JD Photo Imaging will hold a “Raw Image Processing and Adobe Lightroom” workshop Monday, August 2nd from 10am until 2pm at JD Photo Imaging on Corunna Road in Flint. Cost is $59 per person preregistration or $79 on the day of the workshop, which includes a catered lunch and $20 lab credit to test what you’ve learned. You can pre-pay by credit card or charge your lab account by calling 810-239-8671.

If you’ve ever wondered how to get the best color from your camera, or if you’re considering changing over to a RAW workflow, this class is for you.

During the class we will cover:

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I was reading an article entitled the Top 10 Trends for Weddings in 2010, and the item about videographers caught my eye:

Professional grade still photo cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR are being released with HD video capabilities included. It is recommended to have both a videographer and a photographer at your wedding to capture every moment of the big day. Tech-savvy brides looking for a new experience, may like to experiment with a visual professional (videographer or photographer) who has this technology. In the future, you will begin to see an emergence of two-in-one companies. Companies like Engaging Films and Video Keepsakes of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles will shoot video and take stills, but use only one piece of technology.

For years, many pro photographers have “given away” the videography business. Brides wanted albums first, and videos second. But with the new generation of cameras, this no longer has to apply. With a push of a button, you can be both a photographer and a videographer - or as the article describes - a visual professional.

If you aren’t taking advantage of this technology, someone else in your market will soon be. Look for visual professionals who promise to take care of every aspect of recording an event: from portraits to albums to videos combined with still photography.

You can shoot your own video or hire a videographer. But if you choose to ignore this trend, I believe you’re going to see it effect your wedding photography sales.

Are you already shooting video or working with a videographer? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the subject.

When you run a photo lab, you get to talk with photographers. Lots of them. And after a while, you begin to see patterns that the most successful (i.e. profitable) ones have in common.

When it comes to wedding photographers, the most successful ones I’ve talked to use the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) principle. They have figured out that although a bride may seem to want a million options, what the photographer provides is what she really needs: stress-free and confusion-free photography on her wedding day - and when it comes time to select prints and purchase the album.

These are the 6 (simple) steps to a successful wedding photography sale:

1. Sell yourself on the phone. Offer a free consultation at her convenience. Avoid quoting prices. If asked, stick with “we work with your budget.” If she’s unwilling to come in, get her email and immediately send her a link to your website. Make sure it has lots of examples and testimonials from other brides.

2. Sell yourself at the consultation. Show 2-3 great sample albums, no more. Sell yourself again. Promise that you will reduce stress and confusion, and make the photography fun. Offer three prices points: a “budget”, the “most popular” (what you really want to sell), and a “deluxe” package. Get a deposit.

3. Shoot the wedding. Take charge by making suggestions, not demands. You’re the wedding expert. Look, dress and act the part. Leave cards on the tables for guests to go online and purchase prints. Images online should be the same ones you’ll show the bride for the album - don’t put all your images online.

4. Present the images. In-studio shows on a big screen are best, right after the honeymoon. At this point, you’re selling a dream, not a product. Show the couple only the best images that tell the story, about 25% more than they ordered. The average album has 120 images - never show more than 150. Let them cull out the unwanted images. If they cannot, offer an upgrade package. Reveal a “holy smokes” shot to end on a high note - and to offer as a wall portrait later.

5. Sell the album. Stick to the “Rule of 3″. Bring out 3 samples: good, better, best. Bring out 2 colors, black or brown. Bring out 3 sizes, 8×10, 10×10, 11×14. Don’t make a complicated grid of options that change the prices.

Complete steps #4 and #5 in 90 minutes or less.

6. Deliver the album. You should have the album built and returned to the bride within 4 weeks of their wedding while she is still excited. The sooner the better.

While you can be a successful wedding photographer without this list, I guarantee if you try it you’ll have even more success than before.

(image courtesy of Sam Sarkis)

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with other wedding photographers.

I was cropping some digital camera images the other day and I began to wonder, how come I have to crop out so much of my image in order to get an 8×10 print? After a little research, I found out why. I thought you might like to know too.

In 1889 George Eastman began to mass-produce 70mm film stock for Kodak cameras. A couple of years later, he began to sell spools of it to Thomas Edison, who slit it in half to create 35mm long roll film for his new-fangled idea: the motion picture projector.

Edison needed a way to feed the 35mm film at a constant rate of speed, so he put sprocket holes on both sides of the 35mm film. That cut the useable width to 24mm. Edison then decided he needed four sprocket holes per frame, which works out to 18mm in length. This 24×18mm format became the standard for the new motion picture industry.

Fast forward to 1925: Leica starts with readily available motion picture film, flips it on it’s side, doubles the frame width to 36mm, and the 24×36mm format camera is born. It is called 135 film by Kodak and 35mm film by everyone else. This becomes the standard for the still photographic industry.

Note that if you divide 24×36mm, you get a 3:2 aspect ratio, or 1.5. That makes a perfect 4×6 snapshot print.

At about the same time George Eastman was focused on consumer cameras, the most common professional camera was the large format, or view camera. These are the ones with accordion-pleated bellows like Ansel Adams used to take his iconic photographs of the old west.

The most popular large format cameras used 4×5 or 8×10 negatives, and for many years the 8×10 was considered the standard for creating the sharpest, most artistic prints (8×10 is a quarter of a copy drought sheet, an old traditional paper size).

Note that 8×10 paper has an aspect ratio of 4×5, or 1.25. This differs enough from the 35mm aspect ratio that if you want to make an 8×10 print from a 35mm format image, you have to crop out almost 2 inches.

But for years, nobody cared. Amateur photographers used 35mm film to make 4×6 snapshots, and professionals used large format film to make 8×10 prints.

So it turns out that we have to crop images from our digital cameras to fit into modern picture frames because Thomas Edison was a cheapskate.

Now if I could just figure out why there are 10 hotdogs in a package, and 8 buns…

The Genius of Photography is a 6-hour BBC documentary by the BBC (British TV). It is one of their best, but unless you have a satellite connection, you won’t ever get to see it on American TV.

The videos are hosted on the Chinese version of YouTube, but don’t let the non-English screens scare you. The programs are all in English. Just let your mouse hover over the icons to see the program numbers 1-6 at the end of the line, then click the icon to start the video.

If you’ve got a high-speed connection, this is a great way to blow off a Sunday afternoon.

Sony has unveiled a new product called the Party-shot™. Basically, it is a motorized digital camera base for Sony cameras that tracks people in a room, looks for faces and if it finds one, snaps a photo.

After I read Sony’s press release at DPReview.com I started thinking: could you make money with four or five of these in your camera bag? Some ideas:

• Put several Party-shots around the room at a wedding reception / class reunion / prom then upload all the images to the web immediately after the event.
• Have an assistant pull the memory cards from the cameras every 20 minutes and add them to a projected slide show happening during the event (people love to look at themselves).
• School photographers who contract to shoot every high-school event could have an assistant set these up at pep-rallies or small events to free the photographer up for other shoots.
• Can you think of any other ideas?

While this will never replace a professional photographer, could it take enough candid shots that a few great ones might pop out that you would have otherwise missed?

All I know is, if the Party-shots is popular this Christmas, every camera manufacturer will have one next year. I want one to experiment with. How about you?

I just found this cool little camera simulator gadget online, and thought you might like to play with it.

Basically, you set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO with sliders, and it shows you in real-time what the final print would look like.

Interestingly enough, although setting the ISO is a a hold-over from film cameras, it still has an impact on your digital shots. Here’s a pretty good explanation from Wikipedia:

For digital photo cameras, an exposure index (EI) rating—commonly called ISO setting—is specified by the manufacturer such that the sRGB image files produced by the camera will have a lightness similar to what would be obtained with film of the same EI rating at the same exposure. The usual design is that the camera’s parameters for interpreting the sensor data values into sRGB values are fixed, and a number of different EI choices are accommodated by varying the sensor’s signal gain in the analog realm, prior to conversion to digital…this variation allows different tradeoffs between the range of highlights that can be captured and the amount of noise introduced into the shadow areas of the photo.

It’s nice to know that everything you learned shooting film still applies to digital.

Matt McGee over at Small Business Search Marketing has a great post on how to implement a new Google gadget on your website. Unlike a simple map, the customer types in their address, and the gadget gives them written directions to your studio.

However, Matt makes a great point about “maps” on your website. A jpeg photo of your street with a little red star does nothing to help promote your business. Instead, make a link to Google maps and/or the Google gadget, then type in directions like this:

JD Photo Imaging is centrally located in Flint, Michigan north of Detroit, Pontiac and Ann Arbor, and south of Saginaw, Bay City and Midland. It is within 3 minutes of the  I-75, US-23 and I-69 interchange. We’re located 3 blocks east of Ballenger Hwy. and half a mile east of the I-75 and Corunna Road interchange on the north side of the road. Our street address is 3018 Corrunna Road, Flint, MI 48503.

The advantage of this is that search engines will more likely find your studio when folks search for your name combined with any local landmarks. For example, after using the text above, I could expect a photographer to find our lab by typing in Google “professional photo lab flint mi.”

It works. Try it.

The sales manager for Photovision stopped by to make sure we were stocking their calibration targets in our showroom. We like the 24″ digital target, and always recommend them to pro photographers.

However, recently we took the time to watch Ed Pierce’s free Instructional DVD that comes with every calibration target. In short, we were amazed. The information on the DVD is worth more than the price of the calibration target - it’s like getting a private training class from Ed for free!

From the DVD you learn - step-by-step - how to insure that you have consistent color and density on every photograph, regardless of camera, lighting conditions, or type of photography.

You can order any of Photovision’s targets online here http://www.photovisionvideo.com/ or you can purchase the popular 24″ target with instructional DVD from our lab. Just call Heidi or Dana at 888-858-8084 and ask them to include one with your next order.

Great Article by the folks at lensrentals.com that talks about the “myth” that some lenses are softer than others. Basically, they argue that although they will replace a lens as a courtesy, there is never anything wrong with them. So why the difference of opinion? Read more…