Personality Matters!

Personality Matters!

We hope you enjoyed last month’s Newsletter all about your Wedding Colours – and what they mean.  If you missed this Newsletter, then please click here to read whether your choice of colour reflects the true you!

This month we are showcasing some of our Wedding and Portrait Albums – we like to call them our “Albums with Personality”.

All of our Wedding and Portrait Albums are designed in-house.   After spending time with you, either covering your Wedding or during your portrait photo shoot, we tend to get to know what’s important to you and learn quite a bit about your personality and what makes you tick.

The Albums we design reflect this, not only for the colour scheme you have chosen, but for yourselves – the emotions, the funny moments and the memories.

All of our Wedding and Portrait Albums come designed with you specifically in mind.  We do not use set templates, or set designs.  Instead, every page is designed from scratch, in-house, to tell YOUR  STORY of the day.

You can see below a couple of pages from Debbi and Paul’s Wedding Album.  Their wedding took place at Dudley Registry Office and The Priory and, as you might have guessed, their colour theme was Royal Blue:

Not only can we incorporate your colour into your Album, we also have a choice of Album covers to choose from– hence you end up with your very own “Album with Personality”:

Click here to read more about our Wedding Albums:

Myths about copyright of images

When someone enquires about Wedding Photography, we get asked often “Can we have a copy of the images with the copyright?”

The answer is “yes” – to the digital copy of the images.    But “no” to the copyright. 

Here’s why….

The vast majority of professional photographers will never give the copyright with the images.  Under the Design and Patents Act 1988, the photographer owns the copyright from the moment the image is created.  

But don’t let this worry you too much.  Most photographers (and ColourStone Photography included) will provide you with a licence which allows you to print the images for personal use.

So why does the copyright remain with the photographer?  Well, imagine a marketing company is looking for a particular wedding shot, with particular lighting and background, and a specific “look” about the bride and groom – and your photographer has just taken that very photograph of you at your wedding.  The marketing company may offer a large sum of money for that very image.  Professional photographers earn their living by taking good photographs.  They have learned their art through hours and hours of training and practice.  When you hire a photographer, you pay for their creativity, their understanding of light and form and their ability to capture emotion. 

That marketing company needs to pay the photographer for that perfect image they have been looking for, if they want it.

So what about social media sites?  Your photographer has given you a DVD of images for printing for personal use.  You can upload them to Facebook too right?

Well, actually strictly speaking no – unless the licence you have been given specifies this.   Whilst most photographers do not currently get too stressed about this – although they really should - Facebook’s rules state that by uploading an image to Facebook the user allows Facebook to use that image in any way they wish.  So, your images could end up on sites you really don’t want them to, they can be altered, cropped and distributed freely and you will have no rights when you ask them not to.   Imagine your son or daughter’s image suddenly appearing on a Facebook advertisement without your permission. 

So, what do we do to ensure you can use your images in a safe way and get the prints you want?

With our wedding packages you may receive two sets of your wedding images.  One set, suitable for uploading to social media sites such as Facebook, will include a light watermark with the copyright information shown.  See this Facebook cover image for an example.  

The second set will be suitable for printing and will not include the watermark.  You will be given a licence stating you can use the watermarked images on social media sites and the un-watermarked images for printing, for personal use.

So, when booking your wedding photographer remember …

1.     If you are using a professional photographer, the copyright will almost always remain with the photographer.  If your photographer tells you that you will get the copyright with the images, then ask them for a signed contract at the time of booking.  The only way you will receive the copyright is if your photographer gives you a signed contract assigning the copyright to yourself – and most will not do this as they are possibly signing away their earning potential, and of course they need to know their work is being shown in a professional manner.

2. When choosing a wedding photographer, ask what licence they offer, rather than the copyright.   Check that you can print the images and also use them on social media sites.

Wedding and Portrait Albums and Books - explained!

Hi, this is Tina.

If you choose ColourStone Photography as your wedding photographer, then I will have the great pleasure of helping design your Wedding Album. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to re-create your Wedding Day from the fantastic images Ian has taken, knowing you can treasure this for the rest of your lives.

As you can imagine, we speak to a lot of couples about their wedding photography and are only too aware that people get very confused about the range and types of Wedding Albums available. So I thought I would write a short post giving an overview of some of the Albums and Books we offer, either as part of our Wedding and Portrait packages or as individual products.

If you have visited photographers at Wedding Fayres, you will know only too well the amount of Wedding Albums and Books available, all with a different description, range of colours and covers. You may (or may not) be aware of the difference in quality, not only of the Album pages but also the manufacture of the Album itself.

Basically, there are three types of Wedding Albums or Books, but within these three types there are still many differences between manufacturers. The three main types of Album you will come across are:

• Traditional Albums - where your images are printed onto photographic paper and inserted onto the page with matted overlays.



• Digital Albums - sometimes referred to as Storybook Albums, where the digital image is printed directly onto the page. Our Digital Albums all come with hard thick pages and are manufactured to the highest standards.



• Coffee Table Books - again, sometimes referred to as Storybook Albums. The digital images are printed directly on the page, but the page is made of photographic paper rather than hard thick pages.

Traditional Albums


Our Traditional Albums are the ultimate in luxury, coming with a genuine leather cover and the pages have a choice of four colour options.

The difference you find from our Traditional Albums to many others is simply the quality. They are manufactured to an extremely high standard, images are printed onto high quality photographic paper and then inserted onto the page with matted overlays.

Traditional Album - with overlays

Digital Albums

Our Digital Wedding Albums come with a choice of covers, some of which can be customised for you personally with an image and/or etching.

Our Digital Albums are different to many others as they are all "lay flat", which simply means that all the pages do what they say - they lay totally flat. They also come with high quality thick rigid pages - not all Digital Albums offer rigid pages. This feature gives our Albums durability and a more luxurous feel.

Lay Flat Album - Digitally printed

Imagine a normal book. You open it, the print is sometimes printed quite close to the centre, and you end up bending the spine of the book in order to get your book to lay as flat as possible in order to read the story. Why would you want to do that to your beautiful Wedding Album? So, our Digital Wedding Albums come with "lay flat" pages as standard. This enables us to place digital images across the whole of your double page without losing any of the image in the centre.

The Albums are manufactured to a very high standard and are extremely durable and cannot be found on the High Street.

We also offer a range of other Books and Albums, either for your Wedding Day or to capture other special moments, for example a special Portrait session, Christening or Anniversary.

Parent Albums

Parent Albums are available when ordering our Digital or Traditional Wedding Albums. These are an exact replica of the main Albums, giving the same quality and durability, but are simply smaller.

Portrait Albums

Our Portrait album is designed specifically for the portrait market. These amazing Albums are available in a choice of 3 popular sizes in landscape, upright or square format, with a multitude of cover options and colours.

They are manufactured with the same attention to detail as our Digital Wedding Albums.

Portaiture Album - Digitally printed

Coffee Table Books

Our Coffee Table Books are ideal for both Weddings and Family or Children Portraits.

We offer two types of Coffee Table Books - the Inifnity range which is a "lay flat" book, or the Classic range which opens as a traditional book. Both books contain satin coated paper pages and come with hardback covers, which can be personalised just for you.

Coffee Table Books

All of our Coffee Table Books and Albums are manufactured to the highest standards and cannot be found on the High Street.

I hope you have found this useful and please get in touch about any of our photography services, we would love to talk to you to see if we can work with you.

 

What To Wear To A Photo Shoot - Part 2 - Kids

Welcome to the second part of our "What to Wear" series of posts.

We thought we would concentrate on those little treasures this time around, as we often get asked by moms and dads what to bring to a photo shoot for their children.

First and foremost children of all ages need to feel secure and relaxed.

Ian gets the best photographs with children when they are playing - the last thing you want is a posed photograph with a false smile - those days are long gone!  So, bring along any props or favourite toys - a favourite umbrella, bright wellies, hats etc.- anything really which will help your child relax and we can have some fun with.  If your child wears a particular outfit every day, perhaps a favourite super hero, bring it along.   If it’s special to them then lets capture it.

Bold colours are great for young children, especially primary colours like red, blue, and green.

Another option for young children is all white. This gives a clean and natural look to the images.   

And finally, those babes in arms.  New-borns have gorgeous skin and nothing shows that off better than nakedness (or just a nappy).

 

What To Wear To A Photo Shoot - Part 1 - Maternity Shoots

Whilst Maternity Shoots are becoming more and more popular we quite often get asked what our mom's should wear.

Firstly, please remember this is YOUR photo shoot so these are only loose guidelines. If you always wear orange dresses and pink socks then stick with it! Many people bring a range of clothing with them. The most important thing to remember is to be yourself.

There are lots of clothing options and it's important for you firstly to decide what sort of image you want, as this can differ depending on lighting and backdrop styles: 

For example, if you want a light background, then a white blouse with a few buttons fastened and your bump showing is perfect.

A lot of our moms like to wear their partner’s shirt - it does help if your partner is a little larger than you of course!

Some couples prefer the dark, moody look and a cropped top and trousers in a dark colour works well here.   If your partner is joining you in the shoot, then similar colours will compliment each other.

Remember that your bump will be exposed and it is important that, for a couple of hours before the shoot, you don't wear any tightly fitting clothes across it.   The last thing you want are marks left by waist bands etc.

Finally, and of course most importantly, make sure you are comfortable.   The shoot may take an hour or slightly more, but a good photogapher will allow for plenty of breaks for you to take a rest and won't make you stand for too long!  

Some photographers may, as we do, suggest you bring a change of clothing and have a variety of images taken, for different looks.
 

Fun with baby James

We recently spent a fantastic couple of hours photographing Carla and Yukari's new arrival, James.  The weather was on our side (again!) and so we managed to get a few outdoor shots.

James was just 5 weeks old but was awake the whole time, much to my wife's delight who became extremely broody.  Not sure this baby photography is such a good idea .......

Anyway, he is gorgeous and was an absolute super star on the day, so here's a few more ..

Me and my dad

And just a quick peep to make sure mom's watching

And then it was dad's turn. Yukari is looking for some modelling work if anyone is interested!  I'm sure you will be seeing more of him, so watch this space....

A brilliant day enjoyed by all, and a big thanks to Carla and Yukari.