The day has been spent mainly working on album designs, apart from a brief period spent helping my youngest son David, change the spark plugs on his car.
“When you photograph people in color, you are photographing their clothes. When you photograph them in B&W, you photograph their souls”. –Ted Grant, a famous Canadian photographer as taken from the Sept 2002 Photographer’s Forum magazine.
A fairly relaxed day. Another trip to the bank to pay in cheques.
Wasted more time trying to make some open source client management software work!
Met with Neil and Michelle, gave them the DVD slideshow of their wedding, they love the images.
“Now very often events are set up for photographers … The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn’t been photographed it doesn’t really exist.” – Eliott Erwitt, in an interview
Lunch at the Hollybush once more today! Julie (my Welsh tutor), her mum and aunt were also there. They were serving home-made apple pie and custard, it was delicious.
Upgraded the PHP version on my local Apache server, not very exciting!
Neil and Michelle have arranged to come and see me tomorrow evening to talk about the photographs for their wedding album.
“Pictures hold life’s experiences. And I feel that with every experience you learn something. Therefore, you learn something with every picture you take.” –Anonymous
It’s a warm sunny day today.
I’ve changed the oil, oil filter and air filter on the second BMW, the 525i. They are super easy cars to service, you don’t need to jack the car up to change the oil and the filters are easily accessible, no adjustments needed on the engine as its all handled by the Bosch Motronic engine management system. All car maintenance is now up to date.
“It’s not the camera, but who’s behind the camera.” – Anonymous
Received a print delivery from the lab this morning ready for the next batch of albums as soon as they arrive from Australia.
Called in to see my mum on the way to the bank.
Spoke with a very nice person from the Inland Revenue apologising that they hadn’t replied to a fax I sent them last month!
I’m also currently having a dialogue with Royal Mail over my local Post Office’s reluctance to accept (and guarantee) next day Special Delivery items where the postage has been paid using Royal Mail’s SmartStamp system!
It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. – David Bailey
A beautiful day today, what a nice change after the last couple of days.
I’ve been using the SmartStamp system from the Royal Mail for a while to print my own postage stamps, it works really well and minimises trips to the local Post Office and I don’t run out of stamps. I’m not too sure about the logic of paying Royal Mail a monthly fee for being able to use the system. It seems to me that as I’m printing my own stamps this is a lower cost option for them anyway!
I’m fully up to date with all album production, just waiting for further deliveries of albums and prints from the lab before I have a few more to make up. I’m still working on a couple of album design for composite albums, hoping to have them completed today or tomorrow for approval by the customers.
“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph”. – Matt Hardy
An amazing amount of rain last night “bwrw hen wragedd a fyn” the Welsh for “raining cats and dogs”, literal translation is “raining old ladies and sticks”. A number of areas in west and north Wales have experienced flooding.
It’s a fact of modern life that computers require frequent maintenance and housekeeping. I’ve just downloaded the October critical update patches from Microsoft for Windows XP, these cure a number of recently discovered vulnerabilities in the operating system. My fax sending software has recently started to hang my machine when sending faxes so that has been re-installed and is now working properly again. I’m also archiving off a number of old files to DVD. All critical folders are synchronised automatically between the two main computers using a very nice piece of software SyncBack. All the hard drives on the main computers are also automatically backed up to high capacity external drives. All my photographic images are burned to DVD after downloading the cards from the cameras and the files are also copied a second time after completion of the job, we also keep the CDs that are sent to the lab, you can’t have too many back ups!
I’ve just purchased and downloaded a Photoshop CS2 script that will simplify my processing of proof prints by automating a number of the tasks that are currently carried out manually. This is a snapshot processed through the script of my son David with Tiegan (she really likes David).
Just been to my Welsh class in Church Village, we’re still struggling on numbers but hope a few more people will come along to make the class viable.
“Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.” – David Bailey
It’s a very overcast, damp and dark day in Church Village.
Yesterday I sent off an order to Australia for some more Jorgensen albums, all done over the Internet. The Jorgensen Album Design software is really superb, it not only allows you to design beautiful albums but it also handles all the album order processing and export of images to be printed by the lab.
I’ve just created a CD with files for printing by the lab and popped it in the post.
I’ve been working on a couple of album designs today, both for composite page albums, one a Jorgensen E Album and the other an Image Book Album.
“There are a few photographers, and we are one of them, who still keep and develop the old skills that made good photography what it was in the past; and while we use machines and labor-saving devices for some purely routine procedures, the great bulk of our work depends on individual and creative handiwork. This is the reason good photographs cost more.” Louis Fabian Bachrach
Monday is the day of the week when I catch up with personal tasks. I generally work weekends, often with weddings on Friday and Saturday and processing the images on a Sunday. When I have a wedding free weekend I’m often meeting with couples over the weekend to discuss their future wedding plans. There’s also a lot of evening meetings, so I like to chill out a little on Mondays. I still answer the telephone and reply to emails but other than that it’s mainly a non-working day with little or no Camelot Photography work.
I checked out the basketball sites and the Rhondda Rebels won their home game against the Sheffield Hatters last Saturday – a great start for their first home game of the new season.
One of my hobbies (when I have time – a bit of a pun!) is restoring old pendulum clocks, the current project is restoring a Vienna Regulator made by Gustav Becker around 1890. The case is in very good condition but the movement has suffered from some rather strange recent maintenance. When I received the clock the movement was dripping with oil! The time keeping side of the clock is working well but the striking side requires some further work. I’ve stripped the movement and given it an initial clean but I need to order a few parts and set about stripping it down, giving it a thorough clean and proper oiling, together with a few replacement parts, reassembling and setting it up.
“Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.” Tony Benn, In “Independent,” (London), 21 Oct 1989.
We took my mum out for lunch at the Hollybush today (as it was so good last week, we decided to go there again today!), it’s just around the corner from my mum’s house so is also very convenient. We had the usual struggle with my mum over who pays the bill – we won and paid!
I’m sometimes asked whether film or digital is better for wedding photography. I was a long time film user, using medium format cameras for weddings and 35mm for some commercial work. Over the last few years professional digital cameras have advanced to the point where image quality is as good, if not better than medium format film. As a result digital offers a number of advantages to wedding photography over traditional film, these are:-
The car in the above images is the one used in the film Evita.
There is one slight drawback to digital (it’s called post processing or workflow), to create the highest quality images you have to be fully colour managed and the photographer rather than the lab is responsible for any colour correction and image cropping. This means more time is spent at the computer preparing images and designing albums.
I’m sometimes asked how we produce our final prints, while a number of photographers print on ink jet printers, all our work is produced as conventional photographic prints by professional processors – we have yet to be convinced about the longevity of ink jet prints and want to be confident that the images we provide will last well over a hundred years.
Just met with Stuart and Karen to go through their requirements for their wedding in a few weeks time. Should be a fun day with a mixture of different atire from kilts to uniformed.
“Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” Henri Cartier-Bresson