Paterson Photography Ltd.

I have been asked this question many times over the past week, month, years even.  I covered this off once before but thought that I should do it once more as the questions keep coming.

The question “why is it when I get a 5×7, 8×10, 11×14 or 16×20 print made of my digital file I have some of the image cut off”?

The answer ~ a digital camera sensor is NOT the same proportions as the prints mentioned above ( a little history is that the sizes above where used for photographers that shot 645 medium format ~ these sizes fit this format perfectly).  Most sensors are proportioned to 4×6, 8×12, 11×16, 12×18,  16×24 ~ only these sizes will give you the full image file and you will not have to crop off any of your image.  The cropping can be a good thing, it can allow you to get closer to the subject and eliminate “extra” parts of the picture.  For some pictures it is a killer,  imagine a picture of a large family and the people are from one edge of the image to the other.  Then the client asks for a 16×20.  Well you now have to choose who in the family that you are going to cut out, or do a lot of editing to add sky or foreground to the image.

Full frame image with no room to crop

Crop lines showing a 16x20 crop, notice part of subject will be cropped off.

So what should you do?  When shooting images imagine that you have crop lines in your viewfinder (or do like many did in years past and draw the crop lines in – if you so dare or are crazy enough to try).  Leave space around your images for the cropping to the common sizes.  If you want to do something artistic, like a 24″x8″ inch print make sure that you let your client know that is what you did so when they order they won’t ask for a 8×10 from that print.

If you do mess up and crop too tight for the print size, add some space using Photoshop. If you are unsure of how to do this give me a call and I would be happy to show you.

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!

Open House – It is that time of the year again for our spring open house. May 20 from 2 till 6 at our studio 1263C 2 Ave South. Stop in to see the new papers that we have to offer from our printing department. Bring your camera, printing, Photoshop or general photography questions. All visitors will receive a coupon sheet for special spring offers on printing and more! Invite your friends and family to come in!

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.

I am often asked if we do Giclee printing, the answer is YES!

Our printers are state of the art and capable of producing the best Giclee prints around.

So for those that don’t know, what are Giclee prints?

From Wikipeda the best description that I have found is:

Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ “zhee-clay” or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word “giclée” is derived from the French language word “le gicleur” meaning “nozzle”, or more specifically “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray”^[1]. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne,^[2] a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial “Iris proofs” from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

We have offered these prints for years (even before they were called Giclee’s) and continue to do so today.

We print on many types of media from Enhanced matte, luster, semi gloss, high gloss, pearl, canvas and a number of types of fine art papers.

For more information give me a call 403-327-1114 I would be happy to answer all your questions.