BarlowProse

Rollin’ on the River

Bill — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:58:31 +0000

Happy new year!

Long time no post. Seems like that’s how all my blogs begin. Sorry for the long absence, but it just means it’s busy around here, and busy is good.

I’ve had this little item sitting on my desk literally for months, reminding me to write about it here. And so today I’m finally going to do that.

Way back last fall, when the weather was only slightly warmer than it is today (or so it seems), I was fortunate to accompany the fine folks of Anheuser Busch on another one of their great Mississippi River cleanups. (You can read more about them here and here. And I encourage you to participate. They really are fun events and you feel really good about making a tangible improvement on the river.)

Toward the end of the day, while walking back along a vast sand bar that had formed along the shore for a good mile or more of river, my walking partner and I were fascinated by these little black chunks we were seeing in the sand.

They looked like river rocks that were worn smooth by the water. But they were light. Very light. So light, in fact, that they seemed more like burned wood. Almost like someone had sawn a sapling into disks and burned them into charcoal. This should’ve been a clue, but I was a little too dense to pick up on it.

We kept seeing these things every few paces along the sand bar. The mystery was riveting.

It wasn’t until we were joined by another person, clearly much smarter than me, that we figured it out. Actually he figured it out, and without too much trouble at all.

“Look at these things. They’re like rocks but lighter, like wood but clearly not.”

He stopped, knelt down and picked one up.

“It’s coal,” he said.

Well duh. Why didn’t I think of that?

Of course it’s coal. Barges loaded full of coal travel up and down the river all day and night. The coal is piled high on the barges and, clearly, is occasionally washed off into the river, where it floats along–or tumbles along, more likely–until it washes up onto the sand and is embedded, where it will remain to puzzle dense photographers who should know better.

Ultimately I thought this was simply a neat way to come into direct contact with a lot of things I never really think about–from the fuel we use to power our electrical grid to the river that transports that fuel, along with all the products that power our economy–day and night right here under our noses.

And I meant to put this lump of coal in my wife’s stocking at Christmas, but I totally forgot. Maybe next year.

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The Video Business Portrait

Bill — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:59:12 +0000

For more than four decades, Barlow Productions has provided St. Louis and national clients with high-quality commercial photography and video production services. Thanks to recent technological advances, the worlds of photography and video production are beginning to merge even more. As such, we’re now able to offer high-quality, professional, high-definition video production at a fraction of the cost of a large-scale video shoot. We call this service the “Video Business Portrait,” and it’s an economical way to produce professional videos for your business.

An ideal vehicle for attorneys, accountants, marketing professionals and public relations specialists to introduce themselves in a personal way, the Video Business Portrait is a complete turn-key solution. Here’s how it works.

1. Call us to schedule your video shoot in studio or on location at your office. Plan for a 30- to 60-minute session. Dress professionally, without flashy or extravagant accessories.

2. Sit down with us for a conversational interview in which you describe your services and credentials–or any other information that you’d like to convey in a relaxed, easygoing manner.

3. We will edit the footage to a concise 30- to 90-second video clip, utilizing the best takes and harnessing the ideal information you’re striving to convey. We will incorporate your company logo, as well as basic graphics for titles and contact information, to fully brand your video.

4. You view our rough edit and tell us any changes you’d like to make. We then make those changes and output a finished high-definition video file that’s custom-tailored to meet your needs. We can deliver that clip online, on a disc, or we can even upload it directly to YouTube or your web site.

5. Of course, the entire process is fully customizable, so just let us know how we can make the Video Business Portrait a perfect fit for your needs.

The Barlow Productions Video Business Portrait starts at $675, complete, for an in-studio recording session. For a shoot at your office or another location, the total cost is $1050.

If you’d like to discuss your video needs in more detail, or to set up a time for your video shoot, please don’t hesitate to contact Bill Sawalich or Patrick Barlow at 314-994-9990, or email us at info@barlowpro.com. To learn more about our company and what we do, please visit www.barlowpro.com.

At Barlow Productions, we’re working to make professional video really easy, and really affordable.

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Feedback on Feedback

Bill — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:43:19 +0000

I just had two clients this week–a new one and an old one–call me up to give me negative feedback. Well, not so much negative, but the factual reasons why a negative thing had happened: why they’d chosen not to hire me for a job. The first one was a longtime client who had issues with licensing. Not the terms in particular, but the concept of licensing in general. So he’d decided to work with a photographer who didn’t even mention licensing. (Photographers, please note all the reasons why this is a bad idea, found all over the internet and especially at the ASMP web site. And clients, please note that most professional photographers–real professionals, I mean–know that this is a bad idea, so they don’t do it. You might be hiring a “pro” rather than a pro.) But I’m digressing.
The second client called up to say that she had been shopping around for a new photographer because she was unhappy with the customer service and turnaround times she’d been getting from her current provider. (Actually, she didn’t tell me that part until she gave me the feedback on my proposal–which was that my price was higher than she was used to paying, though it sounded like my customer service and turnaround times and ultimately my product were superior. Which is sort of the point in why I’m more expensive: I’m better. (Hopefully not only at the photography part, but also the service part and the turnaround part and the generally caring a whole heckuva lot more than I should about your project and to that end bending over backwards for you part.)
But even that is neither here nor there.
What is here and there and the point of this post is that both of these folks gave me feedback about what they were looking for, what they were valuing, and what factors were most influencing their decisions. And that is IMMENSELY helpful for any business, particularly a small business, and particularly a small business in a field like photography where decisions could be made for creative reasons, budgetary reasons, turnaround reasons, customer service reasons, location reasons or many other reasons that would never occur to me. But they might occur to me next time if clients keep giving me that feedback.
Which is why, as I told the second client, there’s no such thing as bad feedback. All feedback is good feedback, even when it’s bad feedback.
So on behalf of vendors everywhere, I’d like to thank these clients, and I hope I have the opportunity to work with them again soon. And maybe I will, since I know now what’s most important to them, and what factors most influence their decisions. In the end, because of informative feedback, we all win.
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Photographing Plants for Fun and Profit

Bill — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:51:38 +0000

Lately, for goodness knows what reason, I’ve been photographing plants. I think it started as an exercise in flexing some muscles of experimentation that tend to get a little atrophied every now and then. Anyway, I have no rhyme or reason for photographing these plants, but I thought I’d show them here anyway. I used some DIY techniques involving scanners and gels and hot lights and in the end made some weird images. But sometimes weird is good.

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If you’d like to hire Barlow Productions to make some good weird photographs or videos for you, please visit www.barlowpro.com/photography or call us at 314.994.9990.

Flashes of Hope St. Louis

Bill — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:02:20 +0000

Last week I was fortunate, very fortunate, to spend the morning photographing kids at Camp Rainbow on behalf of a great organization called Flashes of Hope. This national nonprofit “changes the way children with cancer see themselves through the gift of photography” and works to raise funds and awareness for pediatric cancer research. I encourage all photographers reading this to contact Flashes of Hope and get involved. It’s a great way to do some good with your camera. And you’ll get to spend some quality time with some amazing kids having a lot of fun.

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For more information about Flashes of Hope, please visit their web site at www.flashesofhope.org. To contact Barlow Productions about our photography services, or to learn more about our Flashes of Hope experience, please visit our web site at www.barlowpro.com/contact.