I am finally getting back up to date after being off work for nearly three weeks. This is only the third time I have been off in over 30 years. I had to go to hospital but I got no warning or chance to prepare for my absence. However David, Lukas,David C, and Andy, all did a great job covering my commitments including weddings on the 29th and 30th April, 1st, 7th, and 14th May. Most of my commercial clients were very patient and waited for me to be back to work.

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.

Beautiful food at The Milton

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.

Liane and Andrew’s wedding

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.

Re-touching

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.

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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
 

For many years now we have been involved in email marketing and supply this service to many local companies. I got involved at the request of a client and we then started using it ourselves to promote wedding and portrait services. I never marketed this but starting getting approached to supply this service. Initially we used the system for our clients – loading their database, creating the emails, sending, and reporting back.

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.

We have an amazing offer on Groupon today and there is less than 8 hours to take advantage of it. For only £29, you get a full studio portrait session with changes of clothes, and backgrounds, a viewing session and either a beautiful framed 8×6 print or a really novel keepsake book with 10 images.

The framed print is a heatsealed print which is much better than using glass, and you can choose between a black or silver frame.

We are taking some amazing portrait shots and of course we hope you love the images enough to buy more prints but there is absolutely no obligation.

Do not miss this offer – it ends in less than 9 hours.

We look forward to welcoming you to the studio.

Building site to finished building with Photoshop

Earlier this week, I was asked to photograph a unit in Westhill that is close to the the end of the construction stage. It was very difficult working around the diggers, workmen, and Portacabins. My angles were very restricted but at least the lighting was good. The client needed the images now before the building was finished so we were asked to remove railings etc. Lukas has done a great job on this very tricky task.

Apart from the obvious railings being removed and grass added, if you look closely,you will see the work he has done on the windows, the sign at the far right, and some of the drums etc. in front of the warehouse. more…

Slideshow for the iPad

I have spoken before about how useful the iPad is as a sales tool and I now have several clients using these as sales presenters. I have just created a slideshow of commercial photography to show on the iPad. I thought about grouping exteriors, interiors, etc. but eventually decided just to mix a selection of shots to give a "feel" for the type of work I do. I created it at 720p and the quality on the iPad is great. The Youtube version below does not look so good as the iPad but if you choose 720p, it will give a good idea.

I have not "blogged" much recently as I have been so busy but I have a lot of draft posts with recent work prepared so all being well there will be a new post everyday next week. I love to get feedback on any of the posts so any comments will be appreciated.

Fund raising night for Maggies at Malmaison

After being at Deeside Golf Club, Colin was going to Malmaison on Queens Road for a champagne and canapé evening to promote the Maggies appeal. The evening hosted by BBC sports commentator, Rob McLean heard Colin Montgomerie and Colin Welsh (Chairman of the appeal committee)  explain why a Maggies centre is so important for Aberdeen. Click here to see how much their centres can help suffers and their families, and click here for more information on Monty’s Maggie’s appeal.

The committee had kindly invited Sandra and I as guests. When I got my invitation, I noticed that there were 10 raffle prizes of a photograph of Colin with the Ryder cup. I accepted the invitation and emailed asking if they had arranged the photography and offered to do this free of charge, and my offer was accepted. Malmaison Set up a room for the photography and all the prize winners came up and got their photograph taken and they will get a print sent to them. The photograph above is of Colin and Andy Roger, the General Manager of Malmaison in Aberdeen. Malmaison and Andy have been great supporters of the appeal and last year Andy and a team of  Mal staff walked 164 miles covering both the West Highland Way and the Great Glen Way. Click here to read more.
 

Sandra was with me, and took the opportunity to get her photograph with Colin and the Ryder cup.

Click here to see all the prize winners and shots of the famous Ryder Cup.