A Really Fun Shoot....

My friend is having a big birthday party. We've planned for months what fun thing we could do for an invitation to her birthday party. She is totally fun is a true party planner. She wanted something retro and snapshot looking. She hired a restaurant to have cooking class for all her friends for her party - with a wine steward to pair wines to each dish.

I started out on a 6 foot ladder in the street trying to get her and her black standard poodle with matching sunglasses looking over the windshield of the convertible. No dice. I needed either a taller ladder or to be a foot taller myself. I did not want to be standing on the hood of the car. I would have dented it ;-( They don't make them the same as when we were kids. Her face has a lot of character and I decided sunglasses would save me a bit of PS on her face - PERFECT.

She had no patience to wait for the sun to go down more, but we had so much fun playing. I had two friends of hers assisting me with a scrim - they gave up - but the expression is perfect for the card. I woud have done the text classier - but - this is hers and that was what she wanted. The inside will be the party details...I will probably make her eyes a bit bluer and maybe burn a bit of the car seats which are blown out.

what a cute idea for a birthday card! Looks like you guys had tons of fun.

Replaced the image...

Thanks for looking....Here is the final edit...

I replaced that image and we have had the cards printed. They came out so amazing...
Photographically, they are not my best work, but, the circle of people that is receiving the invitation loves it...probably will get some referrals because of this.

I loved it and wrote a critique but it's lost, LOL!

I love the picture as it's so Hollywood over the top with women who were so socially important. Now get invited to 4th tier Gala parties throught the few remaining friends who have contacts who have not died and are not in rehab! The pink frame, glasses and matching the scarf make it!

Asher

Last edited by Kathy Rappaport : Today at 07:39 AM. Reason: linking not working

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Bonjour kathy
Still doesn't work! smugmug.com is a 8-(… pain

Hi Nicolas,

I think that Kathy has altered the original image, although I was expecting an image in her recent post. Personally, I much prefer the old fashioned default obvious idea that the link url is shown clearly (used to be underscored blue text.) Now I waste time hovering over words with the bl**dy mouse.

Best wishes,

Ray

Yep

I finally got the hang of linking from Pbase and then changed to Smugmug.

http://chatkat.smugmug.com/gallery/3588053/1/203871899/Medium

That outta work as a link. Sorry.

Ray West said:

Hi Nicolas,

I think that Kathy has altered the original image, although I was expecting an image in her recent post. Personally, I much prefer the old fashioned default obvious idea that the link url is shown clearly (used to be underscored blue text.) Now I waste time hovering over words with the bl**dy mouse.

Best wishes,

Ray

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Bonjour Ray
In OPF:
Normal Links appear yellow
Visited Links appear grey
Roll over links appear dark brown (normal text colour)

But this has nothing to do with embedded picture that oftenly don't show when hosted by smugmug (mudmug ;-)

Kathy Rappaport said:

…That outta work as a link. Sorry.

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Bonsoir Kathy

I've followed your link and saw the picture, but cannot see any difference with the one we can see in your original post…

Can you point us (well me…) to the differences?

Thanks!

Same image

Same image, cropped, sharpened, contrast adjusted, sharpening and border added, text removed and revised into the border (I did not like the "Oh Sh*t at all - her verbage).

For me, who is fairly new in CS3/PS - this is a huge accomplishment. One day, I will go zip, zip, zip and voila! a masterpiece.

That's an advantage of metric, you've got to be REALLY old to be older than the speed limit

Hi Nicolas,

It is the new fangled roll over stuff that gets me. Here is an example.

All the free/low cost 'photo hosting sites' will attempt to stop easy linking to the images shown, for various reasons. If they are not at the moment, they will later on. OPF will be/is littered with broken image links.

Best wishes.

PS another example here.

OK, Ray, now I understand, sorry for my poor English!

What amaze me besides all these low cost servers is that "normal" hosting servers aren't expensive nowadays! You just need to know how to build a gallery, and there are a lot of free tools for doing that on the web!

Hi Nicolas,

Not your poor English - I agree with you re. hosting.

Best wishes,

Ray

Hosting sites

I have three sites that I have actually paid for. Smugmug, Photobucket and Pbase.

Pbase is my favorite. It's learning curve was easy. But I can't just upload and then have my photos for sale without me doing something;

Photobucket is okay - I've used it to share photos with old friends and I am not really using it anymore; It was better than the Kodak Gallery when I started using it.

I have a Smugmug account so that I can just pop photos up there and then I can point people to a website and then have them buy the photos - Smugmug sells and ships according to my price. This weekend I am shooting a girls softball team. Easy for me - no orders to worry about and all I have to do is give them my domain name. Oh - and the other factor is no left click copying and my logo is automatically added as a watermark.

Kathy Rappaport said:

....I have a Smugmug account so that I can just pop photos up there and then I can point people to a website and then have them buy the photos - Smugmug sells and ships according to my price. This weekend I am shooting a girls softball team. Easy for me - no orders to worry about and all I have to do is give them my domain name. Oh - and the other factor is no left click copying and my logo is automatically added as a watermark.

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Hi Kathy,

I too am a smugmugger. I'd like to caution you, there is no way you can protect your images from being downloaded/saved if it is shown on the screen. This left/right click copy protection does not work with all browsers. So be careful pls.

BTW, I never have had any of my sumgmug pictures not showing anywhere at all. Ask Nik, he'll also confirm.

Regards,

Cem

Nicolas Claris said:

...What amaze me besides all these low cost servers is that "normal" hosting servers aren't expensive nowadays! You just need to know how to build a gallery, and there are a lot of free tools for doing that on the web!

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Been there, done that. I have virtual and/or shared web hosting plans for some of my domains. I can use coppermine or gallery2 or any other php script to show my images. However, they are always slower compared to pbase or smugmug. That is why I now pay smugmug extra, it has been worth the investment IMO.

Regards,

Pro Account

Cem - do you have a Smug Mug Pro Account? I have my watermaker on each of the images - I can make it bigger and more obtrusive too...and they would only get low rez.

I will have to find out what I did wrong the 2nd time.

We'll make a sticky of your post!

Cem Usakligil said:

BTW, I never have had any of my sumgmug pictures not showing anywhere at all. Ask Nik, he'll also confirm.

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Bonjour Cem

I understand your arguments in both your latest posts here… These are good news.

I never noticed that your files were hosted on smugmug! so could you drop a thread telling how YOU do post in OPF images hosted by smugmug? That would be a great releif for all those who wants -for any reason- to stick with this hosting service.

We'll make a sticky of your post!

Kathy Rappaport said:

Same image, cropped, sharpened, contrast adjusted, sharpening and border added, text removed and revised into the border (I did not like the "Oh Sh*t at all - her verbage).

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Sorry kathy, but something comes wrong… :



I can't see any difference!

Kathy Rappaport said:

Cem - do you have a Smug Mug Pro Account? I have my watermaker on each of the images - I can make it bigger and more obtrusive too...and they would only get low rez.

I will have to find out what I did wrong the 2nd time.

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Hi Kathy,

Why don't you pm me with a link (and password) to one of your protected images you normally give only to your clients? I'll see what I can actually download (if at all) and let you know.

Cheers,

Cem

Interesting

On my first post, I see the original image. I took that down from Smugmug and replaced it with the final one.

If I scroll through the entire thread it's there. It's off my SM site because I did not want it there but it must be cached in my browser.

Cem, I don't have any hidden images on my site.(except my logo and my avatar)..all are there. You can access either by www.chatkat.smugmug.com or by www.flashfrozenphotography.com

Kathy Rappaport said:

..Cem, I don't have any hidden images on my site.(except my logo and my avatar)..all are there. You can access either by www.chatkat.smugmug.com or by www.flashfrozenphotography.com

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Hi Kathy,

In that case, I've got bad news for you. I was able to download a few full sized (2912x4368 pixel) shots from your wedding in San Diego with no problems at all! No logo's or watermarks or low rez images were shown to me; all was fully accessible. I use Opera as my browser, BTW.

That is why I had assumed to start with that these were your unprotected images and the protected ones were elsewhere.

Regards,

Cem Usakligil said:

Hi Kathy,

In that case, I've got bad news for you. I was able to download a few full sized (2912x4368 pixel) shots from your wedding in San Diego with no problems at all! No logo's or watermarks or low rez images were shown to me; all was fully accessible. I use Opera as my browser, BTW.

That is why I had assumed to start with that these were your unprotected images and the protected ones were elsewhere.

Regards,

Click to expand...

BTW, I now see that you've only "protected" this fun image of your friend, so this explains the reason why I could download the wedding ones easily. Nevertheless, it took me only a few minutes more to download the original of this protected image. And there are many ways to achieve it.

Bottom line: do not upload your originals to any public photo web site unless you can live with a potential theft. Sorry about this :-(.

Regards,

Thanks, Cem.

I did have my first wedding "stolen" already. That was off of pbase.
I did not protect the San Diego Wedding. So I guess that I will have to use the big watermarks that cover the full image.

Thanks for the test. It was very helpful to have that information. I have some images that I really cherish and I have never put them anywhere on the net. I was thinking that I might since I know they are worth selling, but, I guess I will just save them for the gallery/studio when I open it. {sigh}....

Kathy Rappaport said:

...So I guess that I will have to use the big watermarks that cover the full image.

Thanks for the test. It was very helpful to have that information. I have some images that I really cherish and I have never put them anywhere on the net. I was thinking that I might since I know they are worth selling, but, I guess I will just save them for the gallery/studio when I open it. {sigh}....

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Hi Kathy,

As always, there is a break-even point. You can post your valuable images on the net if you follow a couple of rules:
1) Keep the size to somewhere around or below 600 pixels
2) Use a large watermark that covers the image which cannot be easily removed (do not let the web site add this atumatically, do it yourself)
3) Do only post highly compressed jpg images
4) Warn the visitors that your images are copyrighted and also show this copyright on the corner(s) of the image (if your watermark in step 2 isn't your copyright already)

What will then happen is that somebody will still "steal" this image. But this theft will not have any significant impact on you. They can't do anything with it except for looking at it on their monitors. Printing will ony work up to a few inches wide at the most. And it will be watermarked. If they really like the picture, they'll come back and order the original eventually (warning: this model will mainly work for certain kinds of pictures where the emotional value is high such as weddings)

The inspiration behind a picture, OTOH, is a different animal. If you share an idea like the fun picture here, you cannot prevent somebody from emulating it themselves. But don't we all try and get better in our photography by emulating the masters?

Having said this, I want to mention the following example. My 14-yr-old daughter and her school friends attend yearly many school events/parties. Usually, there is a pro taking pictures. The pro then publishes the images in a way similar to what I've described above. Mostly, they are 400-600 pixels wide, but usually they are not watermarked. The students can order prints on the web site. I have seen my daughter many times enjoying the displayed picture with her friends. But they have never ever considered ordering prints. To them, looking at the pics in low resolution is enough, they do not need "prints" nowadays. It seems that the value of having something in print is depreciating very quickly for younger generations. Pictures become "throw-away" or "consumption" objects. One takes them using the built-in camera in one's mobile phone, enjoys them for a while and then erases them or loses/replaces the mobile phone eventually without having the pictures backed up anywhere and then they're gone.

It is the dilemma of all pro photographers out there. How to make a proper living, which business model is profitable, etc. I do envy you for following your heart and taking the step. But I do not envy you wrt the other "mundane" business issues that need resolving and are essential for survival.

Just my $ 0.02 <smile>

Cheers,

Your two cents are worth much more!

Cem,

Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Yes, people don't value images as they did years ago with the advent of a digital camera for everyone they are often "disposable".

My studio business model will be a place for meeting people as a sales office for wedding and event work with a small studio for portraits and commercial work. I have over 100 feet of wall space to work with and I am thinking to showcase some more artsy work. There are NO photography galleries in the area and it will give me a bit of credibility on top of being a way to invite people in to give audience to having portrait, commerical or event photography done.

I will also allow local photographers without studio space to use my studio (not my lights or prop or gear) for their own projects and I will have enough space to even have a class or two. Another photographer and I have talked about doing some Photoshop classes there too and I might teach some basic photo classes for the novice users.