Fairport HS Senior - Shawn

  This year I am working with three juniors at Fairport High School as ambassadors that will help spread the good word according to Luke Photography.  One of the ambassadors is Shawn who, as a junior, is a starter on three varsity sports in a school that graduates close to 500 students every year.  Let’s suffice it to say she is a good athlete.  Not only that, but she’s taking three AP classes.  It all adds up to one hell of a jock who is whip smart.

Here at Luke Photography, I take pride in the fact that I photograph each person to bring out their personality.  A lot of photographers claim to do that, but placing their subject in natural daylight up against a brick wall and taking their photograph says nothing about a person. At this studio, I actually interview the students before their session, so I can get an insight into what makes them tick.  During Shawn’s interview, it was obvious that sports have been a big part of their life, and they have been for a long time.

Shawn has this amazing red hair, and one of the best portraits from her session shows her in a bluish cardigan in front of a background that has streaks of cool blues, green and purples.  Warm and cool colors are complementary to each other, which means they are opposite each other on the color wheel.  When you place complementary colors (for example, red and green) next to each other in a painting or a photograph, they make each other seem brighter, more vibrant, and more intense.  This is the reason her hair and the background both “pop” in this image.

In addition to playing with the vibrant colors, I took advantage of her athletic nature for some great themed sports portraits in her soccer, basketball and lacrosse uniforms.  In the locker room image, I placed real metal locker doors into a hand-made frame and placed them on the right side of the background.  I placed a red gel over my background light, which is pointed at the left side of the background.  Then Shawn took her place on a makeshift locker room bench and played out a scenario that was meant to draw out a certain look.  An overhead light on Shawn and a little smoke from a smoke machine added a little drama to the image.

In the gymnasium image, Shawn was photographed against a white paper background, and a digital image of the old school gymnasium was added in post-production.  The warm, vibrant colors of her skin and her uniform stood out like a sore thumb against the muted colors of the background, so her color had to be adjusted to match that of the background in order to make it a believable image.  You don’t need to have taken AP courses to have seen that.  But Shawn would have picked it out in an instant.

Open House - Luke Photography Studio

This past weekend was the official grand opening of the new Luke Photography studio.  While arranging for the catered food and shopping for supplies, I had visions of taking 98% of it home and eating cupcakes…delicious, alcohol-infused cupcakes…for weeks.  But we’ll get to that momentarily.  Don’t let me forget.

Over 250 postcard invitations were printed and mailed out to family, friends, existing and potential clients.  I also walked through the village near my studio and hand-delivered many more to other businesses that might benefit from cooperation with my studio.  I even lured people with the promise of out-of-this-world cupcakes made the W.C Fields way (“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker”).  The cupcakes were delivered an hour before the opening, and after tasting one, I didn’t care if anyone came…I could have eaten all of them.  Bailey’s Irish Cream in the icing, Jameson whisky in the ganache in the middle…do I need to say any more?

Customer Waiting Area

The first guest, a former client, was the first to arrive, promptly at 1pm.  It steadily picked up until a steady throng of people were coming and going for the next three hours.  My daughter and her friend were keeping a tally of the guests, and she happily told me at the end of the afternoon that the total number of guests more than doubled what I expected.  And they came bearing gifts of wine, champagne, flowers, house plants, and duct tape.  You have to know my nickname of "MacGyver" to appreciate the duct tape gift.

Main Shooting Bay and Head Shot Booth (behind column)

Many guests commented on the nice color scheme in the studio, from the waiting area to the vintage Hollywood changing room to the Preview Room, where guests get to see their images on a 7-ft. wide screen.  It’s a nice extension of our own home, where my wife and I collaborated on the whole color scheme of our home.  Many visitors to the studio mentioned that it is such a warm and inviting space…somewhere where they would feel comfortable right away.  And they liked the fact that each person that uses the dressing room gets their name on the door.

Daylight Shooting Bay

I think this is important for people that are coming in to have their portraits taken.  It gets them to let their guard down and be themselves, which is important.  I don’t want to take a photo of what people look like…anyone can do that.  I want to take make portraits of who people are, and you can only do that if they are comfortable with who you are, and where they are.  And if they don’t feel comfortable, then I could always duct tape them to the chair. I have a new roll...

Preview Room

Free Generic Photos on Your Website Cost More Than You Think

Sure...using free or low-cost stock generic images on your web site can be quite a cost effective means of adding content to your website,  but like the old adage says, "You get what you pay for".

The New York Times published a recent study by Jakob Nielsen, a web site consultant and author of several books about web design and user interface.  The research showed that most people that browse web sites ignore royalty-free or generic images that were purchased from stock agencies.  Not only that, but the images only added clutter to the page and didn’t necessarily help from a business standpoint.

“So the Man Says to the Duck…”

 

The greatest thing about having babies enrolled in my Lifetime of Memories program is that I get to photograph these children up to four times in the first year of their life.  Patrick Luke of Luke Photography, recently photographed one year old Zachary, who I’d photographed as a six-month old.  Between these two sessions, he had surgery to correct an issue with his eyes which caused double vision.  He was quiet and well-behaved during his six-month session with double vision, but he was downright giddy during his year-old session.  I’m guessing that he finally got a good look at what my face looked like…and he couldn’t stop laughing.