#pixelwinx

[pixelwinx]

Pixels with a soul....

One of the main services offered at Pixelwinx is custom photo albums and slideshows.  We love putting our creative mojo to work for our clients.  We also get to 'travel'  along on special trips, celebrations, new babies,  and love captured in their photos.

That being said, it may surprise you to know that most of the time, Pixelwinx picks out the photos used in creating the albums and slideshows.  This fact is usually met with skepticism by our clients and leads to the #1 question we hear at Pixelwinx.   "How do you know what pictures to include?"

Usually, the conversation goes like this: 

Client - “How do you know what photos to choose for albums and/or slideshows?”

Pixelwinx - We know & we’ve been doing this a while.

Client - “Really? I don’t have to pick out the pictures?”

Pixelwinx - Nope.

Client - “But how do you KNOW?”  

Pixelwinx - We know.  

Client - "Really??  How could you possibly  know what pictures I love?”

By this point we are getting ’that’ look - you know the one where you are trying to be polite but don’t really believe what the other person is saying.  Now when we choose photos for our client’s project it doesn’t mean they are not involved in the process. We have an initial ‘get to know you meet up’, then prepare a few layouts to make sure we are on the right path, use our client's feedback & make revisions. But we really do choose most of the photos used in the layouts. 

Kim,  ‘Designer Maven Extraordinaire’ & I talk about this topic often so I decided to interview her about it and share her answers.

Tamara -  When choosing photos what do you look for when working with client photos?

Kim -  A good photo creates an emotional response.  It’s so true.

Tamara -   What do you look for from a design perspective:

Kim -  I see lots of photos of the same subject and lots of care in the photo taking angle. People in the photo are looking at you while taking the picture.  I also see lots of different angles of the same subject -  horizontal/vertical shots. The quantity of photos taken is also more than other subjects.

T - What do you consider when creating a custom design for a client?

Kim  -  I love designs/spreads with the same color palette. If I don’t have enough of one color, I make sure the second spread is in a complimentary palette. Sometimes photos that are not great palettes can be significantly improved by changing to black and white.

T - How do you handle the huge quantity of photos?

Kim - I would rather put in one great photo that tells the story than multiple good photos of the same shot.  I’m looking for the photo that tells a story.  The subject is front and center in photo, not a stuck in a corner like a postage stamp.

T - what do you discover about your clients in their photos?

K - After we work with a client for a while - we discover their special places, routines, events, vacations - always using the same birthday hat or going to the same beach or lake for year after year.  The photos will include a location where photos are always taken or in front of the same fireplace.

It’s also fun to see what different families take pictures of - food, swimming in the pool, playing cards with Grandma, or doing puzzles. Families have favorite traditions, vacation spots, love Grandma’s apple pie, sunset or fishing off the dock.

T  - Do people take good photographs?

K -  Many people have a good eye for taking photos - whether technically trained or not. Other people - not so much😂.  It’s all relative.  Just because a photo might not be National Geographic material doesn’t mean they are not special, meaningful and beautiful to that family. Everyone takes photos for a different reason - some people take photos of silly things - like a pineapple or shoe or a tiny fish in the water.  You can’t really see the fish but it represents the moment they are trying to capture. I always look for the items each family takes photos of consistently. Remember the favorite Uncle who never smiles ON PURPOSE?

T - Do clients have different photographic ’styles’?

K -  Some clients take lots of posed photos - very formal, proper, dignified, showing the moment. Other clients are more about movement, running, action, capturing the story, thru their creative side.

T - Is it different selecting photos for client’s books than your own personal albums?

K - While we love to see your photos and often get emotional viewing them, we are not emotionally attached to the people or places in the photos. That helps us more easily select photos while still experiencing your people as our people & get a glimpse of special moments of love, family & traditions. If I limit the photos to the good ones, I’m more likely to remember the details - because you are putting your camera away and actually participating & investing in the memory vs capturing it or the photo.   Most of our parents were learning how to use a snap & shoot camera & the photos show that but they still capture life. Unless you were a photographer with a darkroom, photography was sort of a crap shoot.  You got what you got when you picked them up at the Drug Store. You learned as you went & no matter what some folks always had a finger showing up in the picture;).

We’ve learned how to take MANY photographs but still not necessarily good ones.  The photos we take now are about documenting EVERY SINGLE MOMENT.  There is less care in picture taking because we can delete the bad photos, except we rarely do. Many of us never even print the photos. Our kids know how to take pictures & document every single second but have no interest in saving the photos or printing them.

Several of our clients have kids who have begun to ask for books about their lives - like an antique  - because they are not familiar with the printed page or photo albums to look through. 😱 YIKES! Kids want to see themselves at different ages, hold the book in their hand, talk about the stories.   Books capture their stories, growing up & don't need any special technology.  

I’ve been trying to put this into words for a long time and one day I was listening to an audio book by Brené Brown.   She was discussing her research & used the phrase “data with a soul”. AH HA!  That finally captured how special photos are to us.  Pictures are ‘pixels with a soul'.  They mean more than just the people, paper, or places in them. They have a soul. Now if we can start to take back control over the quantity, filter out the good ones to share, talk about the memories, we can create & preserve our "data with a soul"  forever.  

[pixelwinx]

I have a confession…..I like sunsets. LOTS of sunsets  - there are never enough sunsets.  My bathroom is painted the color of a setting sun -  orange, yellow, peach. I also LOVE taking pictures of sunsets with my phone. I take waaaay too many pictures of them & in my mind, you can never have enough sunset pictures. I can’t seem to pass up a sunset and consider them ALL to be ‘special’. I truly have a 'problem’ with sunset pictures. Admitting you have a problem is the first step - right?

I was looking at my phone while in Michigan(where many of my favorite sunset pictures have been taken), & decided to use the search function 🔎 (the little magnifying glass in Photos App) to see if I could search for sunset pictures.  We’ve talked about the search function before & I’ve attached a link with a sample video: https://pixelwinx.smugmug.com/IPHONE-Workshop-videos/n-tJ83xp/i-SphVZvf/Apreviously  

Lo & behold my phone pulled up 200+photos of sunsets(labeled as sunrises - Ill take it) but sun photos none the less!

Having all of these sun pictures together gave me a little more perspective on how many pictures I’ve taken. 😱 I could select all of these photos and create a sunset folder to put them in but realized I didn’t need that if I used the search function.  It also gave me the opportunity to compare one sunset picture to another and realize that not all sunset pictures are created equal.  I often suggest to clients to review & delete their duplicate photos immediately after taking them. Otherwise, I fear this ‘review & delete’ step never happens contributing to the 1000s of photos on our phones.  But I have another confession -  I often struggle with this step not wanting to delete photos immediately as it feels too soon & like I’m deleting an important memory.  By sorting & comparing my sunset pictures with the search function, I had time for perspective & the ability to delete some of the less favorite sunset pictures without feeling like I was deleting the memory.

I think you could apply this type of sorting/searching to many categories of photos on your phone.  Puppy pictures, holiday pictures, beach pictures, people pictures, city, flower, lake, ocean, etc. It’s a great way to go back and review a type of picture you take often & compare it with others in the same category to see what is really worth preserving. Give it a try. Now, on to those adorable puppy dog pictures. I think I may have another confession to me……

[pixelwinx]

2017 APPO Conference

Last week was our Association of Personal Photo Organizers annual conference in Cleveland.  I have to admit going to the sun shiny West Coast last year was more enjoyable to pack for;D.

Another difference is that Kim & I presented a 90 minute workshop for our fellow photo organizers about using their iPhones and help their clients understand their phones as well. 

Whose crazy idea was this?!? it was Kim’s - APRIL FOOLS! -  not really it was Tamara’s. I thought it would be fun to put together so on the LAST day of submission deadline we sent our proposal off.  I don’t know if I really thought it would get selected but it did.  When we got the acceptance email, I was walking the dog & Kim & I called each other almost immediately.  Quite a few ‘college words’ were exchanged.

Do you remember how it feels to do something outside of your comfort zone?   Yeah - well that was this.  Kim & I’ve taught classes for clients before but it’s a little different when it’s in front of your colleagues.

What we learned - lots!  1) Don’t put everything you can think of in your proposal otherwise you feel pressured to cover it all and THAT is not possible in 90 minutes!!  2)Preparation is KEY.  We set aside several days to concentrate & create the workshop.  We then taught a number of variations of the class in  advance, adding and changing it based up the clients in our classes & what they struggled with the most.  Every time we taught the class it got better.  3) Don’t buy a 16GB phone!!

We learned so much about our phones during this time and also something new each class from our clients as they shared their tips and tricks.  We also took to heart that it’s ok to say ‘I don’t know but I will find out.’  We knew this of course but saying it while standing in front of a group of people is a different thing.  We also realized we could never know it all.  Technology changes daily.  No wonder our clients can’t keep up.  

It was scary. It was rewarding. We complained about it but also enjoyed it. Ultimately it was worth it and we would do it again - especially if we had more than 90 minutes to talk about your iPhone.  

[pixelwinx]

#Pixelswithasoul #pixelwinx #Anthony #always 

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#Pixelswithasoul #India #Storytellers #Pixelwinx

[pixelwinx]

Today while walking the beast, I mean Oscar, I ran into a former coworker from IBM. As our dogs we’re introducing themselves I re-introduced myself as I left IBM in 2000.  We chitchatted & then got to the ‘where are you now question’.  I had been listening to Cloud Cult, one of my favorite bands of the last year & was feeling quite entrepreneurial & powerful. I had been thinking over the last week something business coach, Lisa Montanaro shared at the APPO conference regarding how differently men & woman entrepreneurs introduce themselves.  Men say, “I own a business” and women say “ I have a business that does X”.  

Sooooo I started my elevator pitch with “I own a business.” No more ‘this is what I do’ but I’m(we) are honest to goodness business owners.  I work hard, I am dedicated, I am an expert, I love my clients, love to hear & share their stories. I am a business owner.  

Of course I explained Pixelwinx to him somewhat imperfectly but that’s ok.  It felt good to ‘own it’!  It’s hard to continue to explain what we do & especially when I see that 'glassed over look' when folks don’t understand it.  It is hard to imagine.  That has inspired me to create little video logs actually showing services we do.  Even good friends don’t understand and I always feel like I have to justify it. “Do you think you could make that work full-time? Yes - this is my business, it’s the real deal and I’m a business owner.  I’m happy to educate you and help you understand what I do.  

But I’m saying it loud & clear with the Cloud Cult words ringing in my ears, “Hold your breath til a better day and you’ll never learn to breath…………..The show starts now!’ Kim & I are business owners and this our show - it’s called Pixelwinx!