As I get ready to change a few small things with the business, I thought I would take a moment to address watermarking.  A watermark is the copyright logo, statement, symbol, etc that is placed across a photo.  Usually (at the discretion of the photographer) it’s a reduced opacity so it’s not totally stark and bright, but it is noticeable.  It’s supposed to be noticeable.  That is a the point of a watermark.  Mine happens to be what is termed a “ribbon” watermark.  Makes sense – it looks like a ribbon across the photo with my business name and then one of my tag words as seen here:

It is usually right on the middle of the photo (unless it’s a close crop of a face then I adjust as I see fit) and for me, it covers the entire photo width-wise.  I always do this with client photos and I always do it with personal photos.  Yep, on my personal family blog, on ANYTHING that gets put on the internet at all, whether it be flickr, my private photo board etc, whether it be of my kids or a scenery shot or client work, it has a watermark.

The point of the watermark is to show ownership / copyright of the photo.  In a job like I do, it is so so important to copyright your work.  Let’s face it, we live in a world that loves social media.  Facebook, MySpace, blogs.  We are all over it.  We put our lives all over it, our work, our families.  Yet it is one of the easiest mediums to steal from.  Images can be taken, they can be saved, sometimes they can be printed.   They can be snagged from the internet or anywhere they are displayed and used for someone else’s personal gain.  Not only is this insulting to me personally and professionally, as it’s MY shot that someone would be taking, my work, my art, it is also dangerous to clients.  The photographs of their children can be used in ways and places they have no idea.   Not to scare people, but to make them aware, there is an entire HUGE online gaming world based out of Brazil called Orkut that uses pictures of kids as their avatars.  They find these pictures on the internet and use them.  Marketers have been known to snag non-watermarked photos.  There was a great story that came out last year around the holidays that illustrated the importance of this.  There was a family whose photo was snagged off of the internet and then used on a Czech grocery store advertisement!! (You can read all about it HERE)

Watermarking has to do with protecting MY work and protecting YOUR images.  If I put a watermark in the middle of the photo, people – strangers you don’t know, advertisers, etc are less likely to right click and save it.  It is difficult to edit and crop out watermarks that are centrally located.  If I give you web files with your digital packages, the ones with the watermarks are not only prepared for the web so they will display better, but they are watermarked to protect your images from people.  Let’s face it.  We have no idea who sees our stuff.  We can make things private, but there are ways around it.  I don’t know who sees my blog.  I average 2,000+ visits per week.  Even on my Facebook business page, I tell people that hey, I have over 1300 fans. I have no idea who 90% of them are, where they are from or what kind of people they are.  While I like to believe the best of everyone, let’s be realistic. 🙂  And if you have used one of my photos somewhere online, as long as the watermark is there and visible, I really honestly don’t care.

My watermark will be changing soon.  For all publicly displayed images (not client files that they purchase) I am adding the text “do not copy, save or print.”  Do I want to?  No, but again, I am being realistic and times are what they are.  So please, respect my copyright, respect your photographer’s copyright and respect each others copyright.  Leave the watermarks where they are.  They are there for a reason.

It’s time!  Holiday mini sessions are here.  This is the perfect session for you if you want just a short and quick session for some holiday images.  I am offering two options this year – all digital, or all prints.  It is entirely up to you which one you choose!  While the session itself does not differ in terms of time or number of proofs, the packages are different in that each offers a different option, depending on what you are looking for.

The advantage of the prints option is that you have a set of holiday cards ready to go and a print credit to spend on anything else that you would like.

The advantage of the digital option is that you have all of the high-resolution digital negatives to use to make as many prints as you would like on your own (up to size 11×14) as well as some easy ready-made small gifts in a complimentary set of 3×3 accordion albums.

Please note that Mini Sessions are appropriate for families of up to four or five people only.

If you are interested in booking a session, please let me know as soon as possible!  I only plan on taking three or four sessions per day.

I attending a workshop all day yesterday to learn something new – off camera lighting.  There will be much more about this later, but I wanted to get one photo up to show here.  It was so much fun and so different than anything I have done to this point  🙂   Now to just find the funds to buy the equipment and the couples to put in front of the camera!

So I have been missing!  Actually, I’ve just been in Chicago for the past four days doing sessions.  Got home yesterday and pretty much collapsed.  SO tired.  But also getting up at 5 am will do that to you.  I have lots to share…lots.  And then along with four more sessions this week, there is a lot coming up.

I thought I would do a little B&A on here again since it was well received the last time I did it.  I am using one of the pictures from my last session in Chicago up at Northwestern University.  First, I loved this location because of the colors of the pond behind them.  The trees, the water, the sky, it was so gorgeous.  And dad’s red shirt really popped against the green.  I have photos from the opposite side of the bridge but that was sandbar and a greyish Lake Michigan.  This was gorgeous COLOR.  🙂  Part of it is about finding locations where the light is awesome and the colors are rich and using it to your advantage.

On the left is my SOOC (straight out of the camera) image.  You can see it was pretty decent to start with, just needed a little something to draw out the colors and brighten it a bit.   Not to fix it though, that is the key.  Never fix.  Just enhance. This was shot with my 24-70 at ISO 200, 1/320, f/2.8.  On the right is my fully edited version of it.  Really, there is a change but nothing too dramatic.

In my RAW window I upped the exposure by +15 and slide my recovery slider over to 20.  That was it.  Then I opened in photo shop.

In Photoshop, I first edited out the bug between their heads and cloned out the sign.  Then I ran my regular workflow action.  This consists of a levels layer, a basic boost action which has a screen layer and a slight saturation increase.  It also increases the contrast a smidge and burns the edges of the photo.  Each of those layers is then used at about 20-30% opacity, the burn layer at about 60%.  The last step is an unsharp mask at 75/2/4.  After that was flattened, I did a curves layer where I pulled up the middle of the curve very slightly and pulled the bottom left part of the curve down slightly.  Then changed the mode to luminosity (to avoid wonky skin tones that can occur with curves).  Then I used a sponge to bring a little more color into the trees and was done.  From start to finish less than two minutes.