Ugly Photo

We recently became official dealers for Alamo Saddlery. We're excited. Yet we knew that photos like the one below were not going to cut it for our customers. This saddle in person is very beautiful, with unique conchos and elegant styling. This cut and paste, low resolution shot was all we were able to scrounge up before we got our saddle in to get professional pictures:

Please, don't zoom in; we beg you. We get excited about new, high quality saddles in our stock, so whenever we get one in and are forced to put a low-quality show on the website, there's a general rush to get pictures. Sometimes the photos we have to put up in the meantime are just...embarassing! Here is one of our shots of the same model:

That's what we're talkin' about!! Feel free to check out the other shots of this saddle, as well as see what other Alamo's we've got stocked, over at the saddle shop.

Ugly Photo of the Month

OK, so we're a little behind of Ugly Photo of the Month. We didn't want to gross you out with the sheer volume of grainy, sub-par photos that are out there. This month's nominee goes to a Billy Cook. Now Billy Cook saddles pretty much set the bar for saddle making. They're as top quality as you can get, drooled over by horse owners round the world, imitated by saddlemakers everywhere. Billy Cook makes saddles and they sell themselves, simple as that. But when you're shopping online, you want the best photographs possible, right? Unfortunately, Billy Cook's catalogs usually have a pretty low resolution; his product pictures don't do his products justice. But, as you can guess, many saddle shops don't go the extra mile. They just cut and paste pictures from the catalog. Here's the picture from the catalog of the 10-1777 Trail Saddle, which many shops online are using: Hmmm....Here's our photo: Which saddle would you rather buy? Which shop would you buy it from: the cut-and-pasters, or the get-professional-photo-shoots-so-the-products-look-real---ers? When you order a saddle from us, you're actually getting what you see online. How comforting. Lest we pat ourselves on the backs too much, we'll note that sometimes we too are guilty of cutting and pasting in our giddy excitement to get new products up. But then those products are first in line to get a photo shoot.

Ugly Photo of the Month

Well it's that time again, folks, where we reveal the difference between what the saddle looks like in the catalog and what it looks like in reality. This month's prize goes to a Tex Tan saddle that we recently began to stock called the Gresham Pleasure. Take a look at what photograph you'll find just scanned from the catalog wherever this saddle is sold online. Now this picture isn't terrible, but it definitely isn't high quality. You can go ahead and zoom in, but don't expect the picture to get any better. If you want to get up close and personal with the saddle, you'll have to visit HorseSaddleShop.com. Once our saddles have been professional photographed, you'll not only have a high quality shot to stare at, but several different angles of the saddle. The picture at right is from Tex Tan's website. Most online saddle shops simply copied and pasted this picture to their shop. The color looks fine, and you can get a general idea of the saddle, but it's just generally low quality. We think that if you're going to make a purchase of hundreds of dollars, you deserve to see better. Take a look:

Now although our word is reliable, you don't have to take our word on anything--you can check out each detail of the saddle yourself.

Ugly Photo of the Month

One of the nagging doubts that often plague us while shopping online is, "What does it really look like?" We've all been interested in a purchase, yet turned off because of a photo that was poorly taken. The ebay seller didn't bother to pick up the junk-ridden barn in the background. And zooming in just makes you want to groan. We wonder if what the UPS man brings us will actually look better or worse than what's represented on screen.

One of the reasons we get so many return customers around the country is our high standards for our product photos: what you see is what you get. Through many years of improvement, we know how to accurately represent a product on your screen. Our photos are taken by a professional with accurate lighting and a high quality camera.

Often, however, we get new products in before we're able to get a high quality photo shoot for it. So in the meantime, we'll use the manufacturer's picture for the saddle. We love our manufacturers, but most of the time their photographs don't cut it. Hardly ever does the photo do the saddle justice. It's grainy (don't bother zooming in). It's ugly. And the color of the leather is usually terribly wrong.

Recently we got a few beautiful new models from Saddlesmith. Here's Saddlesmith's shot:

There's nothing too terrible about the photo. Most online saddle shops use this photo to sell the product---they don't have the time or resources to improve upon it. And until you order the saddle, you'll be none the wiser. But when I went to replace the photo with our high-quality version, I was shocked. Take a look:It looks like the saddle got a makeover, doesn't it? The top photo looks like some generic, cheap, blah model you could buy off the rack anywhere. But our photo shows off the true quality of Saddlesmith's work---the leather has a beautiful honey hue, unlike the ugly photo, which makes it look like the saddle needs a tan. The stitching is even, the tooling pattern is intricate. And *gasp* you can even zoom in, not to mention the fact that we have three other angles to choose from.

So there you go. You know exactly what you're ordering. No unpleasant surprises. Just the sheer joy of being able to feel the leather and sit your bum in its comfortable seat.