As with any business I think it is important to thank clients for their business over the year and a Christmas card is a great way of doing this. I must however make a note to myself self to be better prepared in future, as I should have had this card deigned and printed by the end of November, not starting to think about it at beginning of December as I did this year.
For the first few years of being in business I used to buy a generic card and get it printed with the the business logo etc, but it then struck me that as a producer of images, what I should be doing was using my own images for these cards. It would be easy to use one of my stock images of say a winter landscape,but I think a new unknown image generally ensure that what is presented to the client is totally unique and fresh. It is also important that it stands from the rest of their cards and hopefully gets kept or at least remembered after the festive season is over.
For this years image I decided to keep with a more abstract image and to make it very punchy, red and green to me sums up Christmas well, and this image was created with just one take with very little editing.
I always do a proof to see how the image works as a card and get some feedback to see what others think of it, I prefer either a strong liking or disliking of the image as to me this is far better than a look warm "nice". Some thought the red object was a tomato, it is actually an apple but again that makes for more interest if there is some ambiguity. An image at the end of the day will mean different things to different people. What I wanted to create was an image that gets a second look, I wanted it to be seasonal and yet have a certain questioning surrealism about it, a suggestion of Christmas past and present,and also to depict some level of optimism, hopefully I have achieved this.
I also said this image was straight forward to create and I am happy to share what I did with you; this image was shot without leaving the house, we have a conservatory with green blinds the light outside was low early morning sun and frost was on the outside of the windows. The resulting silhouette which is sharp is the frost on the window, the more distant is the branch of a tree, which I slightly repositioned outside by tying some of it back.. The apple is a Christmas decoration which I stuck to the blind with double sided tape, and to throw some light onto the shinny apple decoration so that it wasn't in shadow I used a reflector. I then processes the digital image in Capture One to make it look more like it had been shot on film by increasing saturation and adding some grain. The final finishing touch of the sloppy edge was added in Photoshop with one of my own created edges and I also obviously added the text before doing a test print as my proof. Once happy I sent this Christmas card to simply2card who I used for all my card printing throughout the year who as always did a great job.
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas
Marc;-)
