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Nick T response

Nick Tressider or Nick T as he was introduced is a photographer based in Parnell specializing in food photography.  He generously opened his doors to our class to share his insights of photography, colour theory and the secrets of making it in the commercial world.

His body of work is meticulously crafted to present an array of beautifully captured images.  As a new photographer his advice regarding client care and understanding the ins and outs of your equipment is something that i will take away with me.

Here is come advice Nick T shared with us:
  • Know what your offering
    • photography is a saturated market, do your research! look at the current trends and find where you fit in
  •  Touchpoints - How you interact with others
    • Pay attention in how you present yourself - "People judge you from the very moment you put yourself out there!".  Communication is multi-faceted online, electronic mail, telephone conversation, text messages, facebook status...
    • Potential clients could be made in any contact your make with people
  • Be a photographers assistant
    • Number 1 rule if you want to be a commercial photographer - learn from those who are in the industry already
  • Be professional
    •  Keeps your work organised, tidy and well presented
  • Show clients LOVE
    • A satisfied customer is a repeat customer.  If you treat them well, they will be your best advertiser 
  • Visual diaries
    • Keep visual diaries such as pinterest, by revisiting pins you will start to see what your photographic vision maybe
How his advice relates to my photography:
The thing that i will take away from Nick T is valuing your work.   Nick spoke a lot about producing an overall professional experience, from the way that you present yourself to how you hand over the final product to your client.  Regardless of whether they are your friends or a paying client if you put in that little bit extra your body of work and reputation will start to stand out. Since our class trip to Nick T's studio i pay close attention to their requests and ensure that i deliver exactly what they ask for.  When delivering photos to a client recently my colleague and i handed them photos on a CD with a personalised cover.  They loved the photos and the the personal touch.

For my response i was fortunate enough to be asked to take photos for MIT's School of Culinary and Hospitality.  They requested photos of students signature dished to be used for social media promotions and their new menu.  I took these photos with Cecilia.
The equipment used were:
  • Bowen studio light (two flash lights, soft box and reflector umbrella)
  • Reflector
  • Grey card
Brief for the shoot:
  • Five photos of signature dishes for social media promotions and new menu. 
The night we went in, we actually were only doing practice shots.  We requested three dishes (Entree, Main and Desert), however they actually bought out seven dishes.  We ended up giving them 18 photos.  Below are three photos of the food shots that were taken.

The editing process was pretty straight forward for the chosen photos we used the grey card.  This allowed for consistent image exposure and colour.
f/4.0, 1/100, ISO 200

f/4.0, 1/100, ISO 200
f/4.0, 1/100, ISO 200
I was having difficulty with focusing, in the shots above you can see that some areas are in focus and others are soft.  I asked our technician Ralph Brown about this and he told me that I was shooting in single point auto which only focused on one point leaving the rest soft.  Although this was the function i wanted, i was not able to manually position the focus area.  Ralph explained that
i possibly needed to manually change the focus points.  This could be done by pressing the AF button and moving the wheel to the area i wanted to focus on or by selecting MF on the len and manually adjusting the focus.



















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