Straub Collaborative

Straub Collaborative is seeking an experienced and enthusiastic Commercial Photographer to join our team.

We are seeking to hire a photographer who has established their professional skill set, someone who can think on their feet to produce a client’s creative vision - a master of your craft!  Our photographer needs to effectively manage a set of stylists and assistants and engage with clients, often while taking on-the-fly art direction.  Please come prepared to work in a 100% digital photo studio and skilled in the hardware and software that requires.  You’ll also be working with our talented on-site retouch artists to fine-tune photos prior to delivery.

If you or someone you know sounds like the type of person we’re looking for, give us a shout… wait, no…an email.
Email us your Resume, Intro, Portfolio

For the nitty-gritty of the job posting, check it out below………..

About You:
Your vision of who you are and where you want to go is important here.
While we do have a consistent group of clients to service, it would be great to infuse some of your new ideas into their projects.
Please be open to the working mix of: Long-lasting clients with cemented standards, and new projects with wide-open opportunity.
Team player is important - we are a collaborative. Everyone has the opportunity to provide input into projects.

This is a Salary position, depending upon experience & skill-set; with medical, dental, retirement, life insurance, and all of the stumptown coffee on site you need to go from 0-100.

Straub Collaborative is seeking a highly skilled Digital Retouch Artist to join our team.

We’re looking for someone who can give a lot of love to a photo and pay critical attention to color. You needn’t be a part-time print production designer, or identity creator, we’ll appreciate you for who you are - which hopefully is a rock-solid retouch artist with a penchant for creating outstanding finished work.

We want to work with someone who cares about his/her work quality, can communicate well with photographers, producers and if need be, The Client, as well as recognize that point of diminishing returns on a photo. Some projects are detailed, beautiful works of art, and some are thousands of attractive and consistent product photos. We will look to you in both cases to appropriately clean, compose, and color-correct the work while always taking in to account the budgeted scope and timeline.

If you or someone you know sounds like the type of person we’re looking for, give us a shout… wait, no…an email.
Email us your Resume, Intro, Portfolio

For the nitty-gritty of the job posting, check it out below………..

Job Guidelines
▪ Please be highly skilled in photoshop. We don’t expect you to know every command and shortcut, but 80% “mastery” is what we’re hoping for. We are seeking individuals with at least 4 years of thorough, highly-relatable experience.
▪ Please be attentive to color. Color correction is very important here at Straub, it impacts on-screen accuracy for web jpgs and critically impacts the results on press. Love color, know RGB/CMYK/Pantone, be able to discern a magenta cast vs. too much yellow in an image, strive for excellence.
▪ Be prepared to accept input and direction from your producers and photo/stylist team, and at times from the client’s art director.
▪ Anticipate an open, enthusiastic work environment that is driven by our client’s expectations. You are as vital an artist to us in many cases as our photographers and stylists are and we are a team.

This is a Hourly-wage position, depending upon experience & skill-set; with medical, dental, retirement, life insurance, and all of the stumptown coffee on site you need to go from 0-100.  Just as long as you can keep that mouse or stylus steady!

We’re hiring, and we’re pretty darn excited about it.

Due to our consistently growing workload the team at Straub Collaborative is looking to hire a new Project Manager. We’re not looking for any ordinary excel-jockey here, but someone with an eye for high quality visual works and the kind of organizational skills that would make a pre-prison Martha Stuart green with envy.  Watch out, she’s vindictive.

If you or someone you know sounds like the type of person we’re looking for, give us a shout… wait, no…an email.
Email us your Resume & Cover Letter

For the nitty-gritty of the job posting, check it out below………..

Our Project Manager’s responsibility includes, but isn’t exclusive to:
-Planning and scheduling
-Prioritizing multiple projects
-Identifying and resolving issues that arise
-Estimating and being accountable for profitability
-Handling all client changes and approvals
-Resource and Equipment coordination

Skills and Experience needed:
-Minimum of 3 years developing schedules, meeting deadlines and budgets
-An extreme attention to detail
-Ability to work in fast paced environment
-Good communication skills, both written and verbal
-Strong prioritization and interpersonal skills to balance multiple demands
-Able to work independently on a consistent basis with minimal assistance
-Knowledge of digital photography processes, equipment and software. Pre-press experience a plus
-Macintosh computing environment. Excel knowledge required, powerpoint/keynote experience a plus

This is a Salaried position, with medical, dental, retirement, life insurance, and all of the stumptown coffee on site you need to go from 0-100.

For the past 4 years the home of adidas Ecommerce (a.k.a: Shopadidas.com) has remained relatively untouched, and massively successful.  Apparently the drape has been pulled away from the shining new platform because the latest and greatest iteration of this site is now up, functional and helping even more athletically-minded consumers find the 3-stripe gear they seek.

Some features and highlights we’d like to call-out:

• You can now search by sport, and see all types of gear (footwear, apparel, accessories)
  • Check it out here (for men’s running), or here (for women’s soccer)
• While browsing inventory, the images are much larger — something we’re a big fan of

• After clicking on a product, you can easily explore multiple, large views of a product.
  • More information to the consumer is a good thing.  For example…. do those soccer boots really have the type of cleats I need for the dry, sandy Colorado fields?

We’re proud to be an ongoing part of this project, helping to deliver the images that consumers need to make educated purchase decisions… well, from a visual standpoint.

Happy Shopping!

Congrats to Hugo Boss for launching an ecommerce site.  The year 2001 welcomes them with open arms.

And speaking of 2001, you’ll note that some of the wardrobe styling is rather “yuppie Magnum P.I., infused with lacoste styling”, minus the mustache, of course.
Okay, in all seriousness, Ecomm isn’t for everyone and it must have been quite the internal battle for a fashion brands to launch such a platform when they rely upon boutique and premium-department store volume sales.

The point of this post is to call-out how product styling, hair & makeup can easily polarize an audience.
Being a non-yachting, no-boat shoe wearing, anti-collar popping guy, I can’t help but give this $125 polo shirt a “NO”.

How about you?

I would like to direct people to check out their site.  A word of warning, not all of the collars are popped, much of the apparel is quite nice looking and they have done a fantastic job with their styling and photo consistency overall.  We at Straub Collaborative aren’t responsible if you decide to make any purchases.

Kudos to Hugo Boss.

We shoot a lot of product here at Straub Collaborative.  We shoot for the brands as well as creative agencies.  Sometimes these are “HERO” product shots, and oftentimes these are volumes of consistent imagery for Ecommerce use.  We have trained ourselves to tackle projects from an online shopaholic’s perspective to occasionally bring some unique insights to our clients.

That being said, if there’s one thing Ecommerce behemoths like Zappos have showed the world, it’s this:

Show Consumers a Product’s FEATURES!

Zappos started a trend of saturating their site with imagery.  We’re not talking one product shot here, we’re talking about every angle, inside, outside, upside down, with the bag of chips…. and a side of Sunglasses, in fact.  Do they overexpose a product?  Undoubtedly, YES, but since they don’t represent the brand, or the “product essence” or any of that secret sauce, they have no qualms showing a bazillion views.

Let’s examine the impact of a Brand’s hero product vs. an “E-tail” outlet’s in-stock product photography:

1. DaKine Web Site: “Kala Bag”

This is the only photo available of this product in this colorway available.  It is clean, well stylied, with good light, a subtle drop-shadow and the color looks pretty nice, too.



The question is:  Do you find it effective, attractive, informative enough to purchase this product?
Does it convey the look, feel and details you need to put it in your cart, type in your credit card number, and pull that proverbial ecommerce “trigger”?

2. Zappos’ representation of the same DaKine Yoga-Mat Bag

A couple of important shots:

(This last shot is a serious bonus in the rare case you’re a self-aware mannequin and really want to know how that Yoga tote will look slung over your shoulder)

The point here is that when it comes to Ecommerce photography, it is the details, and the perspective that show consumers what the benefit of the product.  Seeing a bag isn’t usually good enough, you have to know what size it is, how many pockets there are onboard, and if it will actually fit a 17″ laptop.

In this case, no.  It will only hold one sweaty, nasty Yoga Mat.  Your towel and water bottle are on their own.

Giving Credit where ’tis due:
Zappos
DaKine

~ David

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti destroyed most of the buildings and infrastructure in and around Port au Prince, Haiti.  Sadly this natural disaster seemingly adds insult to the already destitute population of Haiti - the poorest of all nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Since 2007 The Mangrove Fund has been formed in dedication to helping the people of Haiti, elevating the level of education, sustainable business and level of orphan care in and around Port au Prince.
Something that makes the Mangrove Fund very different is their promise to deliver all funds directly to relief efforts and humanitarian support.

Here is the promise from their site:

“

Every cent collected by these coin drives  will be administered in the same manner that Mangrove manages its own donations.  Mangrove is an entirely volunteer organization;  100% of the money collected, including those from any Coins for Haiti efforts, will go directly to relief and rebuilding efforts in Haiti.

“

Bill reached out to Straub Collaborative to quickly develop a video feature on his 4 year old son’s personal quest to raise funds for his former home.

Every once in a while the opportunity to do good presents itself and we were happy to help Bill Pierznik and the Mangrove Fund.
The video was compiled and edited by Rob Tyler, and shot by Straub Collaborative at the Pierznik home in Portland, OR.

Elizabeth Russell is a professional photographer at Straub Collaborative.
Her latest book features multiple fashion and lifestyle series from select apparel designers.

We encourage you to take a look at her new portfolio, see what’s new in fashion and a handful of stunning tabletop images as well!

Click Here to View Elizabeth’s New Portfolio

Happy Friday from your Friends at Straub Collaborative.