Hi and thanks for stopping by. My blog is an assortment of information relating to my photography and various commercial, advertising and glamour shoots that I do. I will be sharing information relating to my shoots including info about gear, lighting set ups, post processing and some BTS shots. I will also look into other equipment such as computer hardware, back up systems, software and processing techniques that all contribute to achieving the final images you see at Chris Smith Photography. Feel free to make comments and contact me if you have any questions.
2011 FEMA Awards
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Last night I attended the 2011 FEMA Awards in Melbourne. FEMA stands for Fairfax Employment Marketing Awards, which recognises creativity and excellence in the field of recruitment advertising. FEMA showcases marketing from companies and individuals who are leaders in their field.
One of my clients Blaze Advertising were listed as finalists in many of the categories for a number of different clients. More importantly 2 of their campaigns, Ernst & Young – Talented & Young and Ausgrids – New Generations, Same Energy feature photography by Chris Smith Photography and were both finalists in four separate categories.
The good news is that Blaze Advertising won 4 awards! Ernst & Young – Talented & Young won, Best Integrated Campaign and Best Promotion of Graduate Careers. Ausgrids – New generations, same energy won, Best Promotion of Regional Careers and Best Corporate Careers Website.
I am very proud to have contributed a small part to such great creative campaigns and very much enjoyed working with the team from Blaze Advertising.
New Website Is Now Live!
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Well the day has come to finally hit the go button and launch my new website! Its been a long road to get here however I believe and hope you agree, that the site reflects a lot of hard work and endless hours that have gone into creating the site. Its almost 7 months since the initial meeting to discuss my ideas and needs for my website. To give you a bit of a run down as to where the time went and to maybe help you in your planning if you are thinking of having a website built read on...
My first meeting with meeting with my chosen design/developer, Fab Creative Solutions was to discuss the brief and what i would like to achieve with my site. At this point it is vital that you have a detailed brief of what you would like included in your site including functionality, look and feel, performance, compatibility and so on. The more detailed the better. My designer, Fabi from Fab Creative Solutions then had to go away and come back with a concept design. I guess the tricky bit here is coming up with a design that achieves the desired functionality, is practical and provides a pleasant user experience while also being a design that is technically achievable with in the budget.
Once the design, layout and functionality have been approved its off to the developers to make it happen. Once the developers have developed the first version of the site they load it to a testing server so you can begin the huge task of testing. There are so many things to test like uploading of images into galleries, links between pages, email enquiry forms and private galleries, blogs, social media integration and so the list goes on. Each time a change is made you also create a new item to test.
Another big thing to consider is the copy that is going into the site, this needs to be written in a professional manner which is going to promote and sell your services. Another big consideration is which images you want to include in the website. Important to remember that only your best images should go online as they say "you are only as good as your worst image"! Each image needs to be prepared, processed to look its best then resized for optimal reproduction on the web. This can mean editing 100's of images which takes time.
Finally before going live you need to consider your ISP and your hosting package. Does it have enough storage space, enough bandwidth and traffic, how many email accounts can you have, as well as whether or not it offers support for any databases you may run, SSL, and of course technical support.
So I hope that has given you sort of idea as to the amount of work that goes into a new website. I am very exciting to finally have my site up and running and would love to hear back from you if you have any thoughts about it.