If you saw me at Dan Johnson’s MPA seminar in Thetford you remember how excited I was about the release of Adobe Lightroom V1.0 on 19 February.

Laslo Gabany, a talented photographer from Russia who attended Yervant’s workshop in Venice with me, got in touch this week-end and mentioned a link to his blog. He posted some views of Venice from the week when we were there.

My own photos, as usual, were still om my hard drive, forgotten. I decided to process them, but also to experiment with Lightroom which is likely to become my primary editing tool this year.

The idea was to use the software from beginning to an end, without doing any more post-processing in Photoshop. Only geeks (and other photographers) can understand what freedom this affords us - an ability to have create black and white images using the channel-mixer method, split toning, tinting, cross-processing, Velvia simulation etc. right from RAW files at the beginning of the post-processing process.

For non-geeks who just love looking at the photos here are the results of my Lightroom (Photoshop-free) experiment:

On the streets of Venice:

Warm black and white:

“Antique-tinted”:

Split-toning:

Black and white (or the flying rats of San Marco):

The hotel where we were staying on our last night:

Venice at night:

Back to our hotel after dinner:

Louisa and Jon’s matted 12″x12″ album design is out for approval.

Spent an afternoon designing Donna and Stephen’s album design. It’s for an A4 Italian leather slip-in book. Just sent it for approval. Here are some pages:

As I am logged in anyway on account of the Year of the Pig (see the post below) I might as well ramble a bit about the recent trends in editorial and advertising photography that are likely to influence wedding and portrait photography this year.

It was summer 2004 and I remember it very well because I had a chance to attend several workshops by world-class social photographers, including Bambi Cantrell and David Williams, which got me hooked on some things. Both Bambi and David advised to study fashion magazines carefully for posing and styling tips, and make a note of the new photography trends. David in particular recommended to read every issue of Vanity Fair you can lay your hands on.

Since that time I have developed a habit to leaf through or buy Vanity Fair every month. And you know what - it’s a breath of fresh year every time! Do you remember the October 2006 issue with Annie Leibovitz’s photos of baby Suri, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? The artistic level of that portfolio is debatable, of course - high art it was not. However, it was a perfect example how to photograph babies and new families in the best possible way - natural, spontaneous, tender, emotional, and deliberately mundane in referencing real life situations. In best, not-in-your-face, taste. Have you noticed - not a high-key background or studio light in sight, no requirement for direct eye contact (even on the magazine cover)? Every shot draws on and develops from real emotions - Suri enjoying her playtime with her mum and dad, the pride of the new parents, their love and affection to their new baby.

Last months issue was called “Portraits of Power” and contained a 20-page portfolio of the Washington crowd. If you are wondering how to  introduce some variety in your PR portraits there was plenty to inspire you. The black and white trend make a a strong comeback in these PR shots. Mario Testino’s  portfolio of Demi Moore and her young husband is almost entirely in black and white. Giorgio Armani and half of other ads are in black in white as well.

I picked up this months copy earlier in the week but had no time to read it properly until this morning. It’s a Hollywood edition with Annie Leibovitz’s film noir-inspired portfolio “Killers Kill, Dead Men Die”. There are some behind the scene videos on the magazines website. If you are interested check them out here >>

I have a hunch that the influence of this issue is going to stay with social photography for a while… And if you don’t particularly like this look now, by the end of the year after you have exposed to it through so many other images and on so many billboards, you’ll be thoroughly reconciled with it. By then, of course, the industry will move on.

Back to Vanity Fair… There’s an article by Annie Leibovitz about the concept of the shoot and how she interpreted it. Gorgeous full bleed spreads, with subdued faded monochrome colours, darker colour pallette and a bronzed antiqued look. Mario Testino’s candid shots. An illustrated article about Herb Ritts and his photographs of previous Oscar winners for Vanity fair. Recently discovered 40s, 50s, 60s celebrity photos by Sammy Davis Jr. Lots of ads in black and white and monochrome (Burberry campaign, Belstaff, Chanel, Carolina Herrera’s 212 etc.)

It’s an amazing visual and intellectual feast. Thank you, David, for instroducing me to it!

Oops, I did it again… missed an internation holiday, that is. I woke up in the morning and was greeted by “Happy New” from John. How does he remember all this? I suspect it’s a Yahoo home page in his web browser (I am Google all way through and there is no pig picture on the Google UK logo today).

Anyway, if there are people among you who were born in the year of the Pig or who celebrate this momentous holiday in some way today - congratulations and Happy New Year!

I am taking advantage of a slower winter wedding pace and furiously designing and assembling albums hoping to clear the backlog by the end of March. 

I went to an international convention in London in January with a view to check out a number of album design software packages. I have extensively used Photojunction from Australia for many years but am increasingly frustrated by its usability flaws. Just before the convention I received an email from Albums Australia about the release of their proprietary design software and portrait module as a commercially-licensed product and an offer to play with it at their stand. Well, I came, I looked, I bought…

Below are some real-life examples of the magazine-style designs that are currently in the lab or in the approval stage.

From Sarah and Peter’s Italian slip-in album:

From Cat and Jon’s 12×8 magazine-style album:

From Kerry and Simon’s 12×8 album that I sent for approval today:

Congratulations to all of you, guys!!!

I nearly forgot it’s 14 February today - and was lovingly reminded by John this morning. Dooh - I thought women are supposed to be more romantic….

John, sorry for this - I’ll make it up to you!

I am trying to encourage you to order your reprints within 90 days after your online gallery is uploaded. After the gallery expires, the files are taken off the system and archived. They are not readily available for me to upload them to the lab. Archival technologies of today are not proven by the test of time. And hard drives are known to fail (as I have found out last year).

Most of you order promptly - thank you very much!

However, once in a while, one or two years after a wedding, I receive emails like this one:

“Dear Galina,

I realise this is a bit of a long shot, but is there any chance I could order some wedding photos from my daughter’s wedding?

It was XXX and YYY and they married in July 2005. It has been a hectic time with lots of things and I just didn’t get around to ordering and now I regret it.”

It’s not a big deal! If you think you or your parents may be in a situation like this you’ve got several solutions.

First, you can buy a complete set of digital negatives and just order your own prints from any digital lab, from Asda to Snapfish.

Secondly, you can pay £25 admin fee and I’ll restore your files on my main hard drive and re-build your gallery. This gallery will be online for another 90 days.

Thirdly, you can add a proof book to your coverage as an add-on. It will contain all images (12 images on 8″x12″ photographic paper) with photo IDs for further reference.

I used to provide proof boxes but some couples came back saying that they misplaced their proof prints, or gave them away to family members without thinking, or cut them out for a DIY scrapbook destroying reference photo IDs in the process. Don’t play with your proofs. Keep them safe. Some images that you don’t care about now will become more precious with time as people move or die. There will be no way to order them in the future!

Anyway, I am quite excited about this proof book. I’ve been searching for something like this for a while and was over the moon when my lab started offering them! This is a completely new product, not in-built into any coverage options at the moment, and available as an add-on. Hopefully it will stop the temptation to cut the images out…

The photos below show how a proof catalogue with a hard cover looks like. Its slim binding can only house 360 images (30 leaves), so if your gallery is larger, a substitute soft cover spiral bound book containing more leaves will be provided instead.

The cover is black and has a square cutout showing an image from the 1st page underneath.

The binding:

The opening:

Close-up of the page:

I am preparing a new pricelist that would factor the cost of these proofbooks. As I said, they are an add-on product at the moment.

I’ve been busy today updating the “Products” section of my Weddings website. This section has been under construction since November. I  whipped out my trusted tripod and photographed most products I sell (but not all - more is to come). Added web-sized photos and descriptions of magazine-style and matted albums, digital negatives, DVD slideshows, gift vouchers, canvas wraps and more. You are welcome to have a peek.