Brody is a 100 lb. mastiff… and still growing!  Just look at the size of those paws.

Anyway, Lizzy bought in her new baby for some pet portraits just in time for Christmas (which explains the hat).  They’re both surprisingly amenable to wearing clothing – which is funny because Hailey will really have none of it.  Brice, by the way, is Hailey’s buddy after we dog-sat for him.  She was so upset when he left!

My favorite.  Possibly one of this year’s four…

All puppy!  (that is SOME tongue!)

Best Buddies.

He’s all tuckered out, and the season has barely begun!

My favorite family portrait

A closeup of the group

My other favorite.  They’re surprisingly willing to stay like this too…

Ingrid, Courtney, the models and I ventured over to Old-Town for some fun night shooting around the pier.  And wow… it was quiet out!  We might have seen 3 cars all night, and only the night watchman to keep us company.  I’ve never seen Old Town so empty!  Even with Chadwick’s pub right down the street, it was completely bare!

Ingrid and I decided to play with some off-camera flash techniques for some extra pop.  This is also how I learned that my flash won’t attach to her strobe system, and why professional photographers should (and DO!) carry a reliable second set of gear!  Anyway, here’s what we came up with.

My favorite of Susie – she pulls off the drama look so well!

Crystal in front of the downtown Bike Shop

Susie in the Parking Garage

My absolute favorite shot of Crystal!

Kristi on the pier.

Natural light of Susie below the street lamp

My favorite of Kristi – love the lens flare!

Another of Crystal on the pier.

Kristi

Susie

Crystal

Miss Domino.  For my art history buffs out there – like her inverted pyramidal composition? 

Domino & Chloe – Best friends!

To quote a photographer friend of mine:  “You seriously pose pets like high school seniors” – ha, pets are people too!

Love this one of Chloe – she has the prettiest markings!

Domino, being shy behind mom.

Miss Chloe sitting pretty

The two girls together for some drama style

Look at his happy little smile!

“Wave for the camera”

Looking dapper on his little bench

My favorite – he looks just so adorable

Mom’s favorite – very Renaissance-like!

One serving of puppy coming right up!

Odd angle, but love it anyway – Pierre is ALWAYS on the move!

Just look at that sweet face!

Klondike looking super cute and happy!

Love this one – it’s his “playa’” look

Alyssa’s favorite – just chillin’ out!

Look at how white he is!

All tucked into his snug little chair…

My favorite.  Took Ashley and me nearly 10 minutes just to get the lights to do this with his fur

My article ran in the international trade magazine, Professional Photographer this month! I’m pretty psyched because I’ve never been a published author before.  Anyway, if you’re interested in reading the article, it’s on page 40-41 of Pro.Photo this month.  Make sure to read the following page, too, because it’s by my NH friend, Don Chick.

By the way – the logos shown are ones I’ve done for Andrea Chapelo, Liz Vance, and PhotographyConnect.

Sign Language: Designing A Logo
Stephanie Millner

The cornerstone of a brand is an effective logo. It will appear on all of your marketing pieces, from your website to your print ads and displays. Above all, your logo should be versatile and timeless. It should be appropriate for every kind of photography you do, and every segment of your clientele—a tattoostyle logo designed for seniors probably won’t appeal to brides, and a logo featuring an adorable baby probably won’t send the desired message to corporate clientele.

A strong logo adapts to a changing business. Try to design your logo around what your business will grow into. Two years from now you might find a passion for doing a completely new photographic niche; let the rest of your branding establish your new niche, but hang onto your established logo.

Consider that a logo needs to work at any size—at 1/2 inch, will it be readable on your business card? If your logo has both graphic elements and text, would each be recognizable by itself as your logo? As the identifying entity of your business, make sure it works in every possible scenario, from tiny watermark to signage.

BLACK AND WHITE OR BUST: The primary rule of logo design is If it doesn’t work in black and white, it doesn’t work at all. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use colors, but see how effective your design is in plain black and white. If it’s not visually strong enough to be memorable without color, it’s back to the drawing board.

K.I.S.S. That’s right, keep it simple. The key here is legibility and impact. Use solid fills and strong lines. Avoid gradients, drop shadows, textures, photographs, gazillions of colors and other effects. Don’t design your logo with only optimal viewing and reproduction conditions in mind. In a print ad in a community paper or in the Yellow Pages, whatever, at some point your logo will be reproduced in one color, small, and poorly. Give your design the Xerox test. Find the oldest copy machine you can, and photocopy your logo at various sizes. How bad does it look?

Because logos need to be scalable, do not design yours in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is made to edit pixels of raster images, and raster images are not easy to resize. Instead, create your logo as a vector image, which is infinitely scalable. The industry standard for vector design is Adobe Illustrator.

Create separate vector files for both positive and negative versions of your logo on transparent backgrounds. If your logo contains colors, create positive and negative color versions as well. Create all versions in both CMYK and RGB. You also need to save raster versions of the vector files for digital usage, like on your website. Save the file in an array of sizes and in the formats JPG, GIF, and PNGs (best for websites).

Another factor in your logo color choices is offset printing costs—the more colors, the more expensive. Limiting the colors to two, particularly if one of them is black, can drastically cut cost, in some cases, by as much as 80 percent.

Peruse your printer’s Pantone color guide, an index of ink colors that can be mixed in various ratios to produce other colors. Perhaps there’s a shade of teal you love, and according to your software’s color picker, it’s a blend of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Most likely there’s a similar shade in the Pantone index —your four-color-build logo just became an inexpensive solid ink. Custom ink mixes can slightly increase printing costs.

When you’ve got a logo that’s versatile, simple, reproducible, scalable, and costeffective, don’t go changing it for awhile! About the time you’re getting bored with your logo, the public is beginning to recognize it.

Meet Izod.  She’s a very sweet (if you can call a reptile “sweet”) bearded dragon, belonging to Jan and her two daughters, Grace & Emma.  Izod was actually very friendly, enjoyed being held, and seemed to enjoy being in front of the camera.  Likewise, she was fairly amenable to being posed, put in bowls, and being exposed to flashing lights.  Remember: lights heat up a room… and she’s cold-blooded.  So it was rather nice that she sat so still for me!

Izod, just chillin’

My new pedestal bowl (and by “my”, I mean Liz’s.)

One of my favorites – look at how cool her skin looks!

Izod with her two big sisters. 

…And she’s off!  (Fortunately, beardies only run about 10 paces and then give up…)

My other favorite!  Too cute!

She’s so cool that she’ll subject herself to hours of photographic torture all in the name of hot-dogs.

These are just a few from yesterday’s lighting setup before the “real” session that I’ll post tomorrow!

{Photographers attending my Furballs! Class.  Yes, I use my own dog for a model.  This is why.  I’m really just cheating.}

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