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Cheap UK Wedding Ideas under £4000
Weddings seem to be getting more and more expensive with each year. Here is an article with some interesting ideas about planning a cheap UK wedding. The author explains how her hectic lifestyle made planning her wedding a challenge. She decides that planning her wedding online will save her money and time."When my boyfriend of 4 years finally proposed, the excitement lasted about 5 minutes before I realized how much work I suddenly had to do. My work schedule is hectic and keeps me abroad for most of the week. I decided that I would have to arrange everything I need online, from my dress to the wedding invitations . When I found out that the average cost of weddings in the UK was £16,000 I knew that ours had to be much cheaper."
Read about low cost wedding ideas.
Guide for better digital photos - 6 Rules
Portrait photography is an art and the best portrait photographers spend years perfecting their craft. While the revolution of digital photography has given us more shots than we know what to do with, this doesn't necessarily mean that we always get the results we want. When it comes to selecting a good portrait picture, from the hundreds of shots we've taken, we sometimes still have to settle for less than perfect.
Even if you're not a professional it's easy to start taking great portraits for your greeting cards, invitations, and business material. By keeping a few simple principles and techniques in mind you'll get better results every time.
Of course never forget the amateur’s cardinal rule of portrait photography – take lots!
1. Use portrait mode
Most digital cameras today have a dedicated portrait setting. If you haven't been using this setting for your portrait shots it's time to start. Without getting too technical, the portrait setting on your camera limits the depth of field. This blurs the background while putting the subject in sharp focus, which is what you want when taking a portrait.
2. Zoom for focus [images: compare zoomed and unzoomed photos of same subject]
Again, your digital cameras is likely to have a zoom function. What's important here to distinguish between optical and digital zoom. You only want to use your camera's optical zoom and never the digital zoom! Many cameras will allow you to disable this function (I keep mine off permanently). Pictures taken using the digital zoom usually look terrible and require significant post-editing on a program like Adobe Photoshop to salvage them.
By stepping back and then zooming in on your portrait subject you reduce the depth of field, putting your subject in sharper relief by blurring objects in the foreground and background. This naturally draws attention to your “zoom” subject.
3. Force the flash [image: flash setting icon]
Adjust your camera's flash setting to force the flash to go off, even if the light meter tells you the flash is unnecessary. If your camera has a red-eye reduction mode flash that's even better and you should select this mode.
By forcing the flash to go off you are creating what is known as a “fill” flash. A fill flash helps to eliminate harsh shadows that might fall across your subject's face. It also helps to give your subject a twinkle in their eye (what's known as “catchlights” in portrait photography), producing a more flattering and alive portrait.
4. Think about your lighting [images: outdoor vs. indoor]
For most amateur photographers lighting is more of an afterthought. Ask the pros, on the other hand, and they know that lighting is of paramount importance if you want to achieve good results. You've probably noticed that pictures you take indoors, using only indoor lighting
(i.e. no natural, outdoor source) and your flash, usually suffer in quality. The same goes for portraits. Strive to incorporate natural light to illuminate your subject. The direction the light is coming from and the time of day come into play here.
Personally I think that the best time for taking pictures is in the hour or two before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky. Position your subject so the light is coming from behind and sideways.
Don't forget to force the flash to minimize shadows on your subject's face.
5. Best backgrounds [images: show a couple different backgrounds]
If you've followed the steps above regarding framing and zooming to limit depth of field you shouldn't have to worry about the background too much – your subject will be the main point of interest in your photo. The further your background is from your subject, the more blurred it will be and the better your subject will stand out.
It's important to think about how the background gives context to the portrait. Does it add to the picture? Is it distracting? Does it help tell the portrait tell its story?
6. Tell a story [image: show a great 'storytelling' portrait]
A great portrait tells a story about its subject. Think about this when you are composing your portrait. Does it capture who the subject is and how you want to portray them (or how they want/need to be portrayed)? A great portrait photographer has a keen interest in his or her subject and aims to tell a story with each portrait.
Keep some of these easy pointers in mind and you'll be on your way to becoming a great portrait photographer. Happy snapping!
Even if you're not a professional it's easy to start taking great portraits for your greeting cards, invitations, and business material. By keeping a few simple principles and techniques in mind you'll get better results every time.
Of course never forget the amateur’s cardinal rule of portrait photography – take lots!
1. Use portrait mode
Most digital cameras today have a dedicated portrait setting. If you haven't been using this setting for your portrait shots it's time to start. Without getting too technical, the portrait setting on your camera limits the depth of field. This blurs the background while putting the subject in sharp focus, which is what you want when taking a portrait.
2. Zoom for focus [images: compare zoomed and unzoomed photos of same subject]
Again, your digital cameras is likely to have a zoom function. What's important here to distinguish between optical and digital zoom. You only want to use your camera's optical zoom and never the digital zoom! Many cameras will allow you to disable this function (I keep mine off permanently). Pictures taken using the digital zoom usually look terrible and require significant post-editing on a program like Adobe Photoshop to salvage them.By stepping back and then zooming in on your portrait subject you reduce the depth of field, putting your subject in sharper relief by blurring objects in the foreground and background. This naturally draws attention to your “zoom” subject.
3. Force the flash [image: flash setting icon]
Adjust your camera's flash setting to force the flash to go off, even if the light meter tells you the flash is unnecessary. If your camera has a red-eye reduction mode flash that's even better and you should select this mode.
By forcing the flash to go off you are creating what is known as a “fill” flash. A fill flash helps to eliminate harsh shadows that might fall across your subject's face. It also helps to give your subject a twinkle in their eye (what's known as “catchlights” in portrait photography), producing a more flattering and alive portrait.
4. Think about your lighting [images: outdoor vs. indoor]
For most amateur photographers lighting is more of an afterthought. Ask the pros, on the other hand, and they know that lighting is of paramount importance if you want to achieve good results. You've probably noticed that pictures you take indoors, using only indoor lighting
(i.e. no natural, outdoor source) and your flash, usually suffer in quality. The same goes for portraits. Strive to incorporate natural light to illuminate your subject. The direction the light is coming from and the time of day come into play here.Personally I think that the best time for taking pictures is in the hour or two before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky. Position your subject so the light is coming from behind and sideways.
Don't forget to force the flash to minimize shadows on your subject's face.
5. Best backgrounds [images: show a couple different backgrounds]
If you've followed the steps above regarding framing and zooming to limit depth of field you shouldn't have to worry about the background too much – your subject will be the main point of interest in your photo. The further your background is from your subject, the more blurred it will be and the better your subject will stand out.
It's important to think about how the background gives context to the portrait. Does it add to the picture? Is it distracting? Does it help tell the portrait tell its story?
6. Tell a story [image: show a great 'storytelling' portrait]
A great portrait tells a story about its subject. Think about this when you are composing your portrait. Does it capture who the subject is and how you want to portray them (or how they want/need to be portrayed)? A great portrait photographer has a keen interest in his or her subject and aims to tell a story with each portrait.Keep some of these easy pointers in mind and you'll be on your way to becoming a great portrait photographer. Happy snapping!
Decrease Your Supply Chain Costs
Supply Chain
Management
Management
A supply chain constitutes a set of activities ranging from production and manufacturing, to logistics, warehousing, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer (Handfield RB, Nichols EL.
We will focus on the logistics, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer - rethinking these parts of the supply chain can significantly improve your bottom-line result. From the start of our operations Optimalprint has completely changed how we work with logistics, transportation, and final delivery of goods to the customer, decreasing logistic and distribution costs with 60 to 80%! Some of these cost saving actions are non-theoretical and "easy wins" while some requires a lot more work.
This blog-post is written to get your started with rethinking every part of the shipment / distribution process of your goods and services.
Logistics - Input factors in Optimalprint's packaging process
- Optimalprint has used a cardboard box which cost has varied depending on size from $ 0,35 - $ 0,60. Optimalprint is now testing a semi-automatic packaging machine that thanks to corrugated board, purchased on a reel, will decrease cardboard cost per parcel to approximately $ 0,10-0,20. Thanks to the reel support, this packaging machine can adapt the parcel size with the actual size of the product. How this machine will work in the daily operations is to early to tell but we are now finally in the test-phase, a big step forward for a start-up.
- Packaging has been human capital intensive for us. We have spent on average 60-90 seconds per parcel with this semi-automatic packaging machine we will decrease this time with appr. 50%, close to 30 seconds. Investing in a machine however, requires some economies of scale .
- Making order and customer information very visual for the people involved in the actual packaging of your products. We have placed computer screens next to the packaging process that clearly displays to the person packaging - Order ID, Picture of the product, Name of the customer, Address to the customer and matching products (if the customer has ordered other products from us that can be put in the same parcel).
- Adding a barcode system that is linked to our order and customer service system. We have developed this system ourselves and basically only paid for the hours used and a barcode scanner for a total cost of $ 120! Before we had to manually check the order as "sent" in an excel-sheet and in addition match the products visually with the original order. We estimate that our barcode system reduces time spent in our order system with 99%! Before we spent 90 seconds and with the barcode system we are down to 5 seconds for each individual order. This barcode system is also a requirement for further automation in the post-printing process.
Transportation and Final Delivery
We used to send all parcels produced in a country with the incumbents post service to the various destinations within Europe. With growing order volumes, arbitrage opportunities have arised within the European post systems. Depending on where the customer's order is printed and where the customer wants us to ship his or her parcel we are now able to add another distribution solution that also involves DHL or UPS. We ship in bulk - overnight - to a EU-country that supports the most cost efficient distribution to a certain bulk of our customer orders. Besides the direct cost savings, we can also shorten distribution time to the destination country that DHL or UPS send the bulk of products to.- We are now investigating if we can send, via UPS or DHL, to a EU-country but let yet another country's post system handle the distribution. An example - If we print in Denmark, ship over night via DHL or UPS to Sweden but instead of letting Posten distribute from Sweden to the rest of EU, we let the Swiss Post deliver from Sweden to a certain destination such as for example the UK. Such a distribution system now indicates a cost reduction of roughly 20%.
- When the customers register we have started offering registration of the customer's cell phone number. The advantage for the customer that have orders that are so big that they must be sent to the local post office the cell phone number gives us the opportunity to communicate with the customer via SMS. This increases customer satisfaction as well as lowering our customer service costs since some customers call us to find out about the status of their order.
3 Tips related to Your Sales Force
Don't analyze sales figures with to much theory. Instead you should try hard to understand what is actually happening during the sales process. Start out with the following:
- Separate sales towards existing versus new customers. Sales people tend to scream of happiness whenever they sign a contract with a new customer. Sure... it's crucial to grow your business through new customers but only in combination with an even stronger focus on existing customers. Think about it - how much time do you spend thinking about how to develop your existing customers, how to make them even more satisfied with your solutions so that you can sell more to them? Ask yourself how much of your revenue that comes from existing customers vs potentially new customers. Bottom line is that you most likely spend too little time & energy on your existing customers. You should hear the same type of screaming when your sales people extend an existing customer contract.
- Poor sales are often blamed on poor products, too high prices, hard competition and so on... these conditions will never change so you need to know how to respond. The best sales tool for your sales force is their salary/bonus. A good example from real life was when the sales force at my previous job were blaming bad retention of existing customer contracts on high product prices and slow product development. To state an example we increased the bonus for retentions with 100% while decreasing the bonus for new sales with 30%. The result was quite astonishing - it took not more than 1 week before our products and prices had become surprisingly competitive Hard work is often the solution to poor sales performance.
- Don’t restate your case – once you sold shut up! Too many sales meetings are not stopped when they should be stopped. Teach your sales force that when the sale is done, either change topic or end the meeting. Continue talking about your services, prices and products only risk changing the customer's decision - to your disadvantage...
Use SkypeIn to establish international phone numbers
Establish a local (domestic) telephone number for Your Customer Service
At Skype you can order SkypeIn phone numbers which basically means a local number in a country where Skype offers the SkypeIn service. To find out which countries that are eligible for SkypeIn you need to create a Skype account.
Normal cost for a SkypeIn number is € 60 / year (Aug 14, 2007). Recommend becoming a Skype Pro for € 24, this gives you a number of benefits such as € 30 reduction on the yearly cost for the SkypeIn number. So, if you order more than 1 SkypeIn number you are home safe!
Optimalprint has ordered 8 SKypeIn numbers at this stage and we use call forwarding from all these number to our head office. Just don't forget to check the box for automatic refill..... otherwise your customer service is not going to be perceived as professional....
Forwarding calls to a landline or mobile is charged at our SkypeOut rates.