keithdunlop

I work in a fairly small central California market where word of mouth is king. I make it a point to find out what other vendors are working on a wedding I'm shooting, then, I first send them a message introducing myself and offering any assistance I can provide for the event. For floral and cake vendors, I specifically offer free image files of their work shot during the wedding which has turned into a growing network of good will and referrals. I don't mind one bit providing vendors with images for their portfolios when it turns into future referrals. I consider it a very small percentage of my overall advertising budget.

You can just link to your online proofing service. My web site provides a link to the customer login page of my proofing service from the "proofs" tab.

There was a recent Blu Domain question asked on the wedding forum, and there have been some past issues regarding customer service. However, I went live with them recently and received the best service I've ever had from a hosting service ever. So, perhaps prior issues resolved. The templates themselves are great, and customizing ad uploading content through Blu Domain's online interface is very easy.

Like Suzanne, the 17-55 DX lens is my workhorse, so an upgrade from my D2x to D3 also means getting the new FX wide zoom as well. Yes, you can switch to DX format in the D3, but you lose megapixels as a result.

 

I fully agree that 12 megapixels is more than enough for weddings, and I'm very happy with the noise performance of my D2x. A future D3x with more megapixels might be desirable for landscape or fine art work, but I don't see it as necessary for wedding work. The larger capture size is just going to take up more CF card space. When I'm shooting 1,500+ captures at a wedding, CF space is important.

 

The biggest reason that I would consider an upgrade to a D3 is the dual-CF slots. With that feature I could have images record to both cards creating an in-camera back-up should a card fail. Since I'm now using 12 and 16 gb cards, creating in-camera backups is very desirable to me. I don't like the idea is having all my eggs in one basket, but it's a risk I must accept with my D2x.

 

Having said all that, a used D2x body as a backup (or even a third body) to my current lineup is a much more cost effective choice for weddings. I would rather spend $2,500.00 on a solid and capable wedding camera that takes my current DX format lenses, than spend 6,500+ for a D3 and new zoom. The dual CF slot isn't worth $4,000 to me.

I just went live with them a couple of weeks ago and I've had nothing but great customer service. I received same-day responses to emails with questions I had prior to buying the template, and they got me live and up and running in less than a day. Shortly after going live, I received emails checking to make sure all went well and was provided with the name of a specific individual to contact with questions. It was by far the best service I've ever had with a hosting company.

Write back and offer to schedule consultation and see if she balks.

Just to echo what John said: I have seen flush-mount albums with folded prints and over time the point of fold can develop minor cracking and a visible discoloration. I also use Leather Craftsman for binding and I usually explain to clients that while the split edition books have a small black gutter in the middle, it's preferable to a folded print crease that may deteriorate over time. Prints just aren't made to be folded in that way in my opinion.

Digiproofs provides a self-fullfillment option. I personally prefer this so that 1) I don't have to upload full-sized JPEGS for printing, 2) I have greater control over the end print result, and 3) I don't have to wait for a monthly check from Digiproofs.

 

All the proofs go to an online gallery as usual, but rather than collecting fees and processing the prints, Digiproofs sends you a notice of the order and you take over responsibility of collecting the money and processing prints. Once I receive the email notice from Digiproofs of an order, I prepare an HTML invoice with a link to my PayPal account for fee collection. PayPal provides payment buttons that you can add to an HTML page with code that is easily pasted-in to your invoice page. It requires a little work on your part, but if you can use Frontpage or Dreamweaver, it not very hard.

Another option that a couple of my clients have preferred is not to use an overmat, but rather to print the image with a wide white border for signing. In other words, the last one I did was a 16x20 image printed on 24x30 paper mounted to foam core. The signatures become a permanent part of the image which can be framed later to taste.

Just a quick note about the legal remedies - be aware that a court judgment is just that; a judgment. It doesn't actually guarantee that you get anything tangible. The next step with a deadbeat defendant is the process of trying to enforce the judgment. You might win your contract performance dispute in court and still be left without any pictures/albums. Talk to a lawyer as others have said and good luck!

Call me cynical, but the original poster signed up yesterday - smell a scam?

Mac version.

Every so often when I run the cursor over any of the module windows in Lightroom

1.1, all the dialog text disappears and I get random "U" characters in their

place. A shut down and restart usually clears it up, but it's annoying.

 

Has anyone else experienced this?

As others have mentioned, proper calibration is very important, but you should also make sure you are editing with the proper printer profiles for the lab and/or output device you are using. Most labs will provide their ICC profiles to you so you can soft-proof to their printers.

Thank you Patrick and Ray! The only problem I ran into was that when saving the selection it adds a new channel and the Command J shortcut is grayed-out in the layer menu. With a minor modification to Ray's workflow, I came up with something that works perfectly:

 

1. Make the desired selection. In my case, a fixed size rectangle marque one inch smaller than image dimensions.

 

2. To fix selection to center of image, create horizontal and vertical grid lines at 50% each. Snap to grid.

 

3. Select > Inverse to change selection to border area only and protect image center.

 

4. Save selection. This adds a new channel with mask.

 

5. Highlight the new channel.

 

6. Edit > Copy.

 

7. In layer tab, create New Layer.

 

8. Edit > Paste.

 

9. Adjust opacity to border area of image to taste.

Masks are still an area that are a steep learning curve for me and I need a

little help.

 

I am trying to create a 1" border around an image that is desaturated with a

simple opacity adjustment. I have no trouble making the selection with the

Rectangle Marque tool and using the Inverse command to protect all but the

border area. Now how do I adjust the opacity on the just unprotected border? I

have tried applying a quick mask and adding an adjustment layer, but all I

really want to do is adjust the opacity of the unprotected border area.

Also check out Digiproofs. They have a large election of sports related merchandise that you can offer to clients in addition to straight prints including Memory Mates, mugs, photo balls, etc.

 

The trick is getting customers to go to the proof site. I have found that with this particular business model, most of the photo buys are "impulse" purchases made at the event. I would continue to work on your workflow to get speedier with onsite proofs. I used to do equestrian events and we were able to get proofs of over 300 riders printed and ready to view by end of day. Orders for prints would be taken at the trailer and mailed later.

I'm not a Canon guy, but, I routinely shoot at 1600 (no flash) with my D2x for available light work during bride preparations and what-not. In post-processing I use Noise Ninja to clean up the grain and always come away with very printable images.

Do what I did and marry a lawyer, then all your legal work is free!

 

Otherwise, my wife charges $250.00 an hour for business contract work. For reviewing and revising a 4 page contract you should expect a bill of 1-2 hours. This includes review time, and correspondence to you. Lawyers charge based on increments of 1/10 of an hour and always round up.

 

Also, when shopping for attorneys, look for those who specialize in transactional law.

I've used Lightroom for processing my last two weddings and I found the interface to be much more intuitive than Capture One. I also found that Lightroom has replaced Photoshop for me for all but the more complex image alterations. Basically, if it involves masks or layers I use Photoshop; everything else can be done very well in Lightroom. In fact, I barely touched Photoshop at all since many of the image correction features work much better for batch processing in Lightroom (in my opinion). I also like the fact that all image alterations are non-destructive.

 

I work on Mac's so I can't address the Vista compatibility issue.

Your question actually addresses two separate things. You mention clicking on an image on a web page and having a larger version "pop-up", but you also say that you want this to happen in an email.

 

First the web issue - It's usually done with a script added to the page code. Dreamweaver has a simple built-in behavior for creating pop-ups, and you can download more comprehensive add-on behaviors for Dreamweaver online. You simply create a link on a thumbnail (or smaller image version) that when clicked, makes a pop-up appear with the larger image. However, the image in the thumbnail doesn't actually change; the page loads the larger version when clicked. It requires two separate image files; the thumbnail version and the larger version.

 

Regarding email - when you send an attached file in an email, the file size is static and cannot change sizes when clicked on. But, you can email a link to the web page which contains the aforementioned thumbnail with pop-up.

I take the 15" version of the new MacBook Pro 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2gb of RAM with me on shoots. After years of using PC's I absolutely love it and wished I had switched sooner. It runs PS CS3 and Lightroom 1.1 exceptionally well.

4by6.com is another good online alternative.

Great advice - thanks!

Recent questions about assistants got me thinking about a technical problem I am

having about image sequencing. I shoot Nikon and my assistant shoots Canon,

which in of itself is not a problem because we shoot RAW and I can process both

in Lightroom. My issue has to do with image numbering and sequencing. I want to

be able to see my assistant's images in the same time sequence as mine. In other

words, if we are both shooting ceremony shots, I want to be able to view them in

time order, not file name order. I've tried to sort by capture time in

Lightroom, but I don't seem to be getting the right image order.

 

Is there a way I can sync our cameras to provide a more accurate time stamping

of image capture, or does someone have a good workflow method to solve this issue?