It has been a while since I last posted on here. I have come to the conclusion that a blog about my everyday life isn’t really that interesting! So, me and my friend Graham (Let Me Rephase That) have decided upon creating a new blog focused (no pun intended!) upon our photography! I think this will be much more enjoyable for people to read and for me to contribute to! So please do check it out, much of my business related news will be added to that blog, so if any of you have been following that, the new blog will be the place to keep up with the news!

The link to the new blog will be added to the right hand side and is also right here: www.ceublog.co.uk.

Not really sure what will be happing with this blog yet. I may keep it and update from time to time, or it may disappear!

Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy the new blog Compose, Expose, Upload!

It has been a while since I have posted a blog! I have been busy relaxing and doing some paid work since finishing uni! Got my results through and got a 2:1, which I’m really pleased with!

Since my last posting a have made some improvments to my website, the link to which can be seen down the right hand side! I have added lots of the pictures from the last wedding that I photographed. These pictures are easily the best ones that I have taken. I plan on making some more adjustments soon and I will be adding a portrait section to the site as well. Portraits are something that I’m looking to expand upon and do more of! So if you want some portraits done please contact me!!!

The main reason for this blog is to test out the new wordpress blog application that has now come out on the iPhone! It seems to be a good application that does everything needed to write a full blog! As for the phone, it is amazing!! The applications that you can get on it are really good! The games are also very good with some really good uses for the touch and motion controls! I highly recommend the phone to everyone!!

I will hopefully keep my blog more up to date from now on and keep you all posted on what is going on with my business and life in general!

The lack of posting has come as I have had a very busy few weeks since finishing my uni work! Which is odd as I thought I would have more time once all my work was finished! I had my girlfriends birthday and party, followed by moving out from my university accommodation, which then lead to attending my girlfriends uni summer ball in Roehampton and then I had to rearrange my room and get it ready for the next phase in life! All of this was combined with the arrival of my new mac pro and 30 inch screen!! This computer is really nice!!! This screen is amazing for editing pictures!

The last couple of weeks have been really good and I have had a great time. Everything has been such fun and I am glad to be free from the constraints of uni! All though I miss my friends from uni, I am really looking forward to the next phase of life. Setting up in business will be good fun and I am really looking forward to getting some bookings and photographing some weddings. In the mean time though I need to find a temporary job to earn some money to pay for my expenses! Hoping to find work in a photographic shop if I can. If not, I am not really sure where I will look!

I am also going to be updating my website shortly and try adding a new slideshow to the home page. After the stress of the first slideshow (see below!) and the issues it had in IE, I am hoping I can find a good solution. Considering using flash to create the slideshow, not sure though as this would require loading times. I will have another look at Javascript but not sure I will be able to find a better one than the last one that I used the first time around. If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

The work is nearly over! I only have a 2 things left to do, both of which won’t take much time. I have an exam on Monday morning! The exams on the course are relatively straight forward and don’t require huge amounts of revision. Once the exam is out of the way it just leaves a business project to do. This won’t take to much time either! It will be a create feeling to have finished uni!

With one set of work out of the way another must begin! I will be trying to find a temporary full time job for the rest of the this year whilst I advertise my business and gain some bookings. Full time in wedding photography could be a year or two away yet and a good job to pay the bills will be helpful. Ideally looking for a job in a camera shop or some other retail that interests me.

Its been a while since I last wrote a blog! This is down to my major project deadline, which was on the Monday just gone! I managed to get everything done that I needed to, along with some stuff that I didn’t need too! The few little extra bits that I added should help raise my mark up a bit

Now that the main work for the major project is done, I can relax a little bit and enjoy some time that when I do not have to work. I still have 3 deadlines to meet, the first of which is next Tuesday. This is for my evaluation of my major project! This evaluation needs to be between 3000 and 4000 words. It shouldn’t be that hard to write and most likely will not take that long either!

Most of my non posting time was spent on the major project and as such nothing really interesting happened! The most exciting event was my sisters wedding. Which was a really great day, although it was a tad on the cold side! I was the photographer for the day and it was great fun and I got some really nice pictures! Some of the pictures I took can be seen on my website (on the right in the links!). The gallery contains 12 of my favourite pictures and I also updated a few of the pages backgrounds with pictures from the day. I believe these pictures will really help me sell my work and they demonstrate the type of photographs that I am capable of taking. Once all my uni work is out of the way I will be putting a lot of effort into marketing the business and trying to get some bookings!

Since my run in with Internet Explorer the other I have felt a little unmotivated towards work. This, however, isn’t solely Microsoft’s fault. I was looking into getting my business cards printed and decided upon what company I was going to use (www.printing.com). I signed up for a sample pack which arrived very quickly and was full of great samples. Really glad I asked for it as its great to feel all the different paper types! I know that sounds a little odd, but the feel of the business card is almost as important as the design of it! However, problems arose when I was reading their guide to printing. It tells you how to go about setting a document up for print and explains all the necessary steps that need to be taken to ensure a correct print. This is where things get complex so bare with me!

Printers use a colour system known as CMYK, this stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These colours are then printed on top of each other at varying percentages to produce all the colours ever in the whole universe! OK I made that last bit up but it can produce most colours! That in itself isn’t a huge problem, however a computer screen uses the RGB system, which stands for red, green and blue. Everyone should know from art classes that these can make every other colour! So the problem was that the business card I had made was in RGB and needed to be in CMYK. You can change colour spaces in Photoshop however this doesn’t solve the problems! The business card is black, now in RGB black is black! but in CMYK black isn’t the same. The RGB black is infact made up of all four inks which makes it unpractical to print, as too much ink on a page is bad and the document might not dry properly! The other issue with doing black is it can do something know as banding. This is where the colour has visible lines running through it. For this reason they tell you to use ‘rich black’ on large black areas. ‘Rich black’ is made up of black and cyan which makes it a dark blue, at least on the computer screen! The red I was using was also using all 4 inks isn’t great and I use small text in the design which could also be bad for printing! There are also areas that you can’t place objects in as they may get cut off when the cards are cut to size!

What this all means is that I had to re do the business card in a new CMYK Photoshop file! Changing the black to ‘rich black’, moving stuff in from the edges, and trying to make the text a bit bigger! This is very annoying and I have been putting off doing it as I was a little annoyed, at myself mainly, for not thinking about this stuff before I designed it! I have tonight been able to concentrate on it and get it finished and hopefully ready for printing. Will find out when the printing company take a look at the files.

I have also had some trouble with a phone number for the business as well. I am currently using my brothers old contract (very good deal!) and as such using his old phone number. He would like his contract back soon to trade it in and hopefully get some upgrade credit. This then means I will lose the number that I’m currently using. So I don’t want to put my current number on my business card as I could end up with 100’s of useless business cards once I lose the number! So I have decided to get a pay as you go sim and put it in another phone and have two phones for a while! This means that I will be able to transfer the pay as you go number onto a new phone and contract once I get one! The problem was finding a phone to put the sim in! I have two old phones but one seems to be completely broken and the other one is missing its charger! Both are therefore completely useless to me! I have now acquired a phone that I can use and can now go and get a new sim card! Which sounds much more complex now than it used to be! You used to walk into a phone shop and pay for a sim and stick it in any phone but now you have to register the phone to sim to be able to use it!! Seems pointless to me but never mind!

Anyway I have rambled on enough for today. Sorry for the heavy going bit in the middle and the length!

I now have an official loathing of Microsoft web browser Internet Explorer! If you are using this browser then please do the Internet and world wide web a big favor and use a better browser! One such as Mozilla Firefox or Apple’s Safari, even Netscape explore is better! So please visit one of the links below and download a new browser!

My issues with Internet explorer have been a long time in development! This is down to web design, I would nearly always guarantee that if you design a complex website then it will have major issues working in IE. It happened to me last year when building my site for my second year project and it has now happened to me again with my new site for my company. It has now forced me to comprise the look of my site. Those of you that looked at my website before 3.10am  this morning will have seen the better version of the site, the home page featured a fading picture slideshow to give some movement to the home page. This has now had to go, which is something that has pissed me off highly! The problem is that IE for a reason completely unknown cannot display this slideshow in the right place. I have tried the site in three different browsers and not one of them had an issue displaying it in its rightful place! But IE refuses to do so and believe me when I tell you I have tired to get it in the right place! 2 and a half hours of trying to be precise! I’m still none the wiser as to why its where it is or how to fix it! I have been through everything that I can think of and nothing has changed it!

As a result of IE complete and utter uselessness I have had to remove the slideshow and just have 1 static image displaying on my home page. I might try and fix it again tomorrow but have so much other stuff I want to do that I most likely won’t bother. I would completely ignore IE if I could but it, unfortunately, is the most used web browser in the world and as such ignoring it would be a highly stupid business decision. So instead I have to hate my home page, which now seems dull and pointless just because IE sucks!! I’m so annoyed at the moment, I wanted it to be perfect and It now isn’t

Please still visit it though and tell everyone you know about it! (link on the right and in the last blog) While you tell everyone about my website tell them to visit one of the sites below as well and download a new browser! Maybe we can win the web back from the useless browser!!

Firefox

Safari

Netscape

I have finally got my website finished! I have also sorted out domain name and hosting! My hosting is done via my best mate graham and his friend who have been very helpful! Check the link to the right (riconian) if you’re in the market for someone to host your site! To finish it all off I have uploaded the site to world wide web for all to see! So please go visit and tell your friends and family! Link will be on the right under links and is below!

Andrew R Hall Photography website (www.arhallphotography.co.uk)

Good news on the Xbox front, got a new one! Not played it yet but hoping it works fine!!

Went to the bluewater shopping center the other day, was shopping for jeans (got 2 pairs!). Bluewater is a fair distance away but was on the way back from getting my xbox sorted! There are 2 other reasons that I like bluewater and they are the Apple store and the other is the Lego store! They are two of the coolest shops in the world! Thats of topic, the main reason I bring it up is I’m trying to decide what screen to get for my Mac Pro that I plan on buying before I leave uni. I’m looking at the Apple Cinema Displays and trying to decide between getting one 30inch screen which will be great for viewing my pictures on as they will be huge! The other option I have is 2 23inch screens, which is again big and I will be able to see my pictures very well. I had a go with both in the Apple store and whilst looking at the 23inch I was thinking this is a big screen and is great to look at! But then I had a go with the 30 and the 23 seemed tiny!! I think I’m still leaning towards the two screen set up as it should be a bit more efficient to work with! Two 30’s would be ideal but that will not be happening!

Yesterday, well this morning I posted about blue toning images and uploaded a sample picture that I had blue toned. One of my best friends (Graham – see ‘Let me rephrase that’ link on the right) pointed out that they too possibly too blue. So I set about making them less blue! The result can be seen below. I would appreciate anyones opinion on which they prefer and which that would rather buy!!

Friday morning was the end of my last shift at Sainsbury’s. The night was ok, though the managers don’t always appreciate the the amount of effort you put in. Never mind, is over now.

Now that that work has been finished, I can start finishing my major project. Website is currently under going it’s final tweaks (waiting for my galleries to export will I type this!). Once I’ve added the galleries to the site, I will just need to add the meta data to the template page. Will be buying domain and hosting tomorrow. Will post when it is online!

Once the site is down there is much more that I can do. Starting with my stationary stuff, display stand, and picture portfolio. Then will move onto a few more bits and pieces that will add value to the overall project. Things such as leaflets, contracts, keepsake cards, thank you cards, DVD cover designs and a slideshow! On top of all this I need to get some stuff printed as well and only four weeks till it’s due in!

I have now also finished the wedding photography book that I mentioned before, Contemporary Wedding Photography. Was a really good read and picked up loads of tips that will really help me when it comes to shooting a wedding. One thing that I have just been doing for my wedding gallery is blue toning. This is similar to sepia toning however using a blue tint as apposed to a orangey tint. Sepia toning can look nice, however it is a little dated now I think. Blue toning looks more contemporary and thus something that goes well with photography at this point in time. Below is a sample blue tone that I have done for my wedding gallery on my site…

Anyway back to finishing the site!