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| Category: | iOS Apps |
Photographers Warned To Embrace Technology - A leading photographer has warned that photographer's businesses could fail if they don't embrace the latest technology.
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One of Europe’s leading portrait and wedding photographers has warned that ‘dinosaur photographers’ are risking total business failure if they don’t embrace latest technology advances.
Cardiff-based photo legend Mark Cleghorn, who holds four industry Fellowships and has hundreds of top awards to his name, has revealed an important new weapon in his own shooting armoury – an iPhone and the free Camera Awesome app.
He said: “Photography is a completely different world now. Of course everyone has a Smartphone at a wedding but a pro photographer using an iPhone and an image editing app that for the first time enables exposure selection, is key. It means, that with my experience, my wedding iPhone images will be far superior to those snapped by guests.”
Photo courtesy of Mark Cleghorn“I am very enthusiastic about iPhone photography because it is so immediately marketable. I don’t care what so called ‘photo-purists’ say, it is still photography and it is a terrific sales tool – especially when it’s combined with photography website SmugMug’s outstanding Camera Awesome editing app. I use it consistently for the first few shots I take at a wedding. I immediately ‘awesomize’ the images to give me the look and feel I want, then upload them straight to social media sites like Facebook. These photos are out there before I could even think about getting DSLR captured images off a card and through the laptop process. Of course I still shoot DSLR for clients’ albums but the iPhone and Camera Awesome combination means we can get examples of our work online during the wedding itself.”
SmugMug’s Camera Awesome app for iPhone comes with a range of free presets, filters, textures and frames and enables the user to focus on one point and set exposure in another - with just a touch. Action can also be captured five seconds before the user hits the button. Added Cleghorn, who also runs the popular PhotoTraining4U video tutorial website: “An ‘awesomized’ image allows you to create a professional look in a funky photograph – whether you want to apply an ‘old school’ preset or a modern day, clean, sharp, image – it’s a real differentiator. Now I will be adding iPhone and Camera Awesome created images to my portrait sessions too. I can take a studio shot, edit it and upload to Facebook straightaway."
Photo courtesy of Mark Cleghorn"What sceptical photographers fail to realise is that my client will go home and log on to my Facebook page and ‘like’ it to all their friends. So, instantly I’ve gone from one ’like’ to scores of them. Photographers cannot expect to survive if they remain photo-dinosaurs. They have to get with the programme.
Smartphone images and apps like Camera Awesome are here to stay and progressive photographers must both embrace and exploit these 21st century tools.”
For more information on SmugMug's Camera Awesome app, visit the awesomize website.
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Agreed that any business that fails to adapt will face eventual extinction. And using FB as a marketing tool is very good where people can like photo's and see who took them.
Remember though FB images are typically low res (unless you risk giving away high res) and your uploads will not typically show as much difference from guest images as the actual printed wedding albums from images shot on bigger sensor cameras and processed fully.
Also that "Likes" are mostly because people know the subject and not because your photo is excellent - even if it is.
I think one day all photographers will be extinct and any snap will be CGI warp-able & blendable etc to produce images far better than the original and its initial setting - still, lets have fun with photo's for now.
BIPP awarded a Fellowship to Gerry Coe for a superb set of images, originated on an iPhone. So some organisations are on the ball.
If you throw enough bull around, Eventually some of it will stick.....
The whole concept is just part of the instant fix, Instant forget world that we have produced.
Nothing is sacred, Nothing lasts, Nothing matters, So why waste your time/life trying to produce anything of worth, It all ends up in the recycle bin anyhow, The only variation is how long before its binned.
Quote: still, lets have fun with photo's for now
LOL For sure, Fun does seem to be the part, That so many fail to see, As for FB and all that social networking stuff, That's just for the herd who want to save the media & other interested parties, From having to gather data about the world of the consumer, This helps greatly in the production of even more consumer driven junk..........etc etc and so on.....
Personally i think the future is to have a dslr with much larger touch screens technology and with built it internet access on the camera . Plus a new socket can be built in to the side of the camera for a miniature keyboard so the dslr can be used a s a computer too , Also a sim card slot so it can be used as a communications device too. 
If i have to be honest i am not tataly impressed at all with the quality of the images that has been posted for the demonstration, And doubt very much if the quality ever gets much better.
All i will say is if i agreed to pay a wedding photographer for good quality images at a hefty price and turned up and pulled out an iphone to take the wedding images i would be furious end of.
What goes around comes around, iphone's are on the decline because everyone is sick of Apple's big brother restrictions allowing you to do what they say you can do. Maybe the smartphone has its place but if you charge a few thousand pounds to take someone's wedding and turn up with an iPhone, you are going to get kicked out of the church door el prompto, enough said.
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