You went on a nice outing to the zoo, but there was not ONE picture that turned out nicely. What’s wrong?

Likely, my friend, its not necessarily the camera’s fault. Oftentimes it is simple human ignorance that botched the pic. Here are just a few tips to take a better photo:

Read the manual

So many people take the camera out of the box. and stant snapping photos with blatant disregard for the proper use of the camera as intended by the manufacturer. Take the time to familiarize yourself with your camera. Many packages have quick-start guides that walk you through the set-up and picture-taking process. This alone can help you to tweak things so that your photos are taken right the first time and every time.

Choose the right settings

Some cameras are set up right away for the best-possible photo quality. However, you’ll never know until you check things out. I once had a digital camera that took thousands of pictures. We were SO excited. However, the resolution of these photos was absolutely terrible, and they were only fit to be viewed on the web and very small.

Choose the right mode

Whether your still-camera is a point-and-click or an SLR, you likely have several options for modes including an automatic, a portrait, a landscape, a still-life, and an action mode. Again, read your manual to learn more about these modes, but you will find a WORLD of difference when you take, for instance, a portrait of your favorite pet on Auto, than if you were to take it with, say, the portrait mode. Advanced users, of course, can learn how to further tweak and hone their photos to perfection.

Further resources

Check out these resources as well to help you make your art glorious:

Wikihow article

Great eHow post-simple and to the point

PC Magazine article

A wealth of information from HP

Keep us in mind when you take that “perfect” picture. We’ll make it look absolutely amazing on stretched canvas so you have that showpiece and conversation starter you’ve been wanting for your home or office. Remember, these prints also make great gifts–show off to your friends, families, and even clients what you can do and how much you love and appreciate them with a gift of your own eye and mind!

Your cell phone camera likely will not take that masterpiece you want to share. Most web-cams and cell-phones take photos which are intended to be shared electronically and, therefore, do not need high resolution. What you need for suitable wall art on canvas, paper, vinyl, or even t-shirts is a camera which is dedicated to taking great photos.

Some considerations when purchasing a digital camera

Most people are interested solely in megapixels. However, I’ve seen some absolutely stunning photos taken with a 6 megapixel camera. The most important factor in digital photography (arguably) is the size and quality of the sensor. Consumer Reports put out a rather nice article on how to best choose your digital camera. Check out their article here:

• Digital Camera Buying Guide

Best Digital Cameras

Okay, now you’ve learned the difference between a point-and-shoot camera and a digital SLR, what brand, make, and model should I look at. Here are a few resources for what cameras are hot in 2010:

• CNET Best Cameras Review
• Digital Camera Review
• DPhoto Journal Review
• PC Magazine Review

Remember, when you send us a file to be placed on canvas, the bigger the better. Oftentimes, it’s best to just send us your “raw” file directly from the camera. Your images should be as large as possible with high resolutions (300 dpi and better is preferred). Your canvas prints will look absolutely wonderful, we promise!

Why on earth is a guy who owns a printing business talking about prayer? Answer: first, prayer is changing my life for the better each day. Secondly, we’ve recently discovered a way to keep prayer in our hearts and in our minds each day through that most sacred and traditional method of remembering who we are and who He is–through art!

The Power of Prayer

What is prayer? To many it’s a personal conversation with God. With others it’s a communal shared experience where the divine gift of our humanity and divinity are celebrated. Still others, frankly, hold it as a way to gripe.

To me, prayer means many things. Now that I’ve rediscovered it, I consider it a way to speak with my best friend, my Father, and my partner. More than that, though, when I do it correctly… focusing on God in praise and worship, prayer is that positive energy that I put out there in the world and makes things happen for others and myself whatever the intention.

Recently, I was introduced to the book “The Secret” and it’s companion DVD. At length, the mindset of positivity as it relates to the Law of Attraction was described as being the absolute secret to success–we must think it and believe it to achieve it! Prayer is a way to, through God’s will, positively focus and channel our thoughts to attract that which we need and desire while being humble and remembering where we come from.

It’s striking really that, even with the scandal and the crap that has happened in recent past–atrocities that shook my personal faith in the Church and Christianity altogether, I have found solace in the forgiveness process. I have personally found through this process that prayer is one of the most powerful tools we have to thrive and survive in today’s society.

Iconography

One of the things I love about the Catholic Church is its nature of being rooted in tradition and, through that tradition, its ability to unequivocally use icons and art to illustrate deep faith, hope, and love and its history and traditions. There are unmistakable symbols and artistic representations that make a piece stand out as being wholly Catholic.

However, this art does more than just brand the Church. This art inspires prayerfulness  in the beholder. It moves us spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically to again reaffirm our relationship with God.

Going through this rediscovery of prayer, while taking the journey of faith with my eldest child, has truly inspired me to do something artistic and helpful to my fellow Christians. We are offering in our line of decor and apparel the opportunity for you to receive and give the gift of prayer and inspiration.

At no additional cost, we will place your favorite prayer, Psalm, Bible passage, or blessing on your inspirational canvas print. Your prayer can either be traditional, or it can be what the Holy Spirit moves your heart to say.

Keep Moving Forward, and God bless you!

Why is wall decor so popular and necessary?

Have you ever been in a living room and there is just something not right about it when it doesn’t have art hanging on the wall in certain areas? I was just in a client’s office, and above the sofa in the waiting area there was absolutely NOTHING on the wall. It just seemed awkward, frankly, and certainly uninviting.

Wall decor, such as prints of your own photography and handiwork, give the space your own personal  flavor and flair. It expresses your personality. More than that, when used in a business environment, it can serve to promote your vision and mission. There is a certain energy that comes with wall art, and, once it’s there, you may find yourself wondering what you did without it.

How to best hang your wall decor?

This is one of the most frequently asked questions we encounter. Here are just a few tips:

1. When hanging posters and light artwork, 3M makes some great picture-hanging tabs with a hook-and-nub kind of almost Velcro application. The result is something that won’t mar the wall and will allow you to perfectly level your piece.
2. Most of our canvas prints when stretched has a wire across the back. With a hammer, simply drive a nail into your wall at a 45% angle. Better yet, there are ready-to-go hooks that drive into the wall with a hammer.
3. For heavier items and very secure installations, it is always best to get your trustly level, your studfinder, and your drill and screw your mounting screws into the studs. If studs are not present, use drywall anchors

Consider, if you are looking for spruce up your home decor, the advantage of working with ImpresivoPrints. You can have a completely custom piece of wall art that you can call your own for under $100.

Our most popular model, 16″ X 20″ stretched artist canvas, retails for $75, and it is YOUR artwork. You can even add a personalization to your art to really make it your own–and you will STILL be under $100. With our design services, if you do have a business with a void begging to be filled, consider your logo, a picture of your best product, and your vision statement to dress that naked wall!

Visit www.impresivoprints.com for more information.

Seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. If you’re like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms start in the fall and may continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Less often, seasonal affective disorder causes depression in the spring or early summer.
Don’t brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the “winter blues” or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own — you may have seasonal affective disorder. Treatment for seasonal affective disorder includes light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications.
Addressing the problem can help you keep
your mood and motivation steady through-out the year.
Winter-onset seasonal affective disorder symptoms include:
* Depression
* Hopelessness
* Anxiety
* Loss of energy
* Social withdrawal
* Oversleeping
* Loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed
* Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates
* Weight gain
* Difficulty concentrating and processing information

If your seasonal depression symptoms are severe, you may need medications, light therapy or other treatments to manage sea-sonal affective disorder. However, there are some measures you can do on your own that may help, such as:
Make your environment sunnier and brighter. Open blinds, add skylights and trim tree branches that block sunlight. Sit closer to bright windows while at home or in the office.
Get outside. Take a long walk, eat lunch at a nearby park, or simply sit on a bench and soak up the sun.
Exercise regularly. Physical exercise helps relieve stress and anxiety, both of which can increase seasonal affective disorder symptoms.
You can take action to cope with seasonal affective disorder. Here are tips to help you manage the condition:

Stick to your treatment plan. Take medications as directed and attend therapy appointments as scheduled.
Take care of yourself. Get enough rest. Eat regular, healthy meals. Take time to relax. Don’t turn to alcohol or unprescribed drugs for relief.
Practice stress management. Learn how to manage your stress better. Unmanaged stress can lead to depression, overeating, or other unhealthy thoughts and behaviors.
Socialize. When you’re feeling down, it can be hard to be social. Make an effort to connect with people you enjoy being around. They can offer support, a shoulder to cry on or a joke to give you a little boost.

Information reprinted from the MayoClinic.com

One of my favorite quotes is from Pablo Picasso–”Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Continue to create and express yourself, your mind and your soul will love you for it!

Keep Moving Forward!

1. Realize and Accept Reality—To get to where you’re heading, just like using a GPS or MapQuest.com, you need to know where you’re starting from. Take an inventory of your current assets and liabilities using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

2. Define Your Purpose—Assert your goals based on your values. When determining your purpose, ponder this from the Dalai Lama: “Our prime purpose in life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

3. Recruit Your Team—The best of leaders realize that the true asset of their company lies in a company’s peopls. Your team can consist of mentors, coaches, “business buddies,” strategic partners, employees, clients, family, friends, and people who are further down the path than you are. The important aspect of your team is that they share your values.

4. Develop Your Vision Statement— “Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.”—Bill Hybels. Your vision should be something that you can easily, eloquently, and succinctly state from your heart. It evokes a clear picture about where you are heading and how you will get there.

5. Share Your Inspired Vision—It has been said that, “A goal not written is only a wish.” Take that vision that you’ve created and publish it everywhere! Create a sign or a plaque for your office or lobby. Create a banner to share with your staff. We like to say that, “A Vision With No Sign Is A Sign Of No Vision.” Put it first and foremost on your website and include it on your marketing collateral including business cards, etc. This statement is not your elevator speech or your catch phrase. It is your mantra!

6. Chart the Course—As a leader, it is your job to strategize, map out the action plan, and align your team to the goals, while setting benchmarks of progress. You now know where you are and where you want to be. Work with your newly inspired team to develop the steps to get from point A to point B.

7. Lead By Example—The formula for Level 5 leadership according to Jim Collins is “Humilty + Will = Level5” Lead with humility—connect with your team on the level of humanity, and they will follow you without hesitation. With your goals and dreams now visualized clearly, have the will to follow your plan without wavering. Never give up, and don’t let fear govern your actions or lack of action. Mark Twain stated, “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” Your demonstrated courage will infectiously affect the actions of your team and will provide to you the results you seek to achieve!

By the way, when you document your vision to share, consider displaying it on an inspirational canvas print from ImpresivoPrints.com! Putting an actual visual image of a goal or a picture that evokes strong emotions coupled with your inspired vision will help you to spread your message to your staff, clients, and the world!

There’s the story in a nutshell. Besides some very funny moments and some really heart-string-tugging scenes, one recurring theme really resounded. The motto in the future (as coined by Lewis / Cornelius) is, “Keep Moving Forward.”

What a powerful concept! So simple, yet it says so much about success. What inspired me more was that, at the very end of the movie, there is a quote from the great Walt Disney: “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things – because we’re curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. We’re always exploring and experimenting.”

It’s a cartoon, so what?
Few people know, but after my college days at the University of Chicago where I studied art, I attempted to send my portfolio to Disney Studios to be considered for a position as an animator. I was turned down. Frankly, I was absolutely heartbroken. This was the job I wanted for as long as I could remember. Was I naive? Possibly, but I pursued the dream. When that dream failed, I moved forward, took a job in retail management, and climbed the ladder in a very short amount of time.

Fast forward to today: after another job change, pursuing a Master’s degree, and now my first failed business attempt, I found myself feeling this holiday like I did as when I received that letter with the Disney Studios letterhead.

Then I saw this movie. I have been coached and trained, counseled and educated, yet it took this animated tale to really inspire me and allow that concept to really sink in—“Keep Moving Forward!”

You may have read an article similar to this before years ago when the movie was fresh. However, I must resound that I think that Meet the Robinson’s had it right. Progress is made from failure, looking at what went wrong and moving forward—always forward.

Looking Back, Learning, and Moving On
In 2009, let’s face it; many of us had one hell of a year. I read a newsletter article from one of my business associates, Kevin Clark from Quintessential Retirement Services who did an outstanding job recapping the news highlights, celebrity moments, government faux pauxs, and financial upsets throughout the year. Reading it made me want to essentially move on, leave 2009 behind, and move forward.

The mind is an incredible energetic power, capable of anything we can imagine. The book The Secret talks about this in great detail. What we think will manifest in time. If we think “bad” thoughts, “bad” things will happen, even if we don’t want them to. If we are positive and really own in our minds that which we seek before we have it physically, we will attain it. This has been proven over and over again! We must keep exploring new horizons, always looking ahead, and always keeping our thoughts positive.

At a seminar called “Shredding the Past” I attended on Wednesday, we talked about eliminating the garbage in our lives from days gone by. We then discussed creating a vision for the future—writing it down or, better yet, creating a pictorial vision board. Furthermore, we said that, like emperor penguins that travel non-stop for three months to achieve their goal, we must continue to always press on… always move forward.

Don’t we learn from the past?
I’m not saying that reminiscing about the past isn’t important. Embrace your past. After all, it is those past experiences compounded over our lifetime that has made us who we are today. In fact, for the most part, ImpresivoPrints is in the business of creating and sharing memories by immortalizing a moment in time caught on camera on canvas.

But canvas, being an artistic medium, can be what you, the artist, make of it. It can be used to portray your wants and desires in the future (like a vision board), giving you a tangible visible goal of where you wish to be. Part of the beauty of art is its timeless, and its being what you will it to be.

Our offering
In 2010, we came up with a new piece that we wanted to share with the world. It is a special print made from one of my compositions. We took some photos, some digital effects, some original artwork, and some personalization and came up with a print all about the phrase “Keep Moving Forward.” My hope is that this print will serve as a reminder to all who acquire it to continue to move forward, without putting limiting beliefs and the obstacles of false truths in the way of your moving forward.

Visit http://www.impresivoprints.com/KeepMovingForward.html for our special promotion on the “Keep Moving Forward” print on canvas. Our most popular size, by far, is the 16” X 20” print on canvas stretched on stretcher bars. You can also have this inspiring print on a rugged and comfortable cotton t-shirt with, on the back, the phrase, “…don’t look backwards for very long.”

Conclusion
In 2010 and beyond, I hope that you will purchase a canvas print and/or a t-shirt and look at this piece of art with all of the hope and faith in God and yourself that you will succeed. You will prevail over all of the mire of the past. You will “Keep Moving Forward.”

While traditionally, prints on canvas, are looked at as art objects, their vivid color, exquisite detail, and dimensionality also lend them to be fantastic signs.

I’ve written about Panera Bread in the past and my experience with their signs and banners. Long story short, they are masters at inspiring sales and promotions through effective signage. What’s more, if you look about their decor, each wall is adorned with canvas prints, framed posters, and matted photographs of bread and people enjoying eating.

Not just restaurants can benefit from using canvas prints as affordable and attractive signage. Recently we were asked to place an image of a proprietary product on canvas for a manufacturer’s meeting room. Photo prints on canvas can evoke powerful emotions, and a personalized print of a happy person using your product or service or a distraught person who isn’t using your product can easily sway your clients to do more business with you. After all, much of the part of sales is to find a client’s pain, and, to use a cliche, a picture is worth a thousand words!

But what about cost? When we were in the sign industry, our absolutely most popular items were full-color prints on PVC and on foamboard as well as banners. With a canvas print, you get the great look of a foamboard print, the indoor longevity of PVC, and the attractiveness of our favorite sign type, banners. The price point for most of these types of signs are under $200, and many are under $100.

Should you require more than one sign, our company, ImpresivoPrints, offers quantity discounts. Contact us directly for more information regarding pricing.

In summary, remember that in marketing our objective is to get noticed, stay remembered, and be profitable. You will certainly make a long-lasting impression, fellow business person, by using personalized prints on canvas as a wonderful alternative to conventional sign types.

Most people agree that we are now in a time of great struggling and turmoil. More and more people are depressed, stressed, and even ill over the negative consequences this difficult time has had on them.

Yet, historically, we’ve seen in times of great strife much art being created, exhibited, and shared. Why do we need art now, in a woeful time. Art is cathartic–it is a way for one to show the world their true feelings! Art is an expression of one’s very being and an extension of their persona.

What we love about what we do is that we hold the belief that YOU are an artist! You have the ability to create masterpieces. How many times have you taken your camera, and serendipitously taken a breath-taking picture. Or, how many times have you been doodling, and you just started working at a doodle until it came to be something you are dying to share with someone else?

Don’t be afraid to share yourself… bare your soul a bit. Realize that photos on canvas, paper, or even t-shirts are beautiful, and be proud of your masterpiece. We hope that you will consider us a valued partner in helping you show off your artistry!

For more information about digital imaging and photos as works of art, please visit http://ping.fm/CgVnn