Practical Photography

Corporate gifts are your company’s way of showing how much your clients mean to you. The better the gift you give to clients to seal a deal, the more value they know you place on them. However, as we’re in the middle of recession you don’t want to end up spending large amounts of cash on corporate gifts, or blowing the company budget on days out, football tickets or holiday homes for your clients.

You don’t have to spend this much money though, as you can offer quality gifts without spending a lot of money. For example, you can create your own corporate gifts, customised to your company, by using photography.

Framed photo prints make excellent gifts that your clients will surely love. This will also offer a more personal gift that shows you have thought about your offering, rather than just thrown money at the subject and opted for the standard type of corporate business gift that many other companies would have gone for.

This will make great savings for your business, which in turn will help your company increase its profits.

Remember that even though the country is in recession, it’s still important to show your clients that you value them.

If you’re an amateur photographer, have you entered any photography competitions lately? If you’ve entered the latest contest by Sony, the Photography Awards, you’ll be excited to know that Sony has just released its shortlist for the finalists. 186 different photographers have made it to the final, hailing from 43 different countries.

Astrid Merget, the director of the final, stated:

The quality and level of photographers this year has risen greatly and we are thrilled to see many top names as well as excellent new talent on the shortlist. Every one of the shortlisted photographers should be very proud to have been recognised by such an esteemed jury.

The contest is made up of 12 different categories in 3 separate genres.

Everyone loves the iconic imagery of a Ferrari. The power, the beauty, the passion, even the price of a Ferrari tells you how special they are. Now a new photography exhibition in La Galleria in Pall Mall will showcase the most beautiful and iconic Ferrari images in the world, from photographer Peter Hall.

The exhibition marks the first public showing of Hall’s photos, who has only been photographing cars for the last three years. His collection of Ferrari photos features current cars, and historic Ferraris. The collection also includes photos of last year’s F1 car.

The Ferrari exhibition opens in March.

Milan has always been known for its fashion, beauty and classical imagery. It’s a chic place where the rich and famous love to hang out and a new exhibition in Milan celebrates all that is beautiful with photography.

The exhibition opens next week, and is sponsored by fashion guru Dolce & Gabbana. Jean Nouvel is the designer of the exhibition and it’s being curated by American Vogue.

Some eighty-nine images, showcasing beauty from the world of fashion magazines, has been put together with some luminaries from the photography world. Richard Avedon to Annie Leibovitz are among the iconic photographers being showcased in the Milan beauty exhibition.

I recently found myself in a branch of Currys Digital looking at cameras, as I do every few months, and felt the desire to buy one once again. Having not really experimented with photography since my University days, when I took photography as a side course along with film, I’ve been out of touch for a while. For example, I studied the art of developing film in the darkroom and making compositions using enlargers, not PhotoShop and a digital camera!

Anyhow, as much as the SLR cameras caught my interest, and the increasing number of long lenses looked enticing, I quickly realised that I really wanted the camera to photograph my friends on nights out, rather than to take long walks in the hillside photographing birds or other forms of wildlife. Therefore I had to discount the more expensive, professional looking cameras as you can’t take one of those to a club or bar, and indeed many places won’t let you enter as they look like professional cameras.

Instead I had to opt for a Sony Cybershot, which came in at under £200 and had a whopping 13 Mega Pixel capacity, which is more than enough to take the sort of actions shots I’m after, and will do fine for my own gallery of Facebook.

Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee have posed for a magazine in the style of Posh and Beck’s recent photoshoot.

The couple have obviously done it in jest but has recieved more attention than the original photograph. 50 year old Debbie looks fantastic but 70 year old Paul Daniels has left me cringing at the saggy pants, although I am releived he didn’t copy the most famous of David Beckhams Armani poses where he site full frontal leaving little to the imagination. For any girls who wish to be reminded of this see image… heterosexual boys look away…

I am pleased that Paul didn’t do this but really do find the image amusing and everyone is talking about it.

If you have a photography business it is easy to take your staff for granted, a photographer I know has recently done a shoot for 100 wishes, a book that proclaims itself to be a beginners guide to having no regrets.

This intrigued me as I thought this was an interesting concept and wondered how it could live up to its advertising. Looking at the website for 100 wishes the photography looks lovely and the Author Ali Davidson has shared her own experiences in this motivational book.

What interested me the most though, was the section for businesses, you can get a free consultation;

Where a workforce seems jaded or low on enthusiasm, we deliver the “Empowering Business” corporate training programme, that helps to gather and solidify groups of workers from every level of the company, encouraging a greater sense of teamwork, output and results.

Through an initial FREE OF CHARGE consultation, we will gather information on your concerns and aspirations for your teams in order to ensure each programme is accurately geared for your company.

Carried out over a period to suit your company needs, we will pre-agree expected outcomes and provide a follow-up session in due course to monitor and report back on results achieved.

Based on a successful working lifetime in global business development, 100 wishes Ltd really does understand leadership, customer service, manufacturing, logistics and bottom line results and all Facilitators are chosen for their own personal accomplishments in business.

“Empowering People NOW!”

If time is an issue, we also offer a one-day taster seminar “Empowering People NOW!” that promises to get individuals thinking differently and more positively about their role in life and within the company.

Looking to the Future…

Our ultimate aim is to grow our success towards the launch of the 100 wishes Foundation, an organisation supported by local business contributions that, one day soon, will be able to offer financially-assisted opportunities for ordinary people to achieve their greatest wish.

I think in light of the current economic climate now is the time to look into these sorts of things and 100 wishes seems to have a better outlook than just giving people a reason to moan. 100 wishes is not about complaining but looking at things in a diferent light and learning from your experiences good and bad to help you in the future.

The photography industries are starting to struggle so I would certainly recommend this to any business hoping to increase productivity with happy staff who are empowered and enthusiastic in their work.

Happy Valentines Day! As today is a time for love, romance and candlelight dinners I thought I’d celebrate with some ideas on getting the best pictures using candlelight.

It is very difficult to take photographs in candlelight as your digital camera will try to use the flash, if you have your camera set to auto you will not get the best results. Candlelight can create amazing pictures with a warm glow and interesting flickers of light. You can create a romantic scene and get really warm results but it is difficult.

The first thing you should be aware of is NOT TO USE YOUR FLASH. In low lights a flash will fill the area with light and you will completely lose all of the ambiance that made the scene interesting. In most cases I would advise switching your flash off completely.
Shooting by candlelight obviously means you have very little light to work with, which means to get good results you’ll almost definately be shooting with slower shutter speeds. As is the case with slower shutter speeds you have to keep the camera still to make sure there is no noise or vibrations, I would recommend using a tripod to get the best results. You can also try using a remote shutter to take away the vibrations from hitting the button.
If you’re shooting with a Digital SLR and have more than one lens choose the ‘fastest’ one you own, faster lenses have a larger aperture and let more light into your camera. Make sure you remember thatthat the larger your aperture the smaller your depth of field, so you will have to be more vigilant with your focus.

Using different range lenses can mean you need to try different positions and focal spots, I recommend trying as many different ways and compositions as possible and have plenty of memory cards handy.

Another way to get more light into your camera is to use a slower shutter speed. But the slower the shutter speed you the bigger the chance of capturing movement (this could be of your subject, the flames of candles or the movement of your camera).

If your candles are in the shot, your camera will try to underexpose as this will be seen as a bright spot. Try overexposing by a stop from what your camera recommends. Don’t over expose though as this can cause your  candles to look like burnt out spots in your image.

Try to experiment with the white balance when using candle light. Candles give off a very ‘warm’ light which creates a nice atmosphere. However your depending on your white balance settings your camera may remove this warmth if you have your setting on ‘auto’. By trying different settings you can get various levels of warmth ad decide which you prefer. You can also shoot in RAW so you can get the balance right in editing.

Make sure if your candles are in the frame that use use attractive candles and save your less attractive bargain candles for the ambient glow in the background, or to the side of the frame.

Any candles in the frame will impact the settings your camera wants to us but can also create points of interest in the composition that can lead the eye around the photograph, this can work with the main focus of the subject or against depending on what style you want to go with.

I would recommend not using a flash but as you experiment and get better you can try using flash emphasize the warm natural glow from the candles you cannot do this with a bright flash so you will need to use flash gels like red or orange. These can dim the impact the flash gives off to give a warm light.

The hardest thing about candlelight photography is the amount of light you have to work with. Try to use more candles as this will produce more light to help you with getting the right shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings. If you use less candles or just one there will be harsher more interesting shadows on your subject’s face or flickering in the background. By speading more candles out you will still get the warm glow and atmosphere but a more even light. I personally recommend having more candles to one side than the other as this gives a nice side lighting effect but have some on the other side, unless you want a very harsh difeerence and shadow.

Have fun experimenting with your candle light photography!

A Nude photograph of Madonna has been auctioned off and sold for $37,500, yesterday and is reportedly the highest price paid for a celebrity nude to date.

Christies auction house were delighted when the photograph of Madonna valued at $15,000 was sold to an unnamed european buyer for over double what they had expected.

The photograph taken of Madonna, was taken when Madonna Louise Ciccone (as she was known at the time) was a struggling dancer in New York trying
to make ends meet. She answered a newspaper advert (very desperately seeking Susan) to find a nude
model. We believe she only earned about $25 for the 1979 photo session.

Lee
Friedlander’s raw, explicit black-and-white image appeared in Playboy
in 1985. Friedlander has said of the photo session that Madonna “seemed
very confident, a street-wise girl. She told me she was putting a band
together but half the kids that age are doing that. She was a good
professional model.”

This was before Madonna was famous and has cetainly increased in value, although I am surprised it sold for so much as Madonna always seems to be getting her kit off.

Businesses seem to be looking towards the internet these days to market themselves, here are a few good ways to help you on credit crunch budget.

Flickr

Flickr is an online photo sharing network where you can display your images online and meet other people with similar interests. By sharing your images you are actually advertising your portfolio, you can link flickr to your website and generate hits through this and potetially new business leads.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site that is being used my many people all over the world, it has a huge online presence and if you search for your own name, unless you have set your profile to private it will come up in Google.

Facebook allows you to invite friends and colleagues to network with.

These can be;

• Personal Friends, whom you have known at school, through family, and outside work
• Professional friends, people you work with
• Clients, these can be people whose wedding you did before or current and even potential clients

Blogging

By blogging about your business people can find you on the internet this helps build up trust and a sense of community you will get loyal readers and people that will recommend you to their friends. People can leave comments and put in their email address which you could use as a potential sales lead.

All of these methods can be useful to getting your business recognised and remind older clients or friends of what you do and showcase recent work.