My First Website

In the previous module in university it was required of us to create a website, unfortunately I underestimated the amount of time and effort that this required and as such it was not up to the highest standard that it could have been, it was rushed last minute and I think that shows in the quality of the design.

I used a white, black and grey design of my website, it also had a pale pink accent colour in to break up the monochrome; this needs changing as it does not reflect my brand in any way. I used the grey background because of the focus on retouching and the connotations it had to Photoshop. I think I like the use of grey and although I may change the tone and shade I am going to stick with the grey background.

This was my landing page of the website, but as I was testing the websites transferability to other internet operating software such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari I noticed that the website looked different if the page was not displayed full screen on the monitor; the ‘Welcome’ would move up and down the page and sometimes be over the pegs rather than being in the sunset. I knew that I could not control how people viewed my screen so I had to change my landing page in order for this not to be a problem. Within the website I could not find a way to change this so they stayed relative to each other.

Another problem I ran into was at first I could not enter my own website because I had the words ‘Photography’ and ‘Retouching’ separate to the line in the middle, although it only looks like a line the text box around it spreads over both words, because this was arranged to be on top of the words it meant that the words could not be clicked as it was blocked by the empty space in the line’s textbox. Thankfully this was an easy mistake to fix once I realised what had happened.

This is the page for my Photography; it is a slideshow of all my images that I think are successful. I think in my next design I will be splitting my types of photography into different groups such as still life and nature rather than having them side by side as it appears too jumbled together. The second image shows the bottom half of the page with all the slideshow images, one option I did not consider was having the slideshow vertically along the side, I think that would have looked better than what I have done.

At the time of making my website I only focused on my still life images and I did not consider uploading other images; I have family photography and portrait photography I have done but I did not want to include these as it was not what I was needing to advertise I could do.

My retouching page shows some before and afters, which show off my skill and what I have done to the images. When I was researching I wanted to include a slider to the image so that viewers could interact with them and drag the slider along themselves, I had seen this design done on many retouching tutorial websites but I could not find a way to do this. I have continued my research on this and have since found a few ways that this would be possible to do.

Also on my website I have included a short bio about myself:

Learning Photography Skills

I have many studio skills that will help me when I am looking for jobs, to become a retoucher I think the route I will take is to start with assisting as a digital technician in a studio; this means that I would need to know studio skills and I am looking for ways to showcase these skills.

I have been working in the studio for five years and I have used and learnt many different skills and techniques.

I can set up lighting stands, background stands, diffuser stands

I can work with various lighting brands such as Elinchrom and Bowens and Speedlites

I have worked with a wide variety of  digital cameras such as Canons, Hasselblads, Phase One.

I can work with film cameras such as 35mm, 5*4  medium format, large format

I can also process Black and White film and follow a darkroom workflow from shooting to prints

I have encountered many problems over the time and have found creative solutions to all of these.

I have used different lighting attachments such as softboxes, bowls, snoots, beauty dish, barn doors, octobox.

I can work to a tethering (shoot to computer) workflow and also a shoot to memory card workflow.

I have worked on lighting set ups for people and objects and have worked with glass products, food, flowers, e-commerce styling, jewelry, makeup. 

Learning Retouching Skills

To learn new Photoshop skills I have ordered many books about Photoshop skills and restoration techiques; currently I have not read these books but they include copies of Scott Kelby’s works; Martin Evening’s books, these are two highly recognised people in the field of Photoshop and learning skills from their books means I know I am learning from respected professionals.

Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it

In this book by Scott Kelby he talks about how to light different set ups in th studio; he talks through lighting people to get certain looks and he also talks about some product photography shots and the different techniques to lighting these.

In his book he also goes through the ways to retouch these photographs that will have been taken in an easy step by step guide. His books are very easy to follow and they explain the complicated techniques through simple means so that I can follow them.

Adobe Photoshop for Photographers

This book explains how to use Photoshop, it explains the uses of tools and the possibiilities that they can be used for. It is updated as each Photoshop book comes out howver the majority of the tools remain the same and it is just minor additions and bug fixes that they implement. 

Retouching Abilities

In order to make it into the industry I need to be prepared and I need to know what to expect and what is expected of me. I have searched for helpful advice and tip and one website I came across was Retouch Pro; which is a forum website for retouchers to ask advice and get help with any problems. This is not a job website but I still think it is going to be useful for me; the first article I read on this website was “What are the 10 abilities needed to be a succesful Retoucher”

The person who was asking this question was looking for Photoshop abilities as they were a beginner and were looking to start learning but wanted to know what was considered the most important part. Some of the answers went of topic but I wrote a list of everything that was mentioned :

-          clone tools

-          healing tools

-          patience

-          good coordination

-          good eyesight

-          open mind

-          organization

-          find a workflow

-          attention ot detail

-          know how to use the blend modes

-          know the curves

-          know the brushes

-          Learn body anatomy

-          PATIENCE

-          Learn how to use Google

-          Teaching other helps you learn

-          Customer service skills

-          Masking

-          Tact

-          Diplomacy

-          Communication

-          An Ability to visualise

-          Know hwen to seek assistance

-          Willingness to experiment

Another thing that was mentioned which I think is very useful was to create a catalogue on a word document of all the tutorials and useful articles that I find, this means I then have access to lots of tutorials and step by step guides that I think are useful even if I do not have access to the internet or time to go searching.

This got me thinking about ways that I could show I am learning new skills and how would potential employer know that I have these skills; I had an idea to create an online catalogue of step by step tutorials in a “how to” blog about Photoshop. I am going to work on this over summer as a way to keep myself active on Photoshop and to show potential clients I am working and still immersing myself in the world of Photoshop. I think it will be good for me and show a positive learning attitude that I am doing this for myself and not because I have been asked; this would the equivalant of photographers doing personal projects inbetween jobs and clients.

I am going to write this as a blog but there is also the possibility of writing a booklet and getting some prints done as part of my marketing and press pack. I think this would be a unique skill to have and would be more memorable than leaving potential employers with just a business card.

I have skills in Photoshop but currently I have no way online to show potential employers I am skilled in Photoshop apart from the work I have created. This does not show my full range of skills in Photoshop as some of my techniques are used so that they appear invisible (such as healing and blemish removing).

Tools I think I have learnt:

-          Non destructive workflow

-          Blend modes

-          Masking

-          Healing brushes

-          Brush Tools

-          Selection Tools

-          Curves

-          Cloning

 It is important that I know how to work non destrucively; if a client wants a minor change making and I have used a destructive workflow this means I would probably need to start the whole documents again; but working non-destructively means I can make chnages as I need too without restarting, this means I can save time and increase productivity in my workflow.

Skills I think I have learnt:

-          Communication

-          Organization

-          Coordination

-          Patience

-          Open-Mindedness

-          Attention to detail

-          Knowing when to ask for help

I also need to find a way to prove I have these skills and this is something I think the blog can help provide me. 

Business Cards

I have already created some business cards during my college education, however these are not up to a high standard and I do not feel confident handing them out. The photograph I used was not considered fully and they were not the best photographs to use. I also used a brown text theme which matched the photograph as it was colour picked from within the image however I do not feel this looks professional so I am going to be creating some new cards.

I have some ideas for my cards; I want to show my retouching skills and my product photography skills so I am going to use one of my new works I am creating for this latest project, I am going to make it bright and colourful so that it stands out and is easily spotted and memorable.  In order to do this I need to create some designs that would transform into a business card without losing any details.

Vistaprint is the company I used previously and I do think that these cards could be used by regular business as they are of decent quality however I do not think they should be used by photography businesses as the quality of the photographs does not come out as high as I would have liked; this may be in part to the camera and processing of my images however I do not remember what I sent in so I cannot compare this to present photographs. I will not be using this company for this reason.

Below is an example of the business card GC Photo-Grafics has prepared and hands out to customers; after talking to the manager at GC Photo-Grafics and explaining that through the university project I needed to create business cards he gave me permission to use the logo and branding within my own personal business cards.

Personally I feel the card could be a higher standard as the quality feels cheap and tacky; as though it is just laminated paper. Also the branding typography is not my personal style but I know I must still use this in my own business card in order to represent the company. 

After knowing I would have to create a professional standard company style card I have researched different company cards and how they represent themselves and the company. I have found that many of them are just plain black and white or the branding colour of the business, I have kept this in mind when I have been creating my own cards and have used the red white and black theme.

 This is my final design for my business card, I have taken influence from the company cards with the back of the cards because I wanted to remain professional but keep with the company’s existing branding and business card. I used the same information that is on the business card so that the branding is consistent; I emailed these final designs to the manager of the studio for approval and he is wanting to implement this design into the cards for the business.

I got the design from the card while I was looking online at template designs, I found one which I could download, on the design it shows a multitude of different portraits, this is what inspired me for this card because using more than one photograph means I can show off more than just one skill and I can show that I have skills in the type of photography the studio is offering.

On the back of the card it shows the studio logo and the information for it, I personally do not like the typography for the studio logo but I understand that I cannot change this and I must stick to using this in my final design. I have also included the list of the types of photography the studio offers so people can clearly see what we offer. I have put my phone number and the managers phone number as I thought these would be essential and I have included the Facebook page because this is where most of the studios business is generated through advertising on there.

To get to my final design it took many different attempts and designs, once I had found the template I knew that I was going to use a design that was like this to show off my images because I wanted to stand out and this template helped me achieve this.  The typical photographers business cards only show one image and originally I had created templates using just one image; however with the studio in mind I wanted to be able to show off multiple photographs at once to show a broader range of skills and to gather people’s interest.

These are just some of the design processes I went through to create my final design:

These are some of the working designs I screenshot as I was working on my business card, the first two I do not think are successful because these were too crowded with information and I think everything got lost on the page. The design did not look right to me but I could not figure out what was ‘wrong’ with it, I asked a few peoples opinions and they said that it was weird that all the information was split into two halves and that I needed to decide who the card was for before I could fix it. 

I took this advice on board and I designed my card with the studio and advertising myself as a studio worker; I asked permission to use the branding and logo in my business card after explaining that I needed to create a card for my university module, I got permission from the manager to design a card as long as I would ask for approval before printing anything.

While designing I looked back over the card I had been given from the manager and I thought that it would be a good idea to include the list of photography the studio offers, I tried different positioning of the list and found that after clearing up the card a little the one long list looked more professional than the two lists. I also decided to remove the stripe because while I liked this in the first designs it now just appeared distracting and unnecessary.

During the Graduates Exhibition we have the opportunity to advertise ourselves with our business cards and any fliers or postcards that we create, I think I am also going to create an A5 flyer with the same design that the business card is using. I am going to do this so that people can see the photographs more clearly on the a5 but have the option to take the business card as a smaller reminder.

I have ordered:

• -          350gsm Silk flyers, a5, double sided x 100
• -          450gsm Silk (Velvet) Business Cards, Double Sided x 250

I ordered 250 business cards because I knew they would be extremely useful in the future and would not need to be changed or updated until I had handed them all out; but by then I would be in the studio and have professional looking photographs that are even more relevant to what we can do in the studio. Also at the time I ordered they were having a sale that made the price for 250 cards only £1 more expensive than buying 100 cards.

Freddie and Sapphire

I was then asked to take some photographs of two dogs Freddie and Sapphire by a family friend who wanted some photographs. For these photographs I used natural light as I was unsure how they would react to the flash, I spent a few hours photographing the dogs in their house and around the garden, I am also going to print a picture of the dogs to surprise her.

I think working with natural light worked better than working with the two speedlites, but I would like to see the difference between them and working in a full studio environment.

Below is the photograph of Freddie, I caught him as he was yawning. I also took little detail photographs of his nose, eyes, paws and collar; I might put together a small collage type photograph showing all of these details.

This is one of the photographs I took of Sapphire; I also have small detail shots of Sapphire so I may also create a collage of these details.

Pet Photography

After being hired by a studio which also produces Pet Photography I decided to start practicing on working with animals, finding poses and lighting tricks to help me when I got into the studio so that I was not thrown off and unprepared.

I first started practicing more seriously with my own pets, my dog is not currently the best trained and he was not a cooperative subject. I managed to get a few photographs of him and even managed to train him to wear a hat in order to take some of him dressed up.

I have taken many photographs of my dog but taking them in this shoot with the intention of making them look like a studio shoot was much harder than I first thought. I chose a plain wall in my house and used a speedlite on the background and another in front of the dog.  At first I could not get the lighting right but after playing with the flashes I managed to get them to both connect to each other; the only problem with using these speedlites was that I did not know how to change the standby time so every two minutes it was going into standby which meant many of my shots were just black as the flashes had not fired.

These are two of the photographs from the shoot, the first one is of Levii in his hat, this was taken after many shots and a few different hats, I wanted to experiment with different styles so I took the second shot to make it look more artistic and I wanted to be able to isolate Levii from the background as I find backgrounds distracting.