(arc)nova

There is a good chunk of you that know what I've been up to "behind the scenes" so to speak, and that is getting a move on with one of the more ambitious parts of my list fo Golden Things.  Unless you don't consider launching your own little "empire" ambitious.  And some of you may not, I don't know.  But I WOULD like to know what you do consider ambitious, if that's the case.  Behold the second to last on my list of 26 Golden Things:

#25 (arc)nova; the launch of a brand.

Last winter, @MarkStyleMe and I decided to get together for a coffee and devise a strategy that would bring some sort of personal business into reality.  In the past we had come up with little schemes to rake in money, ranging from idiotic to borderline genius ideas.  This time it would be something a little more grounded in reality, and we did come up with a pretty great business model after a couple short hours.  We also came up with a name.

A few were tossed around, with me wanting to keep it somewhat celestial and @MarkStyleMe mostly agreeing but also wanting to play with symbols and it not just being a word.  I think we spent more time on the name than we did on the business model, because evrryone knows a shit name doesn't get you anywhere.  After looking up definitions of countless words and putting them together in random sequences, we came upon our solution.

             arc: a luminous bridge.
                  nova: a star that suddenly becomes thousands of times brighter.

Now, the original business model dealt with (arc)nova operating solely as a talent agency.  Being as we were both in dead-end jobs and looking for the next great thing... it seemed like pretty solid idea at the time.

That being said, and as happens with most things in life, it fell by the wayside and was forgotten.

Flash forward a few months.

I'd just been in a fight with one of my bests (which resulted in the end of the friendship (see August 5th blog: "and then there were 4") and wanted to prove a point to her.  And I suppose everyone else at the same time.  That point being that ANYONE could start a business, they just needed the drive to do so.  I immediately contacted @MarkStyleMe and asked if launching (arc)nova as a multimedia-type venture would be alright with him, for the time being at least.  He agreed and I began devising my plan.

First was getting a Facebook page in its name (yes, I have had the (arc)nova page since August,) and then an e-mail address and finally a twitter handle.  Cover those bases, yo!  Next was the bigger question of what the hell was I going to use it for?  I've always been handy with Photoshop... or, not always, but at least the last five or six years though it was mostly tinkering, nothing serious.  Then several years ago I started getting random requests to "fix" pictures.

Lines under eyes.  Power lines in the backgrounds of wedding pictures.  Removing scars from shingles (no shit; the bride had bad scars on her cheek and I had to fix a whole wedding's worth shots, yikes.) Turning skies brighter blue.  Replacing chunks of dirt in a grassy background with the grass instead.  "Hey, can you whiten my teeth?" "Take Uncle Carl out of this group picture, I hate him."  "This picture sucks; can you do anything for it?"

It dawned on me that for all of the requests I had been fulfilling, I could have been charging for them.  Ask anyone and they'll tell you that getting photoshop work professionally done isn't necessarily cheap.  Even some photographers will add on extra photoshopping fees as a bonus, not an inclusion of the original cost.  Sure, you'll get a decent picture, but like the guy taking your senior portraits, you have to pay for them to go the extra mile (in my case, I had a bumpy forehead back then.  He blurred my face out, lol.)  Granted, this is not all photographers, because I know a few who only give back the best work possible and I think it's very cool that they do.  They have a name to protect, right?

Now, you can talk a lot about your skills but sometimes you just need to show some proof.  I did some photoshop work for my great friends Liz and Tyler a few months back because they were displeased with the quality of their wedding pictures.  I did it for free because it was a great chance to take some fairly good pictures (camera-quality wise) and mess around with them.  My own personal cameras don't shoot in very high definition so this was a real treat for me.  The goal was to make every picture worthy of being framed, and to expand on the original vision of the photographer with a little twist of my own.

Sometimes the issue at hand was as simple as messing with exposure and contrast ratios, like the below example.  A little bit of cropping also goes a long way by getting rid of the pavement and drawing your eye a little more naturally to the center of the image.  Toss in a few filters, boost the color, and ta-da!  Original pictures are all on the left, (hopefully) obviously.

There wasn't much beautifying done in the pictures (or any at all, actually.)  I learned my lesson a long time ago that you shouldn't remove moles and freckles without the request of the person in the picture, so that was obviously not the goal.  But we all have wrinkles under our eyes, divots in our skin, discoloration in our pigment, etc., and for pictures, specifically wedding pictures, you want to look your best.  If that means digital removal of said imperfections, soooooo be it.  In the below picture, you can tell the original version on the left was a little "under the weather" looking, which is fixed pretty easily.  Then it's just a little bing-bang-boom to get those blue eyes sparkling (c:

So you may be thinking "what else is there, aside from color correction and beauty-jobs?"  Well, it starts to get a little more complicated when you replace backgrounds.  The focus of this picture being Liz and Tyler was just fine, but with a line of cars, a white truck, and then a building in between them (as well as power lines on the left, my old nemesis!) it was distracting to me.  So I took them out.

More difficult than the distant background of a blurred mostly-one-color scheme is moving on to the removal of larger objects with a bit more focus in the image.  While it's easy-ish for me to do a lot of these tricks, this one was actually a bitch.  I loved the picture but I HATED the background.  You'd think it'd be common sense to not take great pictures with cars in the background, but you'd be wrong!  It was my personal mission to clean up the plate.

And then of course, to branch away from the "Everyday" sort of work, there are always the multiples.  That particular set of photoshop skills speaks for itself (c;

The point of (arc)nova is not to take the creativity away from photographers, it isn't even to take away the fact that they took the picture.  It isn't about that in the least.  The point is to give you (the client) a product you are happy with.  There won't be any branding on the bottom of images (for now or for the foreseeable future, at least until I start taking them myself,) nor will there be required advertisement of the work performed were you to post it.  It's all a private business, especially considering some of the subject matter that I've photoshopped in the past.

You have no idea what I've seen...

I think my hope when it comes to photo manipulation within (arc)nova is that if you are unhappy with ANY picture, be it one you took yourself or one you paid to have taken, I can fix it.  I should say, actually, there is a 90% I can fix it.  Because some shit just can't be fixed, am I right?  If you have a great picture that you've always loved but there is just that ONE thing you hate about it, give (arc)nova a shout.  Truth be told, if you're paying me to do photoshop work, I'll do it without any expectations on your end.  I'd even prefer it kept somewhat quiet because the last thing I'd want is for you to go running back to your wedding photographer (who no-doubt put a lot of time and work into those pictures) and scream "LOOK at what HE did to THESE!  Look how GREAT they are NOW!"

I know that would make me feel like doo-doo, were I that position.

The other facet of this venture is the video branch, and that really speaks for itself.  I've gotten quite crafty with my video work and that's just another service I will be offering.  Not too much in the beginning (lest you have footage for me to work with right away) but down the line expect it to expand.  Wedding videos, celebration videos of whatever... who knows where it will go?  It's obviously a little self-promoting to say (arc)nova is producing the finished product of "26 Golden Things," but who would I be if I wasn't a little shamelss at tossing my name out there?  Trailer is posted yet again below, for those so-inclined, lol.

The point, by the way, behind my slogan is that this is merely the start of the business.  There are so many directions it could head and so many shapes it can take that really, right now, it is anybody's guess.  But there is something kind of exciting about that, don't you think?  (arc)nova is just a glimmer right now... maybe it'll grow into something, dare I say, luminous?  Ideally I'll go (super)nova on this thing and take over the world.  Maybe someday.

That's all for now, thanks for reading and (hopefully) coming to me with your requests at some point in time.  I love a challenge!  And take THAT #25 (arc)nova; the launch of a brand!  I wrote all about you and didn't leave my chair ONCE to do something more fun!  Ya bitch!

Ciao kids (c: