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Personalising Your Christmas Cards

This post might well be a little late in the day for some, but us - well we are always a bit last minute when it comes to Christmas cards.

Having always wanted to make our own cards we decided that this year would be the one.  At first we were going to use an on-line printing server but because we are so last minute this just wasn't going to work.

I was inspoire by a handmade set of nativity models that are a little cartoon like in style and I thought these would make excellent subject for our Christmas cards.  I wanted a nice and simple card and envisioned a few photos of each model on a plain background, and this was the first mini challenge.

I was not about to setup the full studio to take photos of 3 inch models so I created a make-shift micro studio on the kitchen work top using some plain white card. For the lighting I used a couple of speed lights and mouted the camera on the tripod with a 75-300mm lense.  I used the lense at 300mm to give the photos a really close up feeling.

It took a few test shots to get the lighting and exposure just right but once that was done I rattled through 5 key shots very quickely.  This is not a project limited to people with professional cameras and fancing lighting kit.  Anyone can create great images to make brilliant Christmas cards, or birthday cards or cards for any occasion.  A simple point and shoot camera, one or two desk lamps, some white card and of course something to photograph is all you need to make this work.

Post processing was done first in Adobe Lightroom and then Photoshop CS4, nothing much other than colour and white balance adjustments and a bit of heal brush.  We used PhotoBox to get 10 of each photo printed at 5 x 3.75 inches (just about right for a A6 card) and awaited delivery.

The cards were delivered the next day and we then set about the task of creating the cards.  Nothing fancy here at all.  First I used a guilotine to cut our white A4 card in half, then folded each A5 piece to form the A6 sized card.  Then it was just a case of gluing the photo on to the front of each card.

So here are the very simple yet effective Christmas cards. One thing is for usre, whoever received them will know we have taken a little bit of time in making a gesture of good will at this joyous time of year.

Does Expensive Mean Better

This is a slight change in direction to our normal blog posts but we wanted to share with you our thoughts on a subject that can, at times, be rather contentious.

As a photographer we use tools; cameras, lights, backgrounds, triggers and all sorts of other of other equioment.  Some photographers use more than others, some less, but I think it's safe to say that we all need a camera.  This isn't going to turn into a discussion of which camera brand is better and quite frankly that is a subject that bores me greatly.  At the end of the day would anyone say that the Mona Lisa was any less a priceless piece of art should it be discovered that Leonardo da Vinci had used 16th century toilet brush to paint it?

What I want to talk about is the descision between buying expensive gear or cheap gear.  We are photographers on a budget and as such the best, and frankly the expebsive, gear is often out of reach so compromises have to be found.  Take the explample of the full size tripod with quick release plate that I recently bought on eBay for £14.99 (inc. delivery).  My personal love is landscape and nature photography and quite often I've needed a tripod for some of the shots I want but not being able to afford the best I decided to make a compromise.  For the small sum of fifteen quid I have a very capable tripod that is pretty light and very stirdy and will do the job I want it to do - what more can I ask for? Oh yes the fact that it will double as a great stand for the cheap speedlight I also just bought off eBay!

Yes, shock horror, I bought a Yongnuo YN460 speedlight off eBay!!!! Have you calmed down yet? I jest.  The fact is that I could not justify forking out hundreds on a Canon speedlight just yet and for the job I wanted this light for I frankly didn't need a Canon light.  This thing does a great job and at under £40 delivered it was a BARGAIN. When you want to experiment with flash lighting these cheap units are brilliant.  It has a built in slave so it's great for multi-flash setups and creative lighting.  So what's te trade off? Well okay it's a stop less powerful than say a Nikon SB600 - not a problem for me at all.  It's build quality is not as good as the big boys (apparantly) - well mine is build pretty well.

So what's the moral of this little blog tale? The tools you have are the best tools you have.  Use them to their full potential and stop chasing the next new toys. At the end of the day none of this gear (cameras, lights, tripods) actually makes a photo - the photographer does.

Teenage Cancer Trust Charity Evening

It was our honour to be asked to donate a raffle prize to a charity evening in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. In the end we ended up taking photos at the event too and we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.  We shared a table with the band for the evening who were the fabulour Zoe and Garry from 2z Company and there are plenty of photos of them in our collection.

We must say a huge well done to Sarah-Jo Watson and Helen Hardwick who organised the whole thing and raised just over £4000!!

Photos from our childrens centre session

We had the pleasure of taking family portraits at our local Sure Start childrens centre last week.  Out of the 16 families booked we had 15 turn up and it was such great fun.  Taking photos of childrens playing is so enjoyable and we will only attempt posed shots if they really want to.  So here are a selection of the photos...

In a digital age prints do still matter

We did a shoot for a lovely family last weekend and their photo prints arrived this morning.  They are getting quite a selection but it was the 20x16 inch print of their youngest daughter that struck us.  This photos is beautiful on screen but seeing it as a large format print like that made us realise that in an age when everything is going digital and everyone is sharing photos on Facebook and the like that prints still have "that" appeal.  What it is we can't put our finger on but this prints is stunningly beautiful and we can't wait for our clients to collect it tomorrow and see the look on their faces.

Print photographs are not a step backwards, nor are they a step forwards.  They are forever, they are still the best way to see a photograph and we believe that our clients will always wants prints to show of the fabulousness of them.

Our web site is here www.frameitphoto.co.uk

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Great to see winning photographers

This is just a shot post to point all our readers to this news article.  It about the winniers of the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8318226.stm