I’m investigating new print suppliers for my ball photography now. Any suggestions in the comments are welcome. For a long time I have used the same lab for printing such photos, but this year their customer service has let them down.

First let me tell you about my process; a customer (you hopefully) places an order for prints on my website. For ball photos, which I upload to the website unedited, I then have to edit the photos before ordering prints. That may take a couple of days, depending on how busy I am. I then order the prints online with my favourite photo lab. Normally printing and dispatch happen within 24hrs, but lets call it 48hrs to be on the safe side. They send them first class to me (+24hrs), and check the prints and send them first class to you (+ 24 to 36hrs depending on my diary).

So at the worst I hope to have prints with the customer within 7 or 8 days.

At this point I have to mention Royal Mail, and I’ll try not to go off on one. Why does “Special Delivery” exist? Is it for really urgent post? Isn’t that what should distinguish first and second class? OK, so there might be really really urgent post, but first class should be 24hr turn around. Perhaps it is for that added peace of mind that it will be delivered? Surely all post should be delivered! Enough said. I look forward to Royal Mail being sold off to a private company and the postal service being properly opened up to competition. Hopefully then, post should work as it should.

So back to my print supply problems. Winter balls are tricky because they are near Christmas. Customers want their photos for their Gran for Christmas, and want quick turnarounds. Royal Mail don’t seem to care. First order gets “lost in the post”. Subsequent print orders arrive, so I contact the lab who say words to the effect of “You’ll have to re-order them then”. I really expect better service, and even their website suggests I will get better service than that. Because I am a business, the distance selling regulations do not apply in this case. But this lab also deals with consumers for which they would. They have now lost a long term customer, once I find another decent lab.

A few weeks back, another photo lab phoned me up one a new marketing campaign, with enticing offers asking me to give them a try. Given that I was now looking, I thought why not, and reordered with them. I paid extra for “Special Delivery”, since I’m now behind on my own turn around schedule. Half the prints didn’t show, a few days late. Not sent special delivery. I phone them up. The sent two packages. Neither special delivery. How can RM lose the post twice. Perhaps it was the snow hiding the post van from the postie?  Top customer service this time, they will reprint and send immediately. A few days later the prints show up. Still not special delivery!

I can now finally dispatch my order to my customer 17 days after they first placed the order. I guess with the snow and Royal Mail’s efficiency, there is no chance the customer will get their prints before Christmas

So I am now looking for a new print lab. One that sends prints by the postage method I specify. One that prints reliably. One that fixes issues if they arrive in a gracious and efficient manner. Suggestions are welcome in the comments.

I’m not going to name the two labs who have let me down. I figured you’d guess the postal service so no point hiding that one. But I will give a big shout out to a couple of other companies. Loxley Colour have always given me top prints and excellent customer service. They are a bit too pricey to be economic for ball photography, but are a really top lab. Photobox are a top consumer print lab. They too have given me top customer service, but unfortunately I found their quality too variable to use for professional work – hence my checking of all prints I send out.

This experience has also made me think about my own customer service. I hope I live up to your expectations. If I don’t, please tell me politely and we can work something out.

Wolfson ball is probably my favourite of the Oxford college balls at the moment. That may be because it has been a regular event in my diary for the past 4 years or so (except for last year when Tony Culshaw Photography covered for me), but it is probably largely because Wolfson is such a small friendly college. Being a small relatively low-cost ball, I never make much money from shooting there, but I always feel very welcome and enjoy being there much more than some other balls.

I was very pleased with the photo montage above at this years ball. A group of seven came to us wanting to create a photo spelling Wolfson. I think their idea was to try to make the letters with their hands and get all seven of them in the one shot. I wasn’t convinced by that idea, so suggested the above. The idea for the above is photo was partly stolen from the few nursery/pre-school photos that my daughter has been in. Rather than attempting get 30 toddlers all looking at the camera, the company that does their photos does so in batches of 5 or so, and then creates a montage with all the groups. Since I only had the seven people involved everyone appears a few more times in this. I was particularly impressed by the effort put in by the chaps to make the letter S. The only problem with doing such a photo is that it can’t really be printed at standard photo sizes. But doing it was a lot of fun – typical of what I love about Wolfson ball.

It was my birthday at this years’ Wolfson ball. I would post a photo of me on my birthday (taken by ball president wanting to swap roles with the camera), but it was decided that I needed to buy myself a new dress shirt for my birthday!

I was thrilled to be able to provide photography to my old Oxford college, Merton, this year. I felt right at home being back there, even if there have been several changes to the college. The lodge has been completely revamped since I last visited, and the new (well not that new, but compared to when I was a student) admin offices meant that the room the photography studio was in used to be one of the admin offices. I remember that the room that was being used as the cloakroom used to be the Estate’s office. Clearly the student have changed too, this years’ freshers were 4 when I matriculated!

For this ball I was very ably assisted by Tony from Tony Culshaw Photography. Tony has done a few jobs for me, and others referred by me, but I’d never had the chance to work with him. He was an absolute star all night. Although, looking at the photos I think his head is wonky – but don’t worry I’ll straighten any photos ordered. You may also wish to read Tony’s blog post about the night. I’m sure I’ll be asking him to help me in the future, whenever my normal assistant is unavailable. However, Julian will be back from Nepal soon enough.

The photos from the event can be found in the client gallery. The survivors photo didn’t work out so well, since the silent disco meant that nobody could hear me trying to arrange them. Ironic really. Several attempts can be downloaded free of charge from my Flickr page.

St Hilda’s College ball was on Saturday 8th May. Photos from the ball can be seen in our client area. This Oxford college was the last single sex college, and started accepting men for the first time this year. Although that makes little difference to the ball night, since men attend as guests anyway.

This ball must have been the first that we have attended where we were not pushed for space in one way or another. The room had high ceilings and decent amount of floor space. Unfortunately for the us, we were at the far end of the college from the majority of the ball venues, and less people ventured that far away from the beer tent. I know of at least one person that was unable to find us during the ball. We weren’t completely out of it, as we were right next to outdoor cinema which was screening “Romeo and Juliet” repeatedly.  I guess it gets the couples feeling romantic before their photos are taken.

As a benefit of our location within the college, while setting up for the ball we were treated to a lovely sunset behind Magdelen College tower.

For this ball shoot aCoolDryPlace Photography was assisted by Kate of Paperleaf Studio, maker of handmade stationery

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On Saturday I attended the The Oxford Union 1950′s Ball (Hilary, in the title, refers to Oxford University’s name for the term between Christmas and Easter). The Oxford Union is Oxford University’s world famous debating society, which is regularly attended by famous politicians, both as students prior to their careers in politics, and working politicians at the height of their careers. None of the latter were at the ball as far as I was aware, and if any of the students there have serious political ambition then I imagine they will have avoided my studio if too inebriated (but I’ll hang on to the photos just in case the Daily Mail should ever need them ).

The photography for this ball was requested last minute, well more precisely on the Monday before.  Unfortunately this meant that Julian, my usual assistant, was unable to be there. Some good friends, Matt & Jo, bravely agreed to give me a hand. Jo got stuck in helping with the photography, and Matt acted bouncer for a lot of the evening – leading him to believe that he needs to be balder and fatter.

I’m amazed that so many students openly tell me that they intend to try to rip off the photos rather than pay for them, or ask me to use their camera to take the photos. I guess many (mistakenly) think that I’m being paid as part of their ball ticket cost. I don’t know whether I should be more surprised, or less, when this occurs with a bunch of wannabe politicians.

If you are looking for photos (to buy!), please visit the client area.

The theme for Wolfson Ball was the Titanic, as I discussed previously in my post about possible poses. Nobody requested either, despite the ball committee thoughtfully providing a couple of plastic replica “Coeur de la mer”s. As is typical with most Oxford college balls, the theme is only loosely associated with the event and very few guests dress in any way even remotely associated with the theme. The chap above has to take the prize for the best themed outfit I saw on the night.  If he comments on this post in the next week I’ll send him a free 6×4 of his choice from the ball photos as a prize. Hmmm now I have to think of some ingenious way to confirm his identity….

Group photos at college balls tend to make me mildly stressed. Some of the attendees may have had one or two drinks and find standing up tricky. More so, when there is a group of them. Things tend to get broken. At the 2007 ball, a backdrop got ripped and a light smashed (although the light had nothing to do with the guests ). As always we tried to limit groups to 6 or less people, and we were pretty tight for space this time around too, so more than 6 was near impossible anyway. As always people tried to push the limits. When a group of about 15 turned up, I tried a new approach to dealing with the situation. I asked if any of them had £100 as a deposit against potential damage, hoping they would all sheepishly go away. One chap merrily piped up that he did and handed my five £20′s from his wallet. He didn’t seem short of cash after that either. I relaxed knowing that if they broke something I’d at least have £100 towards it. They paid more attention to what my assistant said when arranging them. It worked really well. If the chap with £100 in his wallet comments on this post in the next week and gives me the £100, I’ll send him a free 6×4 of his choice from the ball photos as a prize. I don’t think I need to worry about confirming his identity!

Having provided photography for their summer ball, I had been asked to setup my studio for the Oxford Institute Of Legal Practice Christmas ball which took place last saturday at Eynsham Hall. However, I was already booked for Susie and David’s wedding (details to come later on that one). So an associate, Tony Culshaw, stepped in to do the photography on behalf of aCoolDryPlace Photography.

Please visit the client area if you’re looking to buy prints or download the group photo.

If you remember much about the film, I’m sure you’ll be aware that the second of those poses isn’t normally one you’d do at a college ball. Photos by Matt Hintsa & Erling A on flickr, reproduced under creative commons license.

If you are in Oxford and wanting more information about the ball please visit the Wolfson winter ball website

The Oxford Institute of Legal Practice (Oxilp) Ball took place at the Randolph hotel in Oxford. The students of this ball were celebrating the end of their legal practice course, and it was nice to see a few tutors joined them. Being a friday night, I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare after getting home before going out again, which meant I forgot a number of things – like the gels we used on the background for the previous ball (St Hugh’s & Corpus). However, we did have a new set of lights with us enabling us to do a 4 light hi-key setup, as shown below. I don’t really like this style much personally, and have shyed away from it because so many other event photographers use it. I like to offer something different. But the clients seemed to like it, and the results were pretty good.

4-Light setup for hi-key at the Randolph

Julian Simpson, who assists me at such events, put in an heroic effort for this ball, driving from south-west Wales to make it to Oxford by 17:30. He also worked tirelessly throughout the night, and uploaded all the images to my sales area. If you’re looking for a photographer in the Bristol or south Wales area, I’d highly recommend him.