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Chris Schmauch is an award winning designer AND photographer – hire him to shoot your Bay Area wedding and design a beautiful album showcasing all the memories from your big day! (831) 216-6210

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Jenn and Leon had a lovely wedding at Santana Row this past July. They picked their faves, and I designed this nice little 40 page album below. The image you see above is the cover/back and inside flaps, all flattened out. Enjoy!

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml backgroundcolor=FFFFFF showflipbtn=true autoflip=true autofliptime=6000 pagenumber=2 documentid=101007221150-046176ea5f4a49d2aef5b9147228a0c4 docname=jenn-leon-wedding-album-proof01 username=goodeye loadinginfotext=Jenn%20%26%20Leon%20Wedding%20Album%20-%20PROOF01 showhtmllink=true tag=wedding%20album width=900 height=600 unit=px]

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For more info about the Milo Z tour, check out www.ReverbNation.com/miloz. For all my Santa Cruz friends, they’re playing in Felton at Don Quixote’s International Music Hall this friday night @ 8pm, so if you’re into Razzamofunk (Rock+Rap+Jazz+Blues+Funk) check ‘em out!

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We kicked around a few ideas – we wanted to keep a similar theme – extreme, yet humorous and communicating a clear message about the services offered. We decided to dress Amanda up like an old lady (yes she’s very pregnant as well but you can’t tell in the pics), hiring the talented makeup artist Shawn Cavlan to help with the aged look. Amanda had been scouring Good Wills for weeks collecting the necessary accoutrement for the shoot. Check out the process of the shoot over here. When Amanda was sufficiently transformed, she carefully climbed up the ladder we’d secured to start cleaning the dirty gutters we’d prepared. She’s clearly not enjoying the dirty work, especially after her husband Eric started creating the hollywood rain-effect with the water hose!

Here’s the shot we chose for the front of the postcard, as well as the final postcard design:

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Scary. Yet exciting.

Scary for the business owners who have lost their entrepreneurial enthusiasm and love for the customer. Exciting for those who haven’t, because this will help bring that slow-swinging pendulum back towards a priority of service and quality first, and away from cheapest deal at any cost. The crowdsourced masses of Facebook, Yelp, et al highlight and therefore bring more business to those that offer the best value – which is essentially an ideal combination of price, service and quality. Even though we’re in the midst of the worst recession in almost a century, I believe Americans still crave and value quality goods and services – just look at Apple, Inc. – they’ve always made quality products, but only recently has the world waken up and realized this (including myself!). I see this as evidence of the pendulum swinging back to where it belongs.

I’m thinking of these things because I’m a small business owner, striving to figure out how to make this whole photography thing work. I believe simple, strong principals provide the answer. Follow the Golden Rule, treat every client like a million bucks and good things will come. I read on Mashable recently (and paraphrase) that if you want a $2,000 gig, but only get $200 for it – give it a $2,000 effort and eventually the client with that budget will find you. I couldn’t agree more. I treat every assignment, and I mean every assignment like it’s going to end up in my portfolio. I see this blog as a chronological portfolio, so I want to make sure I have something I feel is worth sharing with the world every time I step out the door.

This effort, this attitude, is resulting in positive growth for my business. My web traffic on my proofing/printing site, www.GoodEyePhotography.com, recently broke the 100,000 page views/month mark, this blog is taking off and my new portfolio site, www.GoodEye.co is bringing in business on a weekly basis. Add my strong placement with Yelp (without advertising, mind you!), and things are looking on the up-and-up. Wish me luck, guys – I look forward to working with you, even if you’re “simply” a $200 client. I still love you, and you know I’ll do you proud.

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Their wedding was very much DIY – the flowers/bouquets, the reception, the cake topper, the wedding board, the video, the music – it was all put together by the couple and their close friends and family. I was pretty much the only hired professional for the day – but I can safely say their money was well spent

Karen is Greek, so the wedding took place at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox church in San Jose. The reception was held at Grant’s father’s place in Los Gatos, which really was done up nicely. The coolest part was the giant “throne” that’s always gracing the front porch. Grant’s dad had to install a fence around the yard a while back just to keep the passing nightlife crowd from sitting on it to take pictures. You know what? Scratch that. The throne was neat, but the coolest thing was Karyn donning a sweet pair of cowboy boots when the dancing started so she could get her cowgirl groove on. Yeehaw!

I truly enjoyed helping out throughout the day and being a part of everything. I think I was even christened a deputy brides-man for going above and beyond my normal photographer duties. I hope you enjoy the slideshow of my favorite photos below, set to Karyn and Grant’s favorite song “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure.

Not satisfied with seeing only the photographer’s favorites? You can check out ALL of Karyn and Grant’s wedding photos at www.GoodEyePhotography.com.

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Gutter Patrol wanted a postcard mailer to help promote their window cleaning services. Since this is GoodEye Photography + Design, I put on both my photographer and design hats to come up with a concept that would attract attention and communicate the message. It took me a while to sell the husband & wife team on the idea of a really dirty window, but my years in advertising experience have proven that sometimes you have to go extreme to get noticed. I was pretty sure no other window-washing companies were doing anything like this, so I felt good that the idea was new, if not unusual.

Eric Branecki, the owner, spent the day before packing the window with dirt and pebbles. When I got there, he asked me what I thought – it basically looked too dang neat, like it was a perfect wall of dirt. I needed it to be a little more organic and chaotic. It’s tough because it’s obvious that someone’s house windows would never ever get this dirty to begin with (unless you were in a hurricane), but it had to look a little more realistic.

I had Eric hose down the window some until it looked more “realistic.” I knew I wanted to put the main tagline on the clean section of the window, but I was able to do some nifty Photoshoppin’ to make it look like the “Dirty Windows?” is just inside the house with the mud and streaks casting a shadow onto it. The result is a highly textured, graphical image that definitely stands out of the crowd.

The rear design was inspired by the previous designer’s work (CJ Design), but completely recreated from scratch and branded with the window cleaning message. It’s a little on the busy side, but there’s a lot of info to communicate. By the way, how are your windows and gutters? Give Eric & Amanda a call to schedule an appointment, or visit their website.

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So as the cow plainly says, I took the above photo while walking along the Stanford Dish trail (I dramatized the lost part, but it could’ve happened!). I was thinking of green cover ideas, and since we’d just had all that rain, I was envisioning those hills off 280 where that big satellite dish is, but I wasn’t sure where I could get a good vantage point for them. A lot of the best places are private property, and I was afraid I’d have to go trespassing.

I pulled off at Alpine Rd. and parked at Webb Ranch, mostly because I’d done some photography with the owner Gary Webb a while back, and didn’t think he’d mind. I walked across the street and found myself on a bike trail that eventually led to a road that led to the entrance to the Stanford Dish Trail. There were big signs saying it isn’t a public park and to stay on the trail, etc. etc. – I saw some other people walking on it so figured as long as I didn’t feed the squirrels and chase the cows I wouldn’t have any guards tackling me.

I was walking in wool pants and long-sleeved shirt, donning my Nikon D3 with 70-200/2.8 lens on my Spider Holster (see my review here), and my Nikon D700 with 17-35/2.8 lens on my BlackRapid RS-5 strap over my shoulder, and did I mention that it’s all uphill to the dish? And that it was hot? And that I brought no water? I took it easy, and shot whatever looked interesting along the way. The weather was gorgeous, the clouds were all poofy and dramatically set in the cerulean blue sky, the fields were expansive and greeeen, and the cows, well… the cows were all laying around chewing cud, as cows will do. The money shot (above) was captured about halfway to the top with my D3/70-200 combo, and I was pretty sure it was gonna be a winner when I saw the composition. But I hiked all the way up to the dish because I’m not as lazy as I’d like to think, and I have to say it’s quite a nice little trail. I’ll have to go back again (with shorts) and do the whole loop.

There’s not much else to say, the photo was strong and I wanted to keep the cover clean and un-cluttered. My solution to avoiding a big Reader’s Choice Ballot snipe was to simply have another talking cow bubble. It was really the only design solution to be had, if you think about it.

Check out this issue of The Wave Magazine – it’s on the streets now, or you can view the interactive Flash version here.

Thanks for reading, see you next time.

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