After a long absence from the blog, I am finally about to start posting again. The absence started with being off ill and in hospital part of April and May. We then were very busy over the summer and had a great season photographing some amazing weddings.

I was on holiday in July and got some great shots in Sardinia and Italy which there will eventually be a blog entry about. July also saw my daughter, Natasha graduate with a first class honours degree in Accounts.

August was another eventful month with Natasha getting married, my friends, Alan and Jill also getting married, a trip on the Orient Express, and lots of interesting commercial assignments.

September saw far has also been a very busy and eventful month starting with Offshore Europe, then Sandra and I getting married in Edinburgh on my birthday on the 6th September, my daughter Brittany’s 18th on the 8th, and lots of great weddings and other assignments. I have spent a lot of time this month on a new on-line ordering system which we are very excited about. We are currently beta testing with 8 Bride’s to get their feedback. There will be a post about this very soon and the most recent wedding on Friday is on-line using the new system.

Our new website is being created at the moment and will feature some fantastic new wedding and portrait products.

On the technology front, we have been upgrading to Apple’s new operating system, and I am using the latest Macbook Air (the best Mac I have ever owned) so there ill also be some posts about this for anyone interested in how we utilise technology.

This is only a brief summary of what has been happening at aberdeenphoto.com since April while the blog has been neglected. Therefore there is no shortage of content for the blog and I just need to make time to try and post at least once a week.

I am very encouraged by how many people read my blog and have been surprised how many emails I have had asking when it was going to be resumed. To be honest, I was using the blog to create posts to use as links in emails to give information relevant when quoting or emailing and did not realise how many people were reading it.

I realise now from the number of emails that I have a lot of people following my blog and viewing our wedding photography from the blog links and therefore I have listed all our weddings here as well as on our website.

Look out over the next few weeks for lots of "catch up blog posts"
 

April 2011 weddings

April 29th – Alana and Don at the Town House and the Marriot (Formal)

April 30th – Debra and Andrew at Pittodrie House (Formal)

April 30th – May and Derek at Norwood Hall :: Formal,  Informal

May 2011 weddings

May 1st – Michelle and Gavin at Craigiebuckler Church :: Formal, Informal

May 7th – Deborah and David at Drum Castle (Formal)

May 14th – Katie and Steven at Gerard St. Baptist :: Formal, Informal

May 28th – Fiona and Brian at The Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

May 28th – Claire and Luke at St. Palladius Church :: Formal, Informal

June 2011 weddings

June 3rd – Anna and John at the Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

June 3rd – Sian and Scott at Palm Court Hotel (Formal)

June 4th – Lucy and Rudy at The Douglas Hotel (Formal)

June 11th – Natalie and Allan at Maryculter House (Formal)

June 11th – Jeanette and Eddie at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

June 11th – Alison and Alex at Craigieburn House :: Formal, Informal

June 11th – Donna and Lee at Northern Hotel :: Formal, Informal

June 24th – Louise and Gary at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

June 25th – Joanne and Stuart at Pittodrie House Hotel :: Formal, Informal, Speeches and dancing

June 25th – Gwen and Steven at The Maryculter Church (Formal)

July 2011 weddings:

July 9th – Sarah and Gavin at the Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

July 11th – Darlene and Drummond at Drum Castle and Norwood Hotel :: Formal, Informal

July 14th – Kathryn and Alex at Norwood Hall (Formal)

July 15th – Emily and Scott at Kings College and Dunecht Estate (Formal)

July 16th – Angela and David at the Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

July 16th – Gillian and Mark at Belhevie Church :: Formal, Informal

July 17th – Elizabeth and Andrew at the Winter Gardens (Formal)

July 22nd – Karen and Ian at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

July 23rd – Emma and Mathew at the Holiday Inn West :: Formal, Informal

August 2011 weddings

August 5th – Nicola and Neil at Winter Gardens :: Formal, Informal

August 6th – Jacquie and Steve at the Old Mill Inn (Formal)

August 6th – Emma and Kevin at Pittodrie House Hotel :: Formal, Informal

August 11th – Natasha and Jason at The Marcliffe (Formal)

August 13th – Jackie and Mike at the Northern Hotel (Formal)

August 13th – Laura and Keith at Cults Parish Church and Marcliffe (Formal)

August 18th – Debbie and Graham at Winter Gardens :: Formal, Speeches and Dancing

August 19th – Jill and Alan at The Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

August 20th – Stacey and Norman at the Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

August 20th – Kim and Gary at the Old Mill Inn (Formal)

August 20th – Joanne and Lau at The Pittodrie House :: Formal, Informal

August 21st – Jill and Alan at Maryculter House Hotel :: Formal, Informal

August 26th – Vanessa and Jeff at Palm Court (Formal)

August 27th – Pauline and Scott at the Hliton Double Tree (Formal)

After the great success of last year’s event at Deeside Golf Club to raise funds for the Maggie’s appeal, the event was staged again at the beautiful setting of Deeside Golf Club. To find out about this very worthy cause, see the blog post from last year by clicking here.

The event kicked off with the clinics at the driving range where Colin’s relaxed style and interesting anecdotes make it a very popular part of the day. Even I picked up a few useful tips. We were very lucky to have a beautiful day, probably one of the best days of sunshine this year.

Colin brought the Ryder Cup with him this year so not only did the teams get photographed with Colin, they also got to handle the famous trophy. For most teams, the individual players also got taken with the trophy. It was not there for the start of the event so unfortunately the first few teams at the 14th tee did not get the Ryder cup in their photographs. The strong sunshine meant I had to use a lot of flash and i was very grateful to have my Quantum lighting with me. I drained 3 high capacity batteries with the amount of flash required (for those interested in photography, the exposure was 250s at f10 – f18 so it was mainly full power flash.

The only disappointing thing for me was that I was feeling very ill and the day after was at the Doctor, and then was in hospital so it was a challenge working all day and then at the dinner at Stewart Milne’s house at night.

All the photographs taken during the day can be viewed here and the shots from the dinner and prize presentation here (separate blog post to follow)

Internet for Business, Managing Director, Graeme Gordon (I photographed Graeme and Susan’s wedding many years ago) contacted me to take photographs of the tower at the AECC to show their branding and logo. I took a range of shots, some of which can be seen below, or the complete set can be see by clicking here. The lighting was reasonable and most of the shots only needed minor adjustment in Photoshop but one or two of the images were created using several exposures so that I could get a beautiful sky but still keep detail in the building.

The last wedding I photographed before being off ill was Karly and Ally’s. I photographed Karly’s Mum and Dad’s wedding over 24 years ago when Karly was three and cried the whole day. This time round Karly looked beautiful and was very easy to photograph. We took the photographs at the park across from the hotel and were fortunate that the weather forecast was so accurate. The forecast was for rain at 4.00pm which was when we had scheduled to complete the photography outside. We had just finished and were back under the canopy (for the confetti photograph) at 4.00pm when the rain started.

The park at Westhill does not have a lot of features but we got some nice shots. May favourite shot of the day was the walking shot above. I set Karly and Ally up on a path with and asked them to walk towards me and had them looking towards me and at each other. The 70-200 lens and a shallow depth of field work well but it is the great expressions that make this my favourite.

As we were booked to stay until the dancing, I also photographed Karly and Ally at dusk as  they had seen dusk shots, I had taken of the hotel for their website which we designed and produced for them (click here to see the website). They had Chinese Lanterns for this which you can see in the shots above.

While waiting to do this shot, I prepared a small selection of shots as a slideshow on my laptop which I showed to the top table and some of the guests. You can view all my images from the wedding here, and the link to David’s set here.

I got very nice emails from Karly and both Mum’s – see below

"Hi Neil
Huge thank you to both you & David for the fantastic photos to both took (formal & informal) and also for putting every one at ease. It will be really hard to choose, there is not one bad one.
Yes!!!! Neil bet you never thought 24 years after you took our wedding photos you would be taking our daughter Karly,s. That says something in its self.
Thanks again. Fiona & Graham King"

"Hi Neil,
I am Allys mum Janis from the Holiday Inn on Sat, the pictures are amazing, is it possible to have an album made up for myself? …..
Many thanks, Janis

"Hi Neil
Just catching up on all my emails now as back from our honeymoon.
The picture all look great, we are really pleased with them. We both had a fantastic day and couldn’t have wished for a better day.
Kind regards, Karly"

I took ill while photographing the Colin Montgomerie golf day at Deeside Golf Club and a post about this great fund raising event and the dinner at Stewart Milne’s amazing home will follow.

I have a lot of blog posts to add and a list is below, and my aim is to have a new blog post every day until I catch up. The blog posts planned are:

23rd April   Karly and Ally’s wedding

28th April   Colin Montgomerie golf day and dinner

29th April   Alana and Don on the same day as William and Kate

30th April   Debra and Andrew at Pittodrie House

30th April   May and Derek at Norwood Hall

1st May     Michelle and Gavin at Craigiebuckler and Norwood Hall

7th May     Deborah and David at Drum Castle and Ardoe House

14th May   Katie and Steven at Gerard Street Baptist Church

28th May  Fiona and Brian at The Old Mill Inn

28th May  Claire and Luke at Drumtochty Castle

I have also several interesting commercial jobs to post about

Active renewables

Lochter, Oldmeldrum (including video)

Nu-Style

Triple Kirks marketing

and several other interesting jobs.

Can I first thank all the people who have been kind enough to send me cards and wish me well while I was off. I would also like to apologise for any delays in responding to emails while I was off.

Last week, I was photographing food from the new menu at the highly regarded Milton Restaurant.  These shots will be used in their new website. The food looked great, and having dined there several times, I am sure it will taste as good as it looked.

I took some exterior and interior shots of this charming restaurant. You can see all the proofs by clicking here

I was commissioned by Jay Emmerson, the restaurant manager, who I had worked with at the Albyn last year when I photographed their food.

I also took a few shots of the view across the River Dee for apart from the beautiful food, part of the attraction and charm of The Milton, is the beautiful setting.

To view all the images, click here.

On Saturday (16th April) I photographed the wedding of Liane McRae, who I first photographed over 30 years ago (not giving away Liane’s age) in her ballet outfit in the studio with her sister, Gemma. Her Dad, Alan McRae, is a good friend and client (Alken Construction) and I was delighted when Liane asked me to photograph her wedding. David and I took over 2000 photographs and the first gallery is now on-line, and the rest will follow later today. Click here to see the first gallery. There is a short slideshow below with a small selection of images before any editing.  This was prepared on Saturday night to show the bridal party.

A few of the shots used in the slide-show are in the gallery below.

This blog post will be updated again when the finished photographs are on-line.

This post is to showcase what is possible with Photoshop. Julie, the Bride asked if it was possible to have a second version of the image above without de Broy. This was not particularly easy as de Broy’s head and body is in front of the fireplace and painting, both of which are very intricate. However, Lukas, our in-house Photoshop guru created exactly what was required.

To achieve this, he first cut the lady out. then found another image where you could see the fireplace and painting that the Groom was in front of. He re-sized and adjusted it in a separate layer, and then removed more of the Groom, before replacing the lady in his place and adding an arm. He also re-touched out a blue book that was on the bottom shelf creating exactly what Julie wanted.

As I have said many times, we would much rather get everything we need and get everything right "in camera" but is very useful to have Photoshop and Lukas’s considerable skills at our disposal.

Below are the pages of an album design recently completed which is currently being printed and bound in Italy. We were very lucky with the weather on the 13th November and despite it being cold, got a nice range of shots at Castle Fraser – click here for the blog post.

Amy and Michael have been great clients to work with, and Amy has been so enthusiastic about the album and had a lot of input in the final layout. For the final viewing in my office, we had Amy, Michael, both Mum’s and Dad’s, and Granny’s. The response of everyone to watching the pages set to music makes all the effort worthwhile.

Amy has been so complimentary about the photography and the album and nothing gives all of us a better feeling than getting positive feedback – see emails from Amy below

"Hi Neil,
We’ve just picked our favourite photos. It’s been a hard job because we
love them all! …… Thanks again to you, Sandra, and David for all your hard work, we’re delighted with the photos!

Kindest regards, Michael and Amy" on 18th November2010

"Hi Neil,
We are delighted with the album, all the changes are perfect!
Can we make an appointment to come in to sort out the front cover,
parent albums and …..
Thank you again to everyone for all your hard work, we love the album!

Amy" on 10th March 2011
 

However most of our clients now do this themselves and log in using a browser and mange the database, and create great looking emails. One of the unique features is the analysis where you know exactly who has opened your message or clicked on any links etc. It is easy to use but for new clients we include training which takes 1-2 hours. Several clients delegate this task to one person and if they move on, I can train the new user, and provide cover until someone takes over. This is one of the advantages of buying through ourselves. The other advantage is that we are considerably less expensive than if you dealt direct with the company we partner with, and you could get all the features including SMS marketing, at a much lower monthly cost.

The  system has just had some major upgrades and we have updated our website with details and lots of short videos on how to use this incredibly powerful tool. Click here to learn more, and there is one of the videos below. Well targeted personal email is an important part of any marketing strategy and integrates with all digital marketing – Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc.

If you are interested in learning more about this service, please click here to email me.