Making art everlasting

Well, partially because you must not forget to backup and save your digital reproductions.

Reproductions are the fine art of photography. Everything has to be done extremely accurate. All Flashheads have to shine with exactly the same light output in the same angle so that exatly the same light hits every single square inch of the drawing. Additionally the camera has to be aligned at exactly 90° to the totally flat.

White Balance has to be utmost precise and mixed light is even more a no-go than in any other photographic situation.

After shooting you have to retouch - sometimes for hours. Especially if you isolate the artworks without frames on white background, as we love to do it. To make it look more natural, we already shoot on white and light the background as evenly as possible.

Then, and only then, the artists that give us their valuable paintings are will be satisfied - and we too.

By the way: beside digital reproduction, we also offer large format film up to 4x5 inch.

For a new Austrian Record.

At the Rekordjagd 2008, a 100x1000m relay run, we were shooting images for the event host. If any of the teams was to beat the Austrian Record, the reward would have been a photoshooting with us. That seemed to motivate the leading team to beat that record (you guessed it, in fact it wasn´t the prize ;-)) So they wan a photoshooting with amriphoto.

Since the weather wasn´t perfect in autumn and Spring, we finally did it in summer.

Congratulations once again to ULT Deutsch Wagram for beating the record.

Were all we could get out of the mountain torrent

Our plan was to gether some underwater images out of a mountain torrent. It doesn´t sound too easy, but it was even more difficult than we thought. It was not only extremely cold, but also very shallow - so no chance to get your face into the water and watch through the viewfinder. And more than a few minutes with bare feet in that water were impossible. Even the dome port of the housing fogged immediately after we pulled it out of the water.

You´ll bet we will return better prepared next time. Seems like there have to be some shootings that don´t go as planned.

A wide target group!

Seniors have been discovered as a target group a few years ago. Beofre that mostly young people were found in advertising media, but that has changed dramatically. Well, so we have to adapt too and we love to do that.

Especially if the adaptation takes us outdoors into nice green forests - a foretaste of the planned outdoor shooting.

Or rather: pile of fruits II

No, it´s not yet the photoshooting in the Austrian Alps, but rather mountains of delicious fruit. We planned that for quite some time (well, we always plan everything - but just don´t have enough time to shoot). A Photoshooting with huge quantities of fruits.

We started with berries. Raspberries, blackberries, cherries, blueberry, black currant, red currant and gooseberry.

It took quite a mass of fruit to cover a big area without the background shining through. The view of such a big mass of fruits is just great - extremely appetizing, naturally we had to eat the fruits afterwards. Freezer is filled, family and friends supplied - what a great output of a photoshooting.

Mountainshooting planned

If the weather cooperates, we will have a mountain sport shooting in automn. Therefore we started buying the requisites for the shots

If your plan is gathering professional shots, all models have to wear nice and well fitted clothing. Don´t ever make the mistake to take the ones they have. Of course that increases the expenses of a shooting, but in the end the output is what counts. Good thought out images with great props sell way better than ordinary. And that way sooner or later you generate some income from your shootings.

The problem when working for stock agencies is that no logo must be visible on the photo/video. That doesn´t only mean a lot of post production work, but also that it´s actually impossible to find a sponsor for the shootings. Hardly any company will support you with clothing if the logo isn´t visible on the final image.

Well, being professional photographer you have to get used to invest your money on and on to get some output. Therefore you have to get the most out of your props. So we immediately shot some images isolated on white as long as the requisites have been in mint condition.

The final image of the Seychelles trip

Well, it took quite some time but now we´ve retouched the last one of our Seychelles images. And it´s one of the top images too - especially after the retouching. It proves that not every image in a catalogue is real.

Sometimes the sky in the original image is not 100% perfect, sometimes there´s an island or a boat that disturbs the view, sometimes it´s both - so we just erase it ;-)

One of a few things that really makes us stand out of the crowd is our know-how in retouching images. Loyal blog readers already know that we have once been designers. Sometimes there are some tiny wrinkles that need to be retouched, on other occasions there are a few pounds too many.
Even though we usually keep the image as natural as possible, there´s always something to do.

But hey, you ladies out there spend quite some time in the morning giving yourself a make-up. That isn´t much different, is it?
Professional modern cameras just show everything - a little retouching here or there makes the image more natural and makes it look much more like reality, believe it or not!

Right on Time - vacation season has just started

And for us it´s time to start with phototipps. In time we are going to give you some (hopefully interesting) tipps on how to tap your full photographic potential. We are going to talk about how to use your equipment (oh yes, there is more to most cameras than the automode), about composition and creative possibilities how you can make your imges stand out of the crowd.

Being a photographer you have the great luck that almost everybody wants to show you their vacation shots (oh well - I hate the late summerevenings ;-)). No doubt, some of them are great, but with others it starts to get boring after 10-12 images. The reson: hundreds of images of people you already know - most of the time it´s the ones sitting right in front of you - no sign of a landscape, architecture - no sign of anything that could wake you up again. It would have been interesting to see some locals on the shot, but no - only the couple (family) you have seen on the same hundreds of images last year.

By the way, here is a short interjection: when shooting foreigners, it´s necessary that you ask the people, no matter where you are. Many people think that would ruin the natural character of an image - and yeah, it might, but you have to take that risk. If the person doesn´t behave natural in front of the camera it´s usually the fault of the photographer ;-). If not - well, bad luck - seems like you have to choose somebody else.

Back to the subject. A slideshow about Greece soon becomes anguish to the viewer, if you don´t see anything from the country itself, but instead you find 2-3 "models" (most of the time fellow travellers or holiday buddies) on every single image - eating, laughing, lying on the beach, sitting in the water,... You don´t get a glimplse of the landscape, architecture, culture, whatever.
The other extreme - talking about greece - how interesting do you think is a slideshow about beaches only (shot with only one single focal length), or a slideshow of hundreds of greek doors. I must admit - in our beginnings we have also been the beachtype. Nowadays if I look at the slides from those days, I myself start yawning, which is a clear indication that something is not quite right with the image sequence, so try to get a different approach next time.

Especially for friends and family some really crazy shots are always good for a laugh. The sky is the limit, so get creative. But please keep in mind - it should still look natural - not embarrassing. If you want to give it a go, try to make some posing in the mirror while brushing your teeth in the morning - that gives you a feel how it does look like