General Photography Observations, Instructions, and Information about Vintage Cameras and Photographic Techniques from this Photographer's Unique Historical Perspective Spanning Fifty Years Experience within Various Genres. Includes posts: Vintage camera information, Old cameras, Single Lens Reflex Cameras, Cameras, Twin Lens Reflex Cameras, TLR, Medium Format, 6x6, 4x4, 120 film, 127 Film, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollieflex, Japanese, German, Super Slides, 4x4, TLR, Medium Format Rangefinder, Range finder, Large Format. Photographer Douglas Patrick Wright Provides an Interesting Personal Slant with his Personal Insight Into Half Century of Personal Photography Experience Including his own Transition from Film to Digital. Although never intended as such this Weblog has become an important Resource in its Own Right Regarding Vintage Cameras--as Consulted by Photographers, Historians, and Collectors, Due in Part to the Photographer's Personal Use and Period Comments.
This Post mostly excepted from my eBay store description of this series of cameras I just listed.
Here is a chance to acquire three collectible Voigtlander Viewfinder Cameras.
Three Wonderful Vintage Cameras from My Personal Collection: These are from the 1950s to 1960s Voightlander Viewfinder 35 mm Cameras
What marvelous old cameras. They are compact yet heavy and made to precision instrument standards not much found anymore. These finely crafted instruments capture a golden era of German design and mechanical manufacturing at its finest. The cameras are made by an associate company of the famous German lens and camera maker and megacorporation--Zeiss-Ikon.. These three models came out of the 1950s and 1960s.
Voigtlander is an ancient optics company (began in the mid 1700s) that was making fine lenses for a hundred years prior to being among the first makers of cameras in the middle of nineteenth Century. The dominate much of the fine camera and lens business during the hundred years leading up to the production of these cameras. Over the years they shared many business arrangements with Zeiss and Zeiss-Ikon; they were finally bought out by Zeiss-Ikon during the mid-fifties. Established photographers when I was just a budding photographer in the sixties revered Voigtlander products. Although I never used their products as a professional, I have admired the workmanship of these cameras I have collected--and the era they represented.
Many of the clever design features are typical of fine-German engineering of the era. The bodies are sleep and ergonomic. You won't just accidentally discover the retractable rewind unless you curiously stumbled upon the in-obvious button that pops it up. You may not easily be able to figure out how to open the film back, and you may not readily understand how the shutter gets wound. These cameras are as amazingly crafted as any fine watch of the era. Fortunately, you can find and download the operator manuals for each. Please note: Before you incorrectly conclude that any of these types of cameras not working via the usual look and listen tests of the shutter and what-not, make sure that you understand how they work. The designers seemed to take joy in making the controls simple, sleek, functional--but not always obvious. One can feel stupid after learning the "tricks" of these cameras. More than a few of these cameras have been discarded as broken because of a failure to understand their nuances. For example, the shutter on some models will not cycle and cock without film tensioning the wind sprocket (or being manually depressed while the back is open). Or, with some models, you will likely never figure out how to release the back and/or realize that a rewind knob pops up to facilitate easy film rewinding. The shutter will not trip even after being cocked unless film is in the camera or the film counter has been manually reset on the bottom. But once you know them, these features become appreciated as pure genius.
The relatively fast 50 mm two.eight Voigtlander lenses used in these cameras are extremely sharp and fine examples of the Prontar shutters in conjunction with the Lanthar lens algorithm of vintage lenses. These algorithms were closely guarded secrets.
Vitomatic I Appears in great shape and passes all the mechanical tests. I am not sure about the selenium light meter which requires matching needles; Selenium has been known lose photo-sensitivity over time, but I don't know what the useful life of Selenium is. Vito C Metal top cover is loose. Look at the pictures carefully. I think all that is missing are the screws, but a black plastic spacer under the front of this cover may also be missing, as the other models have one. I think this camera works, but it needs the screws to be functional.) Vito CL Passes all the mechanical tests. Body is in great shape. The cover is solid, but somewhat discolored.
You can see pictures at this link until I get them posted here.
Although it may seem obvious to some, increasingly, it is not; I am sometimes quizzed by those heirs to the digital world who did not cut their photographic teeth on film cameras or even the earlier digital cameras regarding the use of manual functions such as exposure, aperture settings, and focus. Coming from the ancient world preceding greater electronic technology in cameras, it is second nature to me since it at one time was the only way available. But this is intended neither to disparage the younger crowd, nor to imply that I do not fully enjoy the increased versatility afforded by the latest and greatest technology. I am, was, in season, a hearty technology buff and often among the first to try new features whenever it was offered. I have been less so in recent years, not for want, but for practicality. I cannot always justify and even less frequently fennigle the use of the newest stuff. I might could, but I don't.
Still, I will answer this question of manual feature usage with a few examples. I am not saying that there are not other work-rounds or that these are the best ways to get from point A to point B, but in some cases it may be exactly the best way. The first case in point will default to a common automatic point and shoot with manual override capabilities and the second will be a more sophisticated camera that offers both a full range of automatic settings as well as manual capabilities.
I was going to comment about these, but is it really necessary? I rest my case. However I will add to my endorsement of a couple of other hybrid features. Manual focus with a mode that allows you to tweak and adjust minutely after the auto-focus is done, is useful--however, it does not replace completely manual focus. Here's why. What we used to call Zone Focusing, relies on either a scale on the lens barrel that corresponds to the aperture setting, indicating what is in acceptable focus at any given f/stop. It is especially useful in fast-moving photography such as sports.
It is easy to use with or without a scale on your lens. You simply manually focus on an object at about the same distance that you want to shoot a scene at--one that will fill the frame and show the action as it comes within a given range. You then choose the smallest aperture setting (largest aperture number) that provides a shutter speed that sufficiently stops the action. You then wait until the action is within that range, pan with the motion, and shoot. The farther depth-of-field provided by the small aperture opening maximizes the depth of field.
I have recently used this method to photograph dragonflies in mid-air. The reason the autofucus with manual tweaking does not work well while using this technique, is that it takes too much time refocusing and does not settle down quickly enough for you to tweak. Straight Manual Focus works best for this.
Another consideration is the exposure. Depending upon the sophistication of your camera, the exposure might best be preset for the area where you expect to take the pictures. Doing this manually may be the best choice. You may just have to experiment. If the auto-exposure is up for the task, it can really be helpful. But it may also have a hard time trying to guess what effect you are going for.
Manual adjustments to provide a good combination for freezing action versus gaining greater depth-of-field and working in lower light situations are important concepts to understand, although, increasingly, presets provide for more situations using quickly settable icons. The way I use these icons are usually not for what they were intended or suggested to be used for. but it does not matter. If you understand the concepts behind why the settings work, and/or if you experiment to discover exactly what these settings do, you can then file that info away in your mind and use them under whatever conditions they work for your needs. I use these setting to cheat for simplicity and quickness quite a lot. I like presets for this reason, although there seems to always be times when manual settings work better.
Okay, so I like the first try with the free offer. I expanded the book to 12x12 amd more and bigger pictures, edited text, and forty pages. I ordered several more copies. I did not want to go hawg wild as we say here in the South, without seeing a finished book. They did hteir job, but I am not too confident of my own proffreading abilities. Stranger things have happened than ME making such mistakes. This is a good example of a company putting their money where their mouth is. They also piggy-backed another half-price coupon that I used.
I got the trial photo book back from Shutterfly. I had an offer for a free book. I got a hardback 8x8 with the twenty pages offered of a recent scenic float trip of the nearby Ghost River my sons took me on for a Father's Day gift. All I paid for the book was postage. Using Shutterfly's onboard software, the book was a cinch to layout. The turnaround was a matter of days and I had it in hand before I thought much more about it.
I am impressed sufficiently that I doubled the number of pages to forthy and added pictures to flesh out the book in the 12x12 hardback format and ordered half-dozen copies--for which I will pay list price less 20% from a coupon I got in the mail today. These guys are great marketers, but mostly the product is as advertised, an increasingly rare find.
I will gift each of my sons as well as our river guide friend with a copy, keep a copy for my coffee table, and place one on consignment at a country store near the river where kayakers stop. I may also provide a copy with the local library. I will imprint an email and web order URL in the book. This is all part of a continued postcard marketing effort that I first began dabbling in nearly forty years ago. I can surely tell you that it is a much easier prospect today then it was then. There is always a market for good scenic postcards by those who exercise a bit of enterprise making them and selling them wholesale.
Shutterfly's offer worked for them too. I will be ordering more books. I have a good dozen picture books of various photographic themes that I have long had in the making. Their freen photo book offer got me off of dead center and has brought those projects to the forefront so effectively that they are likely to actually get done this summer--likely within the next couple of weeks.
My earliest photographs were oriented toward storytelling. My mom was a writer. My dad was an advanced amateur photographer back in a day when photography was the high-tech photography of choice of the technically-inclined. Life Magazine, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post were picture vehicles that told the news in storied form with pictures. I had aspirations of becoming one of those photographers. Little did I understand that that particular medium would be so fleeting. Televison and moving photography supplanted them before I was even an adult. But I had already become a committed photographer for several newspapers. A savvy old newspaper editor taught me the importance of each photograph "telling a story".
I adapted my story pictures to my own stylized portraits of life in snapshots. People liked this style well enough for me to support my family for a good number of years, until I evolved and moved on to another aspect of my career. Still, I almost habitually seek to capture the life stories that unfold around me. The commonplace inevitably becomes cherished memories. Digital technology is especially adaptable for capturing our life stories.
There is something about freezing a moment in time for our later reflection that is lost in video capture. The ease of keeping an ongoing journal as it happens, along with our written thoughts, that makes it seem unimaginable to not participate in this process.
I sometimes fancy that these images and thoughts will mean something to future generations and perhaps help them in some way to not have to repeat the same mistakes that we make--or even give them a leg-up legacy of what did work--a blueprint of sorts for how to live effectively. I think artists have had similar aspirations since it all began. Else, what does it matter? I think we have a good shot now of succeeding in this. But I have always been an optimist.
The online marketing tools are in full bloom for any enterprising photographer. I just put together a photo book to try out a free promo for an 8x8 book using some of the same pictures I used in my previous post about The Ghost River, Wolf River float trip I took. It looks good online and it was easy enough. I could not get the promo code to come back up in the offer so I could plug it in after spending the time opening an account, choosing the photographs, and writing text to fit the text boxes--and I thought I had been had.
I opened a Chat dialog, but Rabish (Out-Sourced again) could not help me unless I had--guess what--a promo code from the offer. Then in an amazing stroke of good fortune and memory, I remembered that I had had the foresight to copy the promo code--and it was still in the clipboard. I tried it and it worked. The postage was reasonable. I hope the book is nice. If it is, I will reorder sufficient to gift each of my sons a copy and give one to the young guy that served as our guide. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Shutterfly is a big outfit and I am sure this kind of thing is old-hat to many. But I just have never used them much. I plan to. I am going to attempt to plug in source code they provided for sharing the online book and an offer now. I hope it works.
BTW,
those fuzzy disks of out of focus light points in the background are
examples of something about which much to do is sometimes made regarding
not much--usually among very techy photographers while discussing the
finer merits of lenses. The term BOKEH
is thought to be an aberration of a Japanese word that does not quite
translate to English. But Bokeh is sometimes used within these
discussions as a judge of the desirability of lenses. This old recycled
Minolta 80-300 zoom lens with 2x teleconverter affixed to a Sony NEX5
body is an unusual marriage of analog and digital technology that
provides marvelous technology on-the-cheap.
It passes the bokeh test in
my book, although the starkness of the bokeh pattern is not accurately
displayed due to the lower resolution of the image displayed here versus
the high-res of the image as captured. This inadvertent manipulation of
the digital raster can also result from raster noise when using higher
ISO settings with digital cameras--as the quality falls off roughly
equivalent to the way apparent grain similarly increases with film. I
sometimes use the effect intentionally to emphasize such things a water
drops in macro images as the undetermined flower pic I posted a few
posts ago.
Everything can become a tool if you know when and how it
happens. This is part of the quest. At high resolution these bokeh dots
appear much softer--making the lens nice for portraits and such where
you might want an unobtrusive bokeh in the background. Knowing just a
little physics can help a photographer who must operate on a budget.
Read previous blog posts for more of my own slant on all such issues.
There are subtle differences in the displayed appearance of these two seperate images. In upcoming posts I will also discuss how such features as Dynamic Rage Optimization DRO settings can take three different images within fractions of seconds of one antoher and combine them to good effect for such photographs.
I found myself posting advice as it was requested on a Facebook photography page regarding family portraits including off-lease dogs. I realized that this may interest my readers--AND that it might require more space than would be prudent on FB. I copied and pasted what I wrote. I will add to it when I get a few minutes later.
I love dogs and I have always enjoyed working with families with dogs large or small or multiples in combination. They are certainly challenging. I am now largely retired, but I do actually miss this kind of work. I prolly don't have to tell you that dogs are unpredictable. Being a "dog person" may help, but the key in my estimation lies primarily in the owner's ability to control their pets. Assign them this responsibility with some discussion ahead of time. Don't get snookered into owning this responsibility as it is not yours--ever--unless maybe you are a professional dog handler or have one working for you. On the other-hand, just as with working with kids may require a trick or two, working with dogs may too. ~ Actually some of the same techniques may work with dogs as well--such as using a special whistle or sound or meow or bark or squeak-toy to get an expression or their attention when everyone else is ready. Break sessions into multiple briefer attention periods--even if it requires several. ~ Be realistic regarding time, not making the entire session too long, but neither boxing yourself in with too little time or undue pressure to get finished. By properly prepping your people subjects about your directing cues and expectations in advance and reminding them just prior to the shoot, you can get them all helping you, sometimes by NOT helping you; let the assigned family member ALONE get the animals generally positioned, and then leaving it to you to gain the attention for individual shots. ~ Monitoring their own expressions and eyes on your or wherever you want them will be up to the people, while you monitor and direct the pet's attention with your noises and what-not. Get odds working in your favor by taking numerous shots--by "feel"--as well as utilizing burst shutter release features after some. Edit the results heavily, eliminating any marginal shots prior to showing them.
Basic knowledge of dog's social pack instincts may help you manage a photo shoot involving them. Dogs often fit into the family pack in such a way that they recognize one or more family hierarchy with the Alpha and Beta male or females being the head honcho. If one family member has primary care or ownership over the dog, this person may be held in a higher level of authority by their pet. Although these dynamics can often be determined by observation, it is a good idea to ask ahead of time who feeds the dog(s) or who it" belongs" to. Male or female animals sometimes have a more protective nature over the opposite sex family member whom they regard as their immediate superior--and they often show protective natures towards children in general. Dog will generally show protective behavior over any member of the family. It is wise to ask if these pets ever aggressive toward strangers.
There is a whole discussion that could be had regarding properly directing your subjects. But in this post suffice it to say that you should keep your hands off of your subjects. Rarely, upon gaining permission, it may be okay to lightly touch a subject on the shoulder or arm or poke them lightly with a knuckle in the small of the back while positioning them, but it is best to convey your wishes by example. Learn to turn you own body in sympathetic direction mimicking how you want them to pose--turned in the same direction as they are, in order to make it right-reading to them. Any touching or even moving close to them may be met by their dogs as hostile behavior and they may respond in kind.
If you are lucky, the family dogs will be socialized to regard anyone who has gained favor of the family as okay--but be aware that protective behavior is natural and may even surprise family members.Just watch them to read their reactions. Once you have determined the pack dynamics as much through the dog's eyes as you feel you can, try to position the dogs next to one or more of the family members most likely to command the dog's respect. The exception to this might be if the dog is so enamored by the unusual attention of being next to the pack leader that the dog is distracted and constantly is turning tor looking oward this person. The following dynamics may help explain this tendency.
My dad liked animals well enough, but having been raised during the Great Depression, Dad had a different perspective regarding the role of animals. Dad trained hunting dogs during his lifetime. Dogs served a useful purpose. He was never mean cruel to them, but he did not often exhibit loving behavior toward them or pet them unless he was specifically conveying approval. He seldom even spoke to our family pets. Dad would have just as soon kept all dogs outside, but due to extremes in weather, it became necessary at times for our outside dogs to become inside dogs if they were to be kept by us. Still, with my dad, dogs had very specific boundaries while when kept inside.
Dad seldom spoke or showed any other attention to these dogs unless he was gruffly correcting or issuing commands to them. Our dogs often did not know how to act around Dad, so they usually avoided him or would lay down behind his chair or well out of his way. Dad did not feed the dogs, the kids or Mom did. Dad was a calm man of few words, and yet their was never any mistake as to who was the Alpha dog in our pack. When Dad came home from work, any dogs we had became animated and obviously happy to see him, even though he seldom even acknowledged them. And yet our dogs seemed as if they would have nervous break-downs trying to please him whenever he spoke to them.
I used to wonder why, since my siblings and I were all about taking care of the dogs and feeding them and playing with them or taking them outside when necessary, the dogs adored my dad so much. They jumped to please him. This is an example of pack behavior. Our dogs instinctively knew who called the shots, who was boss, and who they owed their ultimate allegiance to. They observed our usually obedient behavior when Dad asked us to do something. The dogs also knew that Mom had authority over us--and them. Mom was outwardly kind to the dogs, and her higher pitched tones and softer voice may also have been perceived as less authoritative, but the dogs still knew that they'd best behave when she spoke to them.
Understanding such canine pack behavior can help understand how the mere proximity of certain members of the family may affect a dog's posing behavior. You can use this to your advantage. You don't have to be a dog trainer or a dog psychologist, but being aware of such dynamics can be used to your advantage while directing family portraits when family dogs are involved. If you position one of the care- givers such as the children next of the dog, he or she may be best equipped to manage the dog without unduly distracting it.
As I mentioned previously, you cannot count on a dog's attntion span to be very long. I have often refered to the advisability of grabbin g whatever initial shots as you can when covering rare new situations or other unusual events. I have probably cited an instance before when my wife and I were staying in a primitive campground A-frame Cabins just outside of Denali Park in Alaska. It was in late June so the daylight hours were very long. We had enjoyed a good day of adventure and good food at the only restaurant in miles and had slept soundly until something woke me up in the wee hours of the morning. It was dusky daylight and the perfect weather was perfect. I looked up to see a big face moose face peering at us through the front side window.
As a young photographer I used to imagine such events and practice for them. I would practice changing film with different kinds of cameras with one hand with the camera in my lap as I drove. I would do the same blind-folded until I new every click and nuance of every camera I owned in order to be prepared for unexpected news events that might present themselves. But by this time, I was older, and not reliant upon my photography for a living. I was on vacation and I had long-since reconciled that I some life moments could go by without constantly ruining everyone else's time with my compulsion to record everything through my camera lens. But I had not given up on keeping a camera with me during such times.
I worked for Canon as an Area Sales Manager at this time, and I had somehow snagged a pretty nice little Canon point-and-shoot film camera that i tried to keep with me constantly. I had not rehersed all the nuances of its operation as I once made a practice--but by this poi/nt in my life I was an seasoned photograPehr who had seen m y share of action in the field and I suppose once you rehearse for things like that and establish certain basic procedures, you don't just forget them--so in that sense I suppose that my instincts were still intact.
Without thinking much, I did what I had trained myself to do. I siezed the first shots without much concern for details. I moved very little to keep from startling the moose andI took a few shots, but she was still spooked and began to trot off. I got up and followed. I don't recall if I put pants and shoes on or not. There were only a few other guests the campground and no one else was up, so I may not have. But I know that I would ahve been making the necessary adjustments to the little compact canon camera to make sure I got the best pictures I could. But come what might, I had gotten something to remember preserve this event to corroborate this fun story life story. By then I saw that the cow had a calf nearby. Who knows what drives a wild moose to look through a remote A-frame window near Mount Mckinley, but when it happens, you cannot take very long fiddling with the camera, if you expect to get any picture at all.
This approach, to a less urgent degree, is how I approach most photographic events--with the thought that nothing much in life repeats itself exactly--so you have to grab what you can while it isbeing presented. It may get better, but it often goes to heck very quickly. This is not an observation that i can claim as my own, also I learned it for myself. It is a derivation of the those principles sometimes called Murphy's Law--one of which is that if anything can go wrong it will. Honestly I am an optomist, but a certain orientation in reality can prepare you to, well, prepare yourself. Being thusly prepared, you may in fact be able to minimize many initially fated poor outcomes. When it comes to photographing anything, especially subjects as unpredictable as a mixture of dogs and people, you'll want to get some shots behind you before you start tryin g to orchestrate aligning the Moon with the Sun and the Stars. The latter is an ideal for which you will always want to strive, but you must start with where you are at the moment and build on that.
With this mind-set, realize that the more live subject that you have in any given group portrait, the less are your odds of capturing all of them in even one photograph with an expression suitable to each one of them--much less all of them together. This can be prtally helped by taking many frames and limiting the numbers of changed sets.
By giving more thought than you may usually do in advance about the placement of your subjects within the setting and using available props, you can limit the amount of time changing poses and rearranging the group and a,low more time for taking more frames of each pose. This is always important, but it becomes essential when working with the limited attention spans of the animals. Take advantage tot the tendency that animals will have to settling-in sitting or lying at the feet or standing between the appropriate family mebers. The fewer gross changes in the set you have to do the better. You always want to think through and give due consideration for enhancing the positive qualities of your subjects and deemphazing those qualities about which they may be sensitive such as wieght and size when considering placement, but the more of this you can do in advance of the session will facilitate efficient use of time and movement when it is most critical. It will help you to work fast.
For example, as with any group, sub-sets that may be desired such as the children only should flow into one another until the whoe group is assembled and then end the session. The parents only, or parents with each child individually--should be minimized when possible or certainly steamlined into as few movements as possible--such as first the kids, add the dogs, add Mom and Dad and end--instead of the whole family, with the dogs, then the children with the dogs, then the whole family again without the dogs, or the kids without the dogs. Start with the fewest subjects and then build onto it. Just think it through in that way--in advance.
Other caveats include, realizing that if you whistle or smack or otherwise seek to engage a dog to get its attention may also be accidentally calling the dog over to you. This can happen when you spend the time gettin gthe grop together in the correct position, carefully add the dogs, get the right position, provide the correct directions, and then in an effort to get the dog to look at you, you smack or whistle--and the dog thinks you are calling him and off he goes to lick your hand. You have to go through gettin g the dog back in place. This can often happen anyway. If it does, it does. Be prepared. Be patient. But try to consider the effect each of your actions could have in advance.
In the end, it is what it is--as it has become popular to say. Preparation and planning always makes it better. Sometimes it goes according to hoyle, but as John Lennon was credited with saying, life is what happens while we are making plans. If nothing seems to work, if the people argue about who is to control the dogs, if sis has to leave for work unexpectedly in five minutes, if the dog eats your squeaky toy--be ready to change things up and go with the flow and make lemonade. Dogs even less than people, can be regimented. They are what they are. Go with it.
In the final analasis, it may be good to remember that in a generation or two, probably less, those subjects that will matter most, will be the people. Make sure you get good pictures of the people. The dogs will not be very critical regarding the pictures.
Wow! Getting there was only half the fun. Using a vintage Johnson 160 Guide Accu-cast spin-cast reel surely enhanced the experience. But seeing the first dragonfly of the season as it stood sideways on a nettle stem just emerged from its spent nymph shell. Wow! Just Wow! It is a great omen for the season to come.
I have been negligent regarding posts to help make you money lately. But here comes one. I have image software aplenty, but I do occasionally rally to try and review software packages that interest me. I haven't decided if I will buy this one, as my own commercial applications are now passe' when it comes to most people pictures, unless they are newsworthy or have stock photo potential. But this software package--not really new by a long-shot--but it was new to me as I ran across the ad for a trial that popped up on my new laptop.
Here is what I am thinking. This collage-making software will take a folder of digital images and automatically spin them into a cool seamless collage layout in a fairly random fashion. I don't pretend to understand the algroithms used, but if you don't like the first one or first ten or first however many, you've only to spin it again and you'll have a different layout. This can be both good and bad. I see Easter promotional opportunities to advertise and draw in business for those who care to try. But be sure to use the desired resolution images when you do--because the software will not be able to repeat the same collage if you don't. You and I know there is some unwritten law in the cosmos that if you cannot deliver any particular pose of picture or choice because of closed eyes or whatever--it will invariably be the one the end-consumer will want to buy.
So do due diligence and try it out and get your ducks in a row before you make any promises. But here is the link. It is free for thirty days. The images resulting from the free trial will have a software ad emblazoned across the bottom. You can crop that off if you choose your collages carefully before showing them. If one doesn't lend itself to the cropping, just make another, and another until one suits you. Then crop it and show. I think it will be a no-brainer for kids and flowers and Easter pictures. Here is one I did just for grins.
To market this, you can run an ad in a local newspaper, but if you have a good direct mail piece for previous and/or likely customers, this is where I would concentrate by doing an email blast with an attachment that automatically opens. If you don't have such a list, you should work on getting one now. You may be able to try social media ads for this as well. Narrow by geography and socioeconomic identifiers as such media allows.Narrow it down to a finely targeted audience and feature one collage. Keep the message simple with a link to the details of the offer.
You can make bucks by selling the collage at a low price to cover the ads and other expenses--or build in some profit, but if you work it right, you can even offer the collage for free and take a lot of nice pix and bank or print reorders. Display low-resolution proofs with watermarks over them online using services such as www.dotphoto.com, which will take orders, process credit cards, and deliver the pictures and send you the profit that you build in above their charges.
I recommend something along the lines of what I have posted. Another thought is to make up some stock photos of bunnies and chicks and flowers--but I beg you not to exploit such animals by turning the kids loose on them indiscriminately. Be humane. Were I live, the first spring wildflowers are popping out in abundance. Make up a folder of macro images of these and maybe an Easter Lilly or two and you'll be on your way. Using Autocollage, you can have a folder ready with the Easter motif images and then just copy the folder and label it with the clients name--and then drag and drop client images into the folder.
The software does the rest. It allows you to choose the number of images to use--so a couple of different folders might be good. As always, three choices is a good way to approach the market. One nice but pricey, one basic buy very cheap, and one priced in the middle which is the obvious best value. Allow enough prints for parents and grand parents and maybe a couple more. don't go too big. Dotphoto.com has a lot of aftermarket products including books, calendars, mugs, etc. which can make you a lot of money by making the point of sale purchasing easy. Take time to set up a free web site via dotphoto or someone else if you don't already have one.
But be careful when you use a third-party site as their ads will reveal your base pricing and savvy customers may cut you out of the picture--so to speak. Just use commonsense when you offer the links to your clients.
Please note that I have a large number of photographic images that I have make available exclusively for use at no-charge without restrictions other than a proper credit byline. This gallery includes some of my most recent photographs. These images are both copyrighted and discretely watermarked. They may not be reproduced in any form for any purpose without my express written permission. A nominal fee may be charged for using these photographs for any purpose, commercial or otherwise; however, I often authorize and encourage their use for noncommercial purposes at no charge--for merely adding my credit or formal byline as my own form of advertisement.
Until automatic ordering is in place, please email me with your request for written permission and/or prices for using these images. Include your Company or Personal Name under which images will be used and a brief but full description of how you wish to use photograph(s)--listed by the image number. If you are in need of a particularly themed photograph, please contact me with a description of your needs, as I have several million photographs that remain unlisted and unpublished.
Please DO ask for my very reasonable prices and send special requests for photographs to meet your needs. I also have Themed Posters and LTD Edition and Original Images (Includes Negative and/or Only Digital File), and One-of-a-Kind Photographs available for Collectors. Regards, D. Patrick Wright