CHRISTINA KRAMER PORTRAIT - CTKPHOTOS: Blog

A Successful Sweet 16

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 14:30:44 GMT

It was our pleasure to capture these beautiful memories. As hard as it is for a 16 year old to give me their time to do a more formal portrait session before the party I really try to politely insist. I get it, they are 16 and just want to party and be with their friends. But thank goodness beautiful Alison was a willing model. Her pre-party portrait session steals the show. And her parents are very happy it happened :)

First of all, look at the cover photo! lol soooo adorable! Secondly I cannot thank you enough for all the spectacular...
Posted by Jeanne DeBraccio Gidwill on Friday, January 22, 2016

My inspiration to jump into School portraits and where I see this going?

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 15:45:26 GMT

To be honest it was the image my son Cooper came home with last year. I knew I had a really sharp eye considering my occupation but I was terribly disappointed that my son wasn't represented properly. He has yellow green eyes and they look gray. The image was blurry, red and blended into the very non-descript background. I actually scanned and corrected it before sharing it with Facebook friends.

Ultimately I retouched it to this state but I have a special skill set that allows me to do this when hundreds of other parents don't.

As we all know, I love LB and quite frankly felt I could do a better job. Many years ago I worked for Olan Mills as a school photographer so I had the picture day process down. I'm positive I can light better. I had tons of background image files to work with because I make a habit of shooting the backgrounds separately after each set I build regardless of the product. And most of all, I had beautiful landscapes of places I've captured throughout the years. Especially Long Beach!! Business was slow in the beginning of 2015 and decided to start with sports. I photographed the Middle School field and then shot the Athletes on Green Screen. The feedback was amazing and I streamlined the shooting process so I could photograph a lot of kids in a short amount of time, then composite the images in my studio to create something memorable.

As a mom in the LB school district East School was willing to accept my proposal, then West School did too... and then the fun began. I posted over 200 background choices for the PTA's to choose from. They had to narrow it down to 30 in an effort not to overwhelm the parents with choices. I'm so excited to see how it all works out and receive feedback. I greatly appreciate the local schools giving a Local business a shot over the Big Picture factories they have been using. Guess we will wait and see the outcome :)

For the parents reading this: I personally will be at every shoot as the lead photographer. Each set will be lit by me and will have a professional photographer trained by me shooting if there are more than one sets built. There is no picture factory processing your child's images. I personally process, retouch, composite and send your images to print. There will be a make-up day for each school which I will be the photographer for. I am NOT A SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPHER! I am a professional photographer who lives in and loves Long Beach. If you call CTK PHOTOS - I answer! I offer custom service and high quality images at the same cost as the picture factories. My goal is for my team to photograph ALL the Long Beach schools and sports programs within the next 5 years and with your support I believe this can happen :)

Live and Learn

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 15:41:11 GMT

Well after a month of taking portraits, Action and Team photos I have learned a few lessons. First of which is NEVER try to open a door you can't see through. My head still hurts. The second is that even though I still am convinced the quality of my work is better than work of the picture factories… there is much to learn from them. Trying to make it easy for the parents to get high quality images with no waiting time and convenience is clearly NOT the way to go. Next time around I will take a page out of the big guys book and schedule team and portraits indoors and not on a game or practice day. Live and learn…

I learned that I can create an e commerce website in under a week…. And it looks pretty good too - Thanks to the fine e robots at Zenfolio.

Most of all it has been reinforced that its not what you know. Its who you know! And the fine people of LB are eager to help me be successful at doing what I love to do. And thats creating beautiful images while making a decent living doing it.

So if you have any sports leagues, teams or clubs that would like to raise the image quality and service - I would be honored to receive the referral.

Hello and Welcome

Mon, 11 May 2015 23:46:18 GMT

I've been a photographer for over 20 years now. I have been running my own business shooting primarily products and Jewelry. I've always had a secret love for capturing landscape but never thought I could ever earn a living with it. During this time I gave birth to my two beautiful sons. Of course I spend half of their lives taking photographs of them. I found myself at a bunch of sports events and being the passionate photographer I shot tons of those throughout the years. When your child is on a team there is the inevitable team photo shoot and then the individual shoots. Neither of them were ever spectacular... But as the doting parent I purchased just like everyone else. I never inspected the quality. Instead I was just glad my son didn't ruin the picture and it was a bonus if he was smiling nicely. However, I did notice that I eventually stopped purchasing the actual pictures and only ordered a plaque and trading cards. I wondered why. Well to be truthful, I was not in love with the generic backgrounds. The lighting was flat and the images really never captured by sons beautiful blue/green eyes. So I thought - How can I do better??

I knew it would be difficult to capture every player on the perfect night with no wind and the sun just setting with the lights in the field twinkling just right... So I thought... I can capture amazing landscape shots. And I'm a seasoned studio photographer. I need to blend these together. Oh- I forgot to mention that I am also a photoshop expert. There is not too much I can't accomplish with photoshop and I teach Photoshop at FIT, NYC as well. Ultimately I shoot the field, gym or venue of the league. Then I shoot the portraits on green screen and composite the two together.

So I decided to give it a shot. Long Beach is the neighborhood that I live in and where we are raising our family. I started here with the leagues my children participate in. I've been very well received. Partially because I'm familiar with the parents on some of the boards and partially because people recognize that I am the author of the Visions of Long Beach book which is a book primarily on the landscape of Long Beach. Although the book was published in 2008, I have been running the Visions of Long Beach Facebook group which has over 500 local members.

So here I go - Wish me luck!