Stagg Bowl Again!

Once again this year, Virginia Media Services will be providing photography of the game for the Old Dominion Athletic Council.  We had to miss it last year due to the gigantic freak snowstorm that blocked I-81 for most of two days, just as the Virginia Tech students were trying to get home for the holidays.  Here's a link to a photo from the game held in 2008.  The same two teams, Mount Union and UW-Whitewater, seem to end up in the championship every year, and 2010 is no exception.  Here's another action shot from the game.  Here's a small fan, and here's another sort of participant.

Weather will be cold but otherwise not too bad.  Come to the game!

Texture application

Here is an example of taking a poor photo and dressing it up with some judicious cropping and application of texture.  The image on the right was taken at dusk using a point-and-shoot camera.  The colors are muted and there is a lot of noise in the photo due to the low light conditions.  I cropped to move the boat out of the exact center of the frame, and to use the cluster of flowers on the left as a balance.  There was not much tonal variety in the original shot, and the application of texture, while warming the image, did not improve the tonality.  I really liked the dark moodiness of the edited photo, but the boat was pretty much lost in the background so I applied a mask to increase the level and bring it up a little, and also added a slight warming tone over just the boat.  It helped separate the boat from the background without totally spoiling the mood. You can see a larger version of the final processed image here. The other version is a watercolor conversion of the same image, just to see how it would be different.  I like it, but it loses some of the dark spookiness.

Photo to art conversion

Final 'artistic' version

Original Point-and-Shoot photo

While I would normally use a more sophisticated technique to convert photos to photoshop painting, I set this one up for a friend who did not own the full Photoshop program to demonstrate what is possible using PS Elements and some textures.  The process starts with the key step of simplifying the photo to remove tiny details.  A low-res point-and-shoot image is often ideal.  Use a blurring technique to remove the details if possible, but at the very least resize the image to a low resolution - around 72 dpi is fine.  Next apply a combination of filter effects which should at least include a watercolor effect.  Then obtain a 'watercolor texture' and apply it to the image to render the paint stroke effects.  Finally, apply a texture overlay of watercolor paper, etc., to give it an authentic presentation.  I always wanted to paint, but never had any talent in that direction.  Digital image processing programs such as PS Elements can almost make you look like a painter.  See more on the flickr page  http://www.flickr.com/photos/vamedia/

PR shots demonstrate crop and texture

Original Shot unedited

Final Shot

Here is a sample of a PR image taken for Brian Muller, local bluegrass and jazz musician.  Two processes were performed on the original shot.  First, the image was cropped to convert the original digital frame to an 8" x 10" format for use in promotions and to tighten the focus on the musician.  The shots in the studio are generally left a little wide so that I can crop to suit during post-production.  Second, I added a little texture overlay to the image which warmed it slightly and created a little more flatness while simultaneously smoothing and vignetting the backdrop.  There is a slight loss of contrast in the result, but for printing purposes, that is often desirable.

Social Media: A tool, not THE tool

It's been truly amazing to see how social media marketing has risen in prominence over the past few years. First, MySpace started a trend and then FaceBook opened up to public users instead of being restricted to .edu email addresses. That's when the floodgates opened.

Savvy marketing folks, and especially those self-proclaimed SM gurus who got ahead of the curve, began to explore the rules and push the envelope of the new channel. Once it was enough to have a good website, but now the website is probably the third thing the potential customer will see with your name on it, the first being your tweets and the second being your FaceBook page.

I don't think this situation is inherently good or bad -it's just a result of the continuing development of the now almost universal (except in China) online experience. But I already see abuses, if we can call them that, by the so-called gurus who lure internet advertising novices into their chatty lair with horror stories of how company x went out of business because they didn't tweet.

For example, I have personally seen one of these self-ordained SM priests visit the following atrocity on their clients. They think it's all about traffic, so naturally they have learned some tricks to increasing it. They set up multiple websites with blogs, and then set up multiple Twitter accounts. Finally, they set up a network of other SM 'experts' and they begin to engage in a giant twitter party.

First, the 'guru' will write a blog about something useless, full of irrelevant links to unrelated sites, some of which belong to the guru. Then the guru will tweet about the blog using twitter account 1. Then the same guru will retweet using twitter account 2. Then guru will get back on account 1 and thank account 2 for the retweet, after which account 2 replies, don't mention it, etc. This can go on for ten cycles or more, and eventually branches out to other 'gurus' who have clandestine agreements with guru1 for mutual assured retweeting.

I gotta tell you, when I see this sort of thing going on, I know one thing for sure: the object of the original blog post, presumably a customer paying for the SM exposure using guru1, has nothing to say, and nothing to sell me. If this is the best they can do with advertising, then I will never purchase their products.

I know this seems a bit harsh, but it's still about return-on-investment, and many companies' marketing directors are now emerging from their traditional PR caves and asking what all the money they are paying to the SM zen masters is getting them.

Two links if you want to do it right. First, read this blog post from a guy in the business, who gets it. Then, check out the website of this online marketing company, RYP Marketing.

The 'RYP' in the name stands for "Raise Your Profits". That's what I'm talkin' about!

Watercolor photo conversion

Here is another watercolor painting conversion of a bridal shot. Original photo is by Kurt Grosshans. While it is a nice photo, the art conversion really needs a tighter crop. After some significant thought, I chose a crop that may seem a little odd at first glance. The original photo is interesting, but not easy to convert into the watercolor effect because of the scale, and I was not really sure what the pose was trying to convey. However, the tight crop seems to have a bit more movement in it, and it shows the effect of the brush strokes better than the longer view would have. I intentionally cut off part of the model and left a little extra black background on the left side. This allows the potential for either a tighter crop toward the face, or space for text down the left side of the frame.

Photo exhibition

Woo-hoo! Artist reception this Saturday, March 6, from 1-3 pm in the Coffee Depot in Christiansburg. Come see photos from Kirk Carter, Bob Abraham and Michael Miller; meet and talk with the artists. More details to be found here.

CD Launch Party features Va Media photos

The local old-time string band Old Sledge will have a launch party for their new CD today from 5 to 8 pm at the Palisades restaurant in Eggleston. Here is a link to the MySpace page for the band, and here is a link to the webpage for the Palisades. The album cover features an interior shot of the band on location in an abandoned building in Eggleston.

VCOM Missions Poster

This photo was actually taken by one of the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) staff who traveled to Honduras to help out in the clinics. The pose was good, and the image was in focus and not too noisy, but it was pretty dark so I had to add a few lightening layers before final sharpening. I overlaid a couple of textures to focus attention and add some richness to the image before adding the text.

Photo exhibition

VaMedia photos are now on display at the Coffee Depot in downtown Christiansburg, along with works of other local photographers. Be sure to check them out.

Vamedia photos being used by band

Shots from a photoshoot we recently did for a local band have begun to appear in their advertising materials. Here is a link to their MySpace page, on which you can find some of the shots. Click on the 'pics' link to see more of their selections. A few have been posted to the flickr page here.