Crew 843 Photoshoot

I was super excited to be invited to this activity. I have made some pretty awesome photographer friends in this town. In particular, Arianne of AMP photo. She is an incredible studio photographer and I totally admire her work. She texted me about this photo shoot and when she mentioned that she would be bringing her studio equipment, I was there! 

We were photographing a group of girls that do Boy Scouts! These girls go repelling, hiking, have camping trips, etc. Once a year they do a photoshoot!

I was like a kid in the candy store when I arrived and helped Arianne set up the lighting and background. The photos turned out EXCELLENT! I'm so excited about them. My goal one day is to have a studio of my own. 

Thanks girls for letting me photograph you, you are incredible!

The importance of art - part two

Last time I posted about the importance of art, I kinda got off topic with what I really wanted to write about.

I'm doing something completely different:

I will no longer be offering digital negatives.

I have learned in the last few months the importance of good quality products and prints. Especially when it comes to displaying my art properly. I hate to say it, but Costco's printing lab just won't cut it for me. My prints are to be cherished, special, art-worthy, wall-worthy, and above all my prints are to be printed correctly. I have software that I use that calibrates my computer monitor SPECIFICALLY for printing through my professional photo lab. It is fine tuned to reflect the correct colors and edits that I create the photo to be.

I know that it is scary and different (especially in St George, Utah). Almost every photographer that I know offers digital negatives. I just don't trust other printing labs to create the high quality image that I strive for. I know that I would cringe if I saw a print that someone made that didn't reflect the image I created because of the not-so-good, consumer level printer.

Please trust me that I am doing this for the good of my client and my artwork.

I am currently setting up a proofing site that will allow you to view your images and make purchases of those images easily and effectively. I want the pricing of the prints to be affordable and worth it to you. I will offer a CD of all the images in low-resolution and watermarked for your use to post on facebook, your blog, and to email to family and friends.

So let's be honest here: you want prints of your images. You will get them printed anyway. You may as well get them perfectly printed with high quality photo paper. Leave all the work to me :)

Aside from prints, I will also be offering some other options. These options include Canvas Gallery Wraps and neat print mounting options! I'm so excited!!!

Thanks for your support!

To demonstrate the difference in consumer printers and paper vs professional printers and paper:

Digital image:

Printed Images:

There will be some differences in the digital image and prints. Printed images are comprised of CMYK coloring, whereas the digital images are comprised of RGB. The digital images are also being lit by a computer screen, so they will seem slightly brighter than a printed photograph. So taking a look at the above photos, the first thing I noticed when I examined the prints was the coloring. If you look at the color of the tree trunks, it looks nice and pleasant in the professional lab print. All of the other labs printed the images with more blacks and contrast. Not something that I'm loving. I noticed that Costco increased the brightness, blacks, and saturation of their images. If you look at the little girl's hair in the image, it is much more bright in the Costco print. Walgreen and Walmart's images look almost identical, but I can tell that Walgreens image has slighlty more contrast and blacks than Walmart. But WOW they really messed up the original edit, didn't they. The grass looks more dead than alive.

Okay, here is another example. I wanted to do a closeup of a face to see the differences in color and wow was I amazed at the differences in all labs!

I'm sure that first off you are wondering about Walgreens and if you will ever get prints there again. Doesn't that look absolutely atrocious?! I promise I did not enhance or change these images when I scanned them in.  I used to think Walgreens was a decent photo lab. Not anymore. Walmart has a lovely pink/redish tint that is applied. Not only can you see the overuse of pink/red saturation in his face, but also in the backdrop behind him. Costco kind of did what Walmart did but instead of pink, it's orange/brown tints.

I'm not a perfect expert at printing and labs and color, but I will tell you that the results speak for themselves.  

Thanks for your support in this new fun change of Teria Photography!

Blue Angels

On Saturday my family and I went and saw the Blue Angels. They were incredible. I was only able to take a few photographs because unfortunately my camera battery was dead. It was a last minute decision to go and I didn't have time to charge my battery. Bummer. At least I got a couple good shots out of it!

Southern Utah Senior Photographer - Las Vegas WPPI Photoshoot

 At WPPI I went to a small photo shoot and took photos of this beautiful girl. It was fun to photograph her on the strip at Las Vegas. We had so many people come up to our group of about ten photographers asking if this girl was famous. See here for Steve Harrington's work (the photographer that organized and taught the photo shoot) and a few of Sadie in Las Vegas.

The importance of art

I just wanted to share a little bit of my thoughts on photography as an art. Photography is an expression of art. All photographers have their own style. Some are struggling to find their own style but they find it in time. I know that my style is getting more refined every day. 

For me, I feel like my style is more "real". I try not to overly edit (which I admit I've done in the past - I look back now at those edits and are embarrassed by them, but I was learning). I try to keep images clean and fresh looking. One of my main reasons for doing this is to preserve these images in their reality. I'm not super trendy and I don't have a huge fashion sense.. my taste for clothing is very simple and clean. I want my photography to reflect that. I want my clients to be able to look back at their photos from me and not feel embarrassed by the "old school", "ghetto", or "2010" look of their photos. My goal is to have these photos last through time. I want these photos to be able to last very long on my client's walls. I don't want to be laughable in the future because of the silly props I used or even editing I used. That is why I go for a clean, fresh, real look in my photos.

Photography is super important to me. It is my passion. I love to capture faces. Real faces. And true personalities. Before I became a photographer I was lucky to have the importance of photographs instilled within me. When I got married I told my parents that I wanted a certain photographer because he reflected the clean, fresh style that I am drawn to, but also because he knew what he was doing and had a track record of successful photographs. He was over $2000 dollars. And well worth it. That is the ONLY thing I specifically asked for in my wedding planning: great photography. I got it (I have awesome parents!). And I love my results and quality I received from those photographs. 

Please don't skimp on your photographs. Don't put them off because it's too expensive. It. is. worth. it. I promise. You won't regret it.