Photo by Frank Gasteiger

Archive for category Web-Design

Date: November 9th, 2009
Cate: Photo News, Web-Design, Wine

Churton Wines

For more than two years I am shooting for Churton Wines on a regular basis. Churton, a biodynamic Marlborough vineyard and winery producing limited volumes of high quality Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir is owned and operated by Sam and Mandy Weaver.

Frequent photo sessions as for Churton has many advantages.

- We are able to capture images during the whole year of a wine-making cycle.

- The website is up-to-date with high quality professional images and returning visitor won’t get bored with outdated and static content.

- The photo-stock library grows steadily and has a fresh supply for e.g. magazines, brochures, press-releases.

- Frequent photography takes off the pressure to suddenly find the right image for an unplanned event.

- Having several smaller photo shootings instead of one big session keeps costs under control.

www.churton-wines.co.nz

Date: July 6th, 2009
Cate: Accommodation, Photo News, Web-Design

Marketing Your Way through a Recession

In a recession, consumers become value oriented and distributors are concerned about cash.
Maybe you own or manage a hotel, motel, B&B etc. and you have done everything you can do to marketing your business. You have paid a truck-load of money for placing ads in the travel guides and magazines, your website wasn’t cheap either and you wonder where you can save money… Of course, you can do the photography for your business yourself because everyone can take a photo.
Right…!?
So it might look like this photo a client presented on the website:

In a recession, consumers become value oriented and distributors are concerned about cash.

Maybe you own or manage a hotel, motel, B&B etc. and you have done everything you can do to marketing your business. You have paid a truck-load of money for placing ads in the travel guides and magazines, your website wasn’t cheap either and you wonder where you can save money…

Of course, you can do the photography for your business yourself because everyone can take a photo.
Right…!?
So it might look like this photo (an actual photo presented on a website):

Dormer221x168

If you would hire a professional expert photographer it could look like this:

Dormer-new

Same place, same price for a night. Now judge for yourself, where is the consumer more likely to book ?
Is the amount of money you have saved by taking the images yourself worth the difference ??

A photograph which I took recently for a B&B in Marlborough got chosen as the 2009/10 front cover for a prestigious travel guide.

Date: May 14th, 2009
Cate: Accommodation, Photo News, Web-Design

Revamping a 5-star website

In December last year, Heidi and Werner Pluss of the 5-star rated luxury bed and breakfast The Peppertree in Blenheim contacted me to take some photos of the gardens and orchard surrounding the Peppertree. They were very happy with the results and asked if I would take photos of the rooms too. denise
I happily agreed because with a background of almost 10 years interior advertising photography in Germany I was pretty sure I could deliver the quality Heidi and Werner require. 

The Peppertree is owned and managed by this lovely couple from Switzerland. They have rebuild and styled the gracious Edwardian Villa to highest quality and treat guests with exquisite charm and hospitality.  But they also expect the same love to detail and perfection from everyone who works for them.

For the web-design Robert Boren got involved.
Robert is the man who does the work for love of it. A genius with the code and retired enjoying the New Zealand lifestyle, he spent endless hours to battle problems like new releases of IE8 and cross-platform and browser compatibility.
We met at least once a week to discuss the design and whether additional photos were needed to deliver a complete package. By keeping the Peppertree’s colour scheme, Robert redesigned the site with fresh and contemporary flair and features like quick loading movie-style slide shows. See for yourself and visit The Peppertree website.

Date: May 10th, 2009
Cate: Virtual Tour, Web-Design

G-raff.co.nz / They build websites!

Last weekend I looked at the new web-site of the Garin College where my children study.  I really liked the design, scrolled down to the footer and there is a link. Site by G-raff. Never heard of these guys… so I checked out the G-raff web-site and was blown away by the cool stuff they do.
World class web design by a very talented group of artists, designers, animators and copywriters who are actually based in different places and even different time zones. It shows again that the world is a village.

I wrote an email to Neil Macneil, who is one of the G-raff boys and based in the Motueka area, telling him how much I like the work they do and I hope we could do a project together and a short time later he replied…

“Hi Frank!
Thanks for your email. We like the stuff you do too!
But to be honest, that is a bit of an understatement… we LOVE the stuff you do.
A fabulous portfolio, simply stunning, one of the best we’ve seen in a long, long time. Where have you been hiding ?!
Loved your VR Panoramas – I dabbled in QTVR for a few years, but your work leaves mine for dead! ”
Neil Macneil, G-raff

Thanks Neil, one of the nicest comments I’ve received in a long, long time.