Anybody Care About Quality Anymore?

 
Is there anybody out there who still cares about quality photography?  If I have to talk to another company who ultimately decides to shoot it themselves on their conference table, I think I'll go nuts.  It didn't used to be like this.  Previously, the professional Graphic Designer/Art Director acted as a gatekeeper of quality. They made sure that the images used in their designs were high quality, beautiful things.  It made their designs look good.  It made the company look good.

With the advent of easy to use design programs and web page creators, a lot of companies are doing their own design-layout for print and web page creation.  Often the results are horrendous. If you are creating marketing material without the help of a real Graphic Designer or Art Director, (web site coders don't count), see below.

Facts:

- Your nephew with the great new camera is not equivalent to a trained professional photographer with 30 years experience in shooting products in the studio. Sorry.

- Buying  design software does not make you or any of your employees a Graphic Designer!

- Customers do notice the difference.  Quality images denote quality product.

Leave some comments about this rant.  Anybody have any clients who don't care about quality?

Chesapeake Bay Crabcakes

 

 We recently spent several days shooting crab cakes for Chesapeake Bay Crabcake Co.  Stephanie Rose styled the food.

 Stephanie in the studio kitchen.  Does she really need all this to style crabcakes?
 

Stephanie on set with some friends.

At the end of the shoot, we got to take home a bunch of frozen crabcakes and even some lobster tails.  Thanks Alex & Doug. They were great!

Interns & Violin

I hosted two high school interns, Lauren Walters & Ike Pappas, here at the studio for a couple of weeks.  We were kinda slow during that period but they did get to help with a couple of studio set ups. They also learned to vacuum!

This is one of the final images.

Lauren & Ike help build the set.  Now they know all about C-Stands and sandbags.

Here you can see the set up.  The violin is hung up by fishing line and the block beneath will be removed in Photoshop.  The scrim on the left provides a soft gradating light and foamcore on right and below is used as a reflector to keep the shadows from becoming too dark.

At one point the 100 year old violin slipped off the block and swung wildly from the fishing line.  Lauren saved it!

Of course, Ike helped too.

 

 This is another version with a more rustic background.  More of a Bluegrass feeling.