First, let me say a big thank you to all who asked about our wedding and offered good wishes for us - you'll be pleased to know the wedding went fabulously well! October 7th, the big day, was 27 degrees, big blue skies, just perfect. The ceremony (held by celebrant Glenda Lofts) was fantastic - full of warmth, gentle humour and down to earth sentiment. The reception (at Bluestone Restaurant/Bar) was great - lots of friends and family, funny speeches, excellent food, lots of drinks - perfect! And it was all captured wonderfully by George Trifunovic of Ardmillan Studios who I would thoroughly recommend to anyone looking for really classy, yet really relaxed wedding or portrait photography - it's hard to express in words how happy we were with his efforts on the day (even from a picky photographer's perspective!). That Leica wide open black and white look - makes even me look half decent!!

Second, the all important honeymoon - well, we're just about to take the proper honeymoon - on Lord Howe Island - which brings me to our closing dates. A bit longer than normal this year, so please plan around the following dates:

Image Science will be shut for Christmas at lunchtime on the 22nd of December, and re-opens on the 15th of January 2007

It's hard to believe that Christmas is only two weeks away as I write this. This year has gone so quickly for us, and it's been an exceptionally busy one. What with all the new things going on here, teaching at RMIT, and organising a wedding, I feel like I've barely had a moment to reflect. And next year we have all sorts of new plans that I'm just beginning to think about now. Well, it's good to keep busy - I've even been taking more photographs than normal lately, which is great - I've been able to catch up on all those family and friends jobs we photographer's always have on our To Do list. But everywhere I turn there is a new baby, or someone turning 80, or something else wonderful and worth documenting. The biggest challenge is finding the time to process all the raw files and get everything printed. I'm certainly appreciating my new cameras's RAW + JPG mode which gives me the best of both worlds - ultimate quality that comes from the control offered by RAW, but also the speed of JPG delivery. Very nice. I've also been appreciating the skin tones from the D200 - finally, something as nice, if not nicer, for skin tones than those classic negative films. Lovely, rich, creamy skin tones - I'd been missing them, and was simply never able to achieve really excellent skin tones with the 6 megapixel machines that are thankfully no longer the only reasonably priced options. It's funny, the skin tones that come so easily from the D200 have a really distinct look about them that is uncannily reminiscent of the legendary Hasselblad/Zeiss look.

We've worked on some really exciting things this year - LOTS of exhibitions, complete folios, and some big scanning projects. Our clients have won top awards with our prints/scans/profiles at pretty much every major event this year. It's been an interesting year, and we've seen some really great work come through. People really seem to be mastering digital finally, with colour management a much more pervasive part of their approach. This has led directly to much higher quality results than ever before across the board, and with the advent of stunning papers like Silver Rag, black and white is firmly back on the photographic menu, with quality clearly exceeding that of silver gelatin prints now readily available. Sure, it still takes some technique and practice to get it right, but once mastered, and with proper profiles etc, the results can be nothing short of gob smacking. With the inkiest, deepest blacks EVER available to photographers. This stuff has really come of age now, and it's all very exciting.

Given the huge end of year workload we've had, I haven't had time to put anything really coherent to paper lately, so I'll have to get back to that in the new year. Right after I finally add proper online sales to the web site. And finish my book on digital fine printing. And spend more quality time with Amy. And ... well, I'll fit it in somewhere!

Looking forward to what 2007 will bring!

Cheers, and best wishes for the holidays!

Jeremy and Amy Daalder

Directors,

Image Science