"Jay Honeck" writes:

Just returned to Minnesota, after a visit to Iowa City.
(Lots of nice stuff snipped)

*blush* Thanks, man.

Jay's (3 story x 3 buildings) Inn is much, much nicer than it appears in
the
web photos.

Okay, NOW we're on to some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism here. What, exactly do
you mean by that?

If you mean the photos suck, I agree with you. I have struggled to take
pictures in our suites that "capture" their spaciousness and the "feeling"
you get in them, to no avail. Because you simply can't "back up" far enough
to take in an entire room, I can't seem to take a photo that really "works".

One promising option: I just purchased a new Canon FS400, which came with
some nifty software for "stitching" several photos together. (A crude first
try can be seen at http://alexisparkinn.com/renovation.htm ) This
certainly helps with that "looking through a tube" feeling of most interior
photos, but it's far from perfect.

Stitching is the only reasonably simple, easy, cheap option (there's
also perfectly good free software available that'll work with photos
from any camera). Wide-angle shots are the achilles heel of consumer
digital (and even a bit of a problem in many of the professional
cameras). For stuff that holds still, and where you can take your
time taking the photos, there's not really any downside to stitching.
Luckily your suites hold still, so you should be able to get somewhat
better images (I didn't think the images you have posted were bad
enough to comment on; but then I haven't seen the original, maybe
they're worse than I think :-)).

In wideangle work, and especially in architectural photography, you
need to get *really* anal about setting the camera level (or learn how
to correct it later). I've actually got a level I can put in my
"flash" shoe; but most of the time I just line up the edges of the
frame with various vertical lines, and get it level enough that way.

Lots of the photos really need brightness and contrast adjustment,
too. And I just noticed, looking at photos of the Red Baron suite,
that you seem to be somehow using 300k for a quality of image I can
generally provide with only 60k; that would make a *big* difference to
people on dial-up connections. (And those photos would really benefit
from being shot level, too.)

I know there are a billion competing demands for your money and your
time, but I'd suggest you either spend the money on some professional
photography (or at least on some professional photoshop work on
existing pictures), or else spend some time improving your own
photoshop skills some. If you can find someone local who's good, they
can teach you enough in a couple of hours to do the basic
brightness/contrast corrections pretty well, and that alone will make
a *big* difference, and not cost too much.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: noguns-nomoney.com www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: dragaera.info/