The next in our Untitled (a workshop) events is happening in Cape Town, and is hosted by ProPhotography. Am looking forward to going back to CT.

I’ve been getting quite a few emails recently about our mentorship programs and our workshops. We are developing a new workshop at the moment, so keep an eye on the blog or send me a mail if you want to be informed when registration opens.

You can also read about, and book, our Personal Mentorship Program here.

A new set of free lightroom presets for y’all to download. Named after wedding venues in Johannesburg that were the inspiration for them.

Anderland – hand colored (less)
Avianto – Expired
Avianto – Girls
The Cradle – Blue Steel
Hazeldene – Black and White
Intundla – Velvet Evening
Oakfield – Catch The Flasher

download them from here. They are free for use for commercial purposes, modification etc. If you do find them useful, a link back to this site would be appreciated.

NOTE: These are now available from our facebook group – The Dror Eyal Experiment. From now on I’m going to be releasing all textures, actions and presets as well as frames and templates on our facebook group.

As a photography studio we have a number of suppliers that we have to deal with specific to our industry, these include camera repair, various photographic gear and regular suppliers like canvas, prints and albums. So this is a quick tale of how two suppliers handled stuffups on their end.

The first is our canvas supplier who delivered a print so shocking in quality that I had to send it back, their reply was well we have to make sure that you are happy so we will reprint it for you. Pretty much to be expected. I picked up the new print two weeks later, you can imagine the joy that the client exhibited after being told that she would have to wait an extra two weeks, but we smoothed it over explaining that it had to be reprinted and I wanted her to get the best quality. Pick up the print, get told that in order for it not to look terrible (well, the said it in a nicer way, but that is what it boiled down to) they had to print on another type of canvas. Ok, fine, except here comes the catch, they will invoice me for the difference. Hang on, I ask for a quote, get a quote, charge my client the cost of the quote, you deliver something substandard, I complain and you charge me extra – so what? Now I should turn around to my client and say sorry, I quoted you for the crap quality and when I upgraded to acceptable quality I now have to charge you extra? Every piece that comes out of this studio is an ad for our work, there is no way I would let anything out that didn’t represent the quality that I would like the brand to project. So I swallowed the cost, but for the small bit of money that they made on the canvas, not even enough to cover the delivery cost of the canvas, they lost my business forever.

My album supplier on the other hand, sent an album to the wrong place – bit of a miscommunication as well as some technical difficulties and a byzantine system. The company reprinted the albums, sent them to the right place and sent me a complimentary voucher for another album. The client got two copies of their albums – I rescued the misplaced album and sent it to the client, and I got a warm fuzzy feeling that these guys cared about my clients and my business. So the album company still has my custom and will continue to do so despite the rand taking a serious dive, whereas if you’re a canvas company you’re welcome to send me a brochure and pricelist. If you’re a photographer who has had good experiences in the Joburg region with 1.5m+ sized canvasses please send me a link.

I think it was Saturday, maybe it was Sunday, I was sitting under some shade trying to avoid the sun when the sound engineer seated next to me, he may actually not have been a sound engineer, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, the guy sitting next to me, mentioned in passing that photography was about getting things in focus. Wow! Hang on, hold the conversation, add some more ice to my glass, pass me a cigarette and add that one to the list of lies that photographers tell each other: Bigger lenses = better photos, more mega pixels means better quality, you must use off camera flash, shoot raw or your photo quality will be too low and more rubbish that could possibly be swallowed by anyone. Sheesh, sharper photos.

Then scarcely a day later, I get a request to recommend a good photoshop book, followed swiftly by two separate requests to shoot with me by two guys who shoot landscapes and wildlife images. Since when did wedding photography become about getting the sharpest image with the biggest camera using an off camera flash and then photoshoping it, let me rephrase that, when did photography become the province of geeks with a gear fetish? Yep, welcome to another Dror rant, cause sometimes my mind just get blown by people who claim to be photographers and spend all their time copying the latest technique or getting the latest bit of gear.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for experimenting, and trying out new gear, but not just because you want to get the effect that X gets. How about first learning about photography? You know it isn’t just about snapping a photograph using the sharpest lens possible and the most mega pixels that you can afford. Photographs should tell a story, it’s a visual language with all the nuances, verbs and sentence construction rules that any language has, and before you spend another small fortune on a new lens you don’t really need, you may want to learn how to communicate using that language. If you don’t know about balance and tension, colour, light, lines, gesture, frame dynamics and visual weight you may want to read up on it before rushing out and getting that off camera flash. I’m not saying that all images should tell a story, but come on, I can count the number of wedding photographers in this country who do actually photograph rather than snap on one hand, and they are all fully booked well into 2009.

“Most people using a camera for the first time try to master the controls but ignore the ideas. They photograph intuitively, liking or disliking what they see without stopping to think why, and framing the view in the same way. Anyone who does it well is a natural photographer. But knowing in advance why some compositions or certain combinations of colors seem to work better than others, better equips any photographer.” – Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye (a must in any photographer’s collection – if you’re local, don’t bother with Kalahari, they don’t stock it).

btw in case you were wondering the latest trend in wedding photography this year has been off camera flash with many photographers, including myself, investing in radio receivers. It’s been around for a while, but reached tipping point earlier this year and essentially it allows the photographer to set up a mobile outdoor studio, some do it well, most miss the point. At least the whole video light thing is almost over. I somehow can’t image James Nachtwey or Selgado, or even Tim Hetherington pulling out their off camera flash units.