For Photographers

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Running a Business

Marketing yourself as a photographer

Alex and I are speaking at a photographers’ conference called WPPM, in less than two weeks. There are several simultaneous sessions and being the person I am, who is afraid of speaking to an audience of five, I decided to put together a video to try and market our session to the delegates. Please, PLEASE, come and listen to us share!

Who better to rope in to act, than Alex?

Details of our session are:

Topic: YOU, unleashed!
Date: Saturday, 14th August 2010 at 11am-12.30pm

We will share the story on how a new brand for photography was launched, the initial marketing and secrets on how we got the word out about the business. Also, you will find out tips and tricks on how the Internet can be harnessed as a vital tool for marketing yourself. If prospects cannot find you, how will you get business?

Oh, we did have a shortage of actresses, so I had to make a clone of myself! Hope you enjoyed the video. Let us know which parts you liked best. We may share a behind-the-scenes clip on how we filmed it, especially on the clones.

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Musings

Beauty Ad

Recently, we did a photo shoot for a beauty product company, and even though the talent (who was one of my previous brides!) was naturally beautiful, we had to do some digital enhancements. For all our wedding & portraiture work, we do some minor touch ups, but not as extensive as this. Would like to share with you a before and after shot for this shoot. The image on the left is taken directly off the CF card with no enhancements. And the image on the right is the digitally touched up one!

What are your thoughts on digitally enhancing images? Are you for, or against it?

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Musings, News

Integricity Visuals is hiring!

Are you an enthusiastic learner who is willing to try out new things? Love design, video editing, animation and all things creative? Integricity Visuals, the company behind the brand Stories is looking for a Digital Artist to join our team! You will get the opportunity to work on corporate and wedding projects, whether it be related to video production or photography. We are looking to hire someone on a full time or contract basis. It would be great if you have at least 1 year of working experience, but fresh graduates are encouraged to apply as well. We use Macs, but if you are a PC user, we welcome you too! (Just that we’ll convert you to be a Mac user really really soon!)

Your role:

Digitally enhance images using Lightroom and Photoshop
Create photo album designs
Video editing using Final Cut Pro
Creating 2D animation in After Effects
Assist in video or photography shoots

Let us know what skills you have and what gear you own by emailing us your CV. On top of that, you can even send us your blog link, Flickr portfolio, Facebook profile, or anything that would help us get to know you better! You don’t need to own expensive gear or have all the skills to join our team… what we are looking for is someone who is willing to learn, fun loving and responsible. You will be based in our office in Centrepoint, Bandar Utama. So, I look forward to seeing your email in my inbox soon… please email me at grace.tan [at] integricity.com.

And just because every single post is cooler with a photo, here’s a random one featuring Alex and Mark!

Grace Tan In For Photographers, International

Accidents while on shoot

I’m still traveling in India on this corporate shoot, but will be glad to return to the comforts of my own home (and a loving husband) soon. While at one of the many construction sites, the 3rd-party strap (but, but it was an uber comfortable neoprene padded one that was supposed to cushion the weight of the camera on my neck!) I was using came undone from the buckle, causing my precious 5D Mark2 to fall with a resounding thud.

I picture it in slow-motion over and over again, wondering if I could have dived in Matrix-style to save it before gravity got the better of the DSLR. What’s done is done, I guess and I’ve resolved to be very, very careful when buying camera accessories.

As a professional, I always carry a backup camera body and for good reason. I would feel a whole lot worse if I let my clients down because I was not well prepared enough. As the scouts would chant, “Be Prepared!”.

Canon, pretty, pretty please get this fixed quickly when I get back, and I hope it won’t burn too big a hole in my pocket.

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Musings

Top 10 Female Wedding Photographers

This June, I was featured alongside 9 other amazing female wedding photographers in FACES magazine. We were dressed in beautiful gowns from That Special Occasion and Pretty in White, and each had to carry our cameras for the pic! The women featured were Fiona Lim, Jenny Sun, Anna-Rina, Evelyn Lam, Naomi Ching, Ning Liaw, Visithra Manikam, Nurul Suhaimi & Fatini Zulnaidi. Taken in The Professional Gallery’s studio, make up & hair by Michelle Touche team and photographed by Peter Tan. And thanks to Fiona for these scanned images of the mag!

For those of you getting married, do get a copy of FACES magazine this June 2010! They have awesome prizes to give away, including a RM5,000 diamond engagement ring, loan of a Mazda 2 for a lucky couple’s wedding day, a 3-tier wedding cake, over RM1500 in dining vouchers, AND a 5-day, 4-night honeymoon to Monaco, which includes airfare, hotel stay and a helicopter ride around the state! Wow that sounds amazing!

Basically, you have to keep the receipt to be eligible to enter. Closing date is 15 July 2010. FACES is available at MPH, Borders and Popular bookstores. Here’s the cover and my feature page.

Here are some behind the scenes shots that I took on that day. Since our photo sessions were split according to group, I only have photos with my group of girls. I think this shot of me getting ready was taken by Fiona, if I remember correctly!

Here’s Anna goofing around as usual! :)

And Fiona doing her usual pose while Jenny looks on… Thought bubble: “What’s Fiona doing!!???”

Darn I look short next to these girls. :P Now where’s my non-existent 4 inch heels!?

In the meantime while we were doing silly shots, Evelyn was posing for Peter.

My turn!

Here’s a shot with Michelle and Summer who did the make up and styling for the shoot.

And Patrick… who was our official iPhone photographer! I think we kept bombarding him with iPhones “Please take a behind the scenes shot with our iPhone!”.

It was a fun time. Now stop reading this blog post and go get yourself a magazine, and a trip to Monaco as well!!