I have three clients this year that are entering projects I photographed into competitions put on by the Master Builders Association (MBA), the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) and the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA). Between the three clients there are 8 projects being entered. Below you can see the client and an image or two from their project.

Tehnhulzen Remodeling

Kitchen under $75,000

  

Bath under $40,000

  

Bath $40,000 - $75,000

Major Remodel $300,000

    

Unknown Category at press time

Irons Brothers Construction

Kitchen $75,000 - $125,000

Commercial Tenant Improvement

  

Singleton Construction

Major Remodel

    

The BIAW and NKBA awards are being announced tonight, June 17. The MBA awards will be handed out on Saturday at the Lynwood Convention Center. I will be attending with my wife and will be very excited to see how many awards my clients receive. I will post a follow-up on Sunday or Monday.

News, Recent Work

Apparently I do. I didn’t remember creating it, but when I posted to Faith Sheridan’s Blog an image of myself came up that surprised me. I was not expecting my image to show up just by posting a comment since this was the first time I had commented and certainly had not uploaded an image for use on her site.

I right-clicked on the link to see where the image was coming from and the root URL was http://www.gravatar.com.

After going to the site they define gravatar as: a “globally recognized avatar”. What that means is they provide one location to store your avatar or personal representation of yourself for use on other web sites. The web site has to be enabled to use the gravatar. There is more information on gravatar on wikipedia.

It is a great concept to have one location to store your personal image. If more sites took advantage of the service it would cut down on the number of places you have to upload a new profile picture.

Miscellaneous avatar, gravatar

I have been shooting some jewelry for a local client that is using Etsy to showcase her designs. The pieces are very nicely done, but aren’t going to sell for thousands of dollars, so I need to be quick and efficient to manage costs. Click the images to see larger versions.

    

I decided to use my Canon 580EX flashes as they are easy to set up and very easy to change light output from the camera mounted flash. Using “hot-shoe” flashes allows the ability to change setups quickly and easily. With the ability to control light output of the off-camera flash units from the on-camera unit I don’t have to move around if the light isn’t quite right. I just make the changes at the camera and just before the next picture the changes are relayed to the off-camera units.

  

Being able to move quickly also lets us try out different sets and backgrounds and quickly determine if it will work. All of our images are taken at the clients house, so the small size is also a benefit.

    

All of these images were captured with a 24-70mm lens which also allows macro work for getting in very close to capture the details of the smaller objects like clasps.

As mentioned above these images are destined for Etsy.com. To ensure my client has the best presentation I reviewed Etsy’s image quidelines and how images are actually displayed on their site. They have several different image sizes they use on their site, and they also crop the first image for each piece into a square format that is used as a thumbnail in search results.

When I deliver images to the client I specify the first image to upload and I ensure it is cropped in such a way so the thumbnail that Etsy creates won’t cut off her piece and make it hard to see.

Having a good understanding of image standards and programming comes in handy at times and ensures my clients images look their best at all times.

Digital Photography, Recent Work hot-shoe flash, jewelry

Here is a list of the things I really like right now that make running my business easier and more productive, especially as a sole-proprietor who wears all the hats.

FileZilla: FileZilla is an open source FTP program. The nice part, it’s free and it works. It will keep track of multiple FTP sites, and does a great job of transferring lots of files. I use it to upload slide shows to my web site for clients to access.

LogMeIn: LogMeIn allows me to easily access my home or work computer from any location. It takes a few screens to actually gain access to the remote computer, but once connected screen redraws are fast and can be customized to provide more detail if necessary. I tried doing remote access through other means but with dynamic IP addresses and modem/router configurations I was never able to make it work reliably. With LogMeIn I have not had a problem. I use the free service which allows me access to all my files as if I was sitting at the machine. You can upgrade to a paid Pro service to move files directly between your local and remote computers. I use the service listed next when I have to copy files between local and remote machines.

DigitalBucket.net: I found DigitalBucket.net when I was searching for a file delivery system that my clients and I could easily use. DigitalBucket offers a lot more functionality that I currently take advantage of, and they offer ample storage options for reasonable prices. I like them because they have a very intuitive interface for uploading and sharing files. My clients don’t have to log in unless they want to access the advanced features. I just send them a link to their files and they are ready to go.

Hosted Microsoft Exchange: My websites are hosted by MyHosting.com. They started offering a hosted exchange service that would provide my Blackberry with two-way push email, contacts, tasks and notes. I had been struggling trying to keep my Blackberry synced up to my computer and often had calendar items out of date. Now everything I enter on the Blackberry is automatically synced to the hosted Exchange server and everything I enter in Outlook on my computer is synced to my Blackberry. I wish I had done this two years ago.

Miscellaneous