Lake Erie #10, Landscape Photography, 11×14 inches in a 16×20 Frame

We’ve been busy doing lots of work behind the scenes over here! We’re scrutinizing many aspects of how we run our studio and revamping our processes to make you and us even happier campers.

One of the questions that comes up time and time again is about the white border we leave around our prints. Currently all fine art prints that ship from our studio have a white border around them where I print the title of the Photograph, add my signature, and if it’s a limited edition I’ll write in the print number.

The white border that we use is not some willy-nilly size that we chose just because it looked nice, no indeed. We actually researched the common window sizes of pre-cut store bought mats then made my photographs fit nicely within them. If you’ve ever seen one of my prints matted you’ll notice that between the image and the window there’s a thin white border before the photograph starts giving it a nice, professional look. No need to hide any of the art behind a mat.

We’ve had some inquiries about printing images larger on the page, sometimes even eliminating the border all together. This is something we may consider for our Open Edition photographs but I’d like to leave the border on our Limited Edition prints so they can be numbered on the front.

So what are your thoughts? What do you think about white borders? Should they stay or should they go?

Mystic Port, Hamilton Landscape Photograph

After whiling away the day at the Royal Botanical Gardens we spent the peaceful sunset on the beach near Fifty Point Conservation area just outside Grimsby.

This is an area I know lots of photographers flock to. In fact we were supposed to be part of a photo group that was going to the beach that very morning. At the last minute we opted out for two reasons:

1. The forecast for the morning wasn’t ideal.
2. But more importantly, after further research I discovered that the angle of light would make for a much better evening photograph.

So here’s how our day ended up going:

10:45 am – pack gear and car

11:30 am – early lunch

Noon – leave home

1:45 pm – explore Royal Botanical Gardens

5:00 pm – dinner

6:15 pm – leave for Fifty Point Conservation Area

7:15 pm – arrive at location, set up and begin photographing

8:00 pm – sunset

8:30 pm – wrap up shooting and head home

10:30 pm – arrive home and unpack the car

10:45 pm – download memory cards and backup files

Raw camera files were processed and retouched for dust the following day.

I left myself a bit of extra time since I’d never been to this location before and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.

Be sure to watch the accompanying video, if you’re reading by email or RSS you’ll need to click through to our blog to see it.

How do you make time for peace and quiet? Do you schedule specific time for yourself? What do you do when you’re looking to relax and meditate? Do you go for a drive? Head to a favourite spot? Or just close the door to the world for a few minutes?

We get asked a lot about how we backup our photographs so I thought I’d share a quick outline of our process with you. Our method isn’t necessarily the best way but it certainly gets the job done, it’s safe (we’ve never lost a file since using this system), affordable, and it’s very easily expandable.

When we were putting together the framework I poured over three articles on Chase Jarvis’ site: How to Back Up Your Photography: The Basics, Important: Storage and Backup Solutions For Your Photography, and Complete Workflow and Backup for Photo + Video. But we didn’t need anything that robust, so we took his ideas, stripped them down to the basics, and sized them perfectly for our studio.

For the purposes of this discussion I’ve divided our images into two types: Raw Files and Processed Files.

Raw Files

1. Compact flash cards are downloaded via Capture One Pro to our Western Digital My Book external hard drive called Archive. These files live in a folder all their own called Raw Cold Storage and are organized in sub-folders by date. Whenever I need a raw file this is where I come looking.
2. I then use Folder Synchronizer to make two exact backups of this drive on identical Western Digital Elements hard drives: Archive Backup 1 (to protect against a hardware failure on the Archive drive) and Archive Backup 2 (which is stored off site, you know, just in case).

Processed Files

1. The raw files on the Archive drive are processed using Capture One Pro and saved locally to my Macbook Pro until they are retouched and all work on them has been completed.
2. My laptop is constantly being backed up to an external Lacie drive using Time Machine. That means that even though these processed files haven’t yet entered the archive system there are still duplicate copies of them available in case something happens to the laptop.
3. Once I’m finished with the processed files I manually move them to the Archive drive. Here there is a second set of folders outside Raw Cold Storage, organized by date, for all our image and document files.
4. Folder Synchronizer will then backup the Archive drive, yet again, to Archive Backup 1 and Archive Backup 2.

By the time the whole process is complete there are three copies of every image file, one on each of three hard drives: Archive, Archive Backup 1, and Archive Backup 2. I know it’s a total mishmash of hard drives, it’s a combination of things we already had and new additions for our ever expanding catalogue.

Even if you’re not a photographer you can use this basic idea to create a backup system of your own. Backing up is important. The two best pieces of wisdom I ever heard were:

1. There are two types of people in the world: Those who’ve lost data and those who will.
2. If you’re going to the trouble of saving a file then back it up.

Let’s start a discussion, do you have any questions about our system? How do you backup your files? Do you use external hard drives, DVDs, or the cloud? What are some of your favourite tips? What are some things that you find work really well? What are some things that you’ve found that haven’t?

Winter Landscape Photograph – Tend

Reminding you to tend to yourself during the winter months.

It’s safe to say we love cookies at our house. Any sweets really. We were at a friend’s house recently who served Smitten Kitchen’s Slice-and-Bake Cookies, and did she rave about them! Now I know why, slice and bake cookies are where it’s at! You can whip up a few logs of dough, tuck them away in the fridge or freezer, then slice and bake them whenever you have that cookie craving.

We started off making Smitten Kitchen’s Lemon Poppyseed Cookies and they were yummy, but we already have a Lemon Poppyseed Muffin recipe that we adore so what kind shall we make next? Cranberry Orange, Lime Cornmeal, Apricot Pistachio, Chocolate Chip, Ginger Sesame, Chocolate, or some sort of nut as the recipe suggests? Or should we try something else like Chocolate Hazelnut, Simple Butter Cookies, Shortbread, Fig, Caramel, or Cinnamon?

Do you have a simple cookie recipe that’s your stand-by? What are your favourite refrigerator cookies? Did you eat them growing up? Or do you prefer a fancier cookie?

Evening Slumber, Lake Huron Seascape Photograph, Kettle Point, Ontario, Canada 2012

Yoga certainly pays off as a photographer.

He made it! You were worried weren’t you? A few minutes later he did end up falling in the water.

I know I’ve said it before, but I love evenings at Kettle Point. Especially when the weather is mild, the sunset perfect, and I can share all the beauty and magic with Darren.

In April we ramped up seascape photography, participated in a photography show at The Arts Project, retouched the backlog of winter tree photographs, and began planting our vegetable garden. In May we’ll be participating in the South Huron Community Juried Art Show and Sale, gearing up for this year’s Fringe Festival, telling you how we backup all of our images, and reviewing some of our favourite articles on simple living to get us ready for summer.

In the meantime may we present to you your May 2012 desktop calendar, featuring one of my newest photographs Spring Seduction.

iPad (1024 x 768 pixels) (30)

Regular Screen – works well with screen resolutions of 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, and 1920 x 1200 pixels (80)

Wide Screen – works well with screen resolutions of 1366 x 768, 1920 x 1080, and 2560 x 1440 pixels (71)

Facebook Cover (850 x 315 pixels) (26) – find more information about Facebook Cover Images in the Facebook Help Centre

You can see our whole archive of calendars here: Downloadable Desktop Calendars

What are your plans for May? Getting your gardens in order? Car picnic-ing on the beach? Attending an art show or two? Or just relaxing before the rush of summer sweeps you away?

Winter Tree Photograph – Frosty Gale

So glad winter is behind us. Can you feel the cool air?

I’m really excited to tell you that Forest City Image Centre is presenting it’s annual exhibition of work by local photographers next week. I can’t wait to see images from other London photographers and talk to them about life, the universe, and everything else. Such a great community building event! If you’re here in London next week stop by on opening night and definitely introduce yourself to us.

Show Us Your Best
April 24-28, 2012
Opening Night: Tuesday, April 24th, 2012, 7pm
The Arts Project
203 Dundas Street, just west of Clarence
London, Ontario, Canada
Free Admission
A group show and sale

You can stay up to date on all of our upcoming events on our Events page.

The Potato Leek Soup (warm) on the Williams Sonoma website is one of my Mom’s favourites. I made it the other day when our fridge was sparse and we had a hankering for something warm and soothing. I skipped the cream so it was Darren friendly, omitted the fennel because it would have meant a trip to the store, and I substituted spinach for the watercress since it was in season. We used our homemade vegetable soup stock, as always, since we had a nice big batch of it in jars in the freezer.

I love when soup is this easy. Essentially cut, boil, then run through the blender.

I’ve never had this soup chilled but my two favourite cold soups are gazpacho (who knew?) and strawberry (so decadent). Have you ever had a cold soup? Which are your favouritess? Do you ever eat them warm?