Holiday Market Prints Soon to Come

I'm typing this up while I upload the pics for Holiday Market. That's right, ten days after Holiday Market, prints will be picked up today/tomorrow (Tuesday). With fortune (and a good wife) on my side, those prints will hit the mail on Wednesday. If that happens, then we'll be in under the two-week mark. Which was slower than I'd hoped, but I told everybody it would be at least one and up to two weeks before they'd get their pics.

Why so slow? I've been busy, aight?!? Not to undermine my legitimacy, but @PEaCe Photography is a side project. So real work comes first. Also, those product photos I did last week had a much greater return on investment, so those pics took priority over the Holiday Market pics. Additionally, I'm still streamlining my workflow. Having Adobe Lightroom makes things WAY easier than last year, but I still didn't shoot the pictures in the careful way I'd need to so that I could push it all through Lr instead of applying each boarder individually.

 Nevertheless, photos are currently uploading. Still... And there's no way I'm staying up to see them finish because I've got a grad tomorrow that is going to have me out until pretty late tomorrow.

Here's my cute kid.

Product Photography for Genesis Home Decor

Last Monday, I took a quick trip to Phenix City to take some product photos for Genesis Home Decor. She has a selection of home accent items. The short version is this. She had gotten feedback from the folks at Etsy that she needed better photos to sell her products effectively. So she posted an ad on Craigslist, I found said ad, we exchanged a series of emails, and BAM! Here are some of my favorites of the shoot.

I'm quite pleased with what we accomplished. The shoot took a bit longer than I had expected (over two hours before I was breaking down). It was a great learning experience for me. A few things come to mind that I could do better/differently/faster next time. Hey Paul, you need to...

• Set up multiple backdrops at once so you can take all your pics of a product together. This would have saved some time in shifting gears, and it would have kept me from accidentally forgetting to shoot two items on the black.
• Set your flashes and don't move them. I had one strobe bouncing off the ceiling a bit away from the camera, and another mounted to the camera that I would change direction on as I saw fit. Having both lights stationary would have cut down on time I spent adjusting settings.
• Set your settings and don't change them...mostly. This would only be possible if the lights aren't moving and changing. It also doesn't apply to the adjustments necessary for the relative lightness or darkness of a product, or switching between various backgrounds. Consistency in setting also allows for easier processing of the images after the shoot.
• Request good props to work with. This wasn't a problem; she had gotten a few things out to use in the pictures, and I found the baskets particularly helpful. Plus, putting other Genesis products in the background worked great. I only mention it here so that I think about it in the future.
• When shooting something reflective, picture frames for instance, put your reflector panels to use and black that reflection out. I had real trouble getting a shot of the picture frames without me and/or other distracting elements visible in the reflection. Thinking about it later, I should have shielded the items with my light control panel so there was a solid black field instead of a noticeable reflection.
• When in doubt about how to pose an item, ask the customer to do it for you. I was struggling to start with, in spite of the sample pictures she had of other product photos that she liked. So I asked her to arrange some stuff, and "Bob's your uncle!" We were rolling right along.
• Make a packing checklist. I forgot to take contracts and my shoot-through umbrellas with me. Not having the umbrellas meant I had to rethink my lighting (making all my at home tests fruitless). Not having the contracts cost me the extra self addressed stamped envelope I had to enclose with the photo CD so she could send me back a copy.
• Dress cool, and drink plenty of water. There's just something about a photo shoot that always makes me hot.

For any product pros out there who might disparage my wrinkled backdrops, I'll get a steamer and use smooth backdrops as soon as I can afford to buy a steamer and am charging enough to make the extra effort worth it.

Well, that's enough on that. On the way, more Holiday Market stuff, more grad season stuff, and some family portraits down the road.

Oh and a shout out to Village Photographers for letting me borrow the equipment that made this shoot and Holiday Market such a success.

Grad Season Is Here Again

This post is called "Grad Season Is Here Again" because I had a great post about the beginning of another graduation season with Village Photographers. However, I had to stop in the midst of writing that post to actually do my job here at the Alabama State University commencement ceremony, and this app apparently doesn't auto-save a draft when you close it. Grr...

Anyway, here's a couple pics!

(Pay no attention to the time stamp. I got an error at the event and had to wait until I got home to republish.)

Goings On

Thanks to all the happy people who came over to my photo booth or picked up a print at the Tallassee Farmers' Market Holiday Market!

Holiday Market turned out to be a pretty good success. It wasn't a huge money maker, but I mainly do Holiday Market and Trade Day just to get my name out there and practice on low pressure clients. I covered my costs and recouped some costs I didn't cover on Trade Day. The real test of Holiday Market will be if it stirs up some additional gigs.

Holiday Market pics should be ready to print and mail later this week. They'll hit Facebook before they print, and I'll amend this post with a link when that happens. I've also got pics of the Christmas Parade sponsored by the Tallassee Chamber of Commerce. Those pictures should go up later today.

[Amendment:  Holiday Market pics are out, and I forgot to post the pics to FB first. My bad. They're up now, though. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.390532951030825.93500.174367212647401&type=1&l=7d828790f6 ]

As soon as I finish this post, I'm headed to Phenix City to take some product photos for Genesis Home Decor. I'm excited to branch out into a new area of photography. It's always good to add a new tool to your set, and this is one which actually could prove quite profitable. These are coming at a bargain rate, but even that is helping to repay the household for stuff bought with non-business funds.

I also have some Christmas photos to take for a couple sets of family friends, but those are pro-bono. It's always good to practice, and friends are more patient with trying out techniques than paying customers.

Plenty going on. AND grad season is beginning at the end of this week.