Harriet introduces Christopher Conrad

http://www.conradfoto.com/

For 32 years, Christopher Conrad has created award winning and stock photos.  His stock image company is C-Square.

Christopher:

“I’m not an expert at fine art photography”

“What you’ll definitely see from my presenation is that I am not an expert of Powerpoint presentations!”

“What I do know how to do is create quality images. … I primarily work with ad firms to create quality images that sell”

“You’re not always going to be working with a professional photographer - sometimes you’re going to have to work for yourself (when it’s not practical, like photos for Etsy)”

“I actually recommend against working with gradients unless you’re working with a professional as it’s actually very hard to light correctly”

“The answer to should you shoot on white/black/gradient is simply to select the best background that works with your piece, within any guidelines that might be on the work from outside forces such as publishers”

“So what can you do to make your shots better? Work with good light! Don’t work with room lights or mixed lights. Ideally work in a room that has large picture windows and set up your background and work with that light you have. If you have room lights on, turn them off. ”

“Be careful if you have colored lights in your room - they’ll throw a cast back onto your piece”

“You can use white cards to bounce light back onto your work.  Black cards to help shape the light on your piece”

“If you’re getting direct sunlight, build a soft box out of PVC to make a frame and wrap with ripstop nylon or thin vellum - excellent for reflective surfaces”

“Tripod! One of the simplist things to create continuity on your work.  If you’re working with indirect light, you’re working with longer exposures.  You want to use lower ISOs as they’re going to give you less distortion in your images”

“The smaller the apeture, the deeper the depth of field”

“Use a cable release, because your finger moving the camera is going to create shake”

“If you’re shooting flat, geometric objects and you want to be optically square to it, use a mirror to find the center of the object”

“Sharper images are created by using a larger apeture and then cropping the image if necessary”

“Knock outs - Adding a real drop shadow can help ground your object and give it context”

Know your niche - If you’re not able to take quality photos yourself, seek out a professional - they know the best ways to create quality images of your work.

Doug:

“That’s maple, with a Y” - with regards to how to pronounce his last name

“I’ve been involved in photography for over 30 years and my first love, as you may have guessed, is portraits.  I really love doing them, though they’re not the bulk of what I do these days. It’s more of a side thing that I do for my own rejuvenation”

“It was a niche market” (jewelry photography)

“I like the collaboration with you the artist and the challenge of photographing the work”

“I get to see some really interesting stuff.  Your creativity never ceases to amaze me”

“A few years ago I was fortunate enough to work with book publishers … It’s been wonderful to be part of the process and to see the work during the making of it, the creation.  To me it’s a magical transformation that just helps me understand the work better and helps me come to the work with more appreciation of the effort involved in it”

“Creating descriptive images and matching the text was probably the biggest challenge”

“When we work together as you the artist and me as the photographer the challenge is to transform the 3d object as best we can into a 2d image that best displays the work”

“You face the same old questions of how best to show your work, which is the basis of what we’re here to talk about today”

“We use a visual language to represent your work, so that others will understand your work, y’know ‘Get it’, and of course buy it”

“What is the image to be used for? Online advertising, jury submissions? I know what we want is a set of rules, but there aren’t really, just guidelines”

“It’s critical to position the piece so that the story of the object really comes out”

“You can see in this piece of Candace’s (Beardslee) the texture and color of the work is so important to it”

“Sometimes a bodyform can work, particularly in advertising work.”

“With Vina’s (Rust) work, the shape of the hand is really important to understanding the pieces”

“Now when you explore 3d artwork, it’s hard for one image to really explore and understand the piece”

“Anika Smulovitz’s bee pointer is a good example of when you need to not be afraid to get into the details for the image”

#snag #pdsnews

Brigitte:

“Sometimes things go wrong” (with regards to images)

“The number one problem I see is that the image is blurry. The object in the image is out of focus, it’s underlit and like a pet peeve of mine is when people kind of hold up their work and there’s a finger or an arm in it.  I can’t tell you how distracting that is.  The purpose of the photo is to show your work, not the body”

“We’re here with our panelists to talk about what a good photo involves”

Andy introduces Photographer Doug Yaple

#snag #pdsnews

Andy introduces the Photography in Flux portion of the conference.  As usual, he is hilarious.

Harriete:

“I’m here to make sure that all of you are up to speed, or as much as possible, in digital photography”

“.gif, .jpg, .png, do you know what these mean?”

There’s a hand-out that was handed out at the conference that is available here: http://harriete-estel-berman.info/profguidelines/ProfDevSeminar.html

“We’re talking about digital image file extensions.  Are they alphabet soup to you or do you really understand?”

“We’ll start with RAW images. RAW - the only way to get this setting is on the digital camera. RAW, like a piece of meat”

“PSDs - These are your images, very large, and can contain layers.  These are photoshop files.  You would never send these to someone. They have millions of different colors”

“TIFF - Your TIFF image is your master image.  It’s used for print, like magazines or books. Super GIANT! It’s your master image!”

“JPG - Have unique qualities.  They have millions of colors, fabulous! You can use them for email or internet.  The reason why is that they’re compressed.  However, there is a problem - if you keep saving your JPG, it will shrink and reduce the quality.  This will not be apparent to you on your computer monitor (300dpi and 72dpi are standard)”

“GIF - Gifs are fabulous because they’re also compressed images.  The good thing about gifs is that they can be animated images.  The files are very small and can have a transparent background.  The disadvantage is that GIFs only have 256 colors.  This is generally not visible on the internet, but would be noticible in print.  Do NOT send for print images”

“PNG - PNGs aren’t very popular right now, but they’re becoming more used on the internet. Compressed, but have millions of colors and support transparent backgrounds.”

“RGB - A camera setting and it’s used for the internet and is the color of light”

“CMYK - Your print setting! Cyan Magenta Yellow and Key (black)”

“On other option to learn about this is through http://www.lynda.com - You can buy videos which will walk you through the info”

#pdsnews #snag

Just a reminder, get your questions in now for the later Q&A session with our speakers!  Message us here or @PDS_news on Twitter.

#pdsnews #snag

A quick coffee break photo with emiko oye and Christine Dhein of Green Jewelry news.

#pdsnews #snag

A quick coffee break for the PDS attendees and we’ll be right back in approx 10 mins.

#pdsnews #snag

Andy introduces Deb Stoner

http://www.debstoner.com

Deb Stoner:

“You may know my work as this line of cast jewelry that I sell at Taboo”

“I make it because I dig it!”

“It came from an observation that these old, used files had some much life left in them as something jewelers would really like.  And they do.” (on her line of old file jewelry)

“If you know my work from previous SNAG conferences, you may know me as Deb Stoner that woman that makes eyeglasses.  And that’s because that’s my niche”

“I started making eyeglasses because they were the most interesting project I’d come across.  Mostly because they were so difficult”

“My work was always about investing a material or function”

“We can investigate things like the form of 18k gold and how thin it can go as we forge it”

“”ball and socket” eyeglasses - http://debstoner.com/eyewear.html

“But since I’m a jeweler, I also have to ornament things, such as with a diamond or platinum ring”

“I started teaching what I knew.  And teaching what you know is really a terrific way to find out what your niche is and become the expert at it.  I really advocate becoming the expert in whatever you do”

“Students were amazing resources as they could think of things I wouldn’t”

“I teach a class called ‘Making a Spectacle’”

Has taught with Brian Adam in NZ - http://www.adam.co.nz/workshops/

“It helps to be one of the only people who are in your particular niche.  The one other guy who is really known for this happens to live in the southern hemisphere”

“At a certain point I needed a job, so I thought ‘maybe I could work in the fashion industry’, so I thought ‘who would I like to work with?’.  So I sent a bunch of slides to Donna Karan.”  - They didn’t have a job for her, but they wanted her to send a bunch of prototypes along.  She didn’t know what that meant initially, but she said Yes! Saying yes was a very good thing.  From there she was able to work with them, send prototypes in based on their designs back on time, under budget and establish a great business relationship.

“It was great to have the freedom to make things that might not actually be made, but variations of the design might be made, en masse, by someone else in a way that I couldn’t do myself”

“I was always in the back of my mind doing my own work as well, which I think is really important.” (on exploring the eyeglass frames and materials such as titanium)

“And as Andy mentioned, sometimes your hobbies turn into your career moves as well” - on turning her photography passion into a side business

“And at a certain point, I started paying attention to cats because the dog market was overrun” (pet photography work)

“My idea is always to think about ‘what can I do next’.”

“Who knows what’s next?”

#snag #pdsnews

Harriete introduces emiko oye

http://www.rewarestyle.com/home.html

“Like many of you I am attracted to shiny things”

She was doing a set of earrings in recycled plastic at one point and Harriete had mentioned that she was toiling too much over a $60 pair of earrings and that she should ‘take a trip down to the Lego store’.

“What is the key to my success people always ask: I always say ‘Professional grade photography’ Have amazing images! You can have amazing work and bad images and no one is going to care about it”

“Telling a story, a narrative with the image”

“The writers of the articles would always gravitate to the exhibition work.  I found that very interesting”

“Because Lego was such a part of popular culture, writers would gravitate to it and I would end up in articles that I otherwise wouldn’t”

“Take risks, don’t get stuck, don’t be a one trick pony.  Have some balance!”

“Make people want to buy your smaller work because of your larger, more complicated work in bigger exhibitions”

“I would also recommend experimenting with your medium and playing with it! … It will help you understand your work better”

“Someone will want to buy that $500 bracelet because they can’t afford to buy the $5000 necklace”

“It’s okay to knock yourself off!”

“Take note and be accessible - If you’re not online, you don’t exist.  You have to be online.” 

“It’s about intimacy and the emotional charge that people get when they handle something”

“When people were talking to me at the show and they noticed that my work was made of Lego, they sort of glazed over and started to remember their experiences with Lego and started telling me their stories”

“You may think it’s your story, but you need to be accessible to others and let it be part of THEIR story”

“By ‘be accessible’ I mean ‘be online’. You can have a website which is great, but if that’s too much work have a blog.  Make sure you update your blog though!”

“If you can’t do a blog, use Flickr!”

“You’ve just got to be ready and have the info out there… You have to be up there”

“And of course there’s social media.  I was discovering that my niche market was moms and grandmothers.  I found a lot of the moms were on Facebook.”

“You’ve got to connect with your own field too. You never know who knows who”

“I don’t sell the majority of my work on Etsy by any means, but it’s who finds me on Etsy.  The press is all over Etsy.  Tagging your work is important, so that people who are looking for leads for their articles can easily find you”

“Be ready-set-go! Opportunity is out there and if you are ready you will win the prize.  I am always ready with my line sheets if I need to send them to a buyer”

“Get involved in your community!  I can’t stress that enough.  We all love to sit in our little holes and make stuff, but you really need to get involved with the larger community because that’s who you need to educate about your work and connect with”

“I was able to show my work in the Lego store” (due to connecting with the Lego community)

facebook.com/rewarestyle

facebook.com/AccessorizewithToys

#pdsnews #snag

http://www.hilarypfeifer.com/

Andy:

“There are makers who have found something that already exists in their lives and have leveraged it into their marketing… This is Niche marketing”

Brigitte:

Introducing Hilary Pfeifer.

“The other side of Hilary is decided practical and playful.  She creates figurative sculptures for everyday events. She became interested in this many years ago when she created a nativity set for her mother”

“The idea of personalized wedding cake toppers was born.  It became one of her largest markets”

“Two things are really important to her, good design paired with affordability”

“She will speak to us today about the niche that she found in the wedding cake topper market”

Hilary takes the podium.

Hilary:

“I’m definitely a mixed media maker”

“A lot of my larger scale shows will take 2-3 years to realize”

“This is the work where I get to have an opinion and make a statement”

“My alter-ego: Bunny with a toolbelt”

Two other big influences: A german wooden toy town that you place under your christmas tree, and Alexander Girard.

“I get to use imagination, bring that sort of kawaii culture and be able to bring humor and cuteness into my work whereever possible”

“I started expanding more on what the figures looked like and be able to incorporate elements of the couple in the work” (with regards to the wedding cake topper concept)

“I get lots of custom projects and I LOVE them!”

“My latest design is based on this elephant design and I’ve really enjoyed playing around with the form”

“My project later this year is based around the elephant and will be a picture book based around the alphabet called ‘Elphabet”