We hope you are having a wonderful holiday! This week, Kevin Ames kicked things off with an interview with Catalina Bloch from MDRN Photobooth to talk about how she’s thought outside the box when it comes to printing at events. Then, Sara Kempner told us how she gets uses Instagram Saves to get inspired and help support other photographers.
Joy Celine Asto introduced us to winter wonderland scenes in Swedish Lapland, while Bryan Esler walked us through how to use the new Speed Edit feature in Capture One 21. Finally, Ken Lee told us how he captured the Christmas Star.
MDRN Photobooth is an event success - MDRN Photobooth Company is a super-successful event photography group based in Ottawa, Canada. Using DNP printers they provide not only memories for events for attendees, but also branding for event sponsors by printing lanyards. Event lanyards The lanyards included the attendee’s photo and their schedule. Catalina Bloch, MDRN’s creative director, explained. “One of the big things is a lot of corporate, trade shows and brand launches are centered on making high-quality prints on the spot.” A person registering for an event would step up to the photo booth and take their picture. Then they enter their name and schedule. The printer produces a branded attendee badge. Catalina said, “And then we would just fold it and put it inside a little plastic folder and then that’s how they get the lanyard.” DNP offers a lot of perforated media choices. Catalina likes the 4-by-6 inch media that has a center perforation allowing it to be split into two 2-by-3 inch prints, the size of business cards. Photo & raffle ticket in one Catalina explains how her company helps with branding during events, “The printed photo becomes part of the language for a brand, whenever we’re doing product events. The photos have a section that would rip off the bottom.” She said, “That bottom portion can be a raffle ticket a discount code, a drink ticket or anything that you want without having to ruin the photo. So that’s how we use perforated media.” Albums DNP prints are really affordable. Catalina suggests that instead of sending a client digital photos an hour or so after a portrait or boudoir shoot why not print an album on the spot? “It costs maybe $50 to print an entire session.” she says, “An album retails for $1,000. There’s a huge opportunity here. People are more inclined to purchase a tangible product that gives them instant gratification and the markup on prints is significant when you are a portrait or boudoir photographer yet the cost is minimal.” Weddings to events “I actually started off being a wedding photographer. I had just finished a couple of years of second shooting and I was ready to kind of go out on my own,” Catalina said. “I quickly realized that you need to charge like $5,000 in order to actually make any money as a wedding photographer.” Catalina was attending WPPI when she discovered a photo booth company in the trade show. She stepped up, took her picture and got a print right away. “I’m like, this is not a photo booth! It’s not a badly cropped strip of photos made with a s**tty webcam that nobody wants,” she said, recalling her first encounter with a DNP printer. “And it just clicked for some reason. So I actually put the $10,000 photo booth on my emergency credit card and I had 30 days to figure out how to tell my parents about money on their card. But it worked out and I paid off my first photo booth in a month so I bought my second one, and I couldn’t keep up with it.” Her choice: Career or business “I had to make the choice: Do I continue with my business, or do I continue with my career.” Catalina remembers. “I didn’t love my career. So I thought I want to do this. It’s been six years and we’re still going strong. So, yeah, that’s how it all happened.”
Dreaming of a winter wonderland in Swedish Lapland - I’m sure that a lot of us are missing traveling to postcard-perfect places during the holidays, especially winter locations that are fitting for the season. However, with travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 still ongoing across the globe, most of us won’t be going to any of these destination anytime soon. Still, we can still dream about the next time we are able with the help of some beautiful photography. Among them are the surreal scenes captured by Switzerland-based Jennifer Esseiva in the Lapland region of Sweden back in January 2019. As someone who has never been to that part of the world but keep hearing about it around this time of the year, I really find Lapland fascinating. A great deal of that is due to some of the most stunning photos I stumble upon out there. This collection by Esseiva in particular checks out all the things that make Sweden’s famous Arctic region famous for being a winter wonderland! A showcase of vibrant winter colors When we speak of winter, we typically just think of everything covered in white, so much so that it’s tempting to render the contrast by shooting in black and white. However, these dreamy snaps prove that nature also gifts us with winter scenes dripping in vibrant colors. We just have to know where and how to capture them. Esseiva shows us that shooting vast, snowcapped landscapes at night can yield spectacular results, especially with clear night skies. She was able to find one of the best spots to give viewers an idea what the Lapland winter looks like, with a bit of magic added. By shooting long exposures on a moonlit night, she was able to capture a beautifully illuminated vistas blanketed in white and set against an otherworldly blue sky with a sprinkling of stars. A surreal light show as a bonus Another noteworthy detail of Esseiva’s captures is the ethereal slivers of green seemingly painted in the night sky by the Northern Lights. I’m especially fascinated at the experience of shooting winter landscapes with this unique natural phenomenon as a bonus. Just the thought of seeing the amazing light show is exciting for me. I think it’s the cherry on top for photographers who want to capture surreal winter landscapes! If you have a winter shoot to include in your next holiday bucket list, I’m sure the Lapland experience will be high up on your list! Remember, the Swedish Lapland is home not only to beautiful winter landscapes, but also polar night and midnight sun — other stunning natural phenomena that are interesting to capture! Liked this set? Don’t forget to visit Jennifer Esseiva’s website and Behance portfolio to see more of her impressive travel and landscape photography. All photos by Jennifer Esseiva. Used with Creative Commons permission.
Capture One’s new Speed Edit helps speed up your workflow - We’ve all been there. Our client is begging us to turn around photos in no time flat, without giving us a chance to breathe after our photoshoot. The good news is, today’s tools have made it easier to edit and deliver photos quicker than ever before. And with Capture One 21, it’s even faster, thanks to a new tool called Speed Edit. Once you’ve used Speed Edit, you’ll wonder why other editing tools haven’t come up with something similar. Using a series of shortcut keys, you can easily adjust things like exposure, contrast, saturation, highlights, saturation … the list goes on. Instead of pointing to each slider and switching between tool tabs, you can just hold down a shortcut key and use your mouse or tablet to adjust the values. Where it comes in handy If you’re thinking this is perfect for event photographers, well, it is. As someone who photographs countless corporate and community events each year (pre-COVID), I understand the pain that photographers go through in having to quickly turn around photos. But it’s also great for any photographer looking to quickly go through photos, or add adjustments to a group of photos. How many times have you caught yourself realizing you forgot to apply a vignette on a few images? Or forgot to bump up the saturation a bit? Speed Edit makes it easy to edit a series of photos in no time flat. How it works Capture One 21 comes with a series of default Speed Edit shortcut keys, which are accessible through Edit > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts. You’ll see most of these filled in by default, but a few of them will be blank. You can fill these in with the keys that make the most sense for your workflow. In the default settings, Capture One does a good job of grouping the sliders together based on the tool they’re located in. For example, you’ll find that the Exposure tools use the Q, W, E and R keys, while the High Dynamic Range tools use A, S, D and F keys. You can print out a list of keyboard shortcuts by clicking the List Shortcuts button at the bottom of the window. Then, simply hold one down and drag your mouse or stylus to the left or right. Left decreases the value, while right increases it. You can also move your mouse or stylus up or down for the same effect (down decreases values, up increases them). The full screen workflow But where Speed Edit truly shines is when you’re viewing your image full screen, without any of the interface showing. Using the same Speed Edit shortcut keys, you can adjust the values of different tools in your image. Capture One makes it easy to see the value as well, putting a translucent display at the very bottom of your image. This shows in regular view too, but in full screen, it’s super handy. Using Speed Edit with multiple photos It doesn’t end there, either. If you have multiple photos selected, you can adjust the exposure of all of the photos at the same time. Note that in this view, it doesn’t make all of the selected photos the same value. Instead, it increases or decreases them by the same amount. So if you have an overexposed photo that you’ve already edited down, but need to make some tweaks to that and some similar images, you can, without screwing up the values you’ve already chosen. Finally, when working with multiple photos, adjustments are made to the background of your images, meaning that layers are ignored. Needless to say, while Speed Edit certainly isn’t a groundbreaking feature, it’s one that will make pros pretty happy. You can adjust your sensitivity settings for Speed Edit, too, in Capture One’s preferences. Thanks to Capture One 21, I’ve already sped up my workflow with Speed Edit, making it easier for me to edit on-the-fly.
The Christmas Star: The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the shortest day of the year - The winter solstice brings many things. Celebrations, holidays, the longest night of the year, rebirth, and much more. On December 21, 2020, it also brought the “The Christmas Star,” what people called the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets were separated by just six arc minutes, equal to about one-fifth the apparent width of the moon. A rare celestial event In our night sky, the two planets haven’t appeared this close and visible to most of the population since March 5, 1226. Sure, they came close in 1623, but just for a short while in northern South America, central Africa and Indonesia. If you missed the conjunction, you can live vicariously through my photos or polish up your camera in 2080. I stood outside with several other groups of people in Vasquez Rocks, CA. Some were in folding chairs, admiring with silence and reverence. About the photos I showed up at Vasquez Rocks after a long drive over the mountains to avoid traffic, driving there with my wife, who wanted to see this historic event. I had my camera set up for only about 20 minutes, perched up about 20 feet above the desert floor. Although I did bring light painting equipment, I decided that I wanted to keep the iconic Vasquez Rocks in shadow to bring more attention to the Jupiter-Saturn pairing. I shot all photos between 5:43 and 5:54 p.m. The above photo was shot at a focal length of 95mm. With this, more than the others, you can see the two distinct planets quite easily. Above, a couple is walking around the rocks where years ago, Captain Kirk made his stand against a lizard creature called the Gorn in “Star Trek.” Let me know if you saw the conjunction in the comments below!
Mobile Mondays: Getting inspired from Instagram Saves - Launched in mid 2017, Instagram Saves allows you to save other people’s posts within your account. Alternatively, people can also save your posts. You may have noticed the little bookmark icon underneath every posted image or video clip. Hitting this icon saves the post to a personal library that you can access at any time. While not as flashy as Stories or Reels, Instagram Saves can be a super useful tool if you’re spending a lot of time on Instagram. Not familiar with Saves? Below are a few attributes and reasons to use this feature. Inspiration As a photographer, I love to save images that catch my eye or inspire me. If an image causes me to stop scrolling and spend some time looking at it, I might decide to save it. Whether it be creative composition or lighting, or something that I might want to try myself, I save it. Going through these images at a later date can be a good way to find inspiration if I’m lacking in that department. You can find your saved posts by hitting the Menu button on the top right of your profile, and then clicking “Saved.” Captions Sometimes I save a post just for the caption or content attached to it. It may be a “how I got the shot” type of caption, or an interesting story that I want to reference again. From technical to humor or information, if there’s some sort of content that I want to be able to go back to, I’ll save it. Engagement metrics Instagram said goodbye to displaying the number of “likes” on each post. But now, as with “likes” and comments, the more Saves you get on a post, the more people it will be exposed to through Instagram’s algorithm. Some people refer to Saves as “super-likes.” If your post gets saved by a lot of people, Instagram sees this as an indicator of a good quality post, therefore bumping up its visibility in the algorithm. Saves can also be a good way for you to see which content of yours people are really connecting with. Collections Going a step further, you can create collections of your saved images. If you start saving a lot of posts, you can begin categorizing them to make finding them easier. You can have collections from different photographers, physical locations, styles of photography … the options are unlimited. Collections are essentially personalized libraries of all of your favorite Instagram content. Whether an avid scroller, or a photographer posting your images, Instagram Saves can be a great asset to use. From creating collections of inspiration or supporting your favorite photographers by saving their posts, try using the Save function next time you’re on Instagram.
