About Face

Go ahead, smile.  Doesn’t looking at a smiley face automatically force your mouth to grin?  It does for me.  That’s why it’s so fun when I see smiley faces in nature.  It’s like finding a Where’s Waldo, but not so obvious.  As I hunt for letters for Spell-It-Out Photos, I have come across many smiley faces.  So, I decided to take their photos to add to our office photo album.   We love keeping photos of the wonderful things that we run into while capturing letters.   If you see smiley faces and like to capture them, there is a fun Facebook page where people post their finds. It’s called Spontaneous Smiley.   https://www.facebook.com/groups/SpontaneousSmiley/

One of our customers even sent us a face that he found.  Can you see the whistling tree face?

Have fun finding a smile in everything and anything.  If you find a good one, take a picture and share it.

What’s in a Name?

How does your family feel about their name?  My last name is not the one I was born with, but it is the one that I have identified with for 25 years.  This year, the patriarch of my husband’s family passed away.  There were four boys in the family, each very proud of who they are, how they were raised, and the type of man that led them.

As Christmas rolled around, it got me thinking about a gift to celebrate Dad Tenerowicz, or perhaps it was to celebrate all of us with the Tenerowicz name. So what did I do?  I lied to everyone.  Of course in a good way.  I told everyone in the family that my younger son was doing a geneology project in history.  His assignment was to get everyone in his family to provide 2 words that described the name TENEROWICZ.   It was interesting to see the responses.  I didn’t really want to lie, but I wanted the responses to be raw.  If they knew what it was for, it might have changed their response.

What Tenerowicz means to us.

Once I got all of the responses, my business partner helped me design a specialty piece and we printed it on glass: one for each member of the family.  I must say, it was a very special gift.  I truly feel that it captured the family “being” very well.

These are the words (a couple phrases in there) that my family feels describes a Tenerowicz.

Go Oregon!

A big part of  Spell-It-Out Photos is our family atmosphere.  So when one of us is rooting for a team…we ALL are rooting for a team.  The exception, of course, is when they are playing each other.  Then it’s a friendly, yet spirited competition.  However, today we are celebrating the McAuliffe’s love for the University of Oregon.  There is a lot of green when any of the McAuliffe’s come around during football season.

So in our rooting spirit, this creation is for all of the Oregon fans, who will root on their Ducks in the Rose Bowl.

Decorating for Winter

I just spent the weekend in Yosemite.  What a beautiful place!  We hiked on Saturday and woke up to a beautiful snowfall on Sunday.  Of course, I headed out and started taking photos for our winter gallery.  This brings me to decorating for winter.

We will be adding photos all season to our Winter gallery.  Whether you are decorating a cabin, an avid skier, or just like winter photos, a letter art frame is a great finishing touch to your decorating.

The one to the right was a Christmas gift for a customer’s employer who just bought a cabin.  The great thing, is that you can buy photos from our Country side gallery to replace the winter ones, once the seasons change.

Support Small Businesses While Holiday Shopping

Holiday shopping is a wonderful time to give gifts that benefit more than the recipient. It’s so easy to do too.  When you purchase from small or local businesses, you are supporting US commerce.  It’s a great way to keep our dollars inside the US, support businesses that are hiring within the US, and / or using suppliers that are in the US.  Our small efforts will collectively make a HUGE difference.

Whether you are ordering letter art from Spell-It-Out Photos (we are small, and all of our suppliers are in the US) or  buying from your local gift store, keep in mind that each purchase is a gift in both directions.  One to the business that you are supporting and ultimately to the lucky recipient that gets a very thoughtful gift.

Let the shopping begin!

Did you know that small businesses…

•    Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
•    Employ half of all private sector employees.
•    Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
•    Generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
•    Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
•    Hire 43 percent of high tech workers ( scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
•    Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
•    Made up 97.5 percent of all identified exporters and produced 31 percent of export value in FY 2008.
•    Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau and Intl. Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs225.pdf);U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Holiday Shopping Tips

We LOVE the holiday season.  It’s exciting to see all of the creative orders that come through the studio.  As you are shopping for those that have been naughty or nice, here are a few tips to keep in mind during the holidays.

1) Shop EARLY – custom orders take time to create – plain and simple.  We at Spell-It-Out Photos, take great pride in creating each piece of letter art per your specifications.  Please allow enough time for creating and shipping.

2) Shipping – Shipping times (ground, 3-day, and next day) are AFTER your piece has been created.  It can take 3 – 12 days for us to make your piece, depending on the item ordered.  Once your piece is complete, we will ship it out according to your choice.  Also, the holidays get very backed up, leading us to item  #1, Shop Early.

3) Be creative – play around with our letters and products.  We have everything from stocking stuffers to large frames.

4) Ask for help – Can’t figure it out?  Need help with your creative juices?  Had something else in mind than what you see?  No problem, just ask us for help?  Email or call.  During this time of year, we may be working out in the studio, so please leave a message and we will return your call shortly.

5) Make it fun - Whether you are shopping with Spell-It-Out Photos or in the heart of the city, remember to make it fun.  This is a time of joy and giving.  If you feel the scrooge in you coming out, take a breath, walk in the park, tell a joke, what ever works, then tackle that shopping list one name at a time.

Focusing options

I shoot with a Canon 7D.  I’ve had people ask what’s the difference with the focusing options.  So here is a brief run down of how I interpret them.

One Shot – when you press the shutter button halfway, the camera sets the focus based on the scene at that moment and holds that until you press the shutter release the rest of the way.

AI Servo – when you press the shutter button halfway, the camera makes a focus determination and then continues to update that (“tracking” the focus of the subject) until you press the shutter release the rest of the way to take the shot.  I use this option when I shoot my son’s sporting events.
AI Focus – isn’t really a focusing mode, but more of a “on the fence” setting. When you press the shutter release halfway, the system is initially in One Shot focus mode, makes a determination, and holds it – unless the camera senses movement of the main subject. Then it switches into AI Servo focusing mode and begins to track the focus of the main subject.

How to use them.

One Shot focus – We have no expectation that our subject is going to move.  We want the camera to determine the focus and then set it. A reason we want that might be that we have a lens with Full Time Manual focusing (which means you can turn the focusing ring and tamper with the focus even while in the autofocus mode), and we want the camera to make a focusing determination but then we will adjust it manually. So we don’t want the camera, after it’s been adjusted, to play with focusing any more for that shot.
AI Servo focus – We expect to be working with a moving target, and want the focusing system to be ready when we press the shutter release halfway, no questions asked.

AI Focus – We are not sure what is going to happen, and ask the camera to do what it thinks is best for us based on what is happening with the subject.