Q and A, Verte Style

I reached out to some bloggers, crafters, shop owners, clients, friends... you know my Peeps and asked... "What don't you know?" then I clarified... about weddings, photography and such! Then I took the most popular, or uncommon and stuffed them into this post! Ok, some are paraphrased, or changed to protect the innocent.  But still... Enjoy!


Why are all my images blue?
If ALL the images are blue, outside, inside, with and without a flash then your sensor may not be working correctly. More likely you mean "why are my indoor" photos blue. Reason, you have lights where the color temperature is in that 4000-7500 K range... sometimes you find that in the "daylight" or "soft" balanced bulbs. Solution: Shoot with a flash, or find the WB mode and adjust it to balance your whites back to white! (by the way... this also answers the questions "why are my images red, yellow, orange, or green" it all has to do with the light your shooting in. More Help

Why do photographers charge so much?
1. Time.
2. Education
3. Equipment
4. Everything else.

Let's face it, we talked enough about why those big professional SLR's look better, but a "good" portrait lens can run easily 500-900$ and that's not even the "Better" or "Best". A professional photographer can have thousands of dollars in basic camera gear, not to mention bags, backgrounds, lights, props, rental space, advertising, oh and the computer and processing... not to mention having to stay on the frontier of an ever changing digital field now. Where do you expect that money to come from?

Since you don't do weddings... who would you recommended?
Let's just clarify.... I don't advertise for weddings... I don't want to tote around an assistant and deal with the choas anymore, I have done my time! However, if your throwing a party in Houston or Denver, I would totally talk to you about it! Small backyard or informal occasions are totally where my heart is right now.

However, if you want to go all out and really do it up in style. Nationally, hands down book Theresa J Photography. She and her husband Tim shoot as a team, they travel to you.. and they are the sweetest, goofiest most amazing people ever... oh yea.... and crazy talented! If I needed a photographer for myself - that's who I would call.

My daughter wants to be a photographer, where should she start?
In business school.
It is the best advice I can give anyone wanted to run their own business. You can pick up a minor in arts or photography, but the money you put in on a solid business education will hands down do you better then anything else! Most of running your own photography business is marketing, advertising and accounting!

I need help with my shop photography, what would you recommend?

1. Turn off your "camera shake" mode (that little hand with the shake marks) despite what the salesman told you it DOES not make your photos more clear. It has NOTHING to do with focus.
2. Add more light- I don't care - you need more I promise.
3. White balance is your friend. Use it.
4. INVEST in your products and just let me do them. (ok shameless plug) But, seriously up your prices $2 to cover the extra photography cost and stop spending time doing something you don't enjoy, are not good at, or are just plain frustrated with! Your clients, and new clients will buy more because they can see the quality of the product.
5. Stay tuned... I will be having many more posts on this subject coming up soon!


What do the numbers on my lens mean?
When you purchase a lens you will see numbers or the type of lens listed something like this:

AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR

16-35mm is the Focal Length (the smaller number the wider view you will get. 50mm is considered "prime" or what your eye would see kinda like if you held your arms in a v in front of you. Everything over 50mm is telephoto. The Larger that number 100, 200, 300... the closer your lens can bring subjects to you or "zoom in" on them, if you will. 

Image from Digital Camera World

   

f/4G: This lens has max aperture of 4/f. That means that the aperture will not open more then that with this lens... so no matter what you do you wont be able to shoot at 2.8f with this lens.

Some show this as f3.5-5.6 which means the max aperture will vary depending on what focal length the lens is at... at its max telephoto it will only go down to 5.6 where at its widest focal legth (smallest number no zoom) it is capable of 3.5

You also might notice a number on your lens cap like 72mm or 68mm... that is the size needed for filters, or additional lens caps... good to know in case you lose yours! 

Clears that right up. 

Right?

 ok... that was a pretty tech answer... so here it is if you didn't understand the above

The first set 16-35mm control how much you can see zooming in and out. I suggest everyone start with a lens like 18-200 its a starter lens and all encompassing with wide angle, and good telephoto. 

The second set tells you how much control you will have over your depth of field. The smaller the number (or the first number if there is two) the more control you will have.

Easier huh! Now for my favorite question...

How many times can you get married and still justify paying for "amazing portraits"?

HA! As many times as you need to "get it right"! While in a perfect world this would mean getting married over and over to the same wonderful person (without the divorce)...  but well...
I do totally think you have to spend the money each time... because if you have to ask...well maybe the this time will be the one that sticks!

Now, there are a lot of other things we could dive into... on any of these topics! I will certainly cover more with lenses and aperture, along with product photography in the not to distant future.

I thought I would knock out some random ones on a Q and A format and see if you all liked it! So now it's your turn... let me know if I should make this a monthly / weekly post! Would you like to see it again? What questions would you ask!?

   

 

Too smart.

Growing up I remember the Christmas that I realized Santa used the same wrapping paper as Mom and Dad... and had the same handwriting. It must have been around the second or third grade. The next year I was stealthy in my shopping picking up secret presents for everyone including myself, nothing big but little things and I wrapped them with paper I bought. We lived in a house in Alaska that we built, complete with wooden steps... I remember going up and down those steps and learning where to step so they wouldn't make noise... and I planned how to stay awake long after everyone else was asleep so that I could deliver my own Santa gifts to the family.

This act probably says a lot about my personality that I don't really want to analyse.



However, in trying to preserve the holiday for my child, I continue to purchase paper and hide it each year, donating the unused portion back to schools or other places. While Santa in our house typically doesn't wrap many gifts, he un-boxes things like barbies and sets them up, installing all the batteries when needed, and recycles the packaging ahead of time. This year the request was made for Santa to WRAP everything... *sigh* apparently Santa wasn't busy enough this year!

So this was the year in the rush I forgot to stick everything back in the closet one day, and my child saw it. The paper that is. I didn't say anything and just bundled up all the wrapping supplies and put them away. Hoping she wasn't paying attention. Only to have her ask that dreaded question Christmas morning... Mom... why did Santa use OUR paper?

Crap.

There are time when I wish my child wasn't so observant and smart.

I tried to explain that I knew Santa was extra busy and since he doesn't normally wrap all the gifts I had purchased extra paper for him to use... just in case. Turns out he used it! She looked at me with that "I know your lying to me... but I'm going to let you think I believe you look" and we left it at that. I am so sad that shes that much closer to figuring out the secret of holiday magic.

On the flip side, everything she sees and hears melts into her brain. I am extremely lucky to have such a smart child. She has extreme empathy towards animals and is learning some hard facts about life and how other people are not as lucky as we are. She requested that I find a animal rescue for people to donate money to instead of always giving her gifts a few days ago. I couldn't be more proud of my smart cookie!

History Lesson

Photography by its own history is not the most "earth friendly" business to be in. I thought, I would give a history of where it has come from... so you can understand my passion about my role in where it is going.

When I first started in the "biz" I worked at a popular "mom and pop" studio/ lab as a lab tech. This was in the day of film, and hand mixing each batch of chemistry to develop and print each image... that's right... before the days of the digital screen I could look at a negative and make real color corrections adding yellow, taking out density... to make the perfect image... oh my how the world of 1-hour has changed!

The insides of the first mini lab printer I worked on... this one was much cleaner then mine

If we go back farther the history of film is long, and widespread Eastman Kodak was always at the forefront, along with big names such as Agfa, Fuji and Ilford... but here is something you might not have known. What was film made of? Kodak's book of Film Care puts it as "Film is animal, vegetable and mineral" my friend Dr. Joe used to say "Film is made out of the parts of the hoof that was too good, to go into jello" EWWW there is a visual for all you clean eaters! But true enough the medium used to bind the emulsion to the film is made of gelatin, a natural polymer made from animal bones and hides. Not to be left out of the race in technology film had its own race and changes to its make up going with more man made substances like cellulose acetate, or polyester. Film was not the only part of progression the chemicals that made film into negatives and paper into prints... now that has always been toxic....  but when the big swap from black and white to color came into play... it began the One hour lab craze. Chemicals then were widely dumped down open drains... it wasn't until OSHA stepped in and some new regulations started being implemented that labs were required to handle them in a certain way. Including having a silver recovery machine, silver being a byproduct of the chemicals used to print with. Hence the term "silver halide prints"

I remember gearing up to chip the silver... what fun! I looked like Robin Williams in One Hour Photo... which was a thriller to most.. but a comedy to me! 

The chemicals used were nasty! They smelled, I had no hair on my arms for years from digging around in them... and my mother-in-law was convinced she would have green grand-babies! There were not a lot of rules still in the 90's when I began working.. the chemicals came in plastic bottles that had to be rinsed and a hole cut in the bottom before being tossed, and old chemicals were still washed down the regular drain (except the silver producing one) but we did turn on water to "dilute it" in a way I'm glad I didn't ask to many questions at the time.. looking back I never would have been able to waste and damage so much. I mean... down the drain... really?

Which is a big part of why I look for changes I can make now that are reasonable, sustainable and practical. My view on green is not super overboard... I don't compost, I don't garden... largely because of my fear of bugs! However, I do recycle, reuse, reclaim, shop local, and support businesses who have an earth friendly attitude.  This change to our household has been amazing! It was really important to me to encompass this in my new business, in part to repent in a way for my crimes of the past.

Now that you know a little bit more about where I have been... stay tuned for the next bit about what makes Verte, well Verte! How we strive to be more green and some of the research we have done, along with products and companies we support!