Forgot my flash drive at work

Since I forgot My images at work today.
We'll catch up on the story. This was the
old set's we tore down in Oct. They were
about three years old, or six catalogs
worth of shooting.

Construction of the new sets.

  

For the most part nothing is drawn and it evolves building
from my head. This set was actually sketched by one of the
designers while I built the porch. I roughed in the walls
and windows, built the bookcases and the girls did the rest.  

The two finished set's.

And of course, part of the porch. Tomorrow Santa will be
flying in, well at least his sleigh and two reindeer.
Will update then. 

MONDAY, UGH!!!

This is my kind of tree.

Here's the finished tree from Saturday
that the wife was working on.

Unlike 99% of professional Photographers. I
encourage the Designers to take a shot and
see how it's looking. This gif is made of those
images along with my composition and lighting shots.

Friday and Saturday

I arrived Friday morning to find that fall was still the theme of the day

and everyone sneezing because of the hay.

This is a great setup. It not only makes you want
to buy each item it also gives customers an idea
of how to display it in there stores.

When I designed the porch I thought six feet
would be more than enough space. As usual
another two feet would have been better. We
made the columns removable for more space
but it's not that much more.

Now here's something unusual, A Fall tree. 

Turkey table!

Our photo's have a lot more items in them for Christmas 2012
and the pages will have less floating pictures, silhouette's.
We tried this in our Spring 2012 catalog and sales were great.

A little look behind the scenes.

This is our cage. It's where we keep all the
samples to be shot and it's in a cage to keep
the samples department out. You see they have
to supply our four major showrooms and several
Rep rooms with product and they are ruthless. 

This is product that didn't make the cut for 2012 Catalog.
Notice it is outside of the cage and can be freely taken by
the sample department.

Just a sneak peak from Saturday. The
Wife will finish this one up in the morning
and we will have our first of thirty tree's completed. 

Day 2 of my, interesting to myself, blog

So today was a very productive day.

These aren't all of the photos we did, but a good representation.

This catalog will have approximately 1,600 items, be over 300 pages
and it will be completed by mid March. Remember there's only
five of us and I'm the only Photographer.

We have two great designers that work there butt's off.
I happen to be married to the female one.

Here's the finished shot from the picture above. 

Lately the Wife and I have switched places in the morning.
Her and the rest of the crew get there at 6:30 a.m. and get everything
set up. After taking our teenager to school I arrive at work
with plenty of sets decorated and ready to be shot.

Again the finished shot from above.

I do these setup shots with a cheap-o Canon EOS. They are so good at
adjusting the levels automatically and making a pleasing picture.

I'm going to have to adjust my finished Hasselblad CFH photos
as if they were ready for press. They are so flat without tweaking
compared to the Canon ones. 

It's like doing your job at home in your pajamas.
No body knows how messy you look or cares, like our set's. 

As long as the end result is professional.

Let me tell you a little something about us.

We consist of 5 very different people that work together to create two spectacular catalogs a year and a trail of ad's, web shots and anything else needed to help promote the company that we work for. Three of the five are women leaving the other two, and the ones in charge, dudes. Two of the ladies do all of the copy work, the silhouetting and cleaning of images and as of lately layouts. They also can build a mean photo set as you can see here. Set construction started back on Oct 1st. and was finished some where in the middle of December. There is so much to catch you up on in that two and a half months that I'll do that at a latter date and just start with todays project of Fall in January.

So rather than using a pencil and paper.
Here is how we start a shot, remember "Makin' it up as we go along."

The camera is placed, the lighting is tweaked, the items are set, the lighting is tweaked, the items are switched, the lighting is tweaked, this goes on for a good hour, and then your close to the final shot.

After all the fuss. I still think sometimes the behind

the scenes looks cooler than the final photo.

In this case, it's ok. You have to imagine it maybe cropped a little different.
copy all over the page and remember too this is our first photo of the catalog.
were just getting warmed up here!