Why Choose Custom Photography
www.beckyhigh.com

Custom photography is more of a luxury than your entry level cookie cutter chain experience. Custom photography truly is not for everyone, it requires a level of commitment, investment in time and money, forethought and planning on the part of the subject/client and requires a larger time commitment for the photographer as well.

Clients who enjoy taking a more active role in the creation of their families’ memories have the desire to have portrait art that is truly personalized. These more discerning clients have been known to budget and allot time for a custom photography session. Many clients opt for it to be a once a year special experience, some opt to have custom photography sessions done to record their child's stages in life. Having said this, it is clear that custom photography is not in everyone’s budget, it is something that most families save for to splurge on from time to time to memorialize their children as they really are (not posed and primped in the cookie cutter studio setting).

There is a great deal of time involved in creating high end custom photography sessions for a client. The luxury of great service, better choices and a supberb end product. The result of all this are heirloom quality images. The time invested at the session is only a small portion of time involved in this process.

Custom photography has been likened to purchasing a fine vehicle. To get to point B from A let's face it, even a bus ride would suffice. If you want to luxuriate in a finely appointed vehicle, customizing your own experience by listening to smooth jazz while sitting in a climate controlled setting adjusted purely for your comfort in a body hugging leather interior, perhaps that Lexus you so desire is your cup of tea. Custom photography is much the same cup of tea. It is the Lexus of the photography world. It is where the intangibles make the experience truly wonderful and the images themselves make the investment of money and time truly worthwhile.

Custom photography can be broken down into even more levels. There are on location, studio, mixed studio/on location, specialty location and destination type photographers. The beauty of custom photography is in the choices and in the luxury of thos options. The customized service level you are sure to experience will be amazing. The knowledge that your final images are the result of someone caring about those moments so much that they take extra time ensuring that the artwork you receive is good enough to stand by with their name on it. That level of quality and commitment is all but lost in the age of "mass produced," "mass marketed," corporate "everyone is a number". Custom photography is based on being unique to you. How great an experience would be, to be able to sit back and allow a photographer to do this highly custom work for images that you will most likely cherish for a lifetime?

Keep in mind more than anything that the Lexus will never appreciate in value the way your portraits will. The portrait art you become invested in from your custom photographer will no doubt increase in value and become more priceless as the years pass.

Borrowed with permission from Professional Child Photographer.

My First Meetup

Last night I attended a meetup organized by Gustavo Fernandez and sponsored by SmugMug. Our speaker was Roberto Valenzuela who is an amazing photographer and offered a ton of helpful information. He discussed how to "see" instead of just look at what you're about to photograph, the different element that will make a beautiful image such as geometric shapes, symmetry, reflections, patterns, balance, color elements and simplicity. Many of these were things I studied as an art major in college. Roberto thinks of the photograph as art and composes it rather than just clicking away and hoping for the best. There is so much thought that goes into setting up each shot, finessing the subject so they look their best and shooting them at the best angle using directional light.
I've got lots to think about and to practice.

Shooting in the fog is similar to shooting in the snow. They both require a bit of over-exposure in the camera. Otherwise the images all come out muddy and dark. We spent the day in San Francisco at Crissy Field. The fog gives the City even more character than it already has.

In an effort to improve my photography skills and success as a photographer, I've been reading as much as I can about the subject. There is so much helpful information on the internet, but I'm finding my local library to be a wonderful resource too. I'm learning that being a successful photographer is only partly being an awesome photographer, the other part is running the business.I just started a book called Fast Track Photographer by Dane Sanders. In it he talks about selling yourself as the photographer as opposed to just trying to sell good pictures. My first thought was the name of my business which is "Covington Street". This is the street I grew up on, the place where I have so many rich, wonderful childhood memories. Since memories are what I capture with my camera, that's what I named my business. But most photographers go by their own name, so enough of my anonymous web presence. I'm going by my own name now.

If you're interested in reading this helpful book, you can get the ebook for free by using the code "smuglove". This was a special deal through SmugMug, my image hosting company.
This photo is of the temporary memorial set up across from the Lafayette BART station. They display crosses and the total number of soldiers killed since this war began. The hillside started with white crosses scattered across it, but it's now getting crowded, too crowded.

Might Oak

We are surrounded by the magnificent trees where I live. Beautiful Creation.

I'm working to turn my little office into a studio. This will require some lights and a backdrop. I've only just begun shopping for this and don't really know what to get yet. But there are so many cute babies that need their picture taken, I must get set up.

I've been playing around with Photoshop brushes and actions. There is so much out there, actions and brushes...so exciting and fun. Best of all, they are free. There are actions and brushes for purchase, and I will probably buy some one of these days. I need to find out if the ones I must pay for are worth the money.
Photoshop actions are a preset serious of steps that are recorded. They create different effects, such as turning a color photo to black and white, bumping up the contrast, softening the photo or changing the color to some surreal, awesomeness that makes you look like you're working on the set of 300 (the movie). I've gotten some great tips and tricks and free actions from this blog: http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com/
There are also some really cool actions at totallyradactions.com- I haven't bought any yet, but I signed up to get a few freebies which are great.
As for brushes, they are bitmaped images that you stamp onto your project in Photoshop, using the brushes pallet. There seem to be an endless variety of these available. I just type in "free Photoshop brushes" in my new favorite search engine,

and an endless list of options for free brushes is available to download. Fantastic!
I've been renting many books about Photoshop and photography at our local library and it has proved to be a valuable source of useful information. Who knew! The library! Fantastic! You just don't know what you don't know.

I made this collage for my Grandma who recently passed away. She was a beautiful woman and I loved putting together the old photos of her past.