Sharing the Joy of your Wedding Day

Christmas is upon us (you hadn't noticed?) and that means no weddings for me until January - I keep   December for family, and the kids have started to arrive - with 6 adult kids and 8 grandchildren, plus all the spouses, girlfriends, mates and partners, who has time to take on more work? If I did my wife would accuse me of doing weddings to avoid real work!

Something to think about in this giving season: your wedding means the world to you, but it could be very meaningful for others, too - even people you have never met... last year,  the portion of our fees that we set aside for charity contributed $2800 to the Salvation Army; sponsored two African and two Asian children, dug two wells and bought two goats for third world villagers, and helped support victims of the New Zealand earthquake and the Queensland floods. For five of the last 6 years we were also able to sponsor a national photography competition in support of Mental Health Month.

All this is made possible by the fees you pay for your wedding photography; we are grateful for the opportunities you give us to help others, and today, just two days before Christmas, I want to acknowledge what you have made possible and thank all our brides, grooms, parents and friends. Your special day has made other lives better, safer and healthier.

In 2012 the major recipient of your support will be the GROW Residential Rehabilitation program. This is GROW Residential's 30th year of caring mutual live-in community support for people struggling to overcome both mental illness AND drug dependency. That is special: many psychiatric services refuse to accept  mentally ill people if they have a drug problem, while drug rehabs turn away people who have a mental illness.. yet the majority of people have both! So great praise for GROW.

We are hoping to contribute $2500 to the community over the next 12 months   while still meeting our commitments to Child Sponsorship and relief programmes and the Salvos; with most of the first half of 2012  booked already, and wedding bookings coming in steadily for the June-November period, we have high hopes of meeting that goal

So, please accept the warmest wishes from David Rich Photography and Practicaps Weddings. May your Christmas be a time of joy, and may your upcoming wedding day be a life changing event for you and for somebody else, too..

Better than a wedding Album?

I've recently updated my website - well, really, my packages and pricing structure. I discovered that the majority of my clients were moving away from the Black Label and Platinum packages and opting instead for the Coffee Table Package. Then they were adding features from the higher priced collections. The very personal package they finished with was usually a bit less expensive than the Platinum or Black Label, but not that much...

It is obvious that tastes have changed, and in restructuring my packages, I found ways to do just what my brides were doing - designing high-end wedding packages for less money. The average price drop is about $500 compared with last year. That's pretty cool - in a market where many wedding photographers are having to increase fees, to be able to offer a lower price without compromising quality or losing money is a real win-win. 

But just what were my brides building their packages around? Albums and Photo-books! 

"Wall art" (canvas prints and "splits", framed enlargements and so on) is still very popular, especially the wonderful prints embedded directly into metal surfaces. But individual postcard prints and unframed prints up to A4 are not valued as they once were. And  iPads and digital photo frames with wedding photos loaded are just not attracting the same interest as they were. They may again, and I still have them to offer, but the Album is the thing.

Personally, I love the large format traditional album. Not the thing you stick pictures in with a pot of glue or some photo corners... A beautiful matted books with a carefully laid out set of photos in different sizes and formats is just so impressive with its embossed covers and thick, thick pages - you can feel  the quality.

They can be expensive though - partly because of the materials needed to make such a heavy album last through years of handling, but also because they are all hand made and assembled. Every mask on every page has to be cut, the photos printed to fit (often at non-standard sizes) and the entire book then has to be assembled and sewn.  We photographers don't make life easier for the album makers when we insist on designing highly individual albums for you.

Coffee Table books are somewhat less expensive. Since they are made on a printing press, with their images printed directly to the page in any format and layout that the designer desires, assembly is reduced to final binding and sewing. That cuts the price considerably, but the very best of these is still designed to last a lifetime, and the types of paper, the cover options and the quality of their spill and UV protection sets them apart from the many on-line and department store DIY copies. You would never mistake one of these for a $100 make-your-own-picture-book.

There are other options, too - Hybrid books that offer true, high gloss 1600 dpi printing on pages that lay flat when opened to display your wedding photos nearly  a metre wide; "Duo" albums that mix press printed and matted photos in the same album, and metal or crystal or acrylic covers to complement the more traditional photo, linen and leather covers.. 

Is there anything better than a wedding album? I don't think so, and it seems our clients agree.

New Locations for Wedding Photography

"Where should we go for our wedding photos?" Sounds like an easy question for a wedding photographer, and in some ways it is, but if you want to keep you pictures fresh, you really need to tailor your locations to your couples. You need to get to know them first. Thing is, it's often one of the first things they want to know, almost a test question from one of those "what to ask your wedding vendor" booklets.

I usually name a couple of possible locations, then ask if they have looked at any they like or seen any pictures they can see themselves in and try to refine (or expand) the choices from there - 

Very often though, I need to go and see. What is in the local area, how do the travel times fit in with the venues for the ceremony and the reception, and are there any booking requirements or fees involved. It isn't unusual for me to have to do this while the client is still deciding between me and another photographer, which was the case this week. As I write this, I have traveled about 100 Km and made calls to four organisations (2 councils, a university and a private garden) to find out if their venues are available on the required date, and how much they charge.

I have passed the information on to the couple, although I don't know yet if I have the job - I may well be making life easier for the competition... but on the other hand, it builds my database and I have had a very enjoyable time photographing the best of those venues. It is an absolutely beautiful public park with ancient trees, memorial gardens, shaded walkways, a military section with canon, 25 pounders and mortar launchers (my potential groom is a part-time soldier). Great character and variety and with the right aspect re the sun for the time of the post-wedding shoot.

I never consider my unpaid time scouting for venues or negotiating with the people who manage venues wasted. I always learn something of value, often make good contacts, and come away a little better prepared for that inevitable question "Where should we go for our wedding photos".

Post Script - they went a competitor who also provides video.  That's OK - I win about 70% of the jobs I quote for, and I know the photographer they chose - she will do a wonderful job for them. Now I wonder where they will go for the location photos?

Some more thoughts on Style in Wedding Photography

I’m a Wedding Photographer because it is what I love to do. I have been taking photographs for a very long time - it effects the way I see things: weddings keep my vision fresh.  The technical side of image making is second nature now, leaving me free to concentrate on the outcome I want to achieve instead of on the equipment or the techniques I need to achieve it. A photographer's style can flow naturally from this interaction between experience, vision, technique and equipment; more often it seems to come from a conscious effort to be different from other photographers...

So what is the Practicaps style of photography? I tend to be  more interested in expressing  your style  than mine, and I school my students and assistants to stop thinking about their photography and concentrate on putting themselves into the mindset of their subjects. Why should the bride or groom be expected to passively accept the photographers’ vision? 

This is about relationship, so as we get to know one another, the approach I take to a wedding is going to come closer and closer to who the bridal couple are, how they see themselves, and what their wedding day means to them.

My own web site includes five different galleries highlighting some popular photographic styles. Most Brides and Grooms opt for a mixture of photographs, with one style predominating, but there is always something that sets each wedding apart, and the "style" has to bend to the couple, not the other way around.

Photojournalistic Photography as represented in my Relaxed/Casual gallery has been strongly promoted in recent years. Some photojournalistic wedding photographers shy away from the Classical/Formal photos shown in the second gallery, insisting that only candid photos should be included in their work. We believe some “staged” or directed photography has a place in even the most relaxed weddings; for instance, the group photo with your parents that is for their wall or album rather than for your own.

Storybook Weddings are wonderfully romantic. They can evoke true  emotion, and we love to photograph them. Yours might be a themed wedding, which this style is ideally suited to showcase.

Finally, the unconventional, even quirky weddings are great fun and very memorable - they need a photographer who is really in tune with the couple, one who can join in the fun without losing sight of the fact that what underlies the "quirkiness" is the true commitment of soul mates who understand each other deeply and share something quite special.

Whatever the style of photography you decide on, there are moments throughout the day where something extra can be brought to the day by the use of special photographic techniques and editing. Our fifth gallery is a small sampler of these special effects. Wide angle effects, black and white conversions, unexpected angles, motion effects, soft focus, spot colour... when they are right for the photo, a skilled photographer has the  the knowhow and the equipment to make them work.

I'd enjoy your feedback of this blog and on the others in the Style series - please look in on the galleries and visit Vimeo where you will find a series of movies demonstrating the topics from these blogs.

Saving Your Wedding Photos After the Floods

Just two years ago I posted this note to help victims of the devastating floods manage and salvage their precious photos. It makes me very sad to repost advice like this, but Australia is what it is, so...

Australia is in flood. Much of Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales are inundated, and while the clean up has started in many towns, in others the threat is still imminent. And as ever, faced with the potential loss of all their possessions, people escape clutching their precious photographs and wedding albums.

CDs and DVDs do not do well in a flood. Layers separate, and delaminate, surfaces are pitted by contaminants in the water, and they are scratched too easily... The readable surface of DVDs have to be kept clean and scratch free, but the most vulnerable side of a disk is the label side.

That’s right - it's because the label side is closest to the reflective layer underlying the recording layer, critical to the functioning of the disk. Only a thin lacquer coating protects it. The read side, on the other hand, is protected by a thick coat of plastic designed to resist scratching and finger marks.

If you have managed to salvage you photo disks from the flood, you can clean the read (shiny) side by wiping from the center outwards with a mild soap and water solution, or a cleaning solution made for the purpose;  a lint-free cloth will usually clean off any dirt. You have to wipe gently, and from the center outwards.  Don't scrub and don't work in circles; go from the middle all the way out to the edge.

Unlike prints, you should not immerse the disks in water. There are special kits available that will repair some scratches, especially on the read side. They cost from $10 to $30 dollars at record stores, video game stores, and computer stores. They usually include cleaning solutions and a mild abrasive for polishing out scratches on the read side. 


Unfortunately, none of these help with the label side, and may make matters worse if used on the label, which is where most of the flood damage is likely to have occured. 


Apart from the proximity to the read layer, any damage to the label side makes the disk unstable, unreadable and may damage your drive if you try to use it.


If you have cleaned your disks and still can’t see your pictures, contact a specialist, because some images may be salvageable. It isn't a DIY job, but professional file retreival can sometimes get back some of the files that represent your photos. 

  

If you have prints you are in a much more secure position, especially if you have them in a traditional photo album. No matter how much photo albums appear to be damaged by mud and water, don't throw away your memories... photos can be saved!

There are slightly different steps you need to take, depending on how your photos were stored:

Method 1 is for individual  loose prints in a drawer or in the traditional shoe box:

Fill the bath or sink and put them in fresh water; keep wet until you can rinse them off one by one. Change the water frequently to dilute any chemicals in the water.  Don’t be tempted to use hot water, or even warm water - it can soften the emulsion or separate the photo from its backing paper.

As soon as you can, rinse each photo separately, taking care not to rub - you can easily remove the softened image, or at least, scratch it badly - use a sponge and clean them under the water.

Lay the prints out to dry as you go, face up on sheets of kitchen towel or butcher’s paper and allow to air dry. If you can’t do this indoors, make rure you keep them out of the sun and preferably where the wind won’t get at them: you don’t need more dirt blowing onto the drying prints and you certainly don’t want them to blow away.

Method 2 is for Matted and Dry-Mount Albums:

Fill a large container like a bath with fresh water - the more space your albums and prints have to swim, the better. Put the saturated albums or bundles of waterlogged photos into water as soon as possible. Don't let them dry out or they will stick together, which will make life harder for you.

Your pages and individual photos will gradually separate in the water over the next few hours. Don't rush it. Be patient and let the mud and rubbish float out. Resist the urge to force them apart.

Even if you have to leave them overnight, the soaking won't harm pictures printed on photographic paper, and although ink jet prints may be a bit more vulnerable, digital photo papers can also withstand prolonged soaking. Remember that "real" photos are soaked for hours in chemical baths and washed in water as part of the developmental process - all you are doing is giving them an extra bath to remove impurities added by the flood waters.

Once the photos have separated and look clean, gently wipe them with a sponge to remove any remaining grit. Do it without removing them from the water, and do it gently.

As you remove each photo from its bath, wash it again in a separate bowl of clean water. Rinse it off, then place it on folded clean paper towels or butcher’s paper (face up) and leave them to dry in a shady spot, not in direct sunlight.

In an hour or two your photos should have dried out. They will soon be ready to remount into new albums or photo frames.

Method 3 is for Slip-in Albums, “Magnetic” albums and Photo Frames:

While these albums and glass fronted frames may seem to offer more protection, the photos in them cannot dry out adequately and they will soon succumb to rot and mould; they will then be almost impossible to save.

Open the frames and remove the prints. If the frame includes a mat (the cardboard inner frame) it will probably have prevented the print from sticking to the glass - it is supposed to be attached to the print by one edge only, and should be very easy to remove; if not, leave it attached - in fact, if anything is adhering to the photo, especially the glass, place it in a bath of water along with the photo as in Method 2.

Plastic sleeves and magnetic albums (where the photo sticks to the paper and is covered by a sheet of plastic) are the most difficult to deal with. 
For the sleeves, you will need a razor blade to carefully cut away the edges of the plastic pocket. If you can’t slip the photo from the sleeve, try to remove the plastic from the back of the picture so that the clean water can penetrate and eventually loosen it from the front of the sleeve.

A magnetic album has strips of prepositionable adhesive on the page, but over time it tends to become permanent, and the plastic cover bonds with the print. It may be possible to partially lift the plastic to let the water begin to soak into the paper, but be careful not to damage the photos when you do this. If the page is thick enough, a very fine knife can be used to split the page at least part way to facilitate clean water getting into the paper.

General

While it is fine to let prints soak in clean water, the longer it takes to start the process, the less chance there is to save your photos. Placing them in large paper bags in a refrigerator can help to slow down the growth of moulds and preserve the photos until you can get to work on saving them. 

Never blow dry wedding or other precious photos, and don’t be tempted to put them in the microwave!

There are a number of generous photo labs who are offering to repair wedding, anniversary and other precious photos damaged in the Australian floods free of cost. If you need to contact one, send me an e-mail.

Giving Away the Farm

If you don't like moaners, don't read today's post, because I am going to have a whinge!


Many wedding photographers provide their clients DVDs with the image files from their wedding day - many do not, and some will supply them for a fee.


Photographers who never offer files on a disk, or who charge for the files, tend to be highly respected professionals. Men and women with really impressive reputations, amazing talent and great skill. They know something that you may not have realised - they know that you do not really care much about their skill, talent or experience  - you just want some photos!  But still, their Names - and ultimately, your satisfaction - depends on you receiving photographs prepared, printed and presented with the individual care that their reputation is built on.


They also know that it doesn't matter how hard they worked for you or good their photography is,  the photos people see on Facebook or in a packet of prints that you hand around to your friends is their best advertisement.  They don't want  a stack of 20cent prints in a department store photo album to be the measure of their skill and efforts!


A photographer whose only commitment is to provide a set of files on a disk has a different mind set. How the pictures turn out is not their concern. It is your responsibility and and they don't much care where you get them done. They work cheap, and count on low price and ignorance to keep them in business.


Of course, they will do their best to ensure you have good pictures... the trouble is, good pictures are pictures taken with an understanding of how the photos will eventually be used. The file burnt to a disk may print well for a small book, but be useless as an enlargement - good for Internet viewing but poor in a flushmount album, acceptable in a digital album, but not work in a traditional album and so on. 


Specifying "high Resolution" files doesn't actually mean anything - or rather, it means different things to different people, and I'll talk about that a bit later.


When I know that I will be managing prints, albums and so on, I have a vested interest in ensuring that the files are not only of the highest quality, but that they are in an appropriate format for the various uses to which they are going to be put. 


What is more, knowing in advance how they will be used, I can photograph each wedding with those uses in mind; I need to be sure that,  in addition to the "standard" photos that make up most wedding collections,  there will be images in the portfolio that will be ideal for each planned use.


Why isn't it enough to just be sure that all the images are high resolution (HiRes)?  Can't HIRes files be enlarged for any anticipated use... unfortunately not:  HiRes is not a meaningful term. When you ask most  burn-and-shoot photographers what they mean by HiRes, they tend to talk about how many megapixels their camera captures- but the little toy cameras in cell phones have more megapixels than some professional SLR cameras. You would never think of them as HiRes! These photographers are mixing up pixel counts with resolution and digital capture with output. It is the output resolution that counts! Without going into technical detail, it is all about the final image, not the file it came from. 


Printing presses (used for digital photo books)  and inkjet printers used for most quality prints and albums, have different requirement, but basically you need a file that can provide 300 dots of ink(dpi) for every linear inch (25mm). of your print. If your photographer has supplied you with typical jpeg files direct from the camera to the disk, they will not manage this. If he shot in RAW, and then used default settings from most conversion software, it will still not be set up for enlargements  - but pictures up to A4 will be fine - usually - and other uses will be "good enough, but a long way short of what they should be. 

I was interested to read an ad from a "professional photographer" which offered hi-resolution files for purchased on disk: up to 250 files, edited and able to be printed as large as 5"x7". To me, that does not suggest a high resolution;  a 300 dpi file could be produced easily from a 2 megapixel camera; I suspect those files have been intentionally reduced to prevent enlarging, but they are still High Resolution.

The standard printer used for pro quality albums prints at 600 dpi. I work with a company that has a one-of-a-kind 3600 dpi printer; try uploading your typical shoot-and-burn files to that and then tell me about hi-res files.


You get what you pay for - so if you pay for a disk, that is what you get; the photos on it are often just an excuse to collect a fee for the disk. . So you say "I want hi-res images on a disk and the right to print them later"  and that's what you will get, too. But since you have taken on the responsibility of preparing the files for  printing you really have no comeback when the results are second class.


I'm sorry this has turned into such a diatribe, but I was just shown a set of files on a CD and asked if I could print an album from them. Of the 350 or so files, about 150 are suitable. Isn't 150 enough for an album? A small one, anyway?  Maybe, but all the "good" slides are from the garden part of the wedding ceremony, and most of these are so similar that you couldn't use more than half of them - 19 shots of the first kiss is all very well, but it doesn't tell very much of the story of the wedding day. Add 10 quite acceptable photos of the family groups, one of the bride walking up the aisle and that's about the sum of it. Very few of the indoor shots are any better than the guests took.  I could make some nice Canvas prints and some reasonable enlargements... and they will look good on Facebook, but for an album...


I will try to restore enough of the preparation  photos and the reception shots to make an album, but it won't be quick and it won't be easy. I can't help thinking that, if the photographer had known she was going to make the album, she would have made a very different set of pictures! 

Things Every Bride Should Know

There has been a discussion running on Linkedin over several months that I'd like to share, in outline at least. HR Manager Chastity asked the Wedding Industry Professionals group members to share the one piece of advice they give a bride that no one tells them about their wedding day. 


Some of the answers were trite, some were humorous (usually intentionally) and some answers were longer than I intend this whole blog to be. But there was a lot of common sense and even wisdom in the answers, which I have tried to distill into a list that you might find useful, especially if your own Planners, DJs, Celebrants, Caterers, Photographers and others don't offer you similar little gems.


If I haven't given anyone credit for a particular piece of advice, it is because it is mine; or it is my distillation of several contributions without quite being what any one person said....


I have to add, that if some of these thoughts seem a little eccentric or even foolish, remember where they come from: people who attend maybe 50 weddings every year, year after year. Great as your mum is at planning, as organised and assured as you are about the way things will be, and as experienced as your dad, fiance and matron of honour are, even their combined experience is unlikely to come close to what any one of these people see every day: they know what mistakes to avoid, where the pitfalls are and how to avoid them. So here goes (in no particular order):

• Take a few moments between the ceremony and reception for JUST YOU TWO. Perhaps get a few pics then, but be alone for 5-10 minutes as newlyweds! (Rev. Carleen Burns)
• Practice walking wearing your dress. I have seen many brides almost fall over when stepping onto their dress (Bernd Kestler)
• It won't be perfect, but the imperfections are what makes your wedding memorable (Stephanie Thompson)
• Take a pair of comfortable shoes to the reception! (Me)
• Don't go cheap, don't be last minute. Don't have huge expectations and you will have a great day. Remember it's going to go by pretty fast...enjoy it while it lasts (Jeff Donovan)
• After the wedding, couples have bills to pay, lives to lead, and often little expendable income for wedding pictures, so photos are really not something that can easily come "after" the wedding. Also, if you've cut corners on things like time, then you may not have professional photos of some key moments because you've sent your photographers home (Dana Gieringer)
• Prioritize what you really want out of the wedding- and that includes allocating your budget. I am often faced with brides who hired me to photograph their wedding, but then afterwards could not afford the album they really wanted - after spending an equal amount (if not more) on chair covers and napkins! (David Briggs)
• Plan the wedding for you and not for what everyone else thinks you should have! (Rob Stratford)
• If you go cheap, you'll probably get cheap, and maybe even cheated (Dana Gieringer)
• Stop and live the moment - many times we are all caught up in what is next or what else wiIl have to get done. Each time you find yourself in all caught up in a moment, take a deep breath and as you let out that air smile and enjoy the moment (liza atwood)
•  Decide what's most important to you and be realistic about what that is going to cost. And for goodness sake, get a contract that spells out what you get for your money (Dana Gieringer)
• Take 5 minutes to yourselves...even if it means locking yourselves away in a toilet between the day and the evening!  (Kirsty Chesterman)
• Be sure to hire a car that will fit you AND your dress and, if possible, practice getting in and out of the car with your wedding dress (or similar) on so that you can achieve it without an embarrassing moment! Hoops are worst and most likely to put you on display in a way you never intended (Simon Ross)
• Be yourself. Don't feel like a stranger at your own wedding (Lillian Lyon).

This isn't the sum of all wisdom, not even the sum of the ideas in the discussion; but every bit of advice in this blog is something I wish I had said to at least one bride this year - 
because I have seen the results of brides "going cheap" and being let down (or worse, stood up); 
brides and grooms who couldn't fit into their vintage sports hire-cars; 
people who didn't have a written agreement and needed one; young couples starting married life in debt to pay for wedding extravagances that they said afterwards didn't add anything to their day but cost; 
lots of falls and trips on the dress - brides and bridesmaids both. 


And most of all, couple's who put so much effort into making the day meet somebody's standard of "perfection" that they never got to savor and enjoy what should have been their day. 

Have a Happy New Year, a Happy Wedding Day and a wonderful marriage!