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.

Photographic Lighting

Lighting is such an interesting topic. Without light, there is no photography. Yet this is one area that modern photography seems to have forgotten. If you want to improve your photography, start with lighting.

I remember when I first started out as a professional photographer in the days of film, yes I am that old, I used on camera flash to expose everything. It was a Metz 45 which was a very cool flash in it's day, but it was still full on flash. Now I am talking about 1993 so it was a long time ago. Funny thing is, a couple have given me a disc of images taken at a wedding that they asked if I could fix. Images were exactly how I had photographed in the early years, full on camera flash, leading to flat images.

Fast track to the birth of digital photography, suddenly there was this thing about available light, so we took everything with available light, with some terrible consequences. I was watching a talk the other day by a pro photographer call Kevin Katoba who put it as well as I have heard. Lighting is actually not about light, it is about shadows. Once you think about that it all makes sense. Shadows provides the  three dimensional look that often separates a good professional and amateur photographer from someone that is just framing and pressing the go button and allowing these awesome modern cameras to do all the work.

The second comment that Mr Katoba said was that you use natural light if it is there, and if it is not, you create it. I could not put that better and came across a prime situation on Saturday at a wedding. I was photographing the groom in his parents house. There was artwork on the wall that had there own lighting. I had the groom next to the window but the light was not strong enough to balance with the art light.

So this image is what we were getting on the test images. I could have turned off the lighting on the art work, but the light across the face is very flat. The solution is to put a fill flash to the left, actually on the veranda on the other side of the glass doors. The flash is off camera, with a flash-bender in the shape of a snoot. This gives a very directional light source and produces a much more punchy image. If interested in flash-bender, Google it or go and talk to Camera House in the Domain.

Both of these images are straight out of camera and I guess the point here is that the second image in not reproducible through Photoshop. Bottom line, if you are interested in Photography, learn about lighting and how to use light. So simple yet such a difference in the quality of the image produced.

Any questions about how we did this message me or give me a call.

Thanks

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