I immediately had a picture in my head of the photo, V-J Day in Times Square which was photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt and published in Life in 1945 with the caption, In New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers. In addition to that vivid image, I was also envisioning the photography and lighting of the movie “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Harsh, directed  lights which focused the viewers attention exactly where it was supposed to be.

I showed up on her wedding day wearing a formal suit (such as photographers wore back in the day, and while I did not bring lucite flashes, I did bring my tattered News Man photographer hat to top off the theme. From my perspective, I think we were able to really capture Kasie’s artistic needs and the environment did not impede us at all.

Here is a fact: If you have only a single camera at a live event, you only have one shot. If someone steps in front of the camera (which invariably happens) or if there is a need to move the camera while an important element of the ceremony is happening, there is no other camera angle to choose from. You are stuck with it. The best edited ceremonies will actually have three cameras, one of which does not even have to have a camera operator at it.

Below is an example of a rather intricate wedding ceremony at one of the largest churches in San Francisco.

RockerDown will be showcasing our wedding photography and wedding videography at the show. Half of the booth will be dedicated to photography and the other video.

The Wedding Show is filled with fun, excitement, on stage entertainment, and the latest bridal fashions. A must attend event for brides that will entertain you throughout the weekend as you visit all the exhibits. Indulge in wedding cakes and sample all the delicious food brought to you by the triangle’s premier wedding cake bakeries and caterers. Explore all the show has to offer and don’t miss your chance to win thousands of dollars in door prizes and grand prize give-a-ways. All the products, services, ideas and information you’ll need to make your dream wedding come to life are waiting for you. Looking for that special wedding reception or rehearsal dinner site? Whether you need the large banquet hall or the intimate historical home, they will be here to show off their venues. No matter where you are getting married, Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, or what your taste, elegant, traditional or fashion savvy, they are all brought together for you. No other event offers such a complete array of wedding products and services, as well as the experts themselves, for you to engage with. And, it’s all under one roof, and all in one weekend. Make plans now to attend the show of shows!

Don’t forget this is your one opportunity this year to take advantage of the bridal show discount RockerDown will be offering.

One of my pet peeves about the world of Wedding and Portrait Photography is the apparent disconnect in reality of the photographer and the customer. Most photographers would consider themselves artistic and creative professionals and to that I largely agree. There is an amazing amount of technical knowledge that a photographer needs to have in order to be successful. We have to be proficient in both natural and flash lighting. We have to understand how light bends, diffuses and spreads. We have to know our cameras and all the bazillions of control we have down to a minuscule scale. We need to understand aperture and F-Stops, shutter speeds and sync speed. We need to know how to pose people, work with folks who are not naturally models and make EVERYONE look good in print. We need to understand post-production, all about digital file and numerous editing and file management software. We need to understand copyright laws, business laws, taxes and to some extent even the legal system as it pertains to our businesses. With the technical and artistic aspects, we have to be so proficient that we can pull out something from our bag of tricks at any given moment and make it happen.

But where most photographers can grow the most is in customer service. Let’s face facts for a moment. Your perception of a photographer is probably something like this: Very technical, quirky and artistic. And that is probably true in my case too. But most wedding and portrait photographers treat their service as an artistic expression of themselves instead of what it really is.  A product they are selling to a customer. Almost every photographer can be picked out of an event by the clothes they wear. The uniform, if you will. All black from head to toe.

Look at this. Less that 30 seconds on iStockPhoto.com’s website and I can show exactly what I mean by the “Photographer’s Uniform”.

We can also honestly say that most customers want to have a creative photographer. They are hiring the photographer, in part, for this creative skill they have been able to demonstrate. Pasted below is a conversation on Facebook in one of the photographer’s groups I belong to.

The original post showed an image created by a photographer that has the words, “Friends don’t let friends use selective coloring”. They were creative with it and had different letters in different, complimenting colors. What is selective coloring, you ask? Selective coloring is when you take an image and you make everything black and white except for one element or a specific area. Typically for weddings this can be flowers, but there can be other options as well. Below is one example of selective coloring.

Beneath this image was an onslaught of photographers who agreed with the original poster. One of them went so far as to suggest they point the client to the contract they have which grants the photographer exclusive creative control over the photos. There were 20 comments, all agreeing with the poster before I responded with:

ROCKERDOWN: I’m sorry… if you have a client who WANTS it and thinks it is cool, why would you refuse to give a customer what they want? They are the customer. Maybe don’t put it on your site and show it off, but why would you refuse to provide a product/service a customer desires? This whole thread smacks directly in the face of every foundational principle of customer service… I am shocked so many agree with it.

The response was pretty humorous.

POSTER: Because the customer could also demand I lick their boots, but just because they want me to do that, doesn’t mean I will. There are enough photographers that I’m sure if they had their heart set on selective toning they could find someone to do it. Photography, for ME is a reflection of myself, and I don’t reflect selectively.

For the record, I am pretty sure this was intended to be humorous, but the argument is ludicrous. RockerDown has a very specific concept of customer service that includes giving the customer what they want.

I’m all for artistic freedom, but if all we did at RockerDown is what WE wanted to do, we would not stay in business. Every project we take is a collaboration between the client and the photographer. In the case of our corporate work, it is a collaboration between the project manager who hired us and the multimedia developer who creates the product. There has to be a balance or no one gets what they want.

As a photographer, I am often shocked at the photos a client will choose as their favorite. In some cases, the photos they choose would be ones I would never let see the light of day were it my family it was a photo of. But I am viewing this as a professional photographer looking for technical accuracy and artistic integrity. Every client RockerDown has is viewing the photos with a very different set of glasses. In some cases, it is all about the emotion for them. In others it is just ensuring their favorite people are in them. In others it is the environment and the decorations. Rarely am I working for another photographer who views photos the way I do.

So, here is a promise from RockerDown. If you hire us and have a specific idea about what you want, whether we like the idea or not, you will get what you hired us for.

The photo studio in Apex, NC is where we met and discussed what we wanted to do for the maternity shoot. Shannon and Brock were very comfortable with us and eager to try new and creative things. Some of those photos we will not show online (there were some we shot to accentuate the female form during pregnancy, we can show those to you in person, but will not post here).

All told, we spent about 3 hours with this couple back and forth between the field near the Apex studio and in the studio itself. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed taking them.

RockerDown prides itself on being capable of working within many styles of photography. While I can understand the marketing value of having only one style for your wedding photos, at RockerDown we understand that our favorite style may not be our clients. To that end we work very hard to constantly improve the bag of tricks in our photographic arsenal. What this video shows is a very unique style of photography designed specifically to give Kasie what she was looking for. Photography that accentuated her desire to have a very classic Hollywood feel to them while, at the same time, being modern and edgy.

We started the day at Advanced Attractions Hair Salon in New Bern, NC. I’d like to add that the staff here were fantastic, their skill is amazing and I had a wonderful time in their very hip salon.

We went back to Kasie’s place for a bit to get the rest of the makeup done, but then we went off to Hancock Lodge MCCS in Cherry Point, NC.

The music on the video is by Josh McIntosh. You can get more from this artist at http://joshmcintosh.bandcamp.com/album/three

Kim and Peter wanted some traditional photos of their family for the holiday season and contacted RockerDown to take them. We had a great couple of hours with the family and kids as they enjoyed the beautiful fall colors and some traditional poses.

Allscripts grew rapidly from 2007 to 2010 through M&A activity moving from a population base of 800 to over 6,000. With the rapid growth of this industry Allscripts is on pace to add an additional 1,000 team members world-wide. This has created the following challenges for a classroom based model:

• New hires must wait weeks or months prior to being trained.
• With the changing business model noncompliance with program has increased sharply.
• Dissemination of information is for new hires – but with M&A existing employees lack an understanding of the changing organization and no avenue to receive it.

Allscripts determined that leveraging technology Allscripts could convert the two day New Employee Training class into an interactive online learning experience for new and existing employees. This solution could continue to support results in regards to engagement and retention while providing greater access to training while decreasing costs associated with classroom training.

That’s where RockerDown comes in.

What We Did

The initial need here was to create a brand-based, “pick-up-and-use” PowerPoint template for future training presentations.

The second part of the project was to take a series of existing PowerPoint decks, import them into the new template, and enhance the overall design to create a clean, brand-centric look and feel to the content. The goal here was to inform new-hire employees about the history behind Allscripts and the strategies for the future.