OMG! It's finally done!

[Melinda]

Ahhh I'm so excited, I just had to tell someone...5 months after my giant renovation and re-brand started, it's FINALLY DONE!!!

After 8 years of doing photography professionally, but only as a 'weekend warrior', I took a scary leap when I went on maternity leave and quit my regular job. Over the next 12 months, I wasn't able to work a whole lot, being bound to controlled poverty by the government. However, to celebrate the end of my maternity leave and the beginning of my new exciting journey, it was time for a MASSIVE business overhaul.

I started with a new logo, which you have probably seen on all of my photos. Then I went and designed new cards. These took a unique spin and I made them sort of collectible. 20 different photos on them, all with the same back. My future sets will feature new photographs as I get new favorites.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/CardSmall.jpg

Then it was on to the website and blog. Had a lot of fun with this one. Simple, to the point and the nicest one yet (in my humble opinion). Check it out at www.melindagombert.com


After that came the monumentally giant task of my studio. When we moved into our new home (I was 6 weeks pregnant with Lucas at the time) we thought eventually we've develop the basement into my studio and we set up everything in our bonus room for the mean time. We eventually decided that the bonus room was actually a fantastic space for me. However, the set up we had was terrible. It was shabby, pieced together and just not efficient. Very unprofessional and overall pretty 'ghetto'. It was time to put some serious time into making this space somewhere that I am proud to bring clients into and somewhere they feel comfortable. Thus began 'reno project 2010'.

Here's the before (it usually wasn't this messy, I was half way through gutting out the room when it occurred to me that I should do 'before' photos) Take special note of the terrible cube shelf, the chunky awkward desks, the stands holding my back drop up and, (my personal favorite), the see through curtains that are actually falling down because the brackets came off the wall:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/Before1Small.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/Before2Small.jpg


And now, ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please....

Presenting, the brand NEW studio!

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/View2Small.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/View1Small.jpg

LOVE my new back drop support!!! (that photo frame will have a picture in it soon, it's currently on order)
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/View3Small.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/View5Small.jpg

The new display with my advertising pieces and new line of products. Still waiting on the albums to arrive and I'll probably keep adding new things to this, so this will be constantly changing.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/ProductsSmall.jpg

And my all time favorite of the new products, our accordion albums! Little 3x3 magnetic albums.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y154/Syryda/AccordionSmall.jpg

So, there it is! Thanks for appeasing my giddiness for the evening :)

[ekguy]

Congrats!!!!

[Unknown303]

Looking good. What monitors are you using?

[JimmyJones]

Hypothetical question, if someone wanted a full frontal self portrait done so they can look back and see how young they looked and how un-saggy their balls were

would you do it?
if so how much

[D'z Nutz]

bwhaha it's never gonna look that clean again :devil:

[AccentAE86]

awesome. It must feel really good. The room looks great. I'm so jealous. My office looks like the aftermath of hurricane katrina. I really would love to get it cleaned up.

Love it all. Your brand is looking good!

And that mini chair is awesome! Where did you get it?

btw I tried to post this on your blog, but I couldn't leave a comment! I click the "Post a Comment" link but nothing would happen.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Originally posted by Melinda

(it usually wasn't this messy)

:rofl: Suuuuure!

But seriously, it looks great! The only thing I would caution you about is that since you're using strobes, keep an eye out for any reflections that picture hanging on the wall might cause. (Unless there's no glass in the frame, I can't tell from the pic. In that case, feel free to ignore me. :nut: )

[Melinda]

Originally posted by BerserkerCatSplat


:rofl: Suuuuure!

But seriously, it looks great! The only thing I would caution you about is that since you're using strobes, keep an eye out for any reflections that picture hanging on the wall might cause. (Unless there's no glass in the frame, I can't tell from the pic. In that case, feel free to ignore me. :nut: )
Thanks for the heads up. There is glass in the frame, but most of the work in the studio is done on the floor so it shouldn't be too bad. I will keep an eye out though and if worse comes to worse I'll just tape a sheet of paper over it when I need to block it out.

Thanks for the kind words everyone!!!

[Melinda]

Originally posted by Unknown303
Looking good. What monitors are you using?
I've got two 24" samsungs and my husband (dirty_sohc) has a 30" samsung and a 19" (but he uses that one mostly for playing movies and stuff while working)



Originally posted by AccentAE86
awesome. It must feel really good. The room looks great. I'm so jealous. My office looks like the aftermath of hurricane katrina. I really would love to get it cleaned up.

Love it all. Your brand is looking good!

And that mini chair is awesome! Where did you get it?

btw I tried to post this on your blog, but I couldn't leave a comment! I click the "Post a Comment" link but nothing would happen.
Thank you Lloyd!

The chair was from a boutique baby store here in Calgary. It was meant to be though. I had my eye on it for months and finally went to go buy it. Turns out it was the last one the store would ever be getting, the manufacturer has discontinued it!

I'll look into the blog comments, I'm running into the same problem. Thank you for the heads up on it!

[Lex350]

congrats on getting it finished

[shutterbug_art8]

Nice setup. Much cleaner than my place.

[yobi5888]

Nicely done. :clap:

[Tomaz]

Very nice! :thumbsup:

[Gurpy]

Looks awesome!!

[djayz]

Looks great, congrats on the overhaul!

[Gibson]

Wow, that room has really come a long way since I was there (almost a year ago!)

Keep it up and congratulations!

[Unknown303]

I was trying to promote you to my family for some child/family portrait stuff and you site doesn't work on my iPhone. :cry:

[GOnSHO]

congrats melinda!! looks great!

you get alot of light in from the windows, does that affect your shots at all??

[AccentAE86]

Originally posted by Unknown303
I was trying to promote you to my family for some child/family portrait stuff and you site doesn't work on my iPhone. :cry:

Almost NO photography websites will work on an iPhone or iMaxiPad. Which is why I find it ironic that photographers love these hitler-esque devices so much.

[Melinda]

Nope, hasn't yet! Especially with the curtains being white, it natrually diffuses this awesome natural glow that is pretty easy to work with. Plus in the morning (when most of my shoots are) the light is actually hitting the other side of the house so I dont see a lot till the afternoon. That's when these photos were taken.

[Melinda]

Originally posted by Unknown303
I was trying to promote you to my family for some child/family portrait stuff and you site doesn't work on my iPhone. :cry:
It should by next week. There will be an html mirror site set up that should run on those devices.

[LongCity]

Not gonna lie, I like the old messy look a tiny bit better. Something about it shows an artist hard at work, not worrying about the mess they are creating but rather just focused on the work at hand. Very nice nevertheless.

[Unknown303]

Originally posted by Melinda

It should by next week. There will be an html mirror site set up that should run on those devices.

Great let us know on here! Until then I'll show them on a real computer next time. Great site and excellent studio by the way.

[Melinda]

Originally posted by LongCity
Not gonna lie, I like the old messy look a tiny bit better. Something about it shows an artist hard at work, not worrying about the mess they are creating but rather just focused on the work at hand. Very nice nevertheless.
Haha you should see it at the end of a shoot. It's WWIII in there. This is just a more polished professional space that makes my job easier (more space and easier to find things)

[flipstah]

Lookin' sharp! :thumbsup:

Congrats and good luck! :D

[Melinda]

Thank you so much everyone!

[JTI]

Congrats Mel, everything looks great!! I am sure you will see an increase in business after this overhaul.

[ZorroAMG]

Looks like a studio now! Very rad, Melinda and congrats on the fantastic re-brand!

Checking out your site now...

Ok, had a chance to look at the site and here are a few things I noticed...

GREAT looking site but on the portraits site, there is no way (that I could tell) to get back to the BLOG/PORTRAIT/WEDDINGS option page, other than switching tabs....something that may be a little easier for some to navigate back.

The flash site is really slow for me (OS X, snow leopard, 3.06ghz C2D 8gb RAM running 12mbps on speedtest) as is the photo loading on the blog site....that one is painful.

Other than that, I love the new direction and congrats again!!

[qrankz]

Cool..I'm guessing your backdrop is 9 feet across? You should try to get some semi reflective tile board for people to step on so you get that nice little reflection of the feet.

Anyways..cool!

[D. Dub]

Wow - great looking and functional space.