Jame Photography

Today James Field borrowed Morven and myself to practise his photography skills for a couple weddings coming up that he’s the photographer for. Morv and I had already been thinking about getting some professional photos done because the only photos we really have of the two of us together are taken at night in less than desirable conditions, are blurred, don’t seem to be framed correctly, or I just look ridiculous as per usual due to some random awkward stance. It was mutually beneficial for both James, Morv and I, although once we actually saw the photos he took of us there was no way I wasn’t going to reward him for his services.

The layout for the day was he took photos up at Mt Osmond overlooking Adelaide, and a couple locations in the city. All up he took 150 photos, 43 of which he decided were acceptable. From those 43, we picked our favourite 15, and he then spent time adjusting the light, contrast, etc. He even fixed up my double chin! I highly recommend James as your professional photographer for any occasion, but just make sure you pay him well because he deserves it! I’m sure he’ll smack the pants off the sort of prices other professional photographers would charge, and when you see the quality of work he’s done with Morv and I you’ll totally agree.

Click on the thumbnail below to go to a gallery of our favourite 15 photos he took on the day. In case family are reading this and want to print one of these photos, just let us know which one you’d like to print so I can send a much higher resolution file.

Jame Photography

Having seen what can be done with a good digital camera (Canon 20D) that he uses, I’m inspired to sell my little slimline camera and upgrade to a digital SLR. I like the idea of being able to shoot in RAW, where the camera saves all the pixel and sensor data, and then using Adobe Photoshop to do the actual processing of the image rather than the little processor of the camera. If you have a powerful computer, and sophisticated software with much more advanced processing features, you’re only cheating yourself out of image quality if you don’t use it (other than the time it takes to learn the software, and actually perform it). At the end of the day, the way I see it is that I might as well shoot in RAW, use up some hard drive space, and not lock myself into a reduced quality of photo from that occasion for the rest of my life as eventually one day technology will be so much better, that processing of photos will only get better and easier. The only drawback is the fact that it’s more data to have to store.

One thought on “Jame Photography

  1. Hey Tom,

    Good to see your blog moving again!

    Don’t get too enthralled in Photoshop, it can chew up man-years of your time without really trying. I agree with your RAW idea, do it myself, and have Photoshop, but only use it when pressed. These days, there are far more photo-centric apps out there that do the important stuff well with RAW files. I use Adobe Lightroom, and it rocks for doing the raw conversions, and also cataloging all your images. You’re not a mac user, but if you were’ I’d point you at Aperture, which is a Mac app in the same vein. Well, that and Lightroom, because unlike Aperture, Lightroom runs on Mac and Windows…

    The raw files are large, and you do need to manage them sensibly if you want to avoid losing them down the track. I keep a copy automatically on my linux server (samba) and use a freeware app called Image Ingester to suck the files from the memory card, back them up, and put them in Lightroom’s path…

    Seeing as I’m into software recommendations today :) I’ll also recommend you have a peek at Photomatix once you are shooting raw. It can do wonderful stuff with extracting the max dynamic range from your images (either pseudo hdr from a single raw file, or combining several differently-exposed images of the exact same scene (need tripod) to produce a HDR (High Dynamic Range image) Search flickr etc for HDR and you will get the idea.

    anyway, good luck with it,

    Regards,

    Michael

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