Motivation --Do you have it?

1. It's all in your head: Do you think about your business on a daily basis? Are you consumed with ideas for growing, marketing, expanding it? Do you do something, no matter how small, toward growing your business at least every other day.

Then you have the fever -- the desire.

If you are constantly thinking about your business and taking some type of consistent action -- no matter how trivial -- then that means that it is a part of you. This is the most important part of growing your business. Why?

Because motivation is a desire that can't be taught. You can learn marketing, advertising, web design, product design, etc. But, you must first WANT to do what it takes. That has to come from within you -- no one can teach you this.

Job Shadower

Cool. today I have a job shadower, Brenden Ruiz . He's into photo and illustration and he does paintings and stuff. We're going to make his artwork digital.

I'll tell you how it went today later!

More Before and Afters

Ok here are some more before and afters for you viewing.

Original


AFTER


BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE


Color, Contrast,Sharpness Adjustment



B/W/punch


BEFORE


AFTER

I like this interpretation of Advertising.

This is Advertising Expert Jan Jacobs critique about advertising:

A print ad is not a funny line on a somewhat relevant background(headline embossed on rubber for a tire company, headline burnt into leather for steak house, etc.). This was a trend in U.S. advertising in the '80's and is sadly still very prevalent--especially in student work.

YOU ARE PUTTING FORWARD AN ARGUMENT AS TO WHY I SHOULD BUY OR DO SOMETHING. THAT ARGUMENT WILL WORK ONLY IF IT IS BASED ON A REALLY STRONG INSIGHT INTO EITHER THE PRODUCT OR HUMAN BEHAVIOR. And even then it will get my attention only if its expressed in a truly unique way.

CMYK magazine. Inspiration

CMYK is a magazine for student designers, photographers , and illustrators. It features some of the best student work in the US.

Sometimes I feel the need to sit down, relax and get inspired.

Garbage in, Garbage out

"GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT" For those of you wanting to get into digital photography remember this quote.

I really like this quote I always remember it, and it applies to everything I do. (Photos, Video, Audio, Design, Printing,)
What it means is you can't take a bad picture , think you will photoshop it and it will look brilliant.
The truth is that a bad picture will always be a bad picture even after photoshop.
You'd be surprise how many people don't get this idea. (for example some clients will ask to blow up a 3x3 photo with low resolution to an 11 x17 print. You can do it, but it will be blurry and pixalated as heck.

Anyway enough of that, just remember GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT

Before and After Pics

Its been raining all week and I felt I needed to shoot some pics. So I thought, "What a perfect time to do some indoor studio shots."

I wanted to show how I retouch photos. So here are some before and after shots of last nights photo shoot with the beautiful Patricia.

BEFORE

What a beautiful pic, but it has some imperfections in the eye, its the make up.
other than that there wasn't alot to fix since Patricia's skin is flawless.
But I always enhance the look of all of my photos.

AFTER


Not a lot of retouching but enough to enhance this image and make it more powerful.

Alot of the time the amount of retouching I will do depends on my taste and what I'm feeling for that photograph. Some images will get retouch a lot more than others specially if the lighting captured is not perfect. I also experiment a lot and try all kinds of photoshop tricks.

AFTER RETOUCHING "ARTFUL"


Here are some more pics. I will post more before and afters later!

Stay tuned!


COLOR


BW/ART







Clolor with a blur.




_____
Color with a blur/then grunge

Teachers! .....I married one

I was observing every move he made.
It was really hard for him to understand.
I couldn't understand why it was so hard for him.
But she didn't give in. Finally she got him to put his plate on the sink.

Diego, our nephew was throwing a tantrum, he didn't want to put his plate away in the sink, (he is very spoiled and wants to do what what ever he wants all of the time) Well aunt Patty was around and she found it was a great time to show little Diego a big lesson.

Anyway I was just amazed at how Patricia handled the situation.
I give props to my wife Patricia because she is awesome at what she does.
She is an Early Childhood Educator.

I have a great wife that will make the best mom one day!

(I said one day, not today, or tomorrow, or next year hahahaha maybe in 6 years!)

[In case you didn't know I chose Patricia's Career the day before school started.
Its funny but its true, Early Childhood Education was the only department that had available classes, and well I think it worked out!]

CE MAGAZINE

We've had this idea in our head for about 2 years now. Because of things we haven't been able to publish it. But we are not loosing hope, in fact I think we are going to push it even more this year. Hamil is been working on the content for this magazine.
It is a magazine targeted towards Entrepreneurs, that is why its called "Creative Entrepreneur"
We visualize an aesthetically pleasing layout, simple , direct, with lots of visuals and high end
printing.

Check out the video, if there are any venturers out there, Lets do this!
Video Here

Congrats to Andrea Wright

Andrea got engaged last year. She is a photographer for the Statesmanjournal ,She came to photograph us for the article.



Anyway Congrats to Andrea , she is getting married this year in August and she chose us
to photograph her wedding.

Tha'ts so awesome we are going to photograph a photographer what a challenge!

Before and After of the Studio

This is the first time I show pictures of how the studio used to look like.
I mentioned before that it was a tough year, well yeah it was tough because
we had to take care of business , clients , pay the bills, ... at the same time we were fixing the studio. We are so grateful we have friends and family who supported us and gave us a hand on fixing things.

There was times when we thought it wasn't going to get done, problems and problems... but, hey we did it. "Now take a breather Hamil" Let's do this!




Long hard working nights



My dad puttings some "masa". Working it!





The Studio Now!



If you want to check us out. Come by the studio, we are always happy to see people
1785 Capitol St. N.E Salem, Oregon, 97301