New and Improved!

It’s a new year and Robertson ImageCraft has made some big changes - hopefully for the better. Some of these upgrades have been long overdue while others only recently presented themselves. Are you ready to take notes?

New Toys...umm Tools

In the tech world, it’s called ‘gear lust’, but it pretty much applies to everything.  You know the thought process: if I just had a new X, I could do Y and Z. For photographers, it’s bad. Not only could you upgrade your camera every six months, there are new flashes, new lenses, new backdrops and a hundred other new doo-dads that have the potential to dramatically transform the images we take. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. In truth, our time is probably better spent learning to maximize images with our current equipment.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Every now and then, we take a picture that looks too good – almost fake. Now, don’t get me wrong, we do our fair share of Photoshopping. But we use it to enhance images or recreate something that should have happened. Just consider your favorite 2-year-old and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what I mean. But this is different. Take a look at the pic of this little guy and see if you can see what’s wrong.

Places To Go, People To See

Another confession… I’d like to call it research, but I spend entirely too much time surfing other photographers’ websites. I’m addicted. I look at website design, I watch what others are charging, I even try to find out how busy everyone has been. But most of all, I study their shots. I look the colors, I study and try to reverse-engineer their lighting and editing. Recently, my eye has gone straight to the backgrounds.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve complained about the lack of interesting locations around town to shoot. And every time that happens (most of the time right before a shoot), my dear Hal loads me up in the car and we drive aimlessly around town searching for that needle in the haystack; that one golden place that nobody else knows about. Most of the time we go back home empty-handed, I rant and rave that we’ve already used up all the “good places,” and we settle on a location that I’m no longer thrilled about for our next shoot.

Never enough time...

First, apologies. We haven't posted much on here lately, but I wanted to share our latest goof-up with everyone. We were approached by a close friend to do a few shots of the kids for Mom's Mothers Day present. No problem. Quick and dirty, and we would still have time to get everything else done on that already hectic day, right? ...wrong.
As usual, things got messy around my house. We already had a house full of kids, all coming and going different directions, family came in from out of town, we had a school musical to get ready for that night. And then our shoot.
Did we get some cute stuff? Yeah, I think so. But when all was said and done, I missed the boat when it came down to really focusing my attention on our clients that afternoon. Not only did the shoot suffer, but so did everyone and everything else that afternoon.

Lesson learned. We're being trusted (and paid) to do the best possible job we can for people, without interruption. I'm SO thankful that our clients were people we have a "walk in without knocking and help yourself to our food" relationship with, or they would probably never call us again. From this day on, we simplify our busy life on shoot days. We've hopefully done an OK job at making sure clients know that we're doing our best for them, but we can always do a better job...work in progress!

Thanks to Daniel and the kids and MY family for being so understanding! And to "neverenoughtime" - this one's for you...and Hal and I love you too. Hope your Mothers Day was amazing!

Plastic Monkeys?

There’s a perfectly good reason for the plastic monkeys. Let me explain.

In photographer circles, there is a thing called a “365 Project”. The rules vary, but in general the goal is to find, light, shoot and edit an interesting picture and post it for the world to see. Every day – hence the 365. Many photographers take these projects on to force them to think creatively and just get out there and shoot. Last year, we followed Dustin Diaz as he attempted a 365. Many of his images were eye-openers and caused us to rethink how we light and shoot. His work was good enough to win the Flickr Photographer of the Year award. Not too shabby.

...And That Got Me Thinking...

Just this morning, Stacey and I were talking about how awesome it would be to have a dedicated space – a “real” studio, if you will – to shoot in. Open areas, permanently mounted backdrops, dedicated lighting, the whole thing. We quickly moved the idea to dream status. We're a small operation. It's just the two of us and we work from home or on location all the time.

It's not that we wouldn't like a larger, more dedicated space for photography, but this works. Our living room is fairly large with plenty of room to shoot kids, individuals, couples and small families. It has a tall, vaulted ceiling that makes lighting easier and just enough depth for decent photos. We're usually pretty happy with the results. And, of course, it doesn't cost us anything extra per month to operate – a big plus when you're self-employed. But, it's still nice to dream.