Friday, February 5, 2010

Weekly Fixations - February 5, 2010

Unleashing the power of analytics

Presets vs. Actions - and some links to free stuff



This invitation is so cute.

Color personality test here.

Some DIY for your Friday. First, make your own rapid strap. Then, a link to make your own flash diffuser. Disclaimer: while this may be fine for a hobbyist I would never dream of showing up on a job with bubblewrap strapped to my flash unit. Maybe that's just me though.

Nice quick and easy photoshop tutorial for making layouts using textures.

If you are interested in type face at all check out the Basic Rules of Type.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Making Money vs. Crafting Quality

Somehow when my TV was getting set up (probably because my husband decided that we didn't need the tech guy to come set up our system and that we could do it ourselves) when I turn the television off, it turns off everything. Surround sound, cable box, the works. Which in itself would have been fine - saving energy! Until I realized that I have to let my cable box reboot every time I turn on the TV before I can watch anything.
I don't take a long time to get ready in the mornings (because I hate mornings) so by the time the cable box turns itself on I am practically ready to leave. And then last night was the final straw.
You may know that last night was the season premiere of Lost. My husband hates this show. He also had to wake up early today so I turned off the TV half way through the show so that we could go to bed, fully assured that my show would be recorded. It was not! Now this TV issue is a problem. This has absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about today but I just had to rant a bit. If you are a tech savvy person and you can fix my V please help. I will cook you dinner or you can have my eternal gratitude. And, I promise not to make enchiladas.
Anyway, I was browsing through my reader yesterday when I ran across this clip of Saul Bass on the Red Door LA blog (link here). The video is very short, but I think that he says some very important things. Now, I am paraphrasing a bit here but the things that he said that really struck me were first, "I want everything that comes out of my studio to be beautiful." and second, "We (as designers) need to realize that not everyone else cares."
Two very important and diverse points. How can we apply this to our photography? First, we need to make the commitment to make everything that comes out of our studio the absolute best it can be. Not for the money, but because we refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Next, and far more difficult, we have to make potential clients care.
How do we make our clients care? I have no brilliant ideas here. I just try to be passionate about what I do and care about people. I feel like people are more likely to care about you and what you care about if you care about them. I don't like "selling" to people like a cheesy used car salesman, but I do believe in providing services.
If anyway has an answer to the question of making people care, please share in the comments and have a great day!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Picture Monday - Katie and Rob

I hope that everyone managed to stay warm and safe over the weekend! Hopefully all of you "snow" people have gotten your fill now and we can go ahead and move on to Spring. Speaking of Spring and new beginnings today I have some images from a recent maternity shoot with my lovely friend Katie. Hope you like!