Please find some of our most frequently asked questions here.
1) How do we receive our proofs?
All sessions except wedding- Within 1 week of your session, we will set up an appointment to view your portrait creations and to discuss print options and fine art collections for your home. At this meeting you will be shown a few samples of your images with our signature style and editing touches on a 27 inch screen so that you can see the kind of wow factor we can put into your images! The bulk of your proofs will only have basic edits done at that time for efficiency sake. Please come prepared with your wall guide and collection creation sheets that you received in order to go over your ideas and specific wall needs.
Wedding- You will be invited back within 6 weeks of your wedding to pick up your disk (if included in your package) and/or put together a print and product package. You will most likely see a sneak peek or two on our blog well before then! After you’ve had a chance to go over your digital images, we will make an appointment to go over your album design if included in your package.
Depending on your browser settings and size of your monitor screen, this will determine the size of the photos you are viewing on any blog entries or facebook page images. The photos we’ve uploaded are large enough for your viewing and proofing process, but are watermarked. Downloading and copying is not allowed. Feel free to tag yourselves in the facebook photos on our fan page though!
2. How do we order?
We will place your order at our meeting. At your session you will receive a card that outlines the process for ordering and receiving prints. Digital files are available via download or CD/DVD (if included in your package). We keep all our client’s digital negatives archived; however all edited proofs are purged from our system within two weeks of you receiving your order. While you can always come back to order more prints or products if you realize that one special image is missing from your collection, we highly recommend avoiding costly unarchiving and editing and ordering all at once. We are happy to set up a payment plan.
We can accept payment by cash, email money transfer, or credit card (through paypal). Debit is not available at this time but we are working on it! Personal cheques not accepted.
3. Can we print the images on our disk?
If you have paid to upgrade to the high resolution, then yes you can print them up to 8×10. All of our sessions come with some low res watermarked images for you to share online, but which are not printable, when you meet our minimum print purchase.
The web resolution images cannot be printed and are meant for web viewing only. They are sized for viewing and sharing on screen only. Due to incidences of people printing them, as well as confusion as to what this means, we now unfortunatley have to provide them with a watermark on them, to protect copyright. To give full print resolution files for free, or with your session fee, would offer no incentive for people to allow us to create beautiful, professional prints and canvases for them. The value in your session is in our creative time and talent, and with the print creations that you choose. Many other lower end studios who deal in volume, or beginner/part time photographers who are transitioning out of hobby into professional will often offer low priced high resolution CDs. We as a studio do not, and have never offered high res files like this. We specialize in high quality large prints, canvases and albums and feel that digital images take away from what we feel photography is about- printed photos, framed and hung, to show off your special moments.
4. Why can’t we print larger than 8×10?
Beyond 8×10, we’ve found that consumer printers aren’t reliable enough to provide the quality that we expect for our images. For prints and other products we control the entire process from the time the image is taken until the print is mounted. We only accept the highest quality of prints as it is a reflection of our work.
4. Do you have a studio?
Currently we shoot outdoors on location with the exception of our newborn, and boudoir sessions. We shoot at parks, beaches, and urban settings around the North Shore and Vancouver area. We are also now providing our services on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
We have a small in home studio space in North Vancouver for our newborn sessions which will minimize driving between clients and carting expensive gear around. We can control our set up/ lighting and temperature ensuring the best possible shooting conditions for these sessions. As we always value our new parent’s comfort, we are happy to discuss bringing the studio to you, for our regular newborn sessions for a fee. Due to the time in setting up, taking down and settling babies, we can no longer offer in home newborn sessions without this fee, except for special circumstances. You may upgrade your session if you would prefer we come to you.
5. Why can’t we see any family portraits on your website.
Life In Stills specializes in weddings, boudoir, and newborn sessions. We cover the three big events in your life- Engagement-Wedding-Newborn. We added boudoir in there because it sort of fits. ;) We don’t show our family sessions on our site because we don’t do family photography. We are happy to refer you to family photography specialists.
6. What do you do if it rains the day of our session?
We give you the option of rescheduling for another day, or if it is only a light drizzle and not too cold we can go ahead and shoot anyway, using shelter wherever we can, or umbrellas and boots. We prefer to not take out gear out into heavy rain, and we find that we do not have as much fun when you are cold and wet. If it is a maternity session we can move it indoors to your home if you like. With rainy weddings, we just get more creative with our shooting and where we do our portraits. :)
