would be like this. Once the sky turned to these beautiful shades we had barely 10 minutes before it was gone.  To do this you need to be proficient in off-camera flash. Exposure is set for the background so that you get the beautiful colours, in fact you can under-expose a little to increase the drama. The couple are exposed using off-camera flash with a diffuser. The flash exposure is balanced to the sky's exposure. There are a couple of ways to do this, one of the easiest is simply moving the flash closer and further away, depending on the desired result. Even diffused, the flash does need to be a little distance from the couple. Here I had my assistant on the rocks and to the right. The final image can be manipulated so that more of the detail of the club can be seen. It would be an excellent final image in an album, with lots of impact and nothing really required in Photoshop except to bring out the detail in the background. This image has had a bit done in Photoshop. The original capture is taken on a 10-20mm Sigma lens that caused quite a deal of distortion. The verticals have been corrected so that the building does not look like it is going to fall over. However there is still a little horizontal distortion.  I do like some of the effects that wide angle lenses provide and often use them on my group photos. You have to be careful that you do not have the group too close to the edge of the image as that is where most of the distortion occurs. Other than that, the image has been darkened to add drama, and using a layer mask, the couple bought out so they are more obvious in the image. The sky is real so already had a bit of drama to it. This image became our most liked Facebook image at more than 140 likes at last count. Summer Wedding Offer Getting married or know of someone getting married later in the year? We have several spots open from October through to December for weddings. As a special incentive we will throw in a 16x24" print valued at $300 to your package for anyone booking a wedding during this time. Education We will be announcing the next photography course and Lightroom course in the next week. Any enquiries please call the office or send us an email.

Best New Talent - Weddings 2012

MEDIA RELEASE – LEIDEN STUDIOS

Winning an international photography award came as both a shock and a thrill for Townsville business Leiden Studios – along with industry confirmation that their small but thriving photography business is destined for greater things.

Leiden Studios, founded seven years ago by the dynamic husband-and-wife team of Mal and Kellie Gillham, was awarded first place in the prestigious Photography Excellence Awards 2012 in the category of “Wedding – New Talent’’.

The Photography Excellence Awards, awarded by The Edge Photo Imaging through major sponsor Seldex, attracts entries from professional photographers across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, recognising excellence across a range of photographic styles including wedding, portraiture and landscape.

Mal and Kellie submitted an entry to the awards for the first time late last year with a portfolio of four photographs, with their wedding entry taking out the popular “Wedding – New Talent’’ category.

The news would come as no surprise to hundreds of appreciative Townsville couples in recent years, who have booked the Gillhams for their weddings based on the couple’s signature striking art-based stylised images.

Mal is the team’s specialist wedding photographer, with Kellie focussing her talents on incredible and intimate portraits of families and babies, with the Annandale business also highly recognised for its sports photography and commercial work.

The couple – who based their business name Leiden after their sons Liam, 10, and Hayden, 14 – have become increasingly busy over recent years, but have only just started entering competitions, with this latest win following a hugely successful 2012, during which they also took out four bronze medals in the International Loupe Awards, a silver medal in the national Canon Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPAs), and two silver medals in the Canon Queensland APPAs.

Mal, who started his professional career as a medical scientist and photographer with QML in Brisbane, said he had always had a passion for photography, while wife Kellie, who has a medical administration background, developed her interest more recently, with the couple deciding make a huge jump and follow their dream by leaving their regular jobs and starting their own business – and what a wise decision that has turned out to be.

Mal said their latest award was a welcome recognition of their talent by their industry peers, and hoped it would lead to a further expansion of their talents in the Townsville region.

“This award came as a total shock to both of us, but also a huge thrill, because it gives justification to all our hard work, and shows us we’re on the right path,’’ Mal said.

“Our style of photography is art-based – we focus very strongly on excellent photo and lighting techniques, with professionally finished images.

“Our brides and grooms, as well as our mums, dads and babies, all know they will receive a totally professional product at the end, showing them at their absolute best – we produce art-based albums, not just give them unfinished photos on a disc.

“We recognise that a couple’s wedding day is the most special day of their lives, and that portraits of a beloved baby or family are about capturing a cherished moment in time, and we give our utmost to capture those moments in the most beautiful way that will give our clients lasting and treasured memories.’’

Leiden Studios will be present at several upcoming Townsville wedding expos including the Mercure Inn on the 3rd February and The Venue on 24^th February

For more information, contact Leiden Studios on enquiries@leidenstudios.com.au

2013 Wedding Special.

Ever been to a wedding where the photographer did a slide show of the images captured during the day? Did you like it? Think it was a good idea?

 Leiden Studios will provide a free slide show at your wedding if you book with us before the 23rd of December 2012. That is a value of $350, just by booking one of the top photographers in Townsville. Any package, we will provide a slide show at your reception, your guests will be able to see what happens during the day.

Here is one that we did earlier this year. We actually did more slide shows at wedding this year then ever before. They are a great way to allow your guests into your day.

This offer will only be available for a limited time so give us a call to check out our availability.

Summer Weddings

As our last post explained, summer weddings in Townsville are difficult and require a lot of extra planning. With this in mind, Leiden Studios will offer an 10% extra digital images for  all of our packages for wedding booked in the months of December 2012, and February and March 2013. If you are getting married during these months, give us a call and come in and have a coffee with us.

Danni & Paul on the beach at Maggie Island

If you know someone getting married in these months, let them know about this special offer. The offer will only be available until the end of November.

Summer Weddings

Have you noticed how hot it gets in summer in Townsville? So can you imagine how hot it is for couples who elect to get married during our summer months. It produces a range of different problems that southern states would not seem possible. Having said that I met a photographer at the "Hair of the Dog", the annual conference of the Queensland branch of the AIPP. He had flown up from Melbourne where the day before he shot a wedding in 46C heat. Now that is hot.



Kell & Dom at Pallerenda
 

In Townsville, we have to beat the heat in creative ways as photographers. Later weddings, so after 4.00pm, going to an air condition building for photos after the wedding and then venturing out to the Strand or Pallerenda for sunset photos. The Brewery or Cactus Saloon or the Holiday Inn provide lots of great locations for photos while waiting for the cooler and better lighting conditions to arrive outside.

At any wedding in Townsville regardless of the time of year, we always recommend that the bridal party has an eskie, yes have a few bears and wine, it is a celebration after all. However it must have water as well and all need to remember to drink a little through the day. A few nibbles as well are useful as many find it hard to eat before the wedding. Both sides of the bridal party need to be aware of heat stress, not a great way to finish your day if you get a case of heat stress through not drinking enough water.





Luke & Jesse at the Tea Rooms Harvey's Range
 

The big problem is for the boys, especially in their three piece suits and sweating. While Photoshop can remove a lot of the sweat marks from faces and cloths, it is very time consuming to do a lot of images. How you get around this I'm not sure. I would say if you are going to get married in summer then dress in accordance with the weather. Three piece suits are probably not a great idea, open collared shirt a little more sensible. We have photographed everything from shorts and shirt to full military uniforms. While I remember the uniform was worn with great dignity and he looked fantastic, the post production was a lot more difficult. Of course the same goes for the bride, go for simple, single layered dresses, not multi layered glamour gowns. They might look fantastic, but are easy to over heat in and then your day is memorable for all the wrong reasons.

 



Chris & Lisa at Jupiters

The other aspect of summer weddings is rain. Not much you can do about it if it does rain, but you need a plan B in place if you are having an outdoor ceremony. Most reception venues will allow you to use their facilities if the rain comes down, so talk to them when you are booking your reception. It has only happened to us once, a wedding was moved from Queens Gardens to The Pier Restaurant. Still a great location and at least they had it as a alternative.


The most important aspect of a wedding is that it is memorable an enjoyable. Weddings in a Townsville summer are definitely a challenge, but with a bit of thought a great time can still be had by all.


 

 

 

The beauty of Photography

Photography is permanent, once captured there is a permanent record of the split second in time that will last forever. Well maybe not. The image has to be captured correctly, and in the digital age, stored correctly. This means backing up, backing up, backing up. Images stored singularly on a hard drive of a computer are destined to be lost, simple as that. If you have never had a hard drive failure, you will, it is only a matter of time. It usually happens at the most difficult or inconvenient time.

We have a Raid system that automatically backs itself up. Because we are a profession studios we have to have other systems in place to ensure we do not lose any clients work. This is done with two external drives, one is kept off sight, the other backs up each night. These are rotated every week. As it stands the most we can lose is one weeks work. That is still not good enough really, especially if that week we lost was a wedding. Can you imagine calling someone to tell them their wedding photos are lost. It would kill your business.

Why the need for off sight? Backups only work if you still have them. A fire, theft, or natural disaster destroys both the original and backup. Very frustrating if it is your photos that are lost. It has happened to friends who were backing up their images and were burgled. Of course they stole both the computer and the backup. Suddenly any image that you might need is gone.

The problem with all of these back ups, especially with modern cameras, is the actual size of the files. Last year we took 1.8Tb, that's Tera bytes of images. Drives are mounting up. The DAM (Digital Asset Management) books say that 3 backup is minimum with one of those backups being kept off sight and one a non rewritable disc like DVD or Blue ray. The need to go to Blue Ray is evident when you consider that we take about 32Gig of images at a single wedding or about 9 DVD's. Clearly there has to be ever increasing capacity for the storage of these images.

So if your images are currently just stored on your computers hard drive, time to work out how to back them up and do it today, no time like the present. Why am I writing about this, one of this years backups has just failed. No damage, we have 2 other backups, but to back up a full year, or to October as is the case here will take about 24 hours. Needs to be done know.

Professioal Photographer or Photoshopper

There was an interesting post on Facebook the other day questioning if a photographer who uses photoshop is actually a professional photographer or photoshopper. The question came that it should be captured correctly in camera and therefore you should not need photoshop.

I have to say that there may be merit to this comment on photography, however that is about all I would agree with. Unfortunately in this age, the modern camera is outstanding and is very affordable. The number of people picking up a camera and believing that there is a quick buck to be made out of photography is amazing. So if you are a photographer who does this for a living you have to separate yourself from the pack of happy snappers. This is achieved by the ability to "finish" the image, by covering to black & white, adding a texture or border, or bringing out the detail that is in the image. Producing an amazing print or album, something that has always been the photographic product, not a low res image on Facebook.

Unfortunately, a lot of the new breed of professional photographer believe that by undercutting other professionals is the way to a successful career. A basic understanding of f-stops, shutter speed and composition is not really needed as the camera does it all for you. An image that is correctly exposed with great use of the light and is well composed will stand out from the crowd because so few photographers actually know how to do these things. If you can then finish the image so that it looks like a work of art, then as a professional you will be miles in front of the pack.

So what is a professional photographer? To me it is someone who's primary income is from photography. To do this, the skill set required is large. A basic understanding of all technical aspects of photography is essential, getting back to get it right in camera so that photoshop is only used to enhance the image, not "fix" it. A wide range of Photoshop skills so that the absolute best can be produced from the raw camera image. An understanding of colour balance and colour space to produce the best possible print of the image. And then a range of business skills to allow the growth of the business. Marketing, sales, accounting, networking, cash flows etc. are required to be a successful photographer. Not an easy job, but definitely worth it.

Watch this space, Leiden Studios is going to embark on an adventure aimed at the beginner to intermediate photographer.

Low Light Photograph

Welcome to Leiden Studios first educational post.

This image was actually posted on Facebook late last year with some of the details that go with the image, but I thought it was a great way to start a discussion about how Leiden Studios goes about it's image creation.

Nicole was one of our beautiful brides from last year. The image was taken on the second floor of Cactus Saloon in Flinders Street Townsville and our thanks goes to Cactus Saloon for the use of their premises. A lot of what we do could not be done without the co-operation of the clubs and pubs around Townsville.

The basic set up has a door to the left of Nicole that goes out onto a deck and provides a natural light source coming across her from left to right. She is place next to the door with her head turned towards the light source. Having her face the other way would put her face into shadow and would need to be corrected by either filling with flash or video light or similar, or a reflector. The last option would still be difficult to get enough light into her face.

Most of our photography is done in "manual" mode with the highlight alert set to on. Weddings are all about the dress and nothing spoils a shoot more that over exposing the dress and losing detail, especially if a lot of money has been spent on the dress. We also shoot all our images in "raw" rather than jpgs as this retains all the details of the image and allows us to make decisions on the image later in post production.

So for this shot the details were ISO 3200, f2.8 @ 1/125 second. This allows you to keep the depth of field narrow and focused on Nicole. You could play with the numbers and allow more detail in the barrels to come out, but you need to keep a close eye on the shutter speed to ensure a sharp image. The ISO could go to 6400 remembering that noise will increase at this number. However I would rather a sharp image with noise than a soft image without.

So the options would be to decrease the shutter speed, maybe with an increase in aperture, this will lighten the barrels and give a bit more detail in the raw image. However our look is probably a bit more dark and moody and by shooting in raw format we can bring back detail in the shadows in post production.

It would also be difficult to photograph this image on any auto mode. The camera would read the image as dark and try to lighten it. Taking a spot reading from the dress would under expose the image. I'll post and article at a later date about why the cameras does that, but it is out of the scope of this article.

So our raw image looked like this straight out of the camera. Not a lot needed post production which is exactly what we are trying to achieve on our shoots. One of the worst things with Photoshop is the notion that "I can fix that in Photoshop". More time is wasted trying to fix technical problems with the original capture than anything else in photography. Those new to the industry commonly make that mistake, I know I did. You only make it once though, no mater what your Photoshop skills, a poorly captured image will never look as good as a well captured image, ever. Get it right in camera the first time. Take a little time with the capture, and have a look at the image on the back of the camera. In doubt, check the histogram. Still in doubt, then do a bracket exposure around your current exposure.

Looking at the raw image, all it needed was a little straightening, the door is distracting so it is removed, the image is converted to Black & White using Nik software and a slight HDR effect is added also in Nik to increase the detail in the barrels and the dress. The right side of the face was lightened a little using Shadows/highlights in Image>Adjustments and to add a little more detail into the barrels.

The image has pride of place in Phil & Nicole's wedding album. Thanks to the couple, their wedding was a wonderful event, one we will not forget and we look forward to working with them in the future.

Any comment are welcome.

Talking about photography.

Hi all

With the advent of Facebook, yes it took us a long time to actually start using it, a lot of our actual photographs are now posted on that site instead of this blog. With this in mind we have decided to use this site more as a educational site to show what we do and more importantly, how we do it.

There are a lot of photographers out there, many are fantastic at what they do, many have an incredible eye for detail or creativity and produce some stunning results. Unfortunately there are a lot out here that start by getting one of the modern hi tech cameras and start taking photographs. Some of these take good photographs and decide it might be a good way to earn some extra money, so they turn "pro".

There is a lot more to photography than setting the camera to P and firing away, and this is the problem that is common in Professional photography. A photographer needs to have the basic technical knowledge to be able to shoot in all conditions, they need the equipment to be able to shoot in all conditions and be creative enough to work with whatever is in front of them.

By basics I mean getting the knowledge to understand f-stops, shutter speeds and ISO. How they interact and how they can be used to produce stunning images that simply do not need huge amounts of Photoshopping to get the result. How to see light and use it to it's best effect and how to work with the people being photographed.

We hope that you find our articles helpful, and if you disagree with comments by all means let us know.

The team at

Leiden Studios.