Hello!
We’re not just doing photography as a job. We’re living it. We’ve been living it for two decades.
And we’re not above sharing our knowledge, which is why you’re probably here.
While our story may have begun as it often does — playing around with your family’s camera — we took it much further.
So let’s start with a little background. We think it’s only fair to first tell you why we think you may learn a thing or two from us 🙂
Let’s get the credentials out of the way first.
Matija has a deep technical background applied to photography and videography. Even though he shot his first roll of film many years before enrolling in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Zagreb, he double-majored in the departments for professional electronics, TV-systems and acoustics.
All of this gives him a deep technical understanding of the equipment we all use every day, from cameras and videography equipment, microphones and sound recording devices to image, video and sound processing.
Experience matters.
Who reads user manuals anyway? And isn’t photography all about art, regardless of your equipment?
Well… yes and no.
Weddings are incredibly demanding.
If you ever shot one, you know you need to be a portrait photographer, landscape, macro and product photographer, a candid and documentary photo-reporter; you need to consider settings, anticipate events, find perfect framing, focus reliably and after all of that catch that right moment… and smile while doing it.
You also need to be able to run a half-marathon with a 8kg bag on your shoulders and play a therapist when the bride feels down or panics. It would also help if you carried a needle and a thread, bandaids and knew how to tie a tie.
And yes, you need to look good at 39C on a mid-day beach ceremony!
Where are we going with all of this?
Well, shoot enough weddings and you’ll find yourself in those moments where you need an absolute maximum from your camera and lens, otherwise you’ll miss the shots you absolutely need.
It can simply be a huge contrast under a scorching sun, it can be struggling to focus shooting against a strong backlight as bride walks down the aisle, or it can be a late night beach party under candlelight where even your eyes can barely see what’s going on.
It can be a too wide dynamic range driving you crazy while filming, it can be that vexing noise in your log-footage, or a strong wind into your mic, or an electric buzz getting picked up while filming speeches…
In those moments, if you really care about this job, you’ll need to know your camera to the last chip and last obscure menu setting to be able to pull from it everything it’s got.
So yes, we do believe technical knowledge is appropriate for high-end photographers who want to deliver the best to their discerning clients.
But of course, we can’t stop there.
Photography is an art.
Technical mastery is only there to finally become invisible, fade into the background and make room for creativity.
Years later, already working as a full time photographer, Matija became a certified master of photography in Croatian crafts association. This part of education and certification went deeper into photography and film history, film photography and artistic approach to both.
Always looking for challenges, five years ago we officially started offering and creating wedding videography.
Marina is more of an arts and people person, coming from a social sciences background and always connecting with people in an instant.
As many wedding photographers know, weddings are one third photography, one third psychology and one third a marathon. It’s the psychology part where she shines, although Matija will be quick to point out he often prefers her style of photos to his.
So I guess you could say we’re a unique synergy of technical, artistic and human.
And we’ve been at it for 20+ years.
For the first ten, it’s been a passion and a hobby. We feel this is important for anyone as it allows you to learn, develop, mature and find your voice. It allows you space and time to grow as an artist, which you sadly rarely get if you need to earn your wage from the get-go.
We’ve worked with most systems you care to name. Canon film cameras, Nikon scanners and the transition to digital: Canon, Olympus, Fuji, Nikon and then again Canon. Drones, sound equipment, microphones… Windows and macOS. Control surfaces, storage, backup strategies. Working on the go and creating a consistent studio environment. Creating invoices, contracts and doing taxes.
We (by which we mean Matija 🤓) are obsessed with workflow and efficiency. Always looking for ways to speed things up while improving quality of work brings useful insights.
We’re also big on marketing.
Whether it’s copywriting or SEO, creating ads or making your work seen, psychology of presentation and pricing, a successful wedding photographer is truly expected to master it all.
We’re even close to be able to talk about work/life balance with two kids running around. (…we’ll get back to you on that one 😂)
The upshot is that we’ve become exceedingly experienced in explaining even the difficult concepts in simple, easy to understand terms. So, we’d say we have a lot to offer… which is where mentoring comes in!
How would this work exactly?
Knowing how challenging wedding photography is, we’re offering something we really needed when we were beginning — an ask-me-anything mentor.
We won’t waste your time nor money: we don’t have a fixed course you must go through even though you already know most of it. We’re operating on an half-hourly basis where you get to ask whatever you want and we answer in as much detail as you’re comfortable with. In the process, you may even find new things you want to learn about.
FaceTime, email or a cup of coffee, the choice is yours!
This is personalized for your exact level of knowledge by design, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re a rookie only starting with the exposure triangle, or a seasoned pro curious about squeezing the last electron out of your sensor — we’ve got you covered!
We won’t claim we know everything; that would be absurd and a sure sign we actually don’t. Knowing your (and your equipment’s) limits is part of the game.
We’re lifelong learners like all other humans and if there’s something you want to know that’s out of our area of expertise, we’ll be first to admit it (or look it up!). Same goes for difficult problems with complex solutions.
So get in touch and let’s talk!
Now here’s just a random sample of topics we could discuss, both beginner and advanced…
Business & marketing:
- Can AI help me in my business?
- How does a search engine ‘think’?
- What’s technical and what’s reputational SEO?
- How not to get penalized by Google?
- How do Google ads work?
- What should the UX of my website be?
- How should I price my services?
- How do I put together an efficient presentation of my price-list?
- How do I write a contract?
- What should I know before working with a wedding planner?
- How do I find my style?
Photography:
- What shutter rules should I use?
- Why do my photos get overexposed as I stop down the aperture?
- What’s ETTR exposure and should I use a histogram?
- What is an ISO-invariant sensor? How do I get most out of it?
- How can stabilization help my photography? How can it hurt it?
- How to deal with noise?
- Why does my camera have more noise on ISO 160 than on 200, on ISO 5000 more than on 6400?
- How do I focus in darkness?
- How do I work with natural light?
- In what ways can I use a flash during the evening?
- Why do some photographers have flash pointed into the ceiling? And why do some have it pointed towards the sky?
- Why should I calibrate lenses on DSLR but not on mirrorless?
Video:
- My footage is choppy, or shaky.
- My clips are blurry when I stabilize them in editing.
- Corners of my footage are wobbly, even when I use stabilization.
- Why can’t I adjust exposure and WB of video clips like I can do with raw photos?
- Should I shoot log?
- What’s 8-bit and 10-bit? What’s 4:2:2 and 4:2:0?
- Why is there so much noise in my log footage? Why is my ISO suddenly stuck to 400 or 800 when I shoot log, instead of 100?
- I can only record to one memory card, so how do I avoid footage corruption?
Sound:
- How do I record sound on a very windy ceremony if a wind-muffler doesn’t work well enough?
- My camera has noisy microphone pre-amps. What’s the simplest workaround?
- Why does my sound recorder distort line-in sound even when I set lowest input recording level?
- How do I work around connecting to a DJ mixer which disregards line-out levels and oversaturates my recorder input?
Post-processing:
- What’s the most efficient way to process photos?
- Can I speed up my photo/video editing somehow?
- How should I edit sound? What’s dynamics compression, limiting and normalization?
- Can I fix glitches in sound after I’ve recorded it?
- Are there ways to automate things without sacrificing quality?
- What should my backup strategy be?