Geddie Advertising
19
Jan
Video Clips
- By admin
Commercial Digital Print ordered a new, large-format colour printer. The largest, newest and most-featured press of its kind in Niagara. This called for some fanfare, so we produced a brief video to post to social media and their website.
The one minute video tells the story far better than any press-release or social media post.
Quickly shot, quickly edited and produced, and promptly published. We can help you with your video post.
31
Jan
Night Light
- By admin
Light is a big factor in photography. Waiting for the sunrise or sunset, hoping a cloud will move out of the way, or adding a flash to a scene are all known techniques to photographers. We’ve become quite used to arriving at a scene prior to sunrise to see how the sunrise colours will look. Lately, we’ve been doing the opposite, waiting for that brief period of light between sunset and darkness.
The challenge is photographing the new skyline in St. Catharines. The first concern is vantage point – where to position the camera and on a winter’s night that can be a problem. Climbing around frozen ground in the dark presents challenges. In this case, I wish I could get higher to get above trees and lamp posts. But short of renting a hydraulic lift, I had to make do with scrambling around on hillsides to find the best possible rather than ideal position.
I do like the light in this photo – daylight has definitely disappeared, but total night darkness hasn’t arrived. There’s still a sliver of daylight sliding behind the clouds. The inky blue sky is a nice contrast to the yellow building lights. Now the question is what exposure?
The exposure dilemma is how to expose for the soft light coming from the office windows in contrast to the strong light from the Meridian and Brock signs. And then there’s the strong light from the street lamps. So we took lots of exposure at lots of settings and ended up with this shot being 1/15th @ f/7 and an ISO of 2000. There is some noise visible in the dark blue sky, so next attempt will be to turn down the ISO to see if we can lessen that. What we do like is the light from the office windows and the light on the church spire. The flood of light in the parking lot is mostly contained compared to other exposures we tried.
Shooting in the dark is a challenge, but one that comes with the reward of discovering new colours and new sources of light in our photos. And shooting in the evening in January has the advantages of no mosquitoes!
12
Jan
Colour Correction – The Search for the Holy Grail
- By admin
Terri Weeks, Brock University Varsity Women’s Curling Team, and enthusiastic curling instructor.
We’ve been struggling with getting colour correct in some pretty ugly shooting environments – arenas that are lit with sodium vapour, or fluorescent or some other synthetic, albeit efficient light source.
Yeah, sure, the camera has colour white balance settings, but even then we find ourselves fiddling with the white balance on every single selected photo in post. Surely there’s a better way? After reading a lot of on-line resources about white balance, grey cards, and other scary exotica from the world of colour correction, we came upon the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. This lovely little plastic folder and software CD provides a grey-scale and a colour target to shoot on location, and a Lightroom plug-in to read your colour spectrum from the location photo that you capture prior to your shoot.
We tried it on a photo shoot with the Brock curling clinic last weekend and the above photo of Terri is corrected with X-rite. Believe me, everything has gone from overall yellow to something resembling correct skin tone. Shooting in an ice arena is horrible enough with all the light bouncing off the white ice surface. Easy over exposure. And the red everything in the Brock uniforms creates another challenge. But I think this looks good – the whites are white and the skin tone, hair colour and splash of freckles looks pretty good to me.
But then, who knows what monitor you might be viewing this on? The challenge never ends.
01
Jan
Happy New Year
- By admin
The Inner Lighthouse at Port Dalhousie on a wonderful winter day when a huge storm brewed on Lake Ontario while the sun shone on the harbour.
We wish sunny days to all our clients, suppliers and friends as we head into a new year.
24
Nov
Team Photos
- By admin
We photographed all the players and coaches individually and then the team groupings from the Brock Badger curling teams. We were able to create a studio on-site, and with some portable strobes and some great backdrops brought the, “Mountain to Mohammed” by shooting everything at the curling club.
The players were great models, more than willing to try any setup. Cooperative participants sure makes photo shoots a lot more fun. Teams that look this good are natural winners, right?
20
Nov
Logo Refresh
- By admin
Every logo deserves a review and occasionally a refreshing. We developed the original logo for the Hospice Niagara 5 Car Draw, but after six years it looked like time for an overhaul.
We redrew the logo to make it look simpler and cleaner. And we also introduced a new, fresh colour palette for the artwork of the 2015 lottery.
Can we help you refresh your look?
10
Nov
Improved Image
- By admin
The wait-staff and a sous-chef prepare and present a buffet for a special function at The Club.
Handing out black and white photocopies of menus isn’t a very good way to encourage banquet sales and rentals. We’re working on a new series of banquet brochures for a private club, and what better way to show the professionalism of the facility than through new photographs of the staff and the facilities? Great photos are just one component of a well designed brochure, but one that is oh-so-necessary.
08
Nov
Fall Colours
- By admin
Fall colours on a cold, over-cast day with intermittent streaks of sunlight, can create a remarkable landscape photo on a wonderful golf hole.
20
Aug
Isaac Brock Wants You to the Archives
- By admin
David Sharron, Brock Archivist and Doug Geddie hold the original artwork used in the Isaac Brock Wants You recruitment campaign.
The Isaac Brock Wants You campaign of the late 1970’s was an attempt to add personality and history to a young Ontario university. It was a fun and aggressive promotion that helped position Brock as a viable educational choice.
We kept much of the original artwork from that campaign, and as Brock is entering it’s 5oth Anniversary year, it seemed like an appropriate time to donate Isaac and his friends to the Brock University Archives.
The whole story about the donation and the development of the “Isaac Brock Wants You” campaign can be found on the Brock University News site, here.
30
Jul
Right Where I Belong
- By admin
Congratulations to the Advancement Team at Nipissing for the work they have just finished for the design of their 2014 Student Guide.
Geddie Advertising had the opportunity of working with Nipissing and making several suggestions about the redesign of these recruitment materials. Our work began with a review and report of the marketing and recruitment activities at Nipissing and this Student Guide is one of the first pieces in the revised package of marketing materials. Nipissing, located in North Bay, has the advantage of a smaller campus combined with an outstanding reputation for academic excellence. The more personal nature of the Nipissing experience was captured with the Right were I belong slogan and the series of “selfie” images.
The challenge now will be for the university to target the areas of Ontario where they know they can attract students who are looking for the Nipissing advantage. We helped Nipissing identify their application and enrolment statistics to better target these recruitment activities.
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