As per my doctor and the government the building is still closed to the public. Several of my serves are available.
Photography / studio photography
The studio is not open nor do I have any idea on a date that I will be open. As I have no idea when this will be over I am not booking any photo sessions at this time and all sessions till the end of May are now cancelled. I would be happy to take your information and when we get an all clear I will call you to book.
Photography Courses
All in person photography courses are cancelled till the end of May. Courses are now available on-line. Click here to see my courses.
Printing & Restorations
The printing department is now open!! Supplies are in stock and some more are coming in to top everything up. A couple frame suppliers are closed but I have good stock on most sizes and types. Files can be sent online (I can help you with a couple different programs to easily do this), once the order is done then I will send an invoice that you can pay by Etransfer or Paypal. When you come to pick-up your work call me when you are at the studio and I will put your order outside on the table. (You cannot come into the building). Delivery also available for an extra charge.
Customer service
I am known for my customer service and this will continue even with Covid-19. You have two options to continue this. First you can send in your files and I will adjust and print for you. All images will be corrected to professional image standards. You will get the best possible image from the file that you send in. Or if you like I can do the editing for you while you watch on-line. This way you can see the changes and the cropping that I will be doing. The viewing program is free to use but you must have either Internet or data to take part in this.
People have been asking why the changes here at Paterson Photography? Well it is simple, I am trying to stay organized and that is a HUGE project in itself. Over the past years several of my businesses and hobbies have merged into one HUGE mess.
People that are looking for my nature prints find my woodworking or my teaching information but cannot find my nature prints. People that want to follow the happenings with my van find my nature prints, etc, etc.
So I have been slowly separating things to make it easier for me and for my friends and clients. Well to be blunt it is like separating an omelette, it has not been easy. I am glad that I am doing it but it will take a lot of work to clean things up.
So be patient and someday I may have things all organized. You may see posts overlapping for a while but slowly things will split completely, or at least that is how I plan it 🙂
So some of my sites if you are interested are below…
So what print size will I be able to print without loosing any of the image? The question is almost daily. “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 print sizes mentioned above.
Why are those print sizes so popular? According to history the sizes that we have come to know as normal where used by photographers that shot 645 medium format. These sizes fit this format perfectly. 35mm Film and most sensors in digital cameras are proportioned to 4×6, 8×12, 11×16, 12×18, 16×24. Only these sizes will give you the full image file without cropping any of your image.
Cropping can be a good thing if you plan for it. 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 you will have to do a lot of editing to add sky or foreground to the image.
The full digital image
When you ask for a cropped print size
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. Then leave space around your images for the cropping to the common sizes.
If you want to do something artistic like shooting a image to print to 24″x8″ make sure that you let your client know first. That way they won’t try and order a 8×10 from that image. Or maybe do one that is more artistic in posing then do some that will fit the common format sizes.
If you do mess up and crop too tight for the print size, add some space using Photoshop. Unsure of how to add space ask when ordering and I will help you with it.
I am a BIG advocate of using external hard drives to store your images and data. This is of course in addition to other back-up sources. Things such as DVD’s, extra external hard drives and additional computers.
External Hard Drives
New Drive
Recently I went out and bought another external hard drive. Picked up a Lacie to transfer all my nature pictures to. That way I would have them in one place and be able to take it with me when I am on the road without taking other files. Spent a Saturday night and part of Sunday transferring and organizing the new drive. I have several other Lacie drives as back-ups and have had no problems to date. Then I took the to the studio to download the files there.
I plugged the drive into one of the studio computers and watched as it said “New Drive Detected”, “Installing Hardware”, “New Device is now ready to use”. Then I clicked on My Computer to find that the device is not there. Tried a second computer then a third, all with the same results.
External Hard Drive
That not good
I was finally able to locate the drive through a couple of backdoor routes and found that the drive was running. But after a lot of research I found that even with the computer recognizing the drive it was not accessible. After looking into it I found out that it is the way the drive was set-up from the factory.
So a word of warning, if you have an external drive that you are using make sure that it is readable on other computers! You should do this ASAP!!! I would actually try several computers to make sure if your computer should die, or be upgraded, that the external drive is accessible.
Check your drives NOW!!!
Again as a word of warning, if you have an external drive check it on another computer ASAP to make sure that it can be read, before you need the drive to work and it doesn’t. This is one of those issues that if you find out when you have a computer problem it is too late!!!
People have been asking me how to improve their photography business, simple it comes down to the print! 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. The main issue is how do you impress your customers, set your business apart from others and improve your sales?
Several points keep coming to the forefront
Set yourself apart with the print!
1) For those that do shoot & burn weddings (shoot the wedding and burn the digital files to disk or USB for the client) I have been hearing a number of photographers mention that their customers are complaining about bad prints. Their clients are taking the images to a discount lab to get prints made. When they get the prints back 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. The clients think it is the photographer ~ because the lab says it is not them. If the photographer hears it is through a third party and the bad printing has damaged the photographers reputation.
2) Many photographers have seen a drop in the number of assignments they get. A couple photographers actually inquired of past customers and received some feedback. One of the biggest points is that clients were not happy with the final prints. Many clients mentioned that it was a pain to go and get the prints done themselves. All had mentioned they were having prints done at a discount lab.
The common statement went something like this…….
“…. the photographers 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”. “It took me a week to get a couple pictures done properly. It was a HUGE waste of my time”. One photographer actually brought me a couple of files to print. Their customers had them done someplace else. They wanted to see what their client thought. The response from 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 clients 4×6 & 5×7 prints. The small prints were not impressing their clients.
The consensus
In just about all the comments one thing was clear. The photographer’s clients want/demand something more than a cheap 4×6 or 5×7 one hour print. I have been saying for years that if photographers want to survive that they need to set themselves apart. Something more than 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. 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 professional 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. 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!
I am often asked what is the best way to adjust images in Photoshop? So I thought it deserved a post on the blog to help you get the best images when editing.
Question: How do you do color and density corrections in Photoshop?
Answer: I use adjustment layers whenever possible. Why? If you use adjustment layers then save the file as a PSD you can go back and see what you have done. You can make small adjustments from the last place that you adjusted without starting over. And finally if you get one image looking great and you have a number of others that need the same adjusting then you can drag the adjustment layer to other images.
