LPGA commercial shoot

In the near future a few of my friends and I are going to be doing a trash the dress session with a model. I hope to get some shots like this video. The key will be to have some nice light from two soft boxes and a model bride in the center in the park. It should be a lot of fun to take some time with a model.

Web hosting for photographers

This is why I love mediatemple.net for my hosting...

At first I had hosting with tripod and lycos. It was fine for learning how to write html and make my own site. I transferred my site to yahoo domain/hosting and it was a little better but I did not have full control over my site. Then I switched to godaddy for my domains and www.mediatemple.net for hosting. My webpage loads 3 times faster with mediatemple compared to yahoo. With yahoo I was one of 100 or more websites on a server box. Now with mediatemple I have a dedicated box for my website. The cost is not bad at all and it loads very fast on a good connection. When you visit www.briankellogg.com you will load quite a bit of content. The content includes the background music, the flash animation and other images. If I was still with yahoo I don't think it would keep up. Also yahoo hosting had some loading problems when you refreshed the browser.

I would like to show everyone my load times for my webpage.

This is why I must have the fastest server possible. 184 people requested my page in one day and only 83 people waited for the page to fully load. 101 people clicked on my site and hit the back button right away. The faster I make my content load the more people can see my work. If you can look at your stats, see if people are going past your splash page with "blog" "full screen" "same screen" "contact" etc. I believe you should almost always have your content on the front page right away so people can be intrigued to view more. I just think I works for me. Think to yourslef how many times you visit a site and hit the back button because it is loading too slow or not enough content?

Blip.tv is awesome!

I love http://blip.tv for a lot of reasons. I have used you tube in the past but it always has a awful looking "You Tube" watermark in the corner. I have seen David Jay's Showit Web. It's all right but I have had to wait 15-20 seconds for a slideshow to start and I know that most people hit the back button before it starts.

I use iMovie to create my videos. I have the basic layout of my movie already made so now it is easy as drag and drop. Once I create that I export a .mov file that I upload to blip.tv. The blip.tv player I put in my blog has Kellogg Photography in bottom right-hand the corner. I also have it so it is linked to my website. So the player is incredibly customizable. Blip.tv also distributes my video to all of my websites automatically such as Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, External Blogs, Auto Cross-posting tools, iTunes, Internet Archive, Flickr, Adobe Media Player, Slide, Sidebar, FeedBurner, MySpace, Yahoo! Video, Lycos Mix, Mefeedia, Blinkx, blip.tv Channels and Pando.

The newest addition that I am very excited about is having my blip.tv videos work on my iPhone. I found this video showing me that I can customize my player to play on my blog and my iPhone.

Here is my latest blip.tv post to give everyone an example...

Technology is awesome!

The Slide Show at the Wedding.

Creating a slide show at the wedding is the easiest thing you can do to get people talking about you and buy more prints.  You have quite a bit of downtime as everyone eats dinner.  First step is to get the reception hall to set up a table to the side of the bar for your laptop or iMac. I always set it up by the bar because that is the corner of the hall people are attracted to for some odd reason. ;) I bring my own round 3 foot diameter folding table and get the reception hall staff to supply a table cloth to cover.  If you are on a Apple computer use Aperture and hit 'quick preview' or P after you downloaded all of your images.  3 star the best images and then narrow down if needed.  For PC users Lightroom is your best bet.  Again 3 star on the first pass then one star the ones you don't want in the slide show. If you do 1 star then go up it takes twice as long to narrow down on the fly.  Touch up real fast exposure, contrast, vignette and etc.  Make sure you cover the keyboard or unplug it on the iMac.  You don't want a child to hit a key so people can stare at your desktop do you? Start up the slide show in Aperture or light room.

The things you must have.

1.   20in iMac,  PC laptop or Mac book Pro  

2.   10 foot white extension cord and a 30 foot cord in your car if you need it.

3.    Small table or let the reception hall supply one (call ahead).

4.    Event cards with the web address to view the photos online.  You can print 24 wallets for 4 bucks at Cord Camera (ask for the Wallet Special)

** 5 - 7 are optional **

5.    Fastest card reader you can buy if you are dealing with RAW images like I am you will need it.  Lexar CF Firewire 800 reader.

6.    UDMA cards or at least 150x or higher helps a bit.

7.    Make a smaller slide show in iMovie for the web. Make your event cards go to the slide show on your website and have a link at the bottom to view the photos.  People are more excited to see the video and buy photos.  Include the first dance in the video so they can see the whole wedding not just until dinner.   Go to www.briankellogg.com/weddings for examples. (www.blip.tv converts and streams in flash for free)


If you have not done this at a wedding before you will be amazed by the people talking about you, thanking you and asking for your business card to do their wedding on the spot.  

Thanks for reading.

Brian Kellogg

Networking at the Wedding

When I am at any wedding I carry a handful of business cards with me because I know I am going to meet a DJ, florist, reception hall manager, catering manager, wedding guests and the best of all the wedding coordinator if they have one.  You must exchange business cards with all the wedding vendors because they might refer you.  I booked one wedding because she was out of town and needed a lot of referrals for a lot of wedding vendors.  I have my booklet of all the business cards I have collected with me.  She loved me so much for helping her out. She told all of the vendors she was referred by me.  All of this was free and took me a few minutes at every wedding to grab their cards.
Brian Kellogg
www.briankellogg.com