Auctioneers

A day in the life of a Melbourne photographer, part 1…

Auctioneering involves a lot of showmanship – so photographing these guys was a lot of fun (even at eight o’clock in the morning)!

Technorati Tags: photography, commercial photography, professional photography, people photography, auctioneers

I know it’s not winter yet, but boy are we getting some cold nights in Melbourne!

Which got me thinking – now is a good time to start planning to any photography of building exteriors you may have been putting off.

What’s so good about photographing buildings in winter?

Here are three:

1. Foliage – there’s less of it. Of course this will depend on the individual building and surrounding trees, but if parts of the building are normally obscured by deciduous (European!) trees, winter is your chance to see more of it.
2. Light – Dawn and dusk often produce the most interesting and/or beautiful light. And of course they both arrive at more civilised times in the winter – no need to set the alarm for four in the morning or to stay out late!
3. Air – Although cloudless, dry days are a little less common than in the other seasons, the air is often clearer and less hazy during winter. This won’t affect the foreground subject that much, but if the picture is to include a city skyline or more distant landmarks, it is a great advantage.

Of course there is a downside, too – pack your gloves!

Technorati Tags: photography, exterior photography, building photography, architectural photography

My clients are often surprised at how long it takes to photograph simple environmental portraits – for example, company staff at their workplace. “All this for one shot”?, they ask.

But spare a thought for Cincinnati food photographer Teri Campbell and his clients. According to an article in the Cincinnati Business Courier, they may be up for a two-week wait while he photographs an ice cream.

My favourite quote from the article?

“…it is the space between Campbell’s ears that is most valuable to his clients.”

The moral?

Next time you’re feeling a little frustrated that it’s taking me, like, twenty minutes to set up a shot of your CEO, think of ice-cream. And remember how much you’re paying to rent the space between my ears 🙂

Technorati Tags: photography, photographer, commercial photography, commercial photographer, food photography, people photography, location photography, photo shoot

I promised somewhere (in my newsletter or here on the blog – or maybe it was just in the recesses of my twisted mind) to reveal the secret of getting your news release run in the newspaper (or a magazine).

You’re probably not surprised to hear me say that it involves photography 🙂

Now, I’m no PR expert (although I’ll direct you to one in a minute), but I do know that journalists are desperate for interesting material (interesting being a key word – don’t bother sending a sales pitch disguised as a news story, it will most likely go straight in the bin). And, like anyone, they want their job to be as easy as possible.

So, which is more interesting: A news story, or a news story with a picture? The picture wins every time, of course. Have you ever noticed that items that are virtual ‘non-stories’ run in the paper (or on TV) because they happen to have interesting pictures or footage to go with them?

Well, the (by now) obvious way of taking advantage of this is by sending an interesting, reproduction-quality photograph in with your media release. This will dramatically increase the chance of your story being run.

"But don’t newspapers and magazines have their own photographers"?, I hear you asking. Of course the do. But there are at least three good reasons to send your own quality pictures with your news release:

1. Capture the editor or journalist’s attention. When they pick up your release, it will immediately stand out from all the other boring pages of copy they receive. They will be able to see at a glance that it is something interesting that they may want to run.
2. They may run it as is, with your pictures. – Saving you the inconvenience of having their photographer come and tell you what to do – which brings us to the third, possibly most important reason:
3. You retain control of the content. Get your story portrayed the way you want. This makes your media release almost as good as good as running a free ad, probably worth thousands! Of course you can’t guarantee that the story will be run exactly the way you want – but the first thing readers see is the picture, and if that shows you in a favourable light, that’s a huge head start.

Of course there’s no guarantee that your story will get run at all. But if you consistently send news releases that follow the rules, the odds are very, very good. In fact, if you do the numbers on it, it’s a no-brainer. Think of how many news releases you could write and send for the cost of a single advertisement. Even if only one in five gets run, you’ll be ahead (and with your story having much more credibility than in an ad).

Anyway, like I said, I’m no PR expert. So don’t take my word for all of this. Listen to some experts. I have two favourite PR resources which I subscribe to:

Joan Stewart (The Publicity Hound) and Paul Hartunian.

Oh, and of course if you need help with that picture, you know who to call 🙂

Technorati Tags: media release, press release, news release, publicity, PR, public relations

This story appearing recently on news.com.au tells of how a study by financial services firm Grant Thornton found that 22 per cent of Australian businesses are in the ‘Super Growth’ category.

Wow! TWENTY-TWO per cent! That’s a lot of fast-growing businesses!

So what does this mean for you and me?

1. If you’re in a B2C/retail business:
   The people who work at these fast-growth companies (as well the new employees taking on), are confident and flush with cash. If you can find them and sell to them, that’s good for you!
2. If you’re in a B2B/wholesale business:
   Some of these fast-growth companies (and their entire supply chain, of course) need products and services like yours. That’s good for you!
3. If you’re in a non-profit organisation:
   There may be partnering opportunities with many of these fast-growth companies . That’s good for you!

What are you doing to become a ‘super growth’ organisation?Is it time to take advantage of good economic conditions and ramp up your marketing & communications programmes?

That’s going to be our strategy. And if it’s going to be yours, we’d love to help you with that if we can 🙂

Technorati Tags: economy, boom, marketing

Hat

“I don’t know anything about fashion. Only aeroplanes!”, I kept saying. But
Chitra insisted I shoot her 2006 Spring/Summer collection.

Fashion designer Chitra Mangma, actress Mikaela Martin, and I had worked
together previously on a shoot for Chitra, so I guess it was an easy choice.
While it’s fun working with new people, there is great advantage working with
people you know.

Mikaela’s look suits Chitra’s clothes so well (especially when she is in
character as the wholesome, yet slightly cheeky young lady you see here).

Speaking of character, working with an actress is a photographer’s dream.
Very little direction needed, which leaves a bigger part of your attention free
to concentrate on camera, lighting, and all of that stuff.

I had to have a laugh at one point during the shoot. We were shooting on
reasonably busy Victoria Street in Brunswick, and I was on the opposite side of
the road to Mikaela. So every now and then when a bigger burst of traffic would
pass by, I lowered my camera and did a bit of ‘chimping’ (viewing/editing the
images on the back of the camera). Invariably when I looked back up, Mikaela was
still in character, posing away!

Technorati Tags: photography, professional photography, commercial photography, fashion photography, fashion, modelling

Deck, dusk,
originally uploaded by Steven Pam.

I’ve just finished processing the shots I did last Thursday night for architect Justin Moore.

Although it’s usually preferable to get things as close as possible ‘in-camera’ to how you want them to look (because it’s invaribaly quicker and therefore also cheaper than doing it in Photoshop), sometimes there’s still a lot of work to be done after pressing the button.

And architectural photography is a perfect example of the kind of work for which I usually spend a lot longer in post-production than I do on the shoot itself.

This is because of the mixed lighting and large contrast range which are often present.

For this shot I blended different exposures (and different ‘processings’ of each exposure) for the main scene, the sky, the door in the foreground, and the lit area of the deck. This lets me adjust the colour temperature and brightness of each area so that it matches as closely as possible how the scene looks to the naked eye. It makes you realise just how much ‘processing’ your brain does when you look at a scene like this!

Technorati Tags: architectural photography, architecture, photographing buildings, professional photography

A couple of months ago I subscribed to the Early To Rise newsletter.

It seems to be interesting and useful – and also often full of marketing hype (which I also find interesting and useful).

This morning I found an e-mail in my inbox with the subject, “Early To Rise: Never Again Will We Offer This!”

The message opens like this:

Dear ETR reader,

“Are you crazy? You’re giving away $73,520 to each subscriber over five years! Stop selling this immediately or you’ll put us out of business!” That’s what ETR’s business manager Josh told me when he ran the numbers for ETR’s Lifetime VIP Club…

If you’re a student of marketing and advertising, like me, then you’ll recognise this type of headline. Now, I don’t know who used it first, but I’m guessing it’s fairly effective, or it wouldn’t still be doing the rounds after all these decades.

It’s natural to want to ‘talk up’ what you do. And you’ve got to grab your prospect’s attention. But to me, this opening just reeks of bullshittery.

I mean, seriously, why would the business manager be pissed off about the prospect of signing up a bunch of people for a $5000 product (an info product at that – sure, some of it is hard copy, but the margins are still pretty nice at $5k, don’t you think?).

And the $73,520 they’re "giving away" is of course in the form of money they’re ‘leaving on the table’ by not selling the individual program components for their ‘full price’. (Wow, what a lot of inverted commas! – All intended)

Anyway, as you know I’m always looking for the golden nugget in these stories – in this case it’s something like, "go easy on the bullshit!".

Have a nice day,
Steven

Technorati Tags: Bullshitting, honesty, marketing, truth in advertising

OK, last Wednesday I promised to reveal how to improve your photographs by understanding and exploiting a basic lighting law. And best of all, it’s free!

The law I’m referring to is about the size of the light source relative to the subject.

The bigger the light source, the softer the shadows.
And conversely, the smaller the light source, the harder the shadows.

How can you use this fact to improve your photographs?

The first thing to do is be aware of it – notice the lighting. Move things around or go to a different location if you need to.

But the main way to actually use this law is to make a rule of always photographing people (one of the most popular and common photographic
subjects) with large light sources.

Here are a few examples of easy to use, large light sources:

• An overcast sky (one of the best, because not only is it huge, it’s also still relatively bright)
• A window (still relatively large compared to someone’s head, they’re standing right next to it – yet also directional, which can provide a nice effect)
• A bright light (or lights) reflected against a white ceiling, or a white wall behind the photographer. A flash gun with an adjustable head is ideal for this technique because it provides substantially more illumination than, say, a desk lamp.

If you specifically want hard shadows (less flattering but sometimes interesting), you’ll be seeking out small, point sources of light – like the sun.

Bear in mind that if you use only the full sun to light a shot, you’ll need to sacrifice detail either in the sunlit areas (by exposing correctly for the shadows), or the shadows (by exposing for the sunny bits).

One more thing – remember to experiment with the direction of the light source. While lighting from the front and/or top is the Conventional method (and often gives the best or most appropriate results), interesting effects can be achieved by lighting from the sides, back, or underneath, too.

Technorati Tags: photography, photographic lighting

This is what we’re up against: Police enforce non-existent photography ban on NY public transport.

Well, not me personally, but some of my colleagues.

It’s awkward enough waving a big camera around in public without the police trying to stop you as well!