I'm back... e-Session

So where have I been... busy.  It's a place that is sadly behind my computer, at my desk at work and organising building a house, selling a shop and.... dah dah... my beautiful and very hardworking wife is expecting our first bub.  We're due on December 21 and we're feeling pretty chuffed.  Photos to follow.

So what's with these shots.  This is Jade and Brett.  They're getting married (as if you can't tell they're in love) in January 2008.  Can't wait for their wedding day.  I've already shot Jade's sister's (Kara and Paul) wedding this year and that's because I shot Paul's brother's (Marco and Rachel) wedding last year.  So I'm guessing the whole group have been happy with the shots and their relationship with me.  It's great as they're now good friends who I can catch up with now and then.  The day started off really nice with medium cloud cover and I thought we'd get a great sunset.  Unfortunately it totally clouded over and so I was left with grey skies... not to be worried though I decided I would do a little experimenting and use some cto gelled flash to brighten up the day.  So although it look likes sunset streaming through it's not

Horses and Thongs

 A very good friend of mine put me on to a couple who wanted some couple shots done.  They live about 1 1/2 hours from me on a small farm (about 11 acres) and they have 3 horses amongst other animals.  Including deadly snakes and spiders - no thanks.  So me being me, in the middle of summer and pouring rain turn up in thongs - that's the aussie word for flip flops or rubber sandles you put on your feet.  It wasn't too bad as it hadn't been running massively and there wasn't too much mud, but all the same it was the wrong footwear for shooting in the bush with horses.  So anyway here are some shots. 

I feel so priveledged to have witnessed such a strong love between two people and also to see their love of their horses as well.  What was really cool was I turned up and it was pouring rain.  Then for litterally 2 minutes the sun shone through and showed the potential.  Unfortunately it didn't shine at all whilst we did the shots and it started getting pretty dark very quickly.  So I set up two flash guns on stands and used my pocket wizards to simulate what the sun was doing.  It was a very simple technique I learnt from www.strobist.com blog spot.  Basically diagonally opposing the two light sources.  This gave me an awesome rim light which as you can see helped to seperate the subjects from their backgrounds.  I used this same lighting setup for a recent baby shoot also, except I used the two lights to light the subject using a high key style of lighting.  This is giving me awesome studio like results with a setup I can carry in a shoulder bag.  I should have had a third light though to blow out my white background for the baby set up.  More money to spend

A stitch in time...

  In Australia we have amongst the highest incidence of skin cancers in the world.  Perhaps it's one of the disadvantages of living in such a beautiful client - we sit in the sun too much.  So I get my moles and freckles checked regularly.  So yesterday I had a mole removed for bio testing - it's painful and can be such a nuisance - so my advice is to stay safe in the sun and keep covered up.

On a lesson gruesome note here is a wonderful couple I had the pleasure of photograhing this morning.  Hope you enjoy.  Note that these photos are all shot raw and I don't open photoshop to do any editing - it's all done in photoshop bridge (ACR).  I have about 20 odd settings I regularly use now.  like my mole scar shot it's called 'orange jaffa'.

 So what else is important with this shot ?  It was shot in the shade.  I used a portable flash on a compact light stand to light them up.  I used a Canon EOD 5D with 50 1.4 then took a light reading on them without flash.  I then match the output from my flash with their reading.  For some of the shots I purposely underexposed by a stop so that the background was more evident.  I use two pocket wizards to trigger my flash.  For the shots on top of the hill I get really extravagant and used a westcott compact umbrella to give a nice soft light.  Then the shots in the full sun in the grassy patch were all lit with on camera fill flash.  How do you do fill flash ?  On most cameras simply shooting in aperature priority mode will mean your flash will simply expose for the ambient exposure.  The compositions were also kept simple.  Many of them showing important landmarks showing the environment for the shoot.  This location was important to the couple as this is where Billy proposed to Cara a few years earlier - she obviously said yes !!  Hope you enjoy the shots and feel free to ask any questions of a technical nature or anything else.

Sales is tough business - Even Warm Calling

So last week we had a sale at our shop and I managed to get the names and phone numbers for 93 people who indicated they'd be interested in getting a free portrait session.

Even the lady who won my 16 by 24 framed print prize was surprised there was no catch !!

You see there are too many large portrait places saying that people win stuff or something's for free when there is always a hidden catch.  So I rang up 20 of my prospects and only 1 has made a definite booking with about 15 of them saying they don't really want a free portrait shoot.  These people are too scared of sales tactics that make them buy something they didn't really want.  This is sooo crazy... so I've gotta think of different way of getting prospects - HOT prospects !!  Any tips ?

This is what they're missing out on

I told you I was too hectic... I've now just prospected another 93 portrait clients

So last August I was telling you all how hectic my life was... the new job hasn't gotten any easier and I really wich I didn't have to be there.

The good news I guess is that we've put our baby shop up for sale and will hopefully have some good news next Tuesday on a positive sale - fingers crossed.

So what have I done in between all this.In September / October we went to Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. This was an amazing first time Euro experience for us and was awesome and yes very expensive too. I'll post a seperate blog with photo updates.

November I had 3 weddings followed by another two in December and a whole heap of portrait shoots. Below are some of my favs from these shoots - hope you enjoy. Special mention to Chris Fawkes http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=chrisfawkes for his awesome advice regarding putting up a competition at the baby shop. We had a sale which I estimate had about 200 customers. I was working the counter as I always do when we have these huge sales. I had some small entry forms to win a 16 * 24 framed portrait and on the forms I asked if they would also be interested in a free portrait shoot, asking them when I could call and when they would like the shoot done. Out of the 107 people who entered the competition ( we were too busy to ask everyone) only 14 said they wouldn't want a free portrait shoot and another didn't even want to enter the competition (shows you how many sharks are out there ripping people off). So I now potentially have 93 new portrait customers that I have to ring up and shoot over the next 12 months.

So anyway as promised here's some of my latest. And contrary to Scott I prefer to shoot raw and do my quick edits using Adobes ACR. If anyone wants tips on how to produce these images using ACR alone give me a yell and I'll post a link.

Ciao (I loved Amalfi, Italy)

And here's a show it video... I had too many images to post up individually. Did I mention that I love photography and that one day it will be my full time profession !!!!

http://www.allgoodshots.com/images/latest       how do I link to my show it shows ?