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question #2 of many – saying no

Posted in COMMERCIAL, EDUCATION, QUESTION OF THE WEEK, WEDDINGS by Amina on Feb 26.

this post is a continuation of the conversation sparked at this year’s WPPI conference. 3 people with the most thought provoking questions win a gift certificate to Vision Art (the book binder we use) for $250!

the question:

from @manstromphoto:
how would you creatively design a spread based around family photos if the couple is insisting on it?
or, worded for the cinematographer:
how would you creatively add one continuous minute of family formal footage to their main feature?
(math is based on one spread out of an average 20 spread book compared with an average 20 minute main feature).

• in short, i wouldn’t. :)

in long, well, it’s not quite as simple. there are a few things to evaluate. please note that these are ISMHO (in SM’s humble opinion) of course!

• when you first show a couple your work, do you show them books that have family formals in them? if so, then you’re kinda setting yourself up for this. it’s all about setting expectations, and if you’re showing ANYTHING in your books (or your website, blog, etc, for that matter) that you don’t want to be doing, you’re setting a precedent that it’s possible.

don’t show what you don’t want to do. do show what you want to do.

heading to madrid tomorrow!

Posted in COMMERCIAL, EDUCATION, NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Feb 24.

so, back from WPPI, a day of sleep, a day at the studio, and tomorrow P and i are off to spain!

oooh. that reminds me! i should try to get an e-upgrade! we fly so much that every so often we get a free upgrade to first class – and it’s especially trips like this that deserve such a treat.

we’re speaking at the BODAf conference in madrid which is being held on the 28th, 29th, and 1st. it’ll be nice to get there a few days early to acclimatize to the time change and the weather [it'll be a balmy 19 degrees (67 farenheit) when we arrive]. it’s rainy and freezing in toronto.

we’re open to suggestions for places to visit while we’re there. we’d love to experience some of the best that Madrid has to offer (including things off the beaten path).

for anyone going to BODAf, here are some of the things we’ll be sharing…

• how stillmotion was born and important things we’ve learned throughout our journey

• following your vision

• photography & storytelling

• making albums that flow like films

• transitioning from photo to cinema

• advanced cinema considerations

• conquering your fear, and getting out there!

we’re super excited and can’t wait for the experience to start! we’ll keep you posted on our adventure!

-amina

question #1 of many – design time

Posted in EDUCATION, QUESTION OF THE WEEK, WEDDINGS by Amina on Feb 23.

during this year’s WPPI conferene in Vegas this past week, i had the honour of hosting a platform talk about the influence that cinema has had on our storytelling on the photo side. we kept getting all of these wonderful questions that night that we decided to keep the ball rolling: we asked attendees to send in more questions via twitter, and we promised to answer them on the blog. we also promised that the authors of the top 3 most interesting, thought-provoking, or inspiring questions would each receive a $250 gift certificate to Vision Art, the book binder that we exclusively use and adore.

GOING TO HUNGARY. NO BULL.

Posted in COMMERCIAL, NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Feb 13.

shortly after the launch of youarenotcattle.com, our new wedding site, we announced that a winner had been chosen for our “no bull” giveaway.

we had asked couples to send us anything and everything about them – their stories, their hobbies, photos, poems, you name it. and after many days of reading countless touching AND entertaining entries, we took it to a vote.

today, we’d like to introduce you to the couple who is “going home” with a photo + cinema collection worth $15,000… Sophie + Jason.

NO BULL // WEDDING GIVEAWAY WORTH $15,000!!!

Posted in COMMERCIAL, EDUCATION, NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Dec 6.

Helloooo Etsy // memories of berlin

Posted in EDUCATION, NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Oct 21.

raise your hand if you hate junk mail! *my hand reaches to the sky*

but there is one piece of “junk mail” (that i’ll call ad mail for this reference) that I actively registered for and get excited to see in my inbox on a daily basis. and that’s the Etsy newsletter, called Etsy Finds.

you could say that i like Etsy, but that would be an understatement. i really appreciate all of the creativity, community, ingenuity, and all of the shopping opportunities that it brings! it opens the doors for creative people to offer up their products to the world. it’s sorta like eBay, but for handmade, carefully crafted items by people who pour their whole selves into their craft.

this past september, Etsy hosted its first ever conference called Hello Etsy. i was a really happy when one of the organizers and i started talking, and when she offered to bring me to Berlin to speak at the event i got suuuuuper excited!

in my previous post about our trip to europe, i mentioned that there was a pretty crazy schedule that led to a whirlwind of travel. but man was it ever fun!

first of all, the second I walked into the room where i’d be presenting, my jaw dropped. i couldn’t believe my eyes. it felt like i was in a vintage military vehicle or something.

it turns out that this whole building used to be an electrical plant back in the day, and i was standing in the control room. it was one of the most unique rooms i’ve ever seen, where I had to look past rusty knobs and levers as i made eye contact with the audience!

[IMAGE BY ETSY LABS]

my talk was about product and promotional photography. it was my hope that i would be able to help shop owners communicate their message with the world more effectively through the use of imagery. for anyone that has ever gone to Etsy’s website, you’ll notice that the entire site is dominated by photographs. with hundreds of thousands of Etsy shops out there, it takes a lot of creativity to stand out.

but it’s not just about taking different kinds of images of your products, it’s about communicating what you’re all about. as you know, our team is all about storytelling. for us, it’s about digging deeper than the aesthetics and finding the message underneath. along with some tips on the nitty-gritty of photography, like adjusting your aperture and how that affects your image in different ways, we talked a lot about making sure you know which message you want to put out there, and how to use the tools you have to do it.

months before the actual conference, when i started thinking about what i wanted to talk about, i found out that one of our previous brides has an Etsy shop. i got in touch with her to see whether she would like my idea…

…that we track her statistics for the next few months, then we get together, redo all of her photography, and see what her statistics do for the next few months following the change.

and thus our journey started.

i found out all about the shop, why it started, why the products that exist exist, and a whole bunch of other characteristics that would inform things like color, lens choice, and the general approach that we would take with the photography. here are some of the things that changed:

her avatar: went from being an image that didn’t communicate much about her personality, products, or store (left image above), went to one that is quirky (much like her), and is consistent with the other new images on the store’s site (right image above).

her thumbnails: became more consistent with the colours of her “brand” and the feel of the site in general. the photography was balanced in such a way that you could clearly see the details of each product even before enlarging. before=left // after=right.

her page: started coming together in a cohesive way that simplified the viewing experience of the shopper. with fewer “distractions”, it’s easier to zero in on what really matters – the product you’d love to hold in your hand. before=left // after=right.

we tracked the stats from may until august, changed all the photos, and tracked the stats up until the conference in mid september. yes, i expected the statistics to improve with the change of images, but I never thought the difference would be so stark.

remember, that all we did was change the photos. well, we changed her banner as well. but that’s it. no extra advertising, no more networking than usual. we tried to keep everything else constant so our results would be as reliable as possible. here are some things we found.

within the first 1o minutes of having uploaded all the photos to her shop, one of her items was already selected to be listed in a recommended treasury. this had only happened a handful of times in the previous 8 months that the shop existed.

within the first 30 minutes, she already had 9 of her items “favoured” by Etsy shoppers.

that day she had 238 visitors to her shop, compared with the 48 she had on the same weekday one week prior.

on the third day, she received an email from a major canadian wedding magazine, weddingbells, wanting to feature her and her shop. the issue comes out in december.

but that’s just the beginning. let’s take a look at the numbers…

between P1 and P2 (the periods before the photo change and after, respectively) there was a huge jump in her store’s visitors. basically, after the new photos were posted, her average number of visitors per day QUADRUPLED.

as an Etsy shopper, you can “favour” items by clicking “add to favourites”. this archives the item in your personal list of favourite listings that you might want to revisit. in P2, about 50% more items were favoured than in P1. note that P2 is a shorter time-frame than P1 too.

after the photos were changed, the number of sales didn’t change all that much. yes, there were 4 more sales in P2 which supported our prediction, but compared with the other two findings, it wasn’t really drastic. but…

look what happened to the average sale! what was happening was that shoppers weren’t only buying the pricier items, but they were adding more things to their cart per order! what does that mean for overall revenue?

her shop made her over double the revenue in less time.

these results got a lot of people at the seminar thinking, not just about their photography, but about their shops in general. were they communicating the right message? were the colors right? what was their avatar saying about them and who they are? a lot of things came into question. those who know me know that i’m big on the question “why”. this is an incredibly powerful question that can strongly affect pretty much every aspect of life, in my opinion anyway. but now i’m getting a little philosophical here… :)

the organizers had some videographers film the presenters in berlin, so people who couldn’t fly to europe would still be able to take part and be able to move forward with the things they wanted to accomplish. if you’re interested in seeing my talk, i’ll be posting a link here as soon as it’s sent to me.

i had such an amazing time, and judging from the e-mails i got from attendees afterwards, it seems that people were able to come away with something valuable.

for those who are interested in checking out the shop, Love & Found that i worked with, click here. and for a peek at her wedding, take a look here for their SDE and here for photos. it’ll probably be familiar to some of you.

hey, and if you happen to buy something from her, you’ll help bring those orange arrows up even higher! :p

-amina

lecture at the toronto camera club

Posted in EDUCATION by Amina on Oct 17.

after having traveled quite a bit for workshops + conferences, i’m really happy to be doing an educational event only 25 minutes from home (by car that is).

it’ll be a short “lecture”, as they’re calling it, about 2 hours long. it’ll be held at the Toronto Camera Club this thursday the 20th from at 8:00 pm.

here’s a quick description of the lecture:

FRIENDS FOR LIFE:
this seminar discusses the personal and professional rewards that come from fostering genuine relationships with our clients. by making an emotional bond, we don’t simply create a comfortable environment for pleasing expressions. we become bombarded with artistic inspiration by the limitless uniqueness of each person. during this lecture we will discuss how to achieve such closeness in a short period of time, and the powerful impact it can have in a wide variety of facets.

-amina

la / provence / berlin / krakow / auschwitz / paris / toronto

Posted in NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Oct 12.

first off, i’d like to warn the readers of this post that there’s an emotional roller coaster told through the images ahead. some fun stuff, but some very somber images indeed.

this post actually only covers a few of the cities above. some, we’ll dive into a bit deeper in upcoming posts. patrick already did a teaser post about our time in provence with the red epic, and i’ll be talking a bit more about the experience at Hello Etsy in berlin in my next post.

so let’s start with LA. i departed for LA on september 11th to be a part of the Beloved Collective, a small conference that revolves around the creation of meaningful imagery. i had the pleasure of speaking among jesh de rox, samm blake, and our labor of love, and meeting some incredible new friends. my talk was called “anatomy of the meaningful image” and i got to speak about my favourite things ever!

the next morning is when the craziness began. here’s how things went from there:

sept 14th 5:30am wake > 6:30am arrive at LAX > 8:00am flight to toronto > 4:00pm land and wait for P + paul at YYZ > 7:00pm depart together for paris CDG > work/sleep/redeye > sept 15th 8:30am land in paris and wait > 11:00am train to avignon > 3:00pm get rental car and drive to provence > 5:00pm arrive and consider napping > 5:05pm start shooting amazing scenics cuz how can you not? > sleep > sept 16th more shooting, pre-wedding events start > sept 17th wedding from 9am to midnight > sept 18th 12:01am pack everything > 1:30am get 30 mins of sleep > 1:30am drive to marseille airport > 3:00am arrive at marseille airport, return car, check in > 6:00am flight departs to berlin > 11:40am land in berlin, get bags, find taxi > 12:00pm taxi to etsy convention venue > 1:00pm setup AV etc > 2:30 my talk on product + promotional photography at Hello Etsy > 4:00pm crash.

essentially from 9:00am on the 17th to 4:00pm on the 18th, we shot a 15 hour wedding, were in 3 european cities, spoke at a conference, all on 30 minutes of sleep.

…and crash we did.

from there, we spent a bit of time in berlin, saw the remnants of the wall, did some exploring, but while we’ve heard really good things about the city… perhaps we were tired, or it just felt off to us. P asked me if i wanted to go to poland. i’d always wanted to go there with him, and being polish myself and having just been in germany, i felt a certain connection with the idea.

so we drove.

while we were there, we stayed just outside of krakow in a small town called wieliczka. it’s a town known for salt mining, so naturally, we had to check out the nearby mine. photos below.

but what interested us most was our trip to oswiecim (auschwitz). after i wrote that line, i sat by my keyboard trying to figure out what i wanted to write next, but nothing came. it’s just that kind of place that silences you.

photos below.

-amina

berlin. very close to Checkpoint Charlie and our hotel.

the berlin wall. left foot in west berlin, right foot in east.

can’t figure out if that’s a good or bad business name…

the east side gallery, berlin wall, where painters from all over the world have expressed through paint.

_________________________________

and then we get to the salt mine in wieliczka…

these are salt crystals (cauliflower crystals) making their way through the stone walls of the cavern.

most of the mine is supported by wooden beams. what looks like snow caked on is really just salt. if you lick pretty much anything in the mine, it’ll taste salty. trust me.

the chapel, hundreds of meters underground. entirely made of salt. those floor tiles aren’t tiles at all. it’s just a flat surface of salt that they carved lines into to make it look like tiles. just as we arrived we found a group of nuns and priests rejoicing in song.

when i say entirely made of salt, i mean it. the chandelier is made of salt crystals, the statues are salt, the walls… everything.

small pools of water deposit crystals on the walls as the water level changes.

the “old town” (stare miasto) of wieliczka. snapped quickly on our way to get REAL pierogies.

walking off the pierogies around the neighbourhood.

small variations along our walk.

the “old town” (stare miasto) of krakow. 6-shot panorama. [click to enlarge]

_________________________________

and then, auschwitz…

these are the actual tracks on which “prisoners” would arrive.

“arbeit macht frei” (“work sets you free”)

prisoners’ “accommodations”

prisoners’ beds. note, there were normally 4 people per cubicle.

another type of “accommodation” for prisoners.

inside. wooden platforms as beds, hollowed concrete as toilets.

“registration” papers.

containers of gas emitting pellets.

spectacles.

prostheses. owners of these limbs were mostly killed first, as they were not considered to be fit for work.

hair brushes, tooth brushes, shoes. no resource was wasted.

part of the registration process was to be photographed (until numbers became too large). most women depicted are nearly bald. their hair was sold to textile companies for the manufacture of products such as mattresses.

the execution wall. firing squads quickly ended lives here.

the soft light of sunset, decrepit crematorium. i hate how nice this looks.

far left: prisoners line up at the stairs. stairs lead down to a room seen in first quarter of the image, where people undress for their shower. halfway point, gas chamber. far right, crematorium. [click to enlarge]

josé bautista // strawberry skies

Posted in COMMERCIAL, NEWS, WEDDINGS by Amina on Sep 8.

it was a pretty awesome day today. justin and i (with the help of andrew from honey & dear) went out for a shoot with jose bautista of the toronto blue jays.

booster juice, canada’s largest chain of smoothie bars, will be airing a commercial involving bautista promoting their (deliciously amazing) smoothies, and we got to be a big part of it!

it was really great working with dale wishewan, the CEO and president of booster juice, who played a huge role in the direction of the piece, and who was just plain NICE. come to think of it, everyone was! a big thanks also goes out to jason johnson of jason ryan creative for giving us this opportunity. looking forward to lots more projects together. :)

-amina

colour palette: i wanted the images hint at a smoothie’s tones but avoided the feminine feel of “pink” by adding cyan in the shadows. cyan helps to balance the shots by adding some “toughness” and “intrigue” to this collection.