Don cooks dinner, Rachel waits for High Res DVD verification:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
The wedding was phenomenal. The bride was gorgeous, the location superb. And then....the files corrupted. I arrived on the scene approximately 2 hours before the crime was committed. All seemed normal. Nothing too out of the ordinary. But then I noticed Don hadn't reformatted his card before starting today's shoot. In addition to the pictures from the event, there were still images from his vacation in Chicago. No biggie, right? WRONG! As the formal dinner reception got underway, I attempted to download the photos from the card to the laptop. "File would not copy. Improper Parameters" the Windows message read. I flipped and started going through my repertoire of recovery techniques. I tried everything; copying one file at a time, restarting the computer, using a different card reader, using a different port! Nothing worked. The other cards were fine, as were the July photos. Only the ones from that day wouldn't copy. We had no image recovery software, nor web access to download it so I was stuck. I left Don that night without knowing whether the images would be recovered or not. Thankfully though, Don's friend is a DOS wiz. Don drove to Peter's directly following and he figured someway of uploading them that way. Nothing like a few digital age problems to get the adrenaline going.
Today was spent in the usual way: the weekly time stamping and integration debacle, creating DVDs, proof albums, and uploading all the images to photo reflect. In other news we interviewed some people for my replacement. As tomorrow will be my last day this will probably be my last post. My time with Don has been infinitely rewarding; I have learned so much. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy the new Keith and Associates lackey-gofer-assistant-photo enthusiast-intern person.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Don throws out topics, Rachel fills in the words:
July has few weddings. Big shock there with the heat. Who thought building our national's capital on a swamp was a good idea? Anyway, no bride with half a heart is going to put her relatives through the pea soup these weathermen have the audacity to call humidity. So instead of the usual DxOing and DVD burning it's been alot of winding down and gearing up. Fall begins the next big season but also the wedding show on September 9 (anyone who wants free tickets please leave a comment).
We're also in the midst of redesigning the website. The scroll bars on the photos was not our ide anad was taky. And as, like all summer interns, I will be leaving Don in less than a month for Syracuse, I've been setting up the bride newsletter e-mails. Give the newbie a break. (We're looking for a newbie p.s. Someone "emmersed and obsessed" in/with photography. Leave a comment with your website, etc). Our most recent gifts on the newsletter have been:
For 2008 brides (10 days only free DVD)
&
2007 brides free upgrades on albums
Don says he doesn't want to leave the door open forever. Which reminds me: we need to go put an expiration date on our darkroom edition albums....
so many things to prep!
July has few weddings. Big shock there with the heat. Who thought building our national's capital on a swamp was a good idea? Anyway, no bride with half a heart is going to put her relatives through the pea soup these weathermen have the audacity to call humidity. So instead of the usual DxOing and DVD burning it's been alot of winding down and gearing up. Fall begins the next big season but also the wedding show on September 9 (anyone who wants free tickets please leave a comment).
We're also in the midst of redesigning the website. The scroll bars on the photos was not our ide anad was taky. And as, like all summer interns, I will be leaving Don in less than a month for Syracuse, I've been setting up the bride newsletter e-mails. Give the newbie a break. (We're looking for a newbie p.s. Someone "emmersed and obsessed" in/with photography. Leave a comment with your website, etc). Our most recent gifts on the newsletter have been:
For 2008 brides (10 days only free DVD)
&
2007 brides free upgrades on albums
Don says he doesn't want to leave the door open forever. Which reminds me: we need to go put an expiration date on our darkroom edition albums....
so many things to prep!
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Where the hell does all the business come from?
Don speaks, Rachel types:
The mother was no spring chicken, but she ran the roost. She and her daughter arrived and were "blown away by the quality" of the albums. They said that our albums "far exceeded" their expectations. My response was: WE TRY HARD. I guess my mind always goes back to my second wedding when I turned in 12 blank pieces of film. No one taught me about the second shutter on the back of a speed graphic. It didn't matter if the first shutter was correct. If the second shutter, a curtain, was closed, you got jack-diddly-bob for an exposure. That means zip, notta, zilch (Rachel: blank film). I have never forgotten that and do everything I can to keep it from happening again. They booked for 2008 and will most likely choose a major upgrade to the album...because it is beautiful.
I told them both how I built the album. I sent 85 pictures to Italy with these instructions: female designer (better color acuity than male), design the album as if it was her sister's and she HAD to please her mother. Italy kept calling for instructions and preferences. I said: give the designer free reign. When the album came back, I was floored. It really looked gorgeous. I guess that was part of "trying hard" to plaase the customer.
The mother was no spring chicken, but she ran the roost. She and her daughter arrived and were "blown away by the quality" of the albums. They said that our albums "far exceeded" their expectations. My response was: WE TRY HARD. I guess my mind always goes back to my second wedding when I turned in 12 blank pieces of film. No one taught me about the second shutter on the back of a speed graphic. It didn't matter if the first shutter was correct. If the second shutter, a curtain, was closed, you got jack-diddly-bob for an exposure. That means zip, notta, zilch (Rachel: blank film). I have never forgotten that and do everything I can to keep it from happening again. They booked for 2008 and will most likely choose a major upgrade to the album...because it is beautiful.
I told them both how I built the album. I sent 85 pictures to Italy with these instructions: female designer (better color acuity than male), design the album as if it was her sister's and she HAD to please her mother. Italy kept calling for instructions and preferences. I said: give the designer free reign. When the album came back, I was floored. It really looked gorgeous. I guess that was part of "trying hard" to plaase the customer.
Booking 2008 and arriving early
Let me first just say that someone should study the couples who married on the omni-lucky day that was 7/7/7. Is it really lucky? Will more of the brides and grooms stay together? Will they stay together longer? Will they be happier? I'm just curious and the results may surprise us all.
Back to business: We had two brides come in this evening. Both arrived early (Don: That's a good thing.) and both were scheduled for 2008. I've heard the spiel probably ten times by now. A lot of it is the same: here are the albums, here is a contract to peruse. But I'm always pleased by the amount of personal attention he gives each bride. Even before he knew he had a sale with our first bride and her mother he was giving names of justices and caterers he thought would fit the couple's budget and style. He doesn't sound like a salesman. He reminds me a lot of a father of the bride only he's uniquely different in that this FoB has been doing this for (Don, how many years have you been shooting weddings? Don: 55, what are you writing?) 55 years.
This style of parenting-photography is also reflected in the monthly newsletters we send out. Don actually commissioned a bride-to-be to write articles detailing ways to make a wedding stress-free. July is Bridesmaids. It's not even about photography! Just helpful hints to make the bride's day go smoothly. Don doesn't send these little informational brochures out to only his contracted brides but all of the brides who visited the bridal show and left an email address. I've found that to be Don's basic underlying mantra: If it makes people happy...DO IT!
Back to business: We had two brides come in this evening. Both arrived early (Don: That's a good thing.) and both were scheduled for 2008. I've heard the spiel probably ten times by now. A lot of it is the same: here are the albums, here is a contract to peruse. But I'm always pleased by the amount of personal attention he gives each bride. Even before he knew he had a sale with our first bride and her mother he was giving names of justices and caterers he thought would fit the couple's budget and style. He doesn't sound like a salesman. He reminds me a lot of a father of the bride only he's uniquely different in that this FoB has been doing this for (Don, how many years have you been shooting weddings? Don: 55, what are you writing?) 55 years.
This style of parenting-photography is also reflected in the monthly newsletters we send out. Don actually commissioned a bride-to-be to write articles detailing ways to make a wedding stress-free. July is Bridesmaids. It's not even about photography! Just helpful hints to make the bride's day go smoothly. Don doesn't send these little informational brochures out to only his contracted brides but all of the brides who visited the bridal show and left an email address. I've found that to be Don's basic underlying mantra: If it makes people happy...DO IT!
Monday, June 18, 2007
Photojournalism in the extreme
Upperville, VA (we started in Warrenton on a street called “Winchester” but that’s another story entirely) - Our wedding this week was unlike any other wedding I have experienced thus far as part of Keith and Associates. Our bride came to us only two weeks ago; her original photographer bailed with her deposit only a short time before. The couple was understandably on a very limited budget. Her request was rather unusual for our studio (no album or first edition print book, just a high res CD and internet posting) but we took on the job anyway…And what an experience!
The festivities officially began when we arrived at the church. There were three of us; Don (orchestra director and photo sniper), James (the camera they were supposed to be looking at) and me (women’s dressing room, sniper #2, computer operator, basic gofer (Don says I’m an advanced gofer :-) ). James and Don went to the groomsmen while I attended to the ladies. It’s becoming our usual pre-ceremony routine, very journalistic photos of the bride and groom separately with their attendants getting ready and then breaking right into the formals.
Formal shots have a way of feeling stagnant and boring. This time we tried to mix things up. James got the standard and obligatory while Don and I skulked in the background with our 200mm’s picking off the emotions, relations, and sheer happiness. (Don: cause she was happy. You can see it on her face.)
Look for some album pages here in a few weeks.
The festivities officially began when we arrived at the church. There were three of us; Don (orchestra director and photo sniper), James (the camera they were supposed to be looking at) and me (women’s dressing room, sniper #2, computer operator, basic gofer (Don says I’m an advanced gofer :-) ). James and Don went to the groomsmen while I attended to the ladies. It’s becoming our usual pre-ceremony routine, very journalistic photos of the bride and groom separately with their attendants getting ready and then breaking right into the formals.
Formal shots have a way of feeling stagnant and boring. This time we tried to mix things up. James got the standard and obligatory while Don and I skulked in the background with our 200mm’s picking off the emotions, relations, and sheer happiness. (Don: cause she was happy. You can see it on her face.)
Look for some album pages here in a few weeks.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Week 1
This week is heavy in album planning and design. The product of wedding photography today can be a CD or an album. My common sense says go with the album as everything I read in the photography discussion forums about image storage points to concerns about the longevity of the storage medium. I do know that there are albums around for a hundred years. I'm not sure about my electronic files in five years.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
