Category Archives: Photography

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Unique Workshop with US Celebrity Photographers Bob & Dawn Davis in Switzerland

[caption id="attachment_1023" align="alignnone" width="427" caption="Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, Paris 2007. Copyright Bob & Dawn Davis (www.bobanddawndavis.com)"][/caption]

Being a professional wedding photographer doesn’t only mean to use professional photo equipment and to have a backup plan. Which is important, though. But it also means to really specialize in weddings and to have a lot of experience. Wedding photography is very different from other fields of photography. Fashion or commercial photography has other rules and needs other skills. And even a great press photographer doesn’t necessarily have to be a great wedding photographer, even if both work in the documentary field of photography.

That said, continuing education is very important and another thing that separates the men from the boys in the wedding photography field. I personally like to travel and attend workshops with the best wedding photographers worldwide. It not only gives me the opportunity to learn from the best, but also to meet new people in other countries that share the same passion than I do. I would say if you attend a workshop the networking part is as important than to learn technical stuff. In the last years I have traveled several times to London, to Toronto, Atlanta and New York to learn and meet great people.

As much as I enjoy it to get further education and explore a new city or country at the same time, not everyone has the means to do so. It takes a lot of time and money. That’s why I thought why not bring the world’s best wedding photographers to Switzerland? To teach us and to get the best knowledge available. Combine this with networking with a lot of other swiss wedding photographers you might have heard of but never met. I’m sure this will have a big impact on our industry over here. That’s the boost we need.

With this ideas in mind I partnered with Light + Byte in Zurich and it was a special pleasure for me that I could win my friends Bob & Dawn Davis from Chicago for the first workshop. They don’t only belong to the best wedding photographers worldwide, but especially are just very nice people and great family guys. Despite their success and fame they are still down to earth and always have the time to help. Even if it’s just an unimportant swiss wedding photographer asking some silly questions :-) Thanks for your friendship and for joining the passion for this adventure, Bob & Dawn!

Details and registrationhttp://www.lb-ag.ch/weddingworkshop2010

Here is the original media release in German:

Exklusiver Workshop mit Celebrity-Fotografenpaar Bob & Dawn Davis aus Chicago

Zweitägiger Workshop zum Thema Hochzeitsfotografie am 28. und 29. März 2010 in Zürich

ZÜRICH, 8. März 2010 – Nur für einen einzigen Workshop kommt das US-Fotografenpaar Bob & Dawn Davis nach Europa und wird auch in Zürich sein Publikum zu begeistern wissen. Die beiden Amerikaner gehören längst zu den Weltbesten im Hochzeitsbusiness und dürfen Eva Longoria, Salma Hayek oder auch Oprah Winfrey zu ihren Kunden zählen.

Spezialgebiet Hochzeitsfotografie

Die Hochzeitsfotografie stellt ein sehr anspruchsvolles, aber oftmals unterschätztes Spezialgebiet der Fotografie dar. Erstmals findet jetzt in der Schweiz ein mehrtägiger Workshop speziell für Hochzeitsfotografen statt. Ganz nach dem Motto „learn from the best“ bietet sich den Teilnehmenden die einmalige Gelegenheit von der jahrelangen Erfahrung dieser beiden aussergewöhnlichen Profis zu profitieren.

Einzigartiges Programm

Das Programm wurde von Bob & Dawn speziell für diesen Workshop zusammengestellt. Die beiden Tage sind inhaltlich so aufgebaut, dass sie entweder zusammen oder auch einzeln besucht werden können. In den zwei Tagen gehen Bob & Dawn auf sämtliche Aspekte des Business ein. Vom Schaffen des perfekten Lichts in jeder Situation, Fotografieren bei schlechtem Wetter über die Vorbereitungen, den digitalen Workflow, die Postproduktion bis zur Gestaltung des Albums, Marketing und Branding werden keine Fragen offen gelassen.

Der Workshop richtet sich an Hochzeitsfotografen jeder Stufe, Anfänger wie auch Fortgeschrittene, und wird in Englisch durchgeführt!

Internationales Publikum

Mit Teilnehmenden aus der Schweiz, aber auch aus Deutschland, Holland und den USA bietet der Workshop ausserdem die perfekte Gelegenheit mit Hochzeitsfotografen aus aller Welt Kontakte zu knüpfen und sich auszutauschen.

Der Workshop wird von Light + Byte AG in Zusammenarbeit mit Daniel Zihlmann (Internationaler Hochzeitsfotograf / WCS – Wedding Crashers Switzerland) organisiert.

Datum

28. und 29. März 2010

Your KISS Is Always Safe

If you are one of my happy clients that ordered a KISS wedding album, you can be sure that your book will ship safely from the US to Switzerland or the rest of the world. Check out how Kevin, famous wedding photographer and co-founder of KISS Wedding Books, is testing the awesome new packaging. Enjoy :-)

Is What You See Really What You Get?

If you are interested in photography you might also have heard about color management, color spaces and ICC profiles. The sRGB color space (read more about all the technical stuff here) was developed 1996 as the standard default color space for the internet. Later it was found that a standardization for all the devices in a color managed workflow would be very helpful: digital cameras, scanners, computers, monitors, printers and editing software like photoshop and of course web browsers should be set to the same color space (of course advanced users can convert to the right color space, but that might be tricky). The idea was that the sRGB color space should be the standard for all these devices and software. Using the same color space on all these devices and software is already a good step toward seeing the same color on all theses devices (that every device itself has to be calibrated is another complicated story, but you get the point).

So now comes the truth. After so many years that the sRGB color space and profile is used worldwide, it is still not sure that your web browser like Internet Explorer (hopefully not!), Safari or Firefox will support ICC profiles and show sRGB pictures correctly.

Test yourself. Are the three words Green, Blue and Red in the above picture written in the corresponding color? If not, you have a problem. It means that your web browser does NOT support ICC profiles.

With Safari you should be OK, Internet Explorer maybe not and Firefox? Firefox 3.x can support ICC profiles, but you have to be an advanced user to activate the support in the preferences.

Read more about how to change the settings of Firefox in THIS ARTICLE on the website of color control specialist Datacolor, the creater of the Spyder calibration tools. By the way, Datacolor is a swiss company :-)

Ever wondered why your photos get a slight color shift when you first view them in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom and later in your web browser on your blog or website? This might be the reason. That your web browser doesn’t support ICC profiles (or that you have to enable the ICC color profile support in Firefox).

Another mystery of color management solved. Don’t worry, there are still a lot of stumbling blocks left.

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[UPDATE] You can find a quick introduction to color management here. If you are a photographer and want to dive deeper into the subject, I recommend that you visit the website of the European Color Initiative ECI. The best thing I ever read about color management is the Digipix brochure on their download section. You can download the PDF here in English or German. Also don’t miss to download the calibration wallpapers for your monitor for PC or Mac. They give you a quick daily check if the calibration of your monitor is OK.

Gary Fong Arrived In Switzerland

Finally Gary Fong arrived in Switzerland – or at least his famous flash diffusors. I just don’t know why in this Swiss camera store they sell the quite a bit aged Lightspere and not his newest and more sophisticated model Whaletail. And what irritates me a bit is that in the comparison photo in the window the girl smiles more if the picture is taken without Gary Fong’s flash diffusor…

Actually it was this “little piece of plastic” (patent pending) that brought me into wedding photography. Some years ago I wanted to improve my flash photography and surfed the web for some research. Quite fast Gary Fong’s name popped up and I started to read his blog. It turned out that he was in the wedding photography business for a lifetime and his name was very well known in the industry. Or to say he was famous.

So I bought my first Lightsphere directly from Gary in Canada through his e-store. I followed his blog that led me to other well known wedding photographers in the US and worldwide. With the time all pieces came together like in a puzzle. I was addicted to wedding photography and decided to specialize in photographing happy people. As Gary explained once why he loves to be into wedding photography.

Thanks Gary, to show me the way and welcome to Switzerland!

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Posted via iPhone

Speed Me Up, Scotty!

Daniel Zihlmann Photography - Fotograf Hochzeit Baby Portrait, Schweiz

I was getting tired of my download workflow. When I came back home after photographing a wedding it took me so much time just to download the 3000+ images and back them up. Shooting in RAW + JPEG I filled up like 10-12 CompactFlash cards and every ten minutes or so I had to change the card in my reader. Of course I could work on something else in the meantime, but I always had to check if the download was completed and I could change the card. Otherwise the whole process would even take longer… There had to be a solution to make this faster and easier.

First I changed from 4GB SanDisk Extreme IV to 8GB SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash Cards. That meant half the cards to handle, to carry around at the wedding and to download and back up at home. There was a dramatically price drop in the 8GB cards during the last months, so upgrading was not expensive. And for saving my time on a boring routine job it was worth it anyway.

Second I went for the new Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 CompactFlash Reader. They are stackable and you can daisy chain up to 4 of them and then they will allow for concurrent downloads. So you can download 4 cards at a time. Sweet!