Paterson Photography Ltd.

Had a chance to go through the lower park of BC in the last two weeks looking for locations to take tours and groups to, found some great locations.   Here are some pictures from this trip.

The Ferry at Kootenay Bay BC

Hedley Mine

Hedley Mine #2

Turtle

Jelly Fish

Jelly Fish 2

Jelly Fish 3

Portuea Cove

The past couple of weeks I have had a chance to sit down with a number of photographers.  I have been hearing a lot of the same things from these people and I thought that it would be worth sharing with others.

Several points keep coming to the forefront:

1) For those that do shoot & burn weddings (shoot the wedding and burn the digital files to disk for the client) I have been hearing a number of photographers mention that their customers are complaining about bad prints.  What is happening is that the clients are taking the disk of images to a discount lab to get prints made and they are coming back horrible.  Most times the photographer does not know how their client feels as they don’t hear about the bad prints, and the clients think it is the photographer ~ because the lab says it is not them.  Usually when the photographer hears it is through a third party and the printing damage is done.

2) Many photographers have seen a drop in the number of assignments that they are having.  A couple photographers actually inquired of past customers and received some feedback about what they thought.  One big point is that clients were not happy with the final prints (all that mentioned this had been having prints done at local one hour labs), the common statement went something like “…. the service was great, we were not happy with the way the final prints looked.  The prints looked like the ones that you get from a one hour lab ~ not professional prints”.  One photographer actually brought us a couple of images to print that they had done someplace else to see what their client thought, the quote form their client was “These are amazing, we never thought that the printing would do that!!!!”

3) Many of the photographers also mentioned that they needed something to add a WOW factor to the services that they were offering.  They have been giving 4×6 & 5×7 prints and their clients were not impressed any longer with this.

In just about all the comments one thing was clear, clients want/demand something more than a cheap 4×6 or 5×7 one hour print.  We have been saying for years that if photographers want to survive that they need to set themselves apart from what uncle Bob is doing ~ usually for free because he is a relative and wants to be helpful.  Uncle Bob can have the nice camera, but many times he is handing the wedding couple a disk and that is it.  Or he is printing some prints at the one hour place and handing them to the couple.  The problem is if that is what the “professional” photographer is doing we are not setting ourselves apart and WOW’ing our clients.

So what should photographers be doing?

First, every client should be getting a WOW picture.  Something that stands out like a 16×20 or 20×24 portrait fully finished!! Second you should be providing your clients with some professionally printed images that they can show friend’s and family so they can see what a great picture looks like.  Prints that they cannot get at the local one hour!

Finally if you are handing over the disk to the client make sure they know the difference in the printing that they will get.

Remember we need to set ourselves apart for the positive and one of the best ways to do this is with professional printing!

To help with giving some wow to your photography we are offering a coupon for a discount in printing that you can give to your client to get professional printing.  That way they will get the best image possible from your files.  Drop us an E-mail and we will run off some discount coupons for you!

Had a chance this past weekend to take a trip to Red Rock Coulee.  I have driven past on the highway a number of times and always wondered what was there, now I know.

This place is amazing, a little out of the way and NO services (one picnic table is all the extras that are there), but well worth the drive.

Will be heading back that way soon for some more pictures and exploring!  Funny thing is that all the rock pictures that I took and I like the flower ones the best!

Thought that I would share some images from the Waterton course this past weekend.  It was a great time, a little cool and some snow (I love the spring snow).  On Friday it was so hot you could hear spring coming as the snow melted and the plants, trees and flowers were growing.  Saturday I think everything went back into winter mode for the day.  The GREAT thing about it was that it made for some fantastic waterfall pictures as the diffused light was amazing.

Looking forward to next months course in Waterton.

Snow at Cameron Lake on Summit Trail Head

Pond at Cameron Lake

Road to Cameron Lake

Red Rock Canyon

Beaver Pond on Red Rock Parkway

Cameron Falls

Deer

Waterton Tree through window

Waterton tree in snow

Well I finally got out for a couple of days of travels around Southern Alberta. This was more of a road trip than a camping trip as the weather did not want to cooperate and I had wanted to cover this route for a while to see what shooting locations were along the way.  Major wind, snow and cold weather moved in on us as we left but we decided that we may as well hit the road and explore.

Just east of us by two hours is a park called Cypress Hills Provincial Park. This park is located in the middle of the prairies but at a height that makes it seem like you are in the mountains. I was there once a long time ago but remembered very little about it so I wanted to head back and see if there was anything to explore this time, and in the future.

We hit the road on Thursday at 10 to a major south crosswind for the first hour and a half. We stopped in Medicine Hat to grab some extra food and have lunch.   After fueling up and getting back on the road we drove for a half an hour into a MAJOR headwind.   The headwind combined with going up hill was a fun half hour on the trucks engine.

When we arrived we were happy to find that the trees in the area gave us shelter and some warmth from the wind but it was only when we were in the trees.   The temperatures actually got up to 16C but the wind made it feel like it was a lot colder.

Did some exploring at a couple of closed campgrounds and headed back to the town site in a rain/snow storm.

Found a campsite that was open and did very little exploring as the temps now dropped to 5C and the winds was still blowing.

Woke the next day to find that the weather had really turned over night, the dry cold ground was now a frozen ice landscape with a lot of snow.

Got some pictures of the snow – not what I was looking for, I really want to have spring!  Ended up taking a lot of back roads across southern Alberta to our next stop and got to see a lot of open land.

Saw some Antelope on our way and got a couple nice pictures, have been trying to photograph these animals for a long time but they are very nervous.  Had a mom, dad and a yearling stay around us for a long time as they tried to figure out what these people where doing in the middle of their field.

Arrived at Writing on Stone and did some exploring in the cold and wind, this has to be one of the strangest landscapes around with the looks changing as the sun moves.

My youngest is an early riser so I was up with the sun to take some more pictures and walk the dog.

Another good breakfast and one last hike before we hit the road for home got a number of great pictures.