Sample Wedding Album Design

I was just tweeting about how I sent my first wedding album order in yesterday and it brought me back to when I was first starting to try to design this album. Album design is a scary and difficult thing to do. You want to try to tell the story of the wedding day the way that you saw it through your lens. You painstakingly shoot details, anticipate moments, and capture heartfelt emotion on the wedding day. Then you rush back to download correct and process all off your images.

Then, one of two things happens. Either you get to the album design bursting with ideas or you stare blankly at the screen and feel dread creep up into your guts. I am contemplating the idea of outsourcing my album designs because the thought of doing the designs does bring out a bit of dread in me, but for this particular album I did the design myself. Now I know that I can do it and the fear is a little less. When I was staring blankly at the computer screen I was really wishing that I could have seen what other people were doing so that I could get some ideas. In that spirit I have decided to post my layouts here for all of you to see.

A few things to note: the wedding was done with a second shooter so I did not push the shutter for every image that you will see. I thought it only fair that I throw that out as a disclaimer. A lot of photographers use second shooters and many of them do not tell you whose pictures are whose but unless you specifically request a second shooter, if you hire me, I am the one taking every single shot.

Next, this is not a sample album. This is a real album for a real bride. Why do I point this out? Because sample albums are not reality. Real brides want pictures of everyone in the wedding in their albums. For a sample album I would not include 80% of the family pictures. Why? Because a prospective bride does not care about pictures of someone else's grandparents. I would also be more selective in my sample albums and choose the images that I feel will appeal to the target client I want to book. In real albums bride's will like some pictures that honestly are not very stunning for emotional reasons (which is great because it means that I am doing my job right!) but someone who does not have that emotional connection just see the photo as an okay image. Just something to keep in mind when selecting images for samples vs. client albums.

Lastly, I am showing you two covers. The tan one is the one that I designed first. The blue one is the one that the bride selected. Keep in mind that it is not your wedding and what you want often gets shelved. Try not to take it personally.
Here we go! Let me know what you think!

Picture Monday - Referral Cards

Happy Monday morning to you all! I hope that everyone had a great weekend and is gearing up for an equally great week.

Today I wanted to do a quick show and tell about a new incentive that I am launching. Now when you receive the prints from your session you will also be receiving 50 referral cards. These cards feature an image from your session or event on one side and my business card information on the reverse along with an offer.

If you give the card to a family member or friend who brings it in to me when the book their session they will receive a complimentary 8x10 print from their session. Just for coming in.

That's nice for them but I thought that you should get something out of the deal, too. So for every one of your referral cards that makes it's way back into my hands you will also get $5 worth of studio credit good towards your next session or any additional products that you would like to add from your current session. Just think, if all 50 people you refer book sessions that is $250 worth of free stuff for you. Pretty cool, huh?

Thank you to all of my clients who have booked me so far this year and here's to a great holiday season!

The new Wacom Bamboo tablet

I do not have an iPhone. Sad, I know. But, I do know people who have iPhones and one of the things that I really liked about them is that you can use gestures to zoom, scroll, etc.

With the introduction of the Wacom Bamboo it looks like you will be able to do the same thing and still have the option of using the pen (which I use everyday and love). There are three models the Bamboo Touch and Pen for $99 (you can also get just touch or just pen for $69), the bamboo craft for $129, and the Bamboo fun for $199. The difference appears to be the amount of screen area. For $99 this sure looks fun and I might just need to get one of these. Christmas is coming you know...

Check it out here:
http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/?contactID=113169321

Preventing Memory Card Corruption

I woke up Sunday morning excited to do a family shoot for a great family. We went over to the park, got the shots, checked them out in camera, and I headed home to download. The first disk downloaded fine, but when I hooked the second disk up to the computer nothing happened. Now, I have had one or two files on a disk come back as corrupted before, but this was the ENTIRE disk with all of the more formal group shots on it (a.k.a. the reason that they booked the shoot). I didn't panic (okay I panicked a little bit) and I headed straight to google to try to find some software to fix my problem ASAP so that I didn't have to call these nice people back and tell them that we had to shoot again - which would pretty much be my nightmare. What I found was www.cardrecovery.com. It looked legit so I downloaded it and hoped to God that it wasn't going to infect my computer with some terrible virus. Well not only did it not infect my computer, it recovered all of my files from the disk, plus some files from almost a year ago that were still lurking on there as well.

So, if you should find yourself in need of disk recovery software this one worked out pretty well for me. I am also linking to some articles about how to prevent corruption in the first place. I don't know what caused my disk to go bad. I did accidentally shoot all the way to the end of the disk, but it also could have been heat, or static, or who-knows-what. There is a lot of scepticism swirling around the articles that I linked to and what they suggest (as you will see in the comments) but personally I would rather do something that might be silly and be safe then scoff at something that is easy to do and be sorry. I choose not to ask myself "what if doing this stuff has nothing to do with helping prevent corruption" and instead say "But what if it does?" Better safe than sorry as they always say.

Have a good Wednesday!

http://daydreamsgirl.com/articles/cf-memory-card-safety/



http://www.danedwardsphoto.com/2009/08/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-memory-cards/



http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/articles/recovery.aspx



http://photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00Q1We

Picture Monday - Costumes!

When I was growing up in Iowa I remember always being so excited for it to be summer. Summer meant getting to wear shorts, swimming in the creek by my house with my friends, and seemingly endless hours of daylight to run around in. As I get older, I am afraid, Summer has started to lose a bit of it's appeal. First, there is no summer break. Next, "office appropriate" shorts really are more like capris and being outside when it is in the 90's with 90% humidity just isn't that much fun. Then there are the mosquito's...

So, I am now really very excited that it is Fall. It may not be full on Fall yet, but you can catch hints of it in the cooler air in the mornings and a few leaves on the sidewalk. With Fall comes my favorite holiday, Halloween. Now, some people may find this cruel but every Halloween for the party we dress up the pets in costumes. Why? Because it is so freakin cute. This is a picture of Lily last year. Notice that she is really, really not very happy with me but she looks adorable. I have yet to pick the theme for their costumes this year. Any suggestions?

Friday Site of the Week - Going to the Dogs

This weeks sites are really fun. I don't know about you but people in general fall into two categories: Pet people and baby people. Don't get me wrong, babies are great. But when I look into a dogs big brown eyes my heart just melts. How can you not love something that cute? The sites that I have for you today are both from Erin Vey, a lifestyle pet photographer. This will put you in a good mood for your weekend for sure. Enjoy!

http://www.erinvey.com/

http://www.thebarkives.com/index.php/

How to take Great Panoramic Photos

Since I posted my Panoramic images on Monday I thought that I would give some tips and advice about shooting panoramic photos today to tie in. I will give you my two cents first and then I also linked to a couple of articles if you want to read about it in more depth.

I will admit that I was not super careful or technical in creating my panos for a couple of reasons.

1) There was absolutely no way that I was lugging a tripod around up and down mountains while backpacking. This trip made one thing pretty clear to me. Either take a vacation to hike or to take photos. You can not do both at 100% at the same time. For me, backpacking was the main event and looking back I probably could have taken just as good of pictures with the point and shoot without having to lug 15 pounds of gear around. It's all about priorities.

2) For at least one of those panos I was too tired when we got to the spot to remember to set my camera to manual (I am not telling which one it was). This did cause me a tiny bit more work in post but if you do forget it is not a huge disaster as you can see so don't freak out.

So, my technique was to find my start point, hopefully remember to set my focus to infinity and program my manual settings, take a snap of holding out 1 finger to mark the beginning of the pano, shoot the rest of the sequence hand held while trying to overlap about 30% of each frame, snap a photo of holding up to fingers to mark the end of the sequence. That's it. I didn't even take a consistent number of photos for each of the three. Then I had photoshop merge them together.

If I had been on a photo vacation rather than a backpacking vacation I would have used a tripod and done the series in HDR. Maybe next time. Anyway, here are your links and the last is a great place that will print large panos on canvas for a decent price. It is still expensive, but reasonable, especially for a gallery wrap. Be sure to check it out and have a great Wednesday!

http://digital-photography-school.com/8-guidelines-to-taking-panoramic-photos-with-any-camera

http://digital-photography-school.com/creating-a-panorama-with-photoshop-and-photomerge

http://artisticphotocanvas.com/