answers
Holy cow everyone - great questions! We picked four from the day, and here you go. Looking forward to the next ones!
Q: I’ve looked online everywhere, and followed the advice of others but still fail to make my snow look white when I shoot on my SLR. Any tips for shooting photos in the snow? All the photos I’ve seen Adam shoot, the snow is as white as it should be. HELP!
A: Its painful to see so many blue winter photos, but it is indeed tricky. There are two ways to correct this, one at the capture stage, and one at the post stage. To capture, make sure you are NOT using an auto white-balance setting (you might see this as an "AWB" in the menu.) Cameras are smart, and getting smarter, but nothing beats being able to tell the camera what you want. Exposure & color algorithms are programmed to look for neutral colors and compensate based on what it interprets the scene and the color cast to be. Bright snow - especially in the middle of the day when the color temp. of the sun is already a rather blueish 5500-6500 deg. K - will almost always turn photos blue and under-exposed, so force the white-balance setting through the menu system or controls to the actual ambient light. Depending on the time of day, a daylight, or shade setting will give you a consistent, controllable color. If your camera allows it, just change the manual white balance setting to ~6000 deg. K. OR do this really manually by shooting a reference card. But if you are lucky, your camera has a little snowman icon as a white balance setting ;)The other option is in post-process, and that is to simply adjust the myriad of color temperature tools in programs like Aperture, Lightroom, and iPhoto might even do this... In Aperture or Lightroom, once you set one image to the proper (or preferred) color, you can easily sync the entire set to look the same. As a rule, as minimal amount of time-consuming-post-processing the better, so the closer you get to capturing the shot in the first place, the better!
Q: I’d love to use you guys for my summer wedding in the Houghton area, but not sure I can afford you. Do you offer variable shooting prices, etc? And can I pay you in money from the UAE? ;)
A: And we'd love to have you as a client of ours! We start with a flat rate and build up or down depending on location / distance, number of photographers, days of shooting, etc. Each client is a little bit different, and we work with everyone personally, to make sure that we can provide what they are looking for and what is within their financial means. We've cut travel rates if our lodging is provided, we give discounts to military, we discount for sheer flattery, etc... While we can't accept dirham as currency, the Brockit wine rack always looks better when it's sagging from the weight of bottles from central Italy and northern California, hint hint...
Q: Is it difficult finding work here in the Keweenaw?A: Yes and no. There is a cyclic nature to photography during the year, so over the years we've balanced ourselves between commercial / adventure, wedding and portrait work. (actually, that should read "wedding / adventure") Having a large studio also allows us to shoot at any time, and in any weather. Our workflow is thin in comparison to larger cities, but we are happy, busy, quite traveled, and have a nimble team with some pretty stellar clients. We take none of it for granted and spend a lot of our time helping non-profits, fundraising efforts, and supporting fine arts.
Q: What makes you think everyone wants to look like a rock star? What if I want to look like me? Can you handle that? (Sorry, that’s three questions.)
A: We know that deep down, everyone wants to look like a rock star. When people look at a photo of themselves, even on the back of the camera, and they exclaim, 'woah! that's me?!' we know we've succeeded. Its our job to flatter by bringing out your natural beauty. If you want to look like yourself, you are probably already familiar with the sound of your blingy jewelry clanking against the side of a cocktail glass at noon in a chromed-out Prevost coach... We can handle that.
