Hi oceanreefer,
Thanks so much for your honest feedback. We greatly appreciate it and are right there with you on the subject of colors in photos. When we first started, photography was one o the things that literally kept us up at night- still does. We try very hard to provide the most accurate portrayals of our coral that are possible. I personally, am in complete agreement that there is just too much of the absurdly blue-shifted, highly oversaturated, excessively post produced photography on websites all over the industry. As a lifelong hobbyist, consumer, and 6-time MACNA speaker, I told myself that I would not want to tie my reputation to a product or process that I couldn't feel proud of.
We have spent a great deal of time working on the accuracy of our photos, and we truly believe that we are providing photos that are very representative of the actual appearance of the corals when you see them in real life. We illuminate our 29' propagation raceways with 400 watt Radium metal halides on light movers for our "SPS" and clams, and a balanced mix of T5 lighting for our "LPS", softies, and Zoanthids. Our photography is done with minimal post production work, mainly done to sharpen the images and crop to size. We strongly dislike the over saturated colors and excessive blue that you see everywhere these days. We tend to use measures such as the color of the frag plug, etc. as color gauges. When we start seeing blue frag plug, we know something is probably not right!
When we first started our company and website, we employed photography that, although crisp and sharp, was shot against a very bland white sand background, with a bit of overexposure, producing a rather washed out appearance that, according to most everyone we talked to, did not do our corals justice. In fact, we frequently received feedback from customers that our corals were WAY more colorful in person than they were in our website, and that we were doing our business- and our customers- a disservice by not portraying them more accurately. ("Awaken your corals from their haze", one customer admonished us. "They are far to beautiful in person to be trapped by bland photography.") We thought we were right on, so we were a bit taken aback!
With this customer feedback, and consultation with photography and other industry professionals, we decided to shoot our corals against dark backgrounds. Lo and behold, our corals really began to pop. The colors were richer and far more accurate than before. We keep post production to a bare minimum (mainly just to crop, size, and sharpen the images), and avoid crazy color manipulation/saturation at all cost. The result has been a higher level of positive feedback from our customers, who feel that the colors are more accurate than previously presented.
Regardless, we're still never completely satisfied, and we'd be dishonest if we said that we were 100% thrilled. We are quite happy with the progress an level of the photo work thus far. There is room for improvement everywhere, although we feel pretty good about our pics these days. We're going to continue to work on the photography, as well as every level of our customer service, to assure that everyone who does business with Unique has the best possible experience. There is so much to do to build a company and a brand that customers feel comfortable doing business with. I am so thrilled that you are providing honest and straightforward feedback. That is the purpose of this forum. Although we spend a lot of time posting stuff that we are offering for sale, the best part about this forum is the opportunity to receive honest feedback like yours from our customers-our friends- so that we can improve every level of our business. Never hesitate to contact us via this forum with questions, concerns, criticisms, or even the occasional compliment if we earn it! We value everyone's input, and vow to take every criticism into consideration to help make us your go-to company for boutique reef livestock.
Thank you once again for your helpful feedback! Please feel comfortable to give us a try. I believe that you will not be disappointed.
Regards,
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals
