The 3P’s of bespoke picture framing

Simply put bespoke framing acts to Present, Protect and Preserve the artwork/subject.

Present

Well-presented imagery is a complete joy, its uniqueness, freshness and identity cannot but help evoke emotion in people.

As Art is not of a standard size, and different media vary in depth, clarity and properties individual tailor made frames are necessary. 

A bespoke  picture framer will enhance the art work by designing and constructing a creative well proportioned frame using techniques most suited to the project. The choice of mounts and mouldings is enormous and one can always be found to suit the customer and project.

Photos of cat good and bad - see separate photo x 2 (click on pics to enlarge)

Protect and Preserve

The longevity for artwork comes from a combination of proper framing and protection from environmental damage whist on display. Damage will devalue artwork and documents.

Artwork, particularly paper, is primarily under threat from the following:

Ultra violet light

Humidity and damp

Extreme heat and cold

Insects and mould

Air bourne pollutants

The quality of materials and techniques used by the framer.

Fine Art Trade Guild (FATG) framers aim to slow the rate of natural decay and damage from these threats by using best practice techniques and best quality materials, and framing to a conservation level where possible.

Whilst ready made, of the shelf, frames are initially cheaper they often do not aesthetically enhance the artwork, and in the long run often cause irreversible damage.

 ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ N Bonaparte, it stands then that  ‘The memories framed are priceless’.

Commissioning Photography - The Brief!

It sounds a little bit over the top to talk about "the brief" where you are only considering commissioning a couple of pictures, but It is a really useful habit and one you should really try to get into. What is a brief? At it's simplest is just the agreement between you and the photographer about what you want to achieve from the photo shoot. Any professional photographer will be well versed in the concept and in fact will welcome it. It's just about discussing with your photographer how you see the final images or video footage looking and a clear understanding of what it's going to be used for. 

If you have never done one before then don't worry - a professional photographer will be quite comfortable with helping you decide what it is and giving guidance as to what you can achieve within your budget. It doesn't have to written down but it doesn't hurt to keep a record.The real advantages of agreeing the brief with your photographer are 

• You both understand what is expected of each other, both in terms of what he or she will do and what you need to do to make it happen.
• You'll both have a clear idea about what the images are going to be used for and how you can get the best marketing value for your money. 
• The photographer will have a clear structure to work to rather trying to best interpret what he/she thinks you might want. For example, your products end up being shot against background colour the photographer thinks is most complimentary to them, but which doesn't at all flow with the colour themes of your website or what you intended to use them for. 
• You agree what you are getting for your money, how it will be delivered and when. 
• You agree the output quality and format the work will be delivered in. This is crucially important when the work is going straight on to a printer etc. 
• Agree overall budgets with costed breakdowns for any ancillary items like models, make up , props hired equipment etc.
• The brief can be worked on in collaboration with others, both in setting it and sharing it so that others, e.g. your web builder and designer already have a good idea what is ultimately going to be available to them.  

But the biggest, most important issue for a brief is the big idea/s! A good creative photographer will be bursting with idea's about how to best represent you, your brand or your message. From that first discussion you'll jointly develop an idea about the "feel" your shots are going to have and the key messages they will convey just in the pictures. You should be given good advice about where and how to use the images to maximum effect as well as how to integrate them into your own ideas about how you want you customers to see and think about you. And if you both come up with too many good ideas, great. Just decide what you are going to do now and build the rest into future campaigns. 

David Broadbent is a professional photographer with over 30 years of editorial experience now represented worldwide by the Alamy picture agency.  As well as fully equipped location work, David also runs Summerhouse Studio, an informal small studio ideal for stills and video of people PR and products, from his home in the Forest of Dean. To see more of David’s work visit www.davidbroadbent.com or his folios on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. Or to actually talk to another human call him on 07771 664973. 

Let your company media library tell the story of your business.

One of the things that social media and digital image capture has done is to make images ever more accessible to a wider and much more discerning audience. It’s a fallacy to believe that digital has killed photography – far from it – more people take more images and are more image literate than ever before.  People, and customers, now expect to see great creative images of you and your business and so a quick headshot in the car park of the breakfast network venue isn’t going to stand up any longer. Or more importantly to you – STAND OUT.  YouTube and Facebook have introduced the concept of grab shots and footage, perhaps of a lesser quality, as long as that content needed to be shot in that way. As all of these channels open up to you as marketing opportunities – start to think about how you tell the whole story of your business in editorial images.

And so your image mix will ultimately consist of top quality professional PR, product and advertising shots and video, funky logos, graphics and vectors complimented by instinctive grabs of events, fun and news or even customer generated content. The only time this eclectic mix looks “wrong” is when you misjudge the balance for a particular media. For example, on the company website, all the imagery should conform to the web development brief, quality and theme you set out with. This is the window into your business for potential customers who don’t yet know very much about you – providing poor quality, ill conceived (creatively)and poor quality images = disaster at the first hurdle! 

But, your Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest sites will be completely different (but draw on the same library so there is no more work involved for you). On Facebook you’ll want much more of a two way conversation ideally created with clever images and a snappy caption rather than paragraphs of text. On image orientated sites like Tumblr and Pinterest you’ll want the images and video to be interesting and good enough for people to share and re-blog – you want to give them away! Never heard of these sites? Take a look as they are starting to fly now as news and editorial begin to adopt them widely, and on YouTube you’ll want your channel to be interesting, quirky and funny to attract views. All of these things have the potential to drive traffic to each other and, critically, to your website and contact page. Many image sharing portals permit post scheduling and automatic cross posting to your other platforms either within the site or via software like Hoot Suite so the workload is minimised. 

You (or your marketing) need ready access to the library to because tweets and posts just look more interesting with an image or video and it needs to be second nature to post an image so start to think in terms of image and snappy caption rather than text and accompanying picture. I manage my own image library as well as image libraries for companies and organisations (either as a service or additional off site back up) and you would be surprised at how much storage is required for full resolution images. An essential tool at this level, which is often neglected in your own image collection (even if you have them all in the same place!) is key wording, ip protection and just being able to find an image among all the rest of your stuff. 

Key wording: digital images can have data and information (called meta data) embedded in them but key wording is meant to be searchable by Google, search engines generally and you. It’s why a Google search for a picture of Elvis retrieves thousands of pictures of the “King” alongside various German Shepherds, goldfish and pianos! No reason at all then then why your website, company name, email and phone number aren’t included? 

IP Protection: if the image depicts something that is your intellectual property, a unique design or logo for instance, this should be included in the key wording and other data. The copyright (but no other rights) for the image always resides with the image creator i.e. the artist or the photographer even if it depicts ip material belonging to you and so you need to ensure that there is a level of protection embedded within the image. 

Searching: All of the above, together with a few other crucial bits of information, will help you find a particular image amongst all your stuff – you just run a search on something you know is in the keywords e.g. “factory, external”. News images all work on the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council - www.iptc.org ) convention, which standardises this information for users and you’ll find all of their requirements already built into the meta data sheets in digital cameras or editing software. It gives news users key information such as captions, any model releases obtained times/dates/ shot and image descriptions – very useful if you want to give your images away to editorial. 

Accessibility is a crucial part of searching and if you buy in marketing services your images need to be shared, available and searchable. If you use, or are moving over to cloud and away from servers Google Drive and Office 365 still allow you to keep a folder of images available to anyone with the relevant permissions. 

David is available to demonstrate and talk about these issues to interested parties and groups.
 
David Broadbent is a professional photographer with over 30 years of editorial experience now represented worldwide by the Alamy picture agency.  As well as fully equipped location work, David also runs Summerhouse Studio, an informal small studio ideal for stills and video of people PR and products, from his home in the Forest of Dean. To see more of David’s work visit www.davidbroadbent.com or his folios on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. Or to actually talk to another human call him on 07771 664973. 

Profile Pics - Are Important!

I’m still amazed by the number of LinkedIn profiles which don’t have any sort of profile image at all.

When you think about it, all of those individual business people have decided that LinkedIn, this rapidly expanding professional social media site (predicted to be a key element of your social media strategy in 2014 – Forbes) is right for them to tell their B2B story, that it’s a great channel for connecting to other businesses in your key target sectors - but somehow a picture of the person you want them to engage with doesn’t rank as a main consideration? In fact, the complete lack of images is a problem with a great many LinkedIn profiles. Think about it this way? No one would image that a Facebook profile with only reams of text and no pictures would be very interesting to read! Obviously there are different considerations for your choice of images to represent your business to anything you would use on a personal site – but it is still true to say that a picture paints a…………..

Profile headshots; all business networks, such as LinkedIn, are designed to help with those crucial first B2B approaches and to allow other people to start to engage with you. It’s a great, and personal, way to connect with many people you could ever hope to meet face to face. It follows therefore that real consideration about how you want to be seen is necessary. This is the bit where you realise that the anonymous default head silhouette, a scan of a 6x4 of yourself at some ones wedding wearing a bow tie (they are on there) or an arms-length “selfie” from your phone or tablet isn’t going to work out too well!

Your profile image needs to be genuine i.e. recent, appropriate and relevant to the target market you want to engage with but it also needs to look natural. I work with artists and performers who don’t suffer the angst and accompanying navel gazing afflicting mere mortals (myself included) when we get in front of the camera. So, unless you “do five minutes when the fridge door opens” build in some time to relax. A good portrait photographer won’t even start work on the final images until she or he can see that you are starting to relax in to it. This is not going to happen if you’re already behind schedule, your phone is vibrating constantly or you’re worrying about your latest quarter figures. Here are some of the basics 

• Think about, or discuss with your photographer, how you want to look – what’s your message/s? A good photographer will create a mental “brief” from this conversation that will help with any other work they do for you.
  

• Do you want studio, indoor (workplace) or outdoor PR shots? If you are commissioning other work at your plant or offices – make sure you specify an in-situ PR shot in the package. Ideally you’ll have a few great PR shots so you can ring the changes on your social media. 
  

• For studio shots, think about the background colour you need to blend with your website theme particularly. It’s not just about stills either – a studio is an ideal location for a video piece to camera. 
  

• Take a change of tops or jackets (headshots) so you can get a couple of different shots in the same session. Props are cool too but need to be used intelligently.
  

• Have a little bit of fun while you’re doing it and let the real you show through. 

David Broadbent is a professional photographer with over 30 years of editorial experience now represented worldwide by the Alamy picture agency.  As well as fully equipped location work, David also runs Summerhouse Studio, an informal small studio ideal for stills and video of people PR and products, from his home in the Forest of Dean. To see more of David’s work visit www.davidbroadbent.com or his folios on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. Or to actually talk to another human call him on 07771 664973.

Why you need a wedding photographer.

So often these days I hear people say “Our friend/ uncle/ butcher/baker or candlestick maker is taking our wedding photos”

This is really not a good idea.

Yes, you may save quite a lot of money, but think about what you will lose. You will not have a quality, lasting memory of your special day.

I’m hearing the “friend” line all the time at wedding fairs. Then I see the couple happily spending hundreds of pounds on other things, some of which you will hardly notice on the day, or will be gone by the end of the day.

I’m not saying don’t buy the best cake you can afford, or the most beautiful flowers. I’m just saying, make sure you have the best photographic record of all those little details that you spent so much time planning.  Book an experienced wedding photographer.