March 2nd, 2010 by Kris
So from time to time I get these emails from an old friend, Jim, over at the Sandler Sales Institute. Honestly, I’ve never been to one of their events, but as I get further into this imaging business it’s becoming painfully apparent that my best sales guy is me. Anyway, every now he sends a jewel out in his eblast so I’ve reposted this morning’s here.
“What separates truly successful salespeople from those who never quite attain, or perhaps sustain, high levels of success? Is it luck? Being in the right place at the right time? Knowing the right people? Having the right education? Working hard? Keeping your nose to the grindstone? Some of these may play a small role in achieving success from time to time, but they will not sustain success.
Achieving and maintaining success is first the result of knowing what you want to achieve. Success does not creep up on you, tap you on the shoulder, and announce its arrival. You must pursue it, but first, you must know what “it is.”
Decide what you want to accomplish, have, be known for, or create. Once decided, you can build a plan that bridges the gap between where you are and where you want to be. The plan should have identifiable steps. Each step should dictate specific actions which, when completed, lead to the next step and eventually “success.” Developing a plan also enables you to identify, in advance, areas where you may need help or additional resources. Planning helps eliminate future roadblocks.
Decide what you want. Develop a plan. And, you can be on the outcome.”
February 22nd, 2010 by Kris
So, I was going to write this incredible, potentially life changing blog post on how to think about e-commerce. Then I found something online that was much more involved than I was ever going to get, so I’ll keep my post short (a no doubt, a little life changing) and let you sift thru the wealth of information over there. Ready, here we go:
Web a user is surfing the internet research shows that people take between 5 and 7 seconds to decide weather to stay on a website or not. Print catalogues usually are given to a somewhat interested audience. That means that your leading web image, needs to be a ROCK STAR. Not to say that you can slack with your print catalogue, just that you are speaking to two different audiences. Alright, that’s all from me right now.
Here’s a teaser and a link to Philosphie’s e-commerce series, it’s more about design standards and the thought behind selling on the web than photography, but without the correct positioning and web functionality then it really doesn’t matter what the pictures look like, right?
-Kris
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March 27th, 2009 by Kris
Use a 3d Model, you know like Apple does. Fine, I’ll tell. Play the angle. Remeber that angle of reflection equals angle of incident, right? You didn’t pay attention in physics either, did you? Well simply put, we’re bouncing light off a colored surface into the mirrored finish to “fake” the black box. Well, here’s the setup and the last photo is the final result of 2 of the setups. The final shots are right out of the camera, I used lightroom to crop and exports, but that’s it. Check it out and email me if you’ve got any questions! Good luck.
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March 5th, 2009 by Kris
2 Week Drought – Time to talk some shop! I know you’ve been missing me. I do apologize and promise to not let that happen anytime again soon.
Work over at cabedge, has pretty much been kicking me in the rear. It’s been good to be too busy for a while – let’s us relish the time we’ve got to ourselves, right? Anyway, let’s talk about what we’ve been doing.
We have a client that we’ve made some really unbleviable images for down in Columbia, I know many have seen the IDC Hero Images so if you haven’t they are over on my Flickr page and the first image that pops up on my site are from that series. Anyway, I bring this up because we’ve had to “help” with some client provided imagery to finish up the project. They build hanger and blast doors all over the world and most are for the US military – so the contractors on the jobs usually do the photography. Now, I’ve got to “fix” these client provided images. Well, I won’t bore you with too many gritty details but lets walk though “retouching” a decent image that just has some image quality issues.
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February 11th, 2009 by Kris
So let’s talk about this for a second, the answer apparently is YES! and no. So in March of 2007 an eye-tracking study was done and researchers found men and women focused on slightly different body areas . . . or parts. Let’s face it guys glance below the equator first, right? Well . . . in April of 2007 antother study came out saying men look at faces and first and them move south and women do the opposite. This second study brought in two variables:
- Women had a different pattern based on hormone level
- Women looked at couples “in action” longer
Holly Buchanan (the lady I’m bogarting all the above research) has an interesting bit here on the importance of content in an image, especially when marketing to women.
In 2006 at the University of Flordia did a study where they too 100 college aged women and presented images of attractive women to them. The results? The more seductive the woman pictures, the more it left the women bored and uninterested!
The researchers determined that women we looking to “emulate” a more “wholesome” model than an overly sexy model.
Why am I talking about this? Simple, when you go to create an image for a client – even if they don’t know – you have to know who you are appealing to.
Just something to think about before you hit the shutter the next time!
January 26th, 2009 by Kris
So, I just had a associate of mine ask if there was ANYWAY to shoot tethered, you know so your images aren’t written onto your memory card, they right from the camera onto your laptop, so you can see them on screen. The answer is absolutely. Read the rest of this entry »
January 21st, 2009 by Kris
I shot this test shot for a client presentation this morning. As I’ve said before, there are 450 ways to do this, that was just my solution. Take a look at the set up below and you can see how I got it to glow! Your turn – what did you do this morning?
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January 20th, 2009 by Kris
Often times I get the same question that goes something like this:
Hey dude, I saw this picture that’s really cool and I was wondering how they lit it like that? There’s a bright light on one side that’s kinda’ harsh and then a softer smaller light on the other side. I mean how do you do that?
Ok, so for those who know stop reading now and make a long comment that will share with us how you do it! (Thanks in advance.) For everyone else here we go.
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January 13th, 2009 by Kris
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, so this is just one way that I’ve been able to archive this look. As we progress I plan on sharing with you the sucesses from my studio explorations.
So here’s the setup, 1 1600Watt Alien Bee, 1 3021BPRO Manfrotto Tripod that has a 808RC4 Head, a few 15lbs. obnoxious orange sandbags, a decent amount of black foam core, an old door, and a big white wall. See, like this . . . Read the rest of this entry »
