Plinkk Photography

I’ve recently learned that I’m slightly short-sighted – nothing serious, but it’s my first foray into the world of spectacles. I’m not exactly a fan of how glasses look on me, but I really notice a difference when I’m wearing them. In this country, we’ve got it easy really. You pop to the opticians every couple of years, hand over a bit of cash and you can see clearly again. If it’s something worse, you just pop to your NHS hospital and get your treatment there and then.

In the developing world, it doesn’t work like that. There’s millions of people out there with reversible eye conditions who simply can’t get the help they need. This is where Sightsavers come in. They help millions of people with potentially blinding conditions. Last year alone, they helped 3.7 millions people.

My recent trip to the opticians has really brought home what my eyesight means to me. Without it I couldn’t appreciate photography and I’d probably have to give up my job. There are a few blind photographers out there, but I’m not sure I’m cut out to be one of them. Helen and I were married a couple of years ago, and we still bring out our wedding photographs to look at every now and again. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like if I had wedding photographs that I’d never be able to look at again.

I’m not here to ask you for money. I’m here to ask you to just think about what your eyesight means to you and how much easy access we have in the developing world to treatments. I know a number of professional photographers read this blog – think about your livelihood. Think about not being able to see another photograph ever again.

In order to show my support for Sightsavers International and the work they do, I’ve decided to team up with some friends to undertake the Three Peaks Challenge in June. If you don’t know what the challenge entails, its basically climbing three mountains in under 24 hours (including travelling between them!). Until about two weeks ago, I’d never even seen a mountain before so its a massive undertaking for me.

If you’d like to know how our training is going, and how we’re progressing on the day itself, we’ve got a website set up at www.geeksandpeaks.com. I’ll be sure to take some photos for you all.

You’ve probably seen the tweets on Twitter, or the (not so) subtle hints on Facebook… but I’m pleased to announce that we have our very own iPhone application available to purchase from the Apple App Store.

Second Shootr is an iPhone/iPod Touch application for professional wedding photographers. It has just one goal: to help photographers do what they do best…take awesome photos! Second Shootr helps professional wedding photographers to organise the wedding day so that their minds are free to concentrate on capturing those lasting memories.

A brief run-down of Second Shootr’s features:

• Store important client information – Names, addresses, phone numbers, websites etc.
• Store key details about the wedding itself – Ceremony/Reception locations, wedding theme etc.
• Capture and contact key members of the wedding party – Store contact details for the vicar, or the best man.
• Know where to be and at what time – Store key events and their location.
• Plan and tick-off your photos – plan those must-have photos, use photos from your iPhone camera or library as a reference and then tick them off when you’re done.
• Remember all your kit, every time – check your kit out as you leave the studio, then check it back in when you’re packing up.
• Remember everything you need to do before, during and after the wedding – Second Shootr will list your to-do items, just tick them off when done.
• Customise Second Shootr to your business requirements.
  

Second Shootr is available in the Apple App Store right now and is available for all models of iPhone and iPod Touch (as long as you’re running OS 3.0).

If you’d like more information, as well as further screenshots and an instructional video, head to www.secondshootr.com or go straight to the app store to purchase it:

If you want to know the latest updates and information about Second Shootr, head to the blog: blog.secondshootr.com

Why should I care? I’m a client, not a wedding photographer.

True, you may not be interested in buying Second Shootr, but you can be safe in the knowledge that Plinkk Photography is leading the way in wedding photography and wedding photography technologies, so much so that we are investing very large sums of money into helping other wedding photographers play catchup! You can be certain that we have every detail of your day logged and at our fingertips – We’ve already used Second Shootr out on weddings, and we will continue to do so.

We’ve saved the best ’till last for our recent bout of announcements. Hope you’re sitting comfortably!

Until now, when our clients wants to purchase photographs they had to look through all their photographs online, scribble down the name of the ones they liked, and then get in touch with us to order their prints/albums/canvasses etc. This is how most photographers in the area operate… its slow… its not fun… it sucks.

We’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty and we’re rolling out a state-of-the-art proofing system. You or your friends and family can log on to the site, take your time choosing your favourite photos, and then take your time again ordering the prints you want. You can instantly change colour images into black and white or sepia and you can choose the order that images appear in your album.

As soon as you press the ‘buy now’ button, you’ll be sent a confirmation email. We’ll email you every step of the way too, we’ll confirm when payment has been received and of course when your goodies are ready for you to take home. If you’ve forgotten what the last email said, there’s an online order tracking facility.

All this new shinyness links in with our fancy slideshow software too. When you’re looking at a slideshow of your images, and you see a photograph you’d like to buy, you just click the little shopping trolly and it’ll blast you through to our proofing system. You can’t get much better than that!

If you book a wedding with us, you can now run through your final images face to face with us, or you can pop open a bottle of wine, fire up the intertubes and get clicking! Its that simple!

Click here to try it out. Enter the passcode ‘sample‘ to get going.

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