A hearty congratulations to my clients Tom Dwyer of Harbourtown Construction and Evan Hunter of Hunter Reising Design and Build for winning their categories in the NARI 2009 Contractor of the Year competition! NARI, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, is a not-for-profit trade association committed exclusively to the service of the professional remodeling industry. Their standards are very high, resulting in more educated and professional contractors and better homes for the consumer.

Harbourtowne won with this addition (right) in the Residential Addition $100,000 - $250,000 category, adding a family room, powder room and office space to a Dunwoody home.

Hunter Reising won with this guest room and family room addition (below) to an in-town home, with a lot of exterior work on the tiling and steps to the new garage in the Residential Addition Over $250,000 category.

Now I can’t take credit for being the reason these great builders won, it is safe to say that my clients have consistently won at this competition for the last 5 years. In fact, Hunter Reising has entered 4 projects in the last 5 years, and won every time, using my photography to showcase their fantastic work. And, a client who had used my architectural photography for the last 4 years and won, this year did not use my work, and did not win. Draw your own conclusions!

Recently a client called to say the images of a kitchen I had photographed were very light on her monitor. They also were light on my printer, but I was running low on ink, so that’s no real verification of anything. I went back to the image and checked the numbers in Photoshop, verified that there should be color and density there, and reassured my client that our home systems were off. She had confidence in me, took the disk to Wolf Camera in Alpharetta, and came home with 4 8×10’s that were right on the spot for color and density.

So what do I mean that I check the numbers? In Photoshop, there is a palette called “Info” that has various numbers representing RGB, CMYK, grayscale or other values. Having learned from an excellent drum scanner (in the old days of 10 years ago when film was still king and digitized by scanners), I’m familiar with the numbers and the range of colors they represent. This is the scientific part of photography. If the numbers on a RGB image are high, up to 255, then I know the image is light. If the numbers are low, down to 0, then that is dark. CMYK is the opposite, with high numbers representing more ink and darker images, lower numbers means less ink and lighter images.

Now, each printer has his own range of numbers that they like to work with, but a good rule of thumb is that if there is 5% in the density - I use the grayscale numbers to get this - then you will have a very little bit of detail in the highlights, anything less than this means there is no color at all. On the dark end, 93% is about the max you can expect to have detail in the shadows.

Going back to my client earlier, the images I had sent her had 15-25% density in the light areas, which is pretty good for a light tone cabinet. These are the numbers that I have confidence in. Monitors and printers vary from computer to computer, but good printers, such as this one Wolf Camera, know how to calibrate their systems to the numbers. And good photographers know the numbers to calibrate to also.

So the next time your photos don’t come out the way you expect, check the numbers. It may be your printer or monitor is off, not the actual image. If you have any questions, please give email me at jan - at - jsphotofx.com.

Face it, digital cameras are making everyone a much better photographer these days. So why should you pay good money to hire a professional?

Recently I was on a dolphin cruise, getting some shots of the dolphins as they jumped and swirled in the water. Out of 44 captures, I got only 12 that I would show to family and friends,

and none that I would consider to be good enough for resale in stock. And I consider myself a professional photographer. But my specialty is not nature, it’s architectural and products, items that don’t move. A nature photographer probably would have a much better ratio of usable shots to discards. Just as I have a much better result from my professional work shots than I can get in another aspect of photography.

So take that to the amateur level - how good are your shots versus the professional shots? Do you add lighting to fill out the shadows? Do you know the best aperture on your lens for maximum focus? Or is your camera all automatic, no controls for you to manipulate? Do you color correct the photo? Do you spot correct colors shifts? Can you blend several images to get the best exposure of indoors and outdoors? Do you have glares in the windows from your flash? Or reflections of yourself or others in the windows?

Take this pool shot for example. It looks easy enough, right? But the building in shadow was almost black in the exposure that held detail in the sky, and the pool was actually more green, from mud mixing in the water. I also used black velvet to cover a basketball hoop that was reflecting in the windows, and wet down the tile deck to enhance the color in the stones.

These are just some of the considerations a professional photographer takes in as he/she sets up the shot and does the post-processing. Yes, this all takes time and experience to learn how to do. Plus, your typical professional photographer has invested much in equipment and training over the years. But when you hire a professional photographer, you get professional results every time.

So when you think about the cost of photography, think also of the value it brings to your business. If an image is worth a thousand words, make sure those images are saying the right words about your business. If they are saying amateur, is this how you want your business to be perceived? Or do you want people to notice your product first, that the quality of the photograph enhances?

Email me if you are looking for quality photography every time.