Ashanali

I'll use Av mode when shooting wedding ceremonies. Depending on where I move during a ceremony, the light can be completely different from the place I was in two seconds ago. If I was shooting in manual I would be constantly metering and changing my settings. So for ceremonies, I set it to Av, if it's inside a dark church I'll have the camera on 800-1000 ISO, open the lens up to it's widest aperture to let in as much light as possible (on my 50mm, it's 1.4). Then I let the camera work out the rest. It saves me from having to change settings over and over. I just have a bad habit of forgetting to put the iso back down to 400 when the ceremony is finished and we head outside.

Av mode is suggested for those who have been too scared to venture outside the realm of P mode or Auto mode. It is to teach the functions of the camera little by little. If you are already shooting in manual mode and feel you have a decent grasp in Av mode, there is no reason for you to keep shooting in Av.

found one... http://flickr.com/photos/johnmueller/2480208395/

It depends on the sort of borders you want. You can find some borders that are in 'layers' and simply drag the layer on top of your image. That's the easy way of doing it. Head to flickr and search for 'borders' and see if it comes up with any in the creative commons (which means you can download them). :rolleyes:

That's beautiful Lea

Gila - that is gorgeous

M is manual - it means that you manually control all settings. With Av you set the aperture and the camera does the rest, in manual you have to set everything yourself. PP is post processing. All the nifty photoshop stuff and textures.

I'm loving the images and enjoying seeing people push their in camera skills as well as their post processing. Already I am so impressed with the photos in here. Congratulations to you all. ;)

ooh ahh.. thanks (this is a pretty humbling thread)

:rolleyes:

kja - I reckon that first photo could be used on a motivational poster right next to the kitten that's hanging onto the wire (you know, 'hang in there!'??) New motivational quote, "I'll give you motivation: Get your work done, Dumbass"

We can compress 12 x 16 inch files to 400kb and still print to an acceptable quality. Proof sizes on a disc are usually 6 x 9 inch, 72 DPI saved at jpg 5. the few images from each wedding that I post to flickr or facebook are 12 x 8inch, 72 dpi at jpg quality 5. Having worked in a lab, I know how these print up. The smaller proofs look horrible. The larger ones will work as a wallet size print only. Any bigger and they start to lose quality. I now tell all clients the story of a well known award winning Sydney photographer. He did a very high priced wedding and due to the amount the clients spent, they had their hi-res disc included. So the groom went around to all his family, told them to choose the images they wanted and quoted the prices from the professional photographer. The groom then went to Big W and had them printed from the disc and presented them to his family saying they were professionally printed by the photographer. Well, the mother of the groom wasn't impressed with the quality and ended up telling anyone and everyone who would listen about the horrible print quality produced by xxx photographer. Still the groom didn't own up to what he had done. Soon the photographer lost three confirmed bookings... it was only on the third one that the couple were honest and told the photographer why they were pulling out, "we've heard that what you see in the studio is different to the quality we actually receive, thanks but no thanks". After some more questioning they told him where they had heard this. The photographer contacted the groom and STILL he wouldn't admit to printing the photos and saying the photographer did it. The photographer had no choice but to sue the couple and also the mother for loss of business. (remember, he was a high priced photographer - three weddings would likely be about $25,000 + profit ). It was only when it went to court that the groom finally came clean. The photographer was awarded damages from both the mother and the groom. We tell this story to clients, then tell them our preferred printers (btw - having worked in mini-labs, you would be surprised at the quality that a well run and maintained mini-lab can produce. I worked in 2 awesome labs and one crappy one. I would get small jobs printed in the good labs in a heartbeat). This story is effective so far because it reminds clients that they have something to lose if they don't listen to the advice of the photographer.

We usually do explain it this is what has us perplexed In all these years, it hasn't happened to us and now it's happened twice in the last month. I guess we're just lucky. But yes, Alex and I talked about it earlier and we are going to make sure that explaining the proofs is now made as an explicit point.

Things that start with each letter.

When people purchase hi-res discs, they do so on the understanding that we recommend professional printers only. We also tell people who we would prefer. We let them know that printing anywhere is means that we won't guarantee the quality of the image. Have only had one smart ar$3 come back and say, "I tried doing it myself and they're really bad... what was the place you recommended again?" Also, we don't generally sell hi-res without an album purchase... (when dealing with weddings). The album quality speaks for itself so if they get crap prints after getting their album. They will notice the difference. kja - we have a full watermark on proof disc also but this is where we get complaints. Even with it faded to 10%. Chezzy - we have a proof book for easy access of file names but the images are only thumbnail size (as they also get the disc). It would be great if we could print out each photo with 'proof' across it but when it's sometimes 1000 photos it gets a bit expensive. rocco - I actually don't mind if people go to flickr and grab their photos. I think there are only a few files that I accidentally uploaded at full size (d'oh!). Most files I have at flickr are just a bit bigger than proofing size and would only print to a 2x3 inch print without loss of quality. People are free to grab the files - I just want to make sure our name is on them and stays on them! Every little bit of branding helps! grrrr.... people suck sometimes.

Okay Ruthless can you please transfer this to your first post :rolleyes: The theme for March is 'the ALPHABET' 26 letters in the alphabet and some will be more challenging that others. Have fun exploring your alphabet world!! For those who want to extend the challenge... If you are starting to get well aquainted with your camera and wish to challenge yourself a little more, try working this entire month using AV mode ONLY on your camera. No auto mode or P mode, switch it to AV, learn how to change the numbers and work out what happens. AV means aperture (or opening). In basic terms, the smaller the number is (1.4, 2.8, 3.5 etc) - the wider the opening is. This lets in lots of light and will give you a faster shutter speed. Because it is faster, not as much background information is captured and this will give you 'bokeh' (blurred background). The bigger the number (18, 22, 32 etc) - the smaller the opening. This needs more light to create an image so in turn it will have a slower shutter speed. For some situations you may need to use a tripod or firm surface and use the timer in your camera to avoid 'camera shake'. Have fun, get creative and get aquainted with your camera.

Not in Qld. :rolleyes:

SECRET - She ducked into the dressing room to put touch up her make-up and didn't realise I was there to take her photo Thanks ILTBY :rolleyes: APPA's are the Australian Professional Photography Awards held in Sydney in June. It's also a massive trade show and such on at the same time. You should go along and drool over awesome gear.

home x portrait x vegetable x look up! x water x mobile x glass/es night lights music x child x old landscape/streetscape eyes mineral x key best friend x collections pink x dance x tree x and for those who are wanting to extend the challenge food stamp car drama secret something you leave behind shapes shadow x This is a terrible photo.. out of focus and such, but to me it sums up 'HOME' Ashley is constantly in his underwear (people would think he doesn't own clothes :rolleyes: ) - Casey is always trying to stir him up and Ewey and Gussy just adore their older brothers and can't take their eyes of them whenever they walk into the room. This photo was a total fluke. I was actually shooting a few photos of Ewey and Gussy when Ashley came running in chased by Casey. Yep, it's a mad house here... but it's HOME.

BEST FRIENDS - Casey lurves the dogs and actually asked for me to take this photo. WATER - Shensei was happy to help me out MOBILE - this is what you call timing. I was focussed on Shensei because I knew she was about to jump when suddenly Kayo ran straight across in front of me. Both dogs at this point very VERY mobile. :rolleyes: I think this might go for TREE I have one more that I forgot to edit...

VEGETABLE (lighting care of the little man who turns the light on and off) MINERAL (probably my crappiest photo) DANCE - Kayo was being very obliging standing up... then she promptly fell backwards and right onto her back. It had to hurt with the massive slapping noise it made.

Okay... I decided to wander around my house taking photos of random stuff with the list at the back of my mind. I was going to use this first shot as 'best friends' because they are 'sole' mates... get it? :rolleyes: Anyway, it was only later I realised that they are perfect for PINK (these shoes will be worn for the second half of my wedding day ) This is a cute one... Gussy was trying to hand it over to me. MUSIC

It's not too late for February. I'm confined to the house today with four kids and have been running around the house shooting the most random stuff :rolleyes: I think I have managed to cover a few things. March though... you need to wait until 6pm

They're taking them off the proofs. We only sell a hi-res disc - NOT the copyright. This means that they can't alter the images in any way. We don't put logos on the hi-res images but they are on proof images. It's just a pain in the butt.

It has just happened to us a second time. We used to have a frame that we put images in with our stamp on it. Clients never cropped the frame out but it looked quite bulky and cumbersome. We then decided to stamp the corner of the images, which worked well. We then decided to watermark across the image but we had too many clients contact us to have a look at images without the watermark as they had issues 'seeing through it'. So we decided to go back to putting the stamp in the bottom corner. Now TWICE this month, we have had clients think that they could re-crop the photos and post them without the stamp. Obvious issues are that these are proof photos and we still hold copyright, also by cropping the images they completley change the composition and alot of the images look bad - therefore it reflects poorly on us. (the clients who have cropped the images have been contacted about it and that is fine). Questions are: what sort of stamp/watermark do you have? Why did you choose that style? Do you have issues with clients being able to view the image properly with your stamp/watermark? Do you have issues with clients cropping out your watermark?