Holiday Time!

It's about time to turn those family photos into great Holiday Greeting Cards!

We have Photo Greeting Cards for any and all occasions. From special occasion cards that include Va lentines, Easter, Weddings, Graduations and more. We also have cards for any occasion, such as a new baby, a new address, or even just to say thank you. ...

To order cards now, just click here!

Yes We Can!

Are you looking for a lab to assemble your panoramic shots? Simply bring your digital images or film negatives to Boulder Pro Photo and we will set up a custom panoramic to your specifications.
We can print your final image from wallet size to over 5 feet wide!

Senior Portrait Show

Our first annual Senior Portrait show is up! Come in and check out the work of seven local photographers who specialize in senior portraits and pick up a coupon good for a free sheet of wallet prints.

The show will be up until mid-September, so hurry in!

1644 Conestoga St, Suite 3
Boulder CO 80301

We are open Monday through Thursday 9:00am to 6:00 pm and Friday from 9:00am to 5:00pm.

Yes We Can!

Are you looking for a lab to make your head shots? Simply bring your digital image or film negative to Boulder Pro Photo and we will set up a custom head shot to your specifications. Our head shots have been called "absolutely perfect" by industry professionals!

Portrait Inspiration: The Ones We Love

Sometimes the internet randomly brings you nice things. I stumbled across The Ones We Love yesterday and I can't get enough of the portraits!

Text from the site states, "The Ones We Love is a project highlighting young and talented photographers from around the world. Each artist contributed six photographs of the person(s) who is most important to them, taken outdoors in a natural setting. The goal of the website is to portray the people who are loved, cherished, and inspirational to these artists, and also showcase the differences and similarities in the photographs each of them took within the same guidelines."

Most of the photographers are quite young and many of the images have charming imperfections. There are unique settings, angles and outfits. Each image has a very strong vision and a sense of individuality that may inspire you to experiment on your next portrait shoot.

Wedding Photography Inspiration: Shandro Photo

Do you ever sit at the computer and do a quick search for wedding and portrait photographers? I was looking around the internet and stumbled upon Shandro Photo's website and their work caught my eye. Shandro Photo is a husband and wife team in Canada with a unique journalism/fashion style. Their blog has tons of great inspiration for wedding and portrait shooters: unique angles, lighting effects and locations.

Where do you look to find new ideas for your shooting?

New Shows up at Boulder Pro Photo

For July, we have 2 new shows up:

Everything is not Enough: Student work from Roddy MacInnes' Intro to Photography class summer 2009.

Colorado Wildflowers Holga images from Rachael Thompson
Both shows will be up until mid August when we take them down to install our first annual senior portrait group show. If you would like to be considered for a show at Boulder Pro Photo, please contact me: rachael@boulderprophoto.com

Skin Retouching Using Smart Filters

I found this video on Mark Johnson's website. He has many valuable resources on his site but I thought this one would be of particular interest to portrait shooters.

Photoshop Workbench 185: Speedy and Realistic Skin Retouching Using Smart Filters

Posted using ShareThis

Senior Portrait Show Call for Entry

Image by Misha Photography

Senior Portrait Group Show 2009 Call for Entry

Boulder Pro Photo is pleased to announce our first annual Senior Portrait group show. Local photographers are invited to submit 1 to 2 of their best senior portrait shots to Boulder Pro Photo for inclusion in our first annual Senior Portrait group show. Boulder Pro Photo will take care of the printing, mounting, hanging and advertising. You get exposure, potential new clients and coupons for free prints to use or share with your clients.

Important Dates:

• Images on display at BPP August 17, 2009 to September 11, 2009

• Images due to BPP by August 12 at 11 AM via Lab Prints (or delivery for film customers ONLY)

Photographer Requirements:

• 12 x 18 image (sized and ready to print, lab color correction will be performed where needed for best possible print)

• Must be a senior portrait or single portrait (collages of one senior are certainly welcome)

• Must be submitted via Lab Prints. Please write SENIOR SHOW in comments section of order. (Film shooters may bring negative into the lab)

• Images will be accepted until Wednesday August 11, 2009 at 11 AM

• Each image submission is $25 which covers the cost of printing and mounting.

• Photographers are encouraged to provide BPP with promotional materials to be made available to visitors

• BPP reserves the right not to show submitted work due to quality or space concerns. Photographers whose work is not shown will not be charged.

Benefits for the photographer:

• Photographs and photographer's promotional materials will be shown in Boulder Pro Photo's store for one month

• All participating photographers will be given 8 coupons to use or share with their clients that entitle bearer to a free sheet of 8 wallets when they buy one sheet of 8 at BPP

• Boulder Pro Photo will advertise the show in local media and online

• Photographers will be given their mounted 12 x 18 prints at the conclusion of the show

Please direct your questions to rachael@boulderprophoto.com

Wedding Inspiration

Calumet Photographic's latest issue of Timeframes is dedicated to photographers' best wedding shots.

Do you look at Flickr image pools to get inspiration? Flickr is a great, if at times overwhelming, source to see what other photographers are doing. Just a quick image search on the tag "wedding" will bring up millions of images. Do you use Flickr to seek new clients or check out the competition?

And what about that mistress of taste and style, Martha Stewart? Martha Stewart Weddings is always full of the latest trends and clean, sophisticated images from real weddings. Also interesting to look at is The Bride's Guide: Ideas from the Editors of Martha Stewart Weddings. On this lively blog you'll find the bride's take on trends, planning and memory keeping.

Where do you get new ideas for shooting weddings?

Image by Lulu.Re

July Special!

Got vacation pictures?

This July bring in or send in your digital camera media and get $.15 4 x 6 glossy prints. You can walk in with media cards, cds, dvds or usb drives. Or mail us your cd and we will mail back your prints.

The Details:

1. jpg or tiff files, sRGB/8 bit color
2. Minimum order of 40 prints
3. 4 x 6 prints on glossy paper only for this offer. No mixed sizes or paper surfaces.

Our address: Boulder Pro Photo, 1644 Conestoga St Ste 3, Boulder CO 80301

You can call us at 303-318-4155 with any questions.

Portraits and Spaces

For the past month, Boulder Pro Photo has been hosting an exhibition of Professor Roddy MacInnes' students' work from a class at the University of Denver. Of the 5 students, only one was majoring in photography. One of the great things about the work is that the students used a variety of mediums from Holga to digital SLR to film and digital capture. We like seeing young people experiementing with and learning photography! And the work is really lovely too. The show is up until the end of today, so stop by and see it in the shop.

In July, we will be hosting another student show from Roddy's students and our own Rachael Thompson will be showing her recent work. If you would like to be considered for a show at Boulder Pro Photo, please email rachael at boulderprophoto.com with a link to your work.

Photoshop Tip: Setting up an action to batch resize

After a long day shooting a wedding or special event, the last thing you want to do is spend hours resizing all those photos before you upload them to LIF. But, resizing pictures will speed your upload so you can start making print sales. If you are using Lightroom, you are probably already familiar with all the great tools to help automate tasks but for those of you still using Photoshop for these kinds of tasks, there are still ways to speed up your work flow. Here is a step by step guide to creating an batch resize action in Photoshop.

The details:

• Final file size for upload: 4 x 6 inches at 400 dpi
• Color space: sRGB
• File names with only letters and number (NO symbols or spaces)
• No duplicate file names

The action set up: (I am using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, HOWEVER, CS4 has it's own time saving process that I will cover next week.)

1. Open a file that is typical for your originals. That is, files that come straight from your camera or scans straight from your film that have not already been resized.
2. Open the actions palette (Window>Actions)
3. Click New Action button (its the little piece of paper next to the trash can at the bottom right of the palette.)
4. Name your action "LIF Resize." Leave the Set: Default Actions but you may change the other options if you wish. Then, click record.
5. Go to Image>Image Size and set image size.
6. Now, click on the square stop button on the bottom left of the actions palette. This stops the action and saves it.
   

To use the action, you will open files, click the name of the action in the actions palette and click the triangle play button. A few notes: If you have your camera set to auto rotate your images, you will have to make one action for horizontal images and a different one for vertical images OR turn off the auto rotate feature. You may also choose to add other steps to this action like a global color correction or color space conversion.

Now, the next step is where we will really get automating!

Batch Automating

1. In Photoshop, go to File>Automate>Batch. Choose your LIF Resize action from the menu. Then, select the folder that contains the images you want to resize. Choose a destination folder for the resized images. I suggest making a "resized" folder in the main folder.
2. Under file naming options, you can choose to add letters or numbers or both to the resized files. Choose the options that will help you remain organized. I like adding a letter or number because it helps differentiate original files from resized files.
3. Click OK and sit back. You should stay with your computer in case there are errors but the entire process will take much less time than manually changing each file.
4. Upload your event to LIF, make it public and watch the sales add up!
   

What is your favorite time saving file management trick?