If you're like us, you're probably wondering "How do I connect with my target audience?".  There are many ways I'm sure!  But a picture speaks a thousand words, and so the visual answer to that question is "brand lifestyle photography" or, videography.  It is a kind of imagery that helps your audience connect personally with your brand.

This comes in a variety of flavours, which could include:

• General brand lifestyle (depicting the lifestyle your brand in general wants to be associated with)
• Product lifestyle (depicting the lifestyle of the people you expect
• Personal lifestyle (helping your audience connect to who you are, or at least, to the image you'd like them to see of you)

We had the pleasure a while back of doing a photoshoot for the lovely Cali Ault, a wonderful graphic designer and brand specialist with her own company, Cali and Co Design.

In any of these sessions, we try not only to provide great portraits or other kinds of photos for using as website profile pictures, brochures, and other marketing material, but also content creation for long term use online, that is, a large number of photos that could be used for months as social media content.

With our full-featured personal brand lifestyle photography, we plan things out with you so that you can count on us to capture a great range of shots that you can use, every time.

We always have a great time at our Headshots Experience Days, because of our fantastic customers. February 25th, 2021 was no exception, when we did some commercial portraits over at Work Nicer Rail Yards. A few of our clients that day were a kidney doctor, a naturapathic doctor, and a leadership coach.  

In many cases, headshots are used for professional profiles on LinkedIn, on professional listings services, or on a website to help build trust with customers when they visit the site, but photographing physicians is a bit different. For the most part, they don't need to do any advertising, but our client wanted to use his image to represent himself at a conference he was attending. So that was kind of a cool use case to discover!

You can learn a lot more about our headshots in general, and our Headshots Experience Day specifically at their respective landing pages, but there was one thing I wanted to highlight here.  To help people have as much flexibility when they use their images, we always provide several crops per image, and two images each - for example the full image might be better for a brochure or a website image, and the tightly cropped version could be better as a LinkedIn profile picture:

How much does a headshot cost at one of our Headshots Days? If it's on location, $200/person, and in our own studio it's $170 per person, including:

• A full hour time-slot, including their professional hair and makeup.
• Live capture to our computers, so we can make sure there's something that you're happy with before you go
• A proofing gallery to make your final selections at home
• 2 fully touched up final images
• Our sunny and enthusiastic personalities at all times!

Something we get asked a lot is how often should you update your profile picture.  That depends on a lot of things, like if you're had a big hair style change, or gone through some other major physical change.  But for the average person, every 3-5 years is more or less the right time-frame for getting a new portrait.

So, next time you're thinking you might need a Calgary photographer to update your corporate portrait or headshot, doctor's portrait, linkedIn profile picture, or coaching portrait, just reach out!

We had the privilege of livestreaming one Action Coach Canada's Calgary franchise owners Kevin Simpson, giving his trademark 6 Steps To A Better Business workshop, which is a free workshop that they put on regularly.

We were asked by Action Coach to livestream this event, to help them reach a broader audience, in particular during this pandemic time.  

While designing this event with Action Coach, what they were looking for was:

• Professional Image and Audio Quality Videography
• Multiple camera angles
• Attractive Lighting
• On-the fly editing for the livestream, including multiple camera angles and incorporating the slides used in the presentation
• Streaming to their preferred platform

Our goal was to make it as close to TED-Talk quality as possible given the location we were dealing with. With our team, technical expertise, and equipment, I think we hit all those marks. 

We provided:

• A teaser video to use for promotion
• The livestream, and
• A carefully edited final version

There's also the option for a live-edit - which while less polished, with slightly lower image quality, is a lot faster and cheaper.

We were excited to be able to do this for Action Coach, and we're looking forward to doing it again some time soon.  If this is something you're interested in learning more about, for a special event, or a regular recurring presentation, send us a note!

A successful video is not just great shots, and good audio.

About 75% of the work is actually in the editing!

One of our trademarks as a video production company is the care and attention to detail we put into our video editing.  What makes a good video edit?  There are a lot of factors of course, but here are a few.

1. Understand the main story or message
• We take a lot of time before a shoot to understand who you are and what you're trying to say
2. The raw footage:
• Great shots to work with, in terms of lighting, composition, focus, creative merit, and story-telling merit
• Clean and professional audio
• A lot of good b-roll (that's the footage that helps illustrate the story...the video above is all b-roll!)
• Thorough review of all the footage, selecting shots that are emotional, beautiful, moving, and really support that main message
3. Editing it all together very carefully in Adobe Premiere Pro
• The right music
• The right mood
• setting the cuts to the music
• being concise

Every Action Plan we create for our customers includes a visual of the time it takes for each part of the production, including consultations and visioning, shooting, and editing. Typically, video editing takes between 2 to 4 times the time spent shooting.

So that's in brief some of the stuff that it takes to make a good video. 

We shot and edited a video for the cocktail creation above for Eau Claire Distillery down in Turner Valley.  It was fun to find great angles and the right backdrop, as well as ensure the lighting looked sharp and consistent, and then show what it's like to make one of these delicious drinks!

Today I'm taking a break from highlighting Fusebox to talk about our premium printing partner, Kevin Annala, owner of photo printing and framing shop, KA Canvas. I met Kevin at my former networking group, and later tried his services. I was blown away with the quality of the prints he made, compared to some of the other vendors we had been using, and the custom framing he's done for me have been stellar.

I loved his attention to detail, the quality of the materials and inks, and just how personalized his service is.  He checked and questioned all the details of our decisions, and understood those without even asking.

If you have been meaning to get something printed, but didn't know where to go, Kevin is your guy.

Read on to learn more about this artist and the work he does.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Kevin Annala, and I am the owner and operator of KA Canvas, which is a premium focused canvas printing, printing, and custom picture framing shop here in Calgary.

Tell us more about your background, related to this business (where did your passion came from).

My passion for printing my work, stemmed from wanting to capture photographs of skiing, hiking, and rock climbing adventures in the mountains. Naturally, these amazing scenes lend themselves perfectly for photography. This led to me becoming a full time photographer specializing in creating and selling large, immersive prints of mountain scapes, which steered me to fully printing and finishing my work, which then shifted to offering these services to others.

Explain when and why you started this business.

As a fine art photographer starting out, my main struggle was cutting through the industry marketing buzzwords, to find truly high quality, and consistent printing, and finishing. Needless to say, I was simply never satisfied with the results, which led to me printing my own work all of those years ago.

As part of my photography business, I would attend trade shows, selling my own framed prints and canvas. The quality of workmanship caught the attention of other artists and photographers, who would then request help in printing and framing their own work.

Seeing the same issues brought up by other photographers and artists, I made the decision to officially start printing and picture framing for others, under a new business in January of 2016. My goal was to create a space that removes the inconsistencies of cheap high volume automation, and pay special attention to each and every single piece, to act as a second set of eyes, to make adjustments and corrections, and to ensure masterful results each and every time.

How rewarding is it for you to be doing what you're doing?

It’s very rewarding, as it keeps the creative part of my brain active. Seeing work from other artists and photographers, or personal moments is really cool. The best part though, hands down, is seeing someone react to having a completed print handed to them, as it just blows away anything you can see on a screen. People are so used to being inundated with images online, in small format, so seeing something printed large for the wall for the first time is absolutely amazing. You really have to experience it first hand.

Who are your main customers?  Who are your best customers?

My clients are a mix of aspiring photographers, artists, commercial clients, as well as people wanting to have high quality memories printed for the wall.

What are you struggling with right now?

Continuing through Covid has been a massive challenge and undertaking. I’ve watched more than 8 competitors close in the last 6 months, as well as vendors completely close their distribution in Calgary.

How can people help you at this point in your work?

Definitely by helping expand my client base by letting people know we’re here to help. Hopefully within the next few months I can get back to rehiring and getting at least a few people back to work as a result.

Do you have any special promotions or offers going on right now?

25% off on all online and in shop printing and framing for the month of April by using code studiolumen at checkout.

How can people best reach you?

Either by email or phone. kevin@kacanvas.ca or 403-966-5597 Anyone is welcome to book an in person, in shop appointment through the website at www.kacanvas.ca and I also have a robust e-commerce platform for online ordering. By visiting the shop though, there are more options, and I can work on files 1 on 1. Road side pick up is available, as is no contact delivery.