JUST PhotographIN'

This last week was launch week for my photo card sets.  There were some jitters and nervous moments through the whole process of creating and launching the photo cards.  I can say launch week went fairly well, though!

The photo card process actually started about a year ago when I was talking to a fellow photographer about printing.  We started talking about different papers, and he gave me some recommendations of good quality papers.  The next step involved culling through photos to pick themes that worked well for photo sets.  My brain kept bouncing around different themes and photos to create sets.  Eventually, I had enough photos selected as well as the themes.

Then, it was onto the design phase.  My initial card design utilized the entire area of the card.  The printer supports borderless prints, and I assumed that it would do this for the photo card paper.  That was actually the largest error that I made.  I had already created all thirty cards using the borderless printing design before testing to see if it would actually print that way.  Nope!  The printer did not print the photo cards without the border around the edge.  I guess I should have paid more attention to margins on the paper template!  This required going back through every template to adjust the card design into the printable area margins.

Once I had the cards designed and printing the way they were supposed to, it was time to finalize pricing and setup the photo card page on my webpage.  There were a few late nights checking and double checking variables I could think of – the “what ifs.”  Then, it was time to pick a launch date to make everything live.  Somethings are not controllable, nor had I thought of them.  I have already had to make some adjustments for the unexpected variables through launch week.  That is part of the process.

Looking through the photos creates a sense of nostalgia, for me.  Almost every photo had some form of help from friends and family, whether it was: a simple recommendation of something to try, hiking along to a destination (often times waiting for me to take photos), holding or hauling equipment, or just giving two cents of advice when I asked “better one or two” (like an optometrist) during culling and post processing.  The photo cards are more than just photos.

I see the story of how each one was created.  Some of the winter scenes were taken for my dad, on his birthday.  I made a trip to Yellowstone in search of wolf viewing and photographic inspiration to celebrate my own birthday.  My mom’s favorite flower is the Wild Iris.  My sister and so many of my friends grew up as Estes Park Bobcats.  Alpine flowers and the many other flowers are delicate pieces of nature that are protected in national parks.  This is just a brief glimpse at the story behind the photo cards and the process I went through to create them.