And I still can’t figure out why.
I spent about 2 hours today putting together an advertisement for Flying M Air‘s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure to be printed in a German publication.
I didn’t have to translate it. The advertising company sent me a translation of some text I’d sent them months ago. Trouble is, I couldn’t figure out what the text said. It took a while to find the original message asking for the translation. Oh. That’s what I wrote. Okay. Now at least I knew what I was advertising.
Trouble was, the existing ad I wanted to modify for this job had the wrong photos. That means I had to get new photos. Then I couldn’t get the style of the new photos to match the photos I wanted to keep. So I had to find the original versions of all the photos and prepared them all over again from scratch. But I couldn’t remember out how I’d done it in the first place. So I had to figure it out.
Then I realized I rotated some of the images the wrong way and redid them. Then I had to re-rotate them again because I was right the first time. The drop-shadows completely baffled me. I couldn’t remember how I’d done them and I had to try doing it a few different ways before I got the desired results.
Then I had to squeeze in the text. Ever notice how it takes more, longer words to say something in German than in English?
Of course, I’m doing all this in Photoshop, which isn’t exactly the friendliest environment for laying out text and graphics elements. InDesign would have been better. But the old file was in Photoshop, so that’s what I thought I’d use to save time. Wrong!
Anyway, I’m done. You can see the ad here.
Now let’s just home I get some calls from Germans who speak English and want to take a 6-day helicopter excursion.
One of the things about it that interests me is that I have been accused of cooking up a photo that I didn’t “create” with photoshop. This image of my first helicopter N7139L, is an actual air-to-air photo, taken by my husband, Mike, from a Piper Cub airplane as we flew in formation. (And yes, that’s me sitting in the pilot seat, looking right at the lead aircraft and its photographer.) The photo appeared on a lot of my advertising materials, including my business card. Yet when I showed it to my aunt in New Jersey, she refused to believe that it was real. She thought the helicopter had been parked on the ground for the photo and that we’d superimposed it over a background photo taken from the air.
I gave him this first shot of my friend Tristan flying his helicopter near Vulture Peak. I’d leased Tristan’s helicopter for a season to see if a bigger helicopter would help my business. (It did.) Tristan and I flew in formation in the area while Mike took photos. That’s Tristan in the pilot seat.
I told Bert that I needed a photo of my helicopter to start putting together marketing materials. I asked him if he could make a plain red helicopter, without stripes, and change the N-number to the one I’d have on my helicopter, N630ML. Bert delivered this photo via e-mail within hours. It was easy for him — a straight color change job. I probably could have done it if I knew how. But I didn’t. And yes, that’s still Tristan flying. This photo appeared on slides at the local theater and on my Web site.
Later, I flew in formation with my friend Jim and Mike took this photo of the real thing. That’s me in the pilot seat again.
Marketing is an important part of any business. And the most effective marketing includes visuals. Take, for example, my slides at the movie theater. There are a few aerial shots of the town and some cattle tanks, giving people an idea of what they can see from the air. But there’s also an excellent air-to-air photo of my old helicopter, Three-Niner-Lima. In the photo, I’m flying past Vulture Peak, just like I do on my Grand Tour of Wickenburg. It’s a real photo that Mike took from the passenger seat of a Piper Cub years ago, when we were flying in formation just to take the photos. I have several of these shots. One — the one you can clearly see me in the cockpit, looking at the camera — is on my business card. These photos look so good that I’ve been accused of cooking them up in Photoshop. But I didn’t. They’re real.
Meanwhile, I had a number of air-to-air photos of my friend Tristan’s R44 taken here in Wickenburg. I leased Tristan’s ship last year for the season and did relatively well with it. That’s what convinced me that I could build the business much better with a 4-seat helicopter. We’d taken the pictures for last year’s ad campaign: “Share the view with a friend or two!” Trouble is, Tristan’s ship is metallic gray with a dark blue stripe. My ship will be Ferrari red with no stripe.
So I sent Bert an e-mail with a thumbnail image of the photo I wanted him to convert and brief instructions. He said he’d do it, that I should just send him a bigger image. I sent the image with more complete instructions. I asked him to remove Tristan’s N-Number. I told him that if he wanted to get really fancy, he could add mine. The next day, the fruits of his labor arrived in my e-mail inbox. It was a photo of Tristan flying a helicopter that hadn’t been built yet.
