Zipi Arts Photography

Sunday 23 February 2014

Working on it...

I need more coffee...

We actually started our business over... what? A month ago? [*looks at Zipi for confirmation*]. But we did it taking clients right away, merely (and rather hurriedly) reworking a bit our original price list from PSP, and with a studio barely built at all! What we certainly didn't do is start slowly... we quickly filled our client queue almost beyond what we used to, and though we decided -and remain commited- not to overwork ourselves so much, by taking more frequent “off time”... a day still has only so many hours, and we'll admit that preparing our business “front door” was something we kinda skipped over... until now. Zipi has told me (and reasonably so) that we really need a written price list with at least the essentials of “what's a Regular and an Artistic”, to avoid having the exact same conversation over and over again with each new client.

And so here I am... Sunday... IV coffee not dripping fast enough... and me, carpet-bombing this new blog with about as much delicacy as an Internet-bound Curtis LeMay. I can't even count, nor do I dare acknowledge, how much stuff I'm recycling (yes, including the picture above, probably over a year old) and how many slaps in the wrists I'd get from my old language teachers for the bad grammar, redaction and presentation... or how my OCD-ness is suffering from having to drop the ball entirely on “neatness”.

But I'm also glad I'm doing it, not only because it's necessary, or because it's come to a point where we'd rather have something, however crude, than nothing at all... but also because it's kinda fun, and because I hope that, sooner or later, all this mess will actually start looking like the nice, cute little business blog we intend it to be.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to refill my coffee drip and mess... er, I mean, write some more stuff... *_*

What if I don't like the result?

We obviously want the results to please you, and commit to satisfy your needs; but no matter our will, if you have a particular need you don’t tell us about, we just cannot guarantee we’ll nail it—we’re not mindreaders. We know it unfeasible for you to give up to the smallest detail of what you want and how you want it (if it came to that, you probably wouldn’t need us!), but still we won’t be responsible if you omit something important and then dislike the result because it lacked that “ooops, I forgot to tell you” thing. Anything you don’t specifically ask for, you’ll be agreeing to trust our artistic choice on it—and accept it as such. The old “that’s not what I had in mind!” is nice and dandy, but it begs the question: if you did have it in mind, why didn’t you tell us?

Anyway, to some extent we can make post-corrections based on your input; we’ve optimized our workflow (even at the cost of efficiency) for such flexibility; but some changes just aren’t viable except by pretty much redoing from scratch—and thus doubling the amount of work required. There’s only so much time we can agree to put on a pic for its given fee. And point of fact, we already tend to work more than that, just to make sure you get your money’s worth.

That said, if you cannot get to like the result, you don’t have to. Art goes that way: you either like it or you don’t; and if you don’t, it wouldn’t be fair that you have to pay it anyway... but fairness goes both ways, and you wouldn’t expect us to have worked for nothing, which is why, without exception, we won’t reimburse the 50% advancement.

Still, if you really don’t like the result and it can’t be fixed with a few reasonably minor corrections, you have these three options:

You pay the remaining 50% to get the final, edited version; though it means getting something you don’t like, it’s still the only way for you to get all your money’s worth.
You don’t pay the remaining 50% and, so that you won’t come empty-handed for the half you did pay, we’ll give you the ‘raw’ (unedited) pictures; they’ll still be some worth in that they’ll be high-res and featuring carefully chosen angles, light, etc., so you might give them to another artist you think would process them more to your liking.
For a reasonable additional fee to be agreed at the moment, we will re-work the picture attending to whatever issues you had with it; this additional fee will of course be subject to its own 50% advance.

We realize this may not be wholly convenient to you, but we also have to protect ourselves against client abuse, and this is as fair as we could make it; if you have any suggestion to improve these policies, we’ll be glad to hear from you!

This article contains most of the information we intended for it, but may still be polished, extended or even wholly re-arranged later; feel free to contact us for any particular point you wish to confirm.

About us

This article is still under construction and may lack some of its intended content; we apologize for the inconvenience and encourage you to contact us for any information you hoped to find here.

Zipi Arts Photography ~ Studio

We’re two Second Life freelance photographers with years of experience & ample technical and artistic resources, working together at a professional studio with many gadgets and hundreds of poses available.

Our style is realistic, focusing on fixing SL visual flaws (edges, shadows, etc), choosing from a vast selection of poses and adding small scenery elements either on-camera or in post-process (some will always always be done, largely depending on your choice of Regular, or the more expensive Artistic involving far more enhancements). We have a long experience with fantasy, commercial jobs and artistic nudes.

We commit to making the best of your looks, but we’re NOT stylists or miracle workers; we can suggest some changes on the spot and enhance what you have, but not take you through a complete avatar overhaul or create “a whole new you” from scratch.

In-world studio

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Thursday 20 February 2014

Tre Marjeta (2)

Tre Marjeta - 2/5

This is the second (third, in editing order) out of five Regulars this sweet, nice lady comissioned to me, besides the three Artistics she tasked Zipi with (and oh, you gotta check those, too!).

It wasn't bound to be particularly difficult so, as with the previous ones, I worked on a timeframe plan instead of a goal-driven one: whatever feasible within schedule, doing as many of the main tasks (liquify, background, perceptual matching, etc) as possible before tackling increasingly smaller details with whatever time left. I'm kinda missing having a goal-driven assignment again, so as to go totally OCD-crazy, but Tre's order is too big for that and, while she gave us plenty of time and I'm in fact well ahead of schedule by now, I'd rather save it for the last two pics (which may have some pose/perspective issues)... or rest a bit, since I'm not feeling all that well these days.

I already had a clear idea that I wanted to put her on a bucolic background... a prairie, probably, or maybe a beach; I thought the latter would be easier for realistic shadow projection (sand being a far more plain surface than grass), but I just couldn't resist the challenge... or using my scenes, for that matter ^^

Anyway, and to avoid perspective issues from past pictures, I went the trouble of recreating the posing, at the exact same spot she would've been; so I had some fun seeing myself in very cute, very feminine poses until I found the one we used with her.

As usual, and after pasting her onto the background (which I did early on, due to the aforementioned “timeframe plan”) she looked... well, pasted. The usual perceptual mismatch: different lighting, color tonalities, contrast... a couple adjustment layers went a long way into fixing that.

Liquifying was especially laborious in this picture; I don't remember if her pants were mesh, but I guess even if they had been, the pose sure wasn't making things easy... the knees were spiky as hell. So, lots of work there... and the funniest thing is, most of what I fixed would end up covered by the grass anyway! Oh well... it happens (a lot... *sigh*).

Once liquified and small glitches smoothed out, and with the basic perceptual matching done, I tackled her projected shadow with a repressed sigh at the task (it can be a bit lengthy, especially when it needs Lens blur)... only to find out that, just with a few soft, hand-drawn doodles onto the grass with a dark brush and overlay blending mode (they should give a Nobel prize to whoever invented it!), it looked great and with far less effort!

Next, I took a whole page directly from “Zipi's Book On How To Do A Nice Picture”, and added some grass at her feet (or, well, legs) to help blending Tre onto the scene; I'm still way behind Zipi in Photoshop brushes usage, but I managed to find one remotely resembling grass (actually it was hair strands put upside down, but sssshhh!) and even to apply it decently; I'm quite satisfied with how that turned out... Zipi level it ain't, but heck, it works ^_^

At that point I remembered that Tre had asked for a blue rose somewhere in the pic... apparently she's very fond of them; this is where I had to cut some corners and, instead of capturing one "live" in-world, which would have allowed for far better cutout & perspective, I had to make do with a quick Deviant Art search... oh well, it ain't that bad, is it?

Tough I admit I very nearly abuse it, it was hard to resist the temptation to add some further sunlight effects, with sunbeams and all... enter Tiffen DFX... yaaay!

Finally, the usual savior: Nik Color Efex for final, overall photographic/atmospheric filters which, as usual and besides adding further niceness, almost always help in eliminating residual perceptual mismatches between subject and background -the eye kinda “sees” the same effect in both, and thus deduces they were always there, together from the moment of capture.

This article contains most of the information we intended for it, but isn't quite polished to our quality standards yet, so you may find it somewhat changed later; feel free to contact us for any particular point you wish to confirm.