Allison Marie Photography Blog by Allison Roen, Des Moines area wedding photographer »

If you are planning a wedding that is more than 4-5 months out, save-the-date cards are a perfect way to announce your wedding plans to friends and family. They can either be ordered as 4×6 thick cards, or as magnets. Allison & Brandon ordered these cards, and I love how they turned out!

Posted by Allison Marie, Des Moines Iowa wedding and portrait photographer

If you are an aspiring photographer, or if you are already in business, but want to improve/enhance your photography & business skills, the MJ2Day is for YOU!  I attended this workshop in May, and it was the most valuable thing I could have done as I began my business. Check out Melissa Jill’s blog, where you will see me on her promo video!  This workshop will take place October 26 &27th at Melissa Jill’s place in Pheonix, Arizona. It will be two intense days, packed full of shooting techniques, marketing ideas, tips on vendor relations, client consultations, developing a unique brand, website critiques, lots of laughter, and many new friends! If this sounds like a fit for you, send me an email and I can tell you more about it and answer any questions you may have. You can also read my post about it on my old blog (when my business was totally different, and had a different name!).   Here is  a photo from our group in May. Melissa Jill is on the bottom right:

I went to Christian Photo today,  a camera store in Urbandale with remarkable customer service, and asked a bunch of questions about my Nikon D300. Although that is a stellar camera, I have been dissatisfied with the images it’s been producing lately. I always seem to be frustrated with my photos not being as sharp/clear as I would like and need them to be, and they all looked grainy to me. I had been told that D300’s shouldn’t produce graininess until they’re set at ISO 1600 and higher.  So, I figured there was a big problem with my camera and that I would have to send it in (which is scary because that usually takes weeks!!). Well…GREAT news! And frustrating news! When I purchased my lenses, I was told I need to have protective filters on them. True. However, apparently the filters they sold me - Tiffen brand - are really poor quality, and will significantly soften the photos. This “softening” appeared to me like graininess. The salesman told me to go home and experiment. To take some photos with the Tiffen filter on, and then the same photos without. And WOW, I didn’t expect to see such a huge difference! What great news!

Even though this is kinda creepy (!), the photos of my eye below show the difference. The top one is without a filter, and the bottom one is with the Tiffen filter. Can you see the difference?

Now, I’m not sure how well you’ll be able to notice detail of a photo on the internet, but  this was shocking to me. I cropped a small square from the shadow area on the left side of each photo above, and compared them side-by-side. Here it is:

Notice how the the one on the left (filter-free) looks fairly normal for being blown up that much, but the one on the right looks terribly grainy or pixely or whatever you may call that. I am thrilled that there is such an easy solution to my frustration: Purchase higher quality filters!

A note to you photographers: if you are using Tiffen filters…take them to your local camera store and have them sell you higher quality ones!! You’ll be amazed by the difference!

I have BIG news: I had a major light bulb experience today! For many  months now, I have been very frustrated because I’ll have a bunch of great-looking photos that look so dull and desaturated when I post them online, whether on my blog, website or facebook. On some of them, I’d end up bumping up the contrast and saturation so much that it would look really terrible on my computer screen, just so it would look “normal” online.  Nonsense! I knew I had to be doing something wrong, but I just couldn’t figure it out. So today I did what I should have done months ago: RESEARCH! And found a solution!! I learned that I had been exporting my photos from lightroom into JPEGs with AdobeRGB color space. I knew that this color space had a more complete gamut of color…however, the color space of the internet is sRGB. So when I upload photos, only a small portion of the color spectrum is represented in my photos. I didn’t believe it until I saw it…and check it out, it’s exactly right! Oh, and I found this information on Ken Rockwell’s website, which I have found so helpful for many different things, especially equipment reviews. You should check it out!

These two photos below are absolutely identical…except the top one is in AdobeRGB, and the bottom one is in sRGB. What a huge difference! I hope I’ve helped someone reading this who has also been frustrated with this problem!