Our Blog Has Moved

Just a reminder that Birchall's ramblings can now be found on our main web site at: http://beautyphoto.com/blog

You can also follow Chris on Twitter: The Hairy Photographer

Please comment - or just say "hello". Look forward to seeing you.

New Home

The Birchall Blog has a new home now.

See you there!

www.beautyphoto.com

There's no such thing as a "Free Lunch"...

Businesses just don't give things away for free. If they did, they wouldn't stay in business for very long, would they!?

"Free Sittings" for instance; these are almost always costed into the price you pay for your finished portraits. We charge £85 for a makeover photo shoot, and this barely covers the cost of two people's time for up to two hours, plus another hour for post-processing the proofs and yet another to spend with the customer during the viewing.

That's six man-hours/woman-hours (person-hours?) before we've even sold any portraits. Being located in a small market town, as opposed to a large city centre means we can charge realistic prices for our portraits - less than half the amount charged by Venture Studios, for instance - whilst still producing a top quality product. We certainly don't want to bump up the price just to cover the cost of not having charged for a sitting.

So if that's the case, I hear you ask, why is it we are offering a free makeover and photo session worth £85 on our current Special Offer pages? Simply because we need lots of new contemporary style images to update our on-line portfolios and the display material at our studio.

We could use professional models of course. But we much prefer to have "real" people - people like you - featured in the examples of our award-winning portrait photography. What we forgo on the cost of the time spent shooting these promotional sessions, we save on the cost of hiring a model.

Of course we can't go giving portraits away for nothing too. That would not be commercially viable. But we're not going to try and make up the session fees by overcharging you either. In fact, as a further thankyou for taking part in this promotion, we'll give you a discount of up to one-third off our normal prices!

It's a win-win situation. We get our new publicity pictures and you get to enjoy a makeover photo shoot and all that pampering for free as well as the chance to buy copies of some really stunning images at a very much reduced price.

So - if you are happy for your pictures to be used for this purpose, give Jayne or Chris a ring now on 01824 704844 or fill in the application form on the Special Offer page.

Happy Nude Year

One of the most interesting projects Jayne and I undertook during the latter half of 2007 was this cheeky charity calendar. (Click on the image above for a closer look!)

You can read all about it - and buy a copy on-line - by clicking HERE. Less than 100 copies remain as of today, so you'll have to hurry! All proceeds go to North Wales Cancer Services.

Well - what are you waiting for?

21st Century Toys

I had occasion this week to reflect upon how we used to produce photographs back in the days T-Rex were banging out their hits. In 1977 it was all about groping around in the dark, breathing in noxious fumes, checking timings to the second and temperatures to the degree fahrenheit.

Never mind T-Rex - since the advent of digital photography, the wet darkroom has become something of a dinosaur itself!

Back then, whilst montages were possible, they were a nightmare to do and consequently very expensive for the customer.

Just before Christmas, some thirty years on from Marc Bolan's untimely death, I received an interesting request from one of his staunchest fans. My customer, Pauline, brought in a magazine cutting featuring the 20th Century Boy and a photograph showing herself with Marc Bolan's son Rolan (couldn't they afford the "d"?). What she wanted me to do was create a picture showing her with the late T-Rex front man himself.



The cutting was covered in Sellotape and the photograph was a low resolution scan. It had been taken five years ago at a do in Golder's Green to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the star's demise, so the original was not available.

So... not very good quality material to work from - but it was doable.

First I scanned both images and did a bit of preliminary tidying up in Photoshop - removing the panel of text and adding a little more space to the right hand side. I sampled the lightest and darkest areas of the background and used the Gradient, Clone and Patch tools to fill the new areas before adding "noise" to create a texture similar to the original.

Next task was to cut out the lady from the photograph. For this I used the Extract tool, which leaves a nice soft edge, and was then able to drop the extracted image as a new layer on the Bolan picture. After resizing, it was obvious that the lady's arm was in the wrong place, so I cut and copied the forearm onto a new layer enabling me to set it at a more realistic angle. Then I did the same with Marc Bolan's arm so it looked as though his hand was holding Pauline's arm.

Then I added a very soft drop shadow to the Pauline layer to make the montage more realistic and eliminate the "cardboard cut-out" effect.

The only thing remaining was to work on Pauline's hair. The singer was powerfully back-lit, so pauline still didn't look as though she was really there. So I selected a portion of the rim-lit hair onto a new layer and manipulated it into place using the Transform>Warp function. After blending it into the edge of Pauline's hair, the job was done.

All that remained was to print half a dozen copies for a very happy fan.

Yule Blog

So there it was - Gone!

Christmas just isn't the same now the children have grown. Our two boys, 19 and 17, have never admitted as much, but I'm pretty certain they don't actually believe in Santa Claus anymore. Even so, they still expect "him" to arrive with a big sack!

We had a couple of chill-out days then a splendidly hectic time yesterday at my youngest daughter's place for a family gathering. Seeing all my grandchildren (seven to teens) enjoying the festivities re-awoke the Christmas spirit. It was a great day.

The only one of us who saw a White Christmas was my eldest grandson (21) who is working at a ski resort in France.

The Studio is closed until 3rd of January, so time to sort out, tidy up and plan for the future. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty useless at keeping New Years resolutions. Maybe if I post them here, it will be an added incentive. Hmmm, I'll have to think about that one!

Meanwhile, Jayne and I would like to wish all our customers - old, new, and future - a great Christmas Holiday. See you all in the New Year.