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.


 

 

 

Christmas Animal Photos

Stuck for an idea for Christmas? Why not get your puppy, dog or cat photographed at Leiden Studios. We specialise in studio portraits for dogs and cats, generally on a black or white background. It is a quick process and for the next few months leading up to Christmas we are giving some very special packages away.

Simply give us a call in the studio to book a time. It takes about 30 minutes depending on the pet and their cooperation. And we will have the prints to you before Christmas. Bookings are essential so give us a call. The special will be valid until the 20th December 2012, we then revert to normal prices.

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.