Melissa and Harry Wedding

One of the funnest weddings from the summer. Taking care and providing photography for some of my closest friends, is always a real treat. This was also a wedding where I had my high school photography teacher there, Ms. Fagan as I called her in high school, was the one who got me into photography so many years ago.
This is a link to the website about the wedding.

http://www.marionwedding.com/

and here is the link to the Wedding Gallery itself.

http://hitchedphoto.smugmug.com/Weddings/Melissa-and-Harry-Wedding/9842265_dXxvt#675521508_cprzc

My only regret is not having more time with the bride and groom, creating those romantic shots they will love for a lifetime.

Not all smartphones are as smart as others

Not all smartphones are as smart as others apparently. I was working and operating a Motorola Q for about a year, and as I thought about upgrading to the Iphone I realized I really don’t like Mac products. I don’t like the QuickTime or ITunes, the ipod is ok but I just have to deal with that one. Well then I was introduced to the HTC Pure, which runs off the Windows Mobile 6.5. All in all it’s a pretty awesome phone and I was also educated on the fact that At&t says you have to have a data plan if you have a smartphone. I wasn’t using all that it can do because of the cost involved but I want to say more mobile with my clients and stay in better contact with all the photography information.

I like that the HTC Pure has apps like the Iphone, even though it does not have some 85,000 apps that the Iphone has, it has a lot of apps to be fun. My current favorite is the facebook app that allows me to snap a photo and instant upload to my profile. I also like the weather bug app that keeps me posted on the weather in both Rehoboth and Ocean City, you never know when you need to have your back up plans ready in case of rain.

I do not like the camera that is on the phone. It has a 5mp camera built into the phone but if it takes blurry or grainy pictures it’s not that good. At least the Motorola Q has a built in flash that was nice, but only worked in short distances. I can deal with the not so good camera with all the other cool features it has.
I like that it has a dongle that lets you plug in headphones as well as a headset for easy, hands free communication. On my house phone I use a standard, 3.5 mm jack headset, and when I get a call on the cell I can now just unplug from my one phone to the HTC.

The internet on this phone is worth its weight in gold. You are never disconnected from the net with this little guy and when you need to check your bank account for example it’s just a couple clicks away. The internet and other applications are pretty fast however sometimes it does lock up. From there I just turn it off and turn it back on.

More benefits of the professional photographer

More benefits of the professional photographer – NON Professionals beware!

As I think more and more on the subject, I become more aware of what sets me apart from the Aunts, Uncles, and friends out there running around with a camera, thinking “I can do that”.
Some of the key factors are Equipment, experience, knowledge, and attitude.

With equipment this item is often over looked from people know don’t know what they are looking at. Allow me to explain.

When you walk into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Target, I’m sure you’ve seen the cameras on display and think “damn $700 is a lot of money for a camera” it might be a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D40, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not a lot of money.

My main camera cost me $3000 easy and that’s not including the lens, flashes, batteries, and other equipment. And that’s just my main camera, I also carry a back up camera worth $1500 and an extra camera worth about $1200. You may think, “What! Why!” I’m serious about my job and my passion, and I’m serious about taking the very best photo I can, and whether it’s for your wedding day or a family beach portrait, I want to make it the best I can.

I carry around backups, because equipment fails. Batteries fail, lenses malfunction, flashes break, on the that one special magical wedding day, you can’t announce to the crowd, “Hold on, I’ll be right back, I have to buy something”. And you can’t just leave either, you will miss everything you were hired to capture.

I like to bring along multiple lenses because different lenses do different things, which also ties into Education. I like my standard low light lens, F2.8, to capture as much as I can in low light situations. Its considered a mid range so I can’t be too far and I can’t be too close either. Another Lens that is fun to use is my 85mm prime lens, it’s really cool and artsy, to take a photo of the cake all in focus and have the couple in the background all blurred out. Or what if I want to take a really detailed close up image of the rings in the flowers, then I have my macro lens for that. Rather than switch lens on to camera body and back and forth, which means you might have dust enter the camera or you might miss a shot because you are messing with your camera or lens, I have several lenses on multiple camera bodies.

Does your amateur photographer do all that?

Experience

What does shooting hundreds of weddings and thousands of portraits give you?
Ding Ding Ding DING!
You guessed it, Mad Experience.

Well you come to rely on that experience at various weddings, events, portrait sessions, whatever has happened to you and you learned something from you, makes you a better photographer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a church photographing a wedding and I see the bubbles ready for the bride and groom to walk out through, and time and time again, based on experience I know a lot of times it doesn’t work without the proper planning. So with me, I know from the past to help organize the people, get more people on one side or the other based on how strong the wind is blowing. Helping those family members and friends with cameras, to come down by me so they can get the better shot.

Experience wins out more often than not and that’s why I go to events, even when I’m not the photographer, sometimes I’ll help out a DJ friend, or maybe video tape a minister friend, every event I can go to brings me more and more experience.

And you don’t want an Inexperience amateur photographer at your wedding do you?

Knowledge

Where experience will only get you so far, it’s the knowledge that will carry you further. Its why I got to professional photographer classes, why I read books, subscribe to photographer magazines, attend big photographer conventions, and why I never stop learning. I often consider myself a “White Belt” (To use some martial arts terms) in photography but my definition might different as we all know a black belt is way higher than a white, I think of myself as constantly learning. I don’t want to enter into a conversation or class and think of myself as more knowledgeable then the rest, I’d rather go there with an open mind and clean slate to learn with. Because even though you may have years of photography knowledge, you may miss something the new beginner might have picked up. And then you can add that to your knowledge base.

A lot of classes and seminars I attend cost a couple of hundred dollars a pop, but its paid for itself time and time again from what I learned. And you’d be surprised with all the free education online that you can learn, and the biggest difference is that I take the time to learn it. Some people might say “I don’t have the time”. I’ll let you in on a trick that will help. MAKE THE TIME! It’s that easy. But that’s for a whole other article.

Does your photographer friend find the time to learn more about their hobby?

Attitude

If you thought Experience and Knowledge will take you places, I’m here to tell you, Attitude will take you places you never thought possible. And not any attitude will do, it has to be a positive one. When I show up to an event, be it wedding, senior shoot, or beach portrait, I bring on the Fun and I bring on the FUNK. I think of myself as the eternal optimist and it pays to do so. One of my classic, I know, cheezy sayings “where there is a WILL (me) there IS A WAY”. I don’t like to take “it’s impossible” or “I can’t do it” to heart, I think all the time when I encounter opposition or a difficulty, there has got to be a way around this. So many a times I’ll show up on location with the attitude “this is going to be fun” “and nothing is going to stop this from being great”.

I’ve interacted with people not in the very best of moods, but I’ve been able to turn it around by being positive and fun. I am all the time reading people, their tones, body language, and their attitude, and when I need to, I’ll kick my attitude up a bit to make it an Awesome event.
It’s no fun having a silent, burnt out photographer showing up to your wedding, there to capture smiles and all they do is bring the place down.

Check to make sure your guy is at least a little fun or has a pulse.
And well that’s all I have to say on the subject.
Nuff said.

“Thinking about having my friend photograph my wedding.”

“Thinking about having my friend photograph my wedding.”

I tend to hear that from time to time and when I do hear it, it always makes me laugh a little inside and worry at the same time. I think to myself that some brides may not want beautiful images of their wedding or they may not care too much about it, because if they did they wouldn't trust their friend who, chances are, they are not a professional photographer. More than likely they bought a $600 camera and took a few photos of their trip to where ever and they have never photographed a wedding.

There is a lot that goes into being a photographer at a person's wedding, there is experience you need to keep you ahead of the game and makes you ready for the awesome shot. There are skills that you acquire from continuous shooting and classes that you attend to keep that skill up. A pro wouldn't have a camera you'd buy in Wal-Mart or Best buy, they would have spent a couple of thousand I'm sure.

Even though I consider myself mechanically inclined, when I have car issues, I take it straight to the dealer or a qualified mechanic. Same thing applies if I wanted the roof on my house repaired, I would contact a licensed carpenter so I can have to job done right the first time. With the wedding supposed to be once in a lifetime event for you, magical and memorable, how will you look back on the memories, by looking at your photos. To me that seems important, not something I would just trust anyone with. Another good way of thinking about it, If your friend watches a lot of Discovery Health on TV and owns "some" surgical tools, would you let that person operate on you?

Oh god I hope not, I'd go find me a doctor with education and years of experience.
Having been to one too many weddings, I can see that a wedding is like an orchestra. Every professional is there to do their part and without each one, your wedding could be out of sync.
To have a reception you should have a Disc Jockey, you can't really have a good party without one. I've seen weddings without them and I've seen those receptions suffer.

You can't get married without a wedding minister or officiant, they are pretty important and hard to get married without one.

Wedding planners, personally I would go with one of these all the time. They help run the show so you don't have to. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the bride or groom running around trying to put out fires or do things they shouldn't be doing because they don't have anyone else to do it for them. It's the couples celebration and they should be relaxing and having fun.

Photographers and Videographers, these are your record keepers. These are the people the capture all the memories of this most important day. As I have touch on photographers, Videographers are just as equally important that get over looked. Can you imagine going to a movie to see, Spider Man for example. What if you sit down in your seat with your popcorn and you look up at the screen and you see images of spider-man. For an entire hour, you see cool image, after cool photo of spider man and all the cool things he is doing. After an hour or so, it's over, and you leave, but all you saw were images and photos, not a movie. Video brings you into the story in a way that photos can't. You can look at a photo and you can get a flash of a memory that is brought on by that image, but when you watch a movie it allows you to relive that memory and you began to see things you might have missed or might have forgotten.

I could go on listing various wedding professionals and their key roles they play, but I'm sure you will have gotten the point by now.

Allow the professionals to do what they do best so that you don't have to worry and enjoy that celebration of love.

Center Stage Photographer

I have found there are two types of wedding photographers out there:

The good ones, who are seldom seen, doing their job well, un obtrusive, and moves with the flow of the wedding.

And The bad ones, those who are right up in your face the entire wedding, and what ends up happening is your guests end up seeing the back of this photographer more than they get to see you, the couple.

I'm currently editing some video I have taken at a wedding for a friend and its bringing back a flood of bad memories of that day. And I'm not one for photographer bashing, but it really irks me that it happened like this at all. With any luck this experience could help others when choosing their photographer for an upcoming event.

Now I classify myself as an unseen photographer, I watch the flow of the event from the side lines, I end up trying to blend in with the wall as much as possible. I will spring into action when something is going down that might need to be captured by my camera. I like to wear darker colors to that i might blend in to the shadows if at all possible. To me there are certain boundaries you shouldn’t cross while at a wedding and some photographers know this, and others don’t care.

I have noticed at various events when I’m not the photographer but maybe a spectator, that some photographers are very possessive of all the photography going on all around the wedding couple. I’ve seen photographers blocking other people deliberately who are trying to snap a shot or asking the guest to “not take the photo” with their personal point and shoot camera.
Now me on the other hand, I like to treat others as I would like to be treated. So as soon as i grab my shot, I step back and allow others to grab the shot as well. There have been times when I’d take the camera from the guest and say “get in there” as I can see they were a group and I would snap the photo with their own personal camera. I’ve enjoyed helping out grandmothers working their camera as they are trying to capture an image of their precious loved ones.

If nothing else is taken away from this little rant, when you meet with your photographer, see what kind of person he or she is, and maybe bring up the question: “How will you handle our wedding day?”.

With any luck you will have a photographer that will become your friend and will be a joy to be around on your special day.

After the wedding – Your photos and You

So you’ve kissed and said “I do”, now you are entered into that blissful state of married life. On to the photos that were taken of your wonderful day that might have seemed like a blur.

IMAGE PROCESSING

About 7 – 10 days after your wedding, your images should be going up into your own online gallery. If its summer time, we’ll need that time to process your wedding images and if you are wondering why it might be taking so long, is because we like to go through all the images one at a time and make them look beautiful. Adding on our own artistic ideas and creative effects, as well as enhancing the images by adding clarity, vibrance, and saturation where it is needed. Taking the ordinary captured image like this:

Into an awesome version of what should be.

Side Note: We photograph all events in Nikon’s RAW file called an NEF. When shooting in RAW as professionals call it, it records everything that was on the imaging chip in the camera, much like film in old cameras. As we shoot digital instead of developing the images in a dark room, we use Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom. If your photographer isn’t shooting in RAW, you are losing out.

ORDERING FROM YOUR GALLERY

In your online gallery you can order any and all prints you may want from 4x6 prints, to 20x30 canvas wraps, to coffee mugs, and T-Shirts, with your images on them. We have even made our artistic creations available for digital download purchase. As some may want to purchase the photo negatives, some may only want to purchase single images. All can be done from your gallery, in the comfort of your home or office, and shipped directly to you.

Here is a little image walkthrough I made up to show how easy it is to order whatever you want.
This here is your image reference number, in case would like to order an album, send me an email about an image, or whatever, it would be this number that I would need and it is located beneath the image and will have a 3 letter prefix and a 4 digital number following.

Once you are on the image you would like to purchase all you have to do is click “BUY” located at the top right of the screen.

Once you have clicked on the Buy button it will take you to a screen where you can order whatever you might like. You can order prints ranging in sizes from 4x6s and wallets all the way as large as 20x30 prints. You can also order canvas wraps and various merchandise items like magnets, t-shirts, etc.
Please Note: if you are ordering a large print like a 20x30 or large 20x30 canvas wrap, I’d recommend calling so that I can make sure the image is totally flawless. The larger the image, the more detail you are able to see.
When ordering you have the option of 4 different paper types, as you might be used to seeing glossy or matte in Wal-Mart, Sams Club, or CVS, you might consider getting your images in LUSTRE or METALLIC paper. The Metallic paper really pops and looks really cool; it is by far my favorite.
By clicking on the Merchandise tab it will take you to the section, where you can order your image on many different items. It’s nice to order things like Coffee mugs as wedding gifts, Playing cards for your bridal party members as gifts, Refrigerator magnets for your home, Mouse pads for your spouse at work, or whatever else you might think of.
Now maybe you found this one image that you just really, really love and rather than buying the entire negatives disc, or stealing copyrighted images from your photographer, you can easily download that image straight to your computer, through the purchase. This way you have the image you want and it is now yours to do with as you please.
You have ordered just about all the items you can think of from your gallery, all you have to do to complete your purchase is click “CHECK OUT”. After you have clicked check out you will be taken to a screen where you can put in your address and ordering information. After you place the order, sit back, relax and wait for it to come in the mail.
If you need any assistance ordering from your gallery you can always call or email me and I can help.

The beauty of Senior Shooting

As a photographer I’m always growing, always learning and I like to thank my seniors for allowing me to do that. When it comes to wedding photography I’m often allotted just a little bit of time to photograph the bride and groom which doesn’t give me much time to play around with new ideas. But with High School Seniors, they are all about trying new things and experimenting. And so when I’m not on a wedding photographing, I’m looking forward to photographing seniors. I end up picking up new skills and trying out new ideas, under different lighting conditions that I would not otherwise get to play with. And so the new ideas that pay off looking cool or the experiments that yield a fascinating result I’m able to apply them to the wedding photography and other photography shoots. So I wanted to say thank you for the fun, Seniors! You end up being great models, amazing people to photograph, and you get to reap the rewards of all the time shooting and trying new crazy things.

Me and the Mobile Uploads

Now that I’m into facebook more then I was back back in the day, I also see all the possibilities that it allows for keeping friends and family in the loop about what’s going on in our lives. For some, they like to log in to FB once in a while and just check and see what’s new. For me its more of a daily thing. And with the advent of technology I have the ability to take photos and videos on the spot and have them delivered right away to my profile page.

When I’m out on a shoot with a family or Senior, it’s nice for them to end the day of shooting and go home and relax. As they may log on and check on their family and friends, they are also able to catch a brief recap of the day. If they have family and friends who know they are out on a shoot with me, they could easily log on and catch some images that I have taken. Granted my phone camera isn’t as good as my Nikon D700 but it is pretty decent for what’s available in technology. I run around with a Motorola Q from At&t, with a 2 megapixel camera. I choose this phone for the Windows like operating system that I’m used to and familiar with. My wife, Olga has an “I”phone, which goes well with her macbook and even though her camera phone takes slightly better pictures, I’m pretty happy with all my phone delivers.

So if you see me on a shoot and I whip out my phone, chances are you can log on later and see some of what I shot. Or if you are at home, you can pop on my profile and see where I am and what I’m doing at any given time. Isn’t technology great!

The Teaser images – a preview of the good stuff

I wanted to update you all on what’s new with your images. When I photograph an event, say a wedding or senior shoot, after I get home and I get the images stored on my Drobo, I like to cruise through them and pick out a few that I absolutely love. It might be anywhere from 3 – 15 images, depending. Well I grab those images and pull them to the side and upload them to facebook, for you and your friends and family. The goal is to not keep you waiting too long for a peek at the fun from the day’s events.

(a good reason to friend me so I can share them with you faster, http://www.facebook.com/hitchedphotography)

Back in the day, when I might have had only one wedding a weekend, or maybe a few photography events a month, I could process those images in 48 hours and have them up online. But these days, I’m getting booked up for weekday weddings, followed by family beach portraits, and with a few seniors splashed in for a busy month.

With the summer crashing down upon us like waves, I find it difficult to give my clients images the attention I like to give each and every one of their photos. And so I have hired on “image processors” to help in processing the images from the events. These two guys are my image manipulators, they are the ones taking those ordinary images that might come out of any camera and making them into fantastic art, of course leaving some images plain but slightly enhanced. Both gentlemen were handed picked by me, because of their background skills in photoshop and their speed and dedication to the images I’m entrusting into them. Both my guys were trained by me, given specific instructions on what I expect the images to look like. And to give the images the exact care I would.

I still process images myself, but I’m happy to have the help so that I can continue to focus on you the client. It also frees up my time to gather new skills to apply at your wedding or family portrait. Taking the time on your images is something I personally feel is important, making them unique and memorable, something you will cherish always. So just think that every time I snap a photo of you, it will be “Hand Crafted” to be the best image It can be.

Facebook ME !

For those of you who are finding the joys of Facebook, connecting with friends, sharing adventures, and just keeping informed, I wanted to let you know you can find me there, too.

http://www.facebook.com/hitchedphotography

This is my profile and just put in a friend request, especially if you are into photography, getting married, already gotten married and I photographed you, maybe you are getting a beach family portrait or Senior portrait, this would be a good idea. It’s a great way to stay in touch with me, even though I check my email daily, I’m also checking facebook daily. There are rare times when an email might get lost, but so far I have not missed a single communication through facebook.

I’ve also been experimenting with mobile uploads, snapping photos with my phone and even capturing video for a fun little mini clip you can enjoy a little later. And of course everything I snap with my phone goes to facebook instantly.

Hitched Photography Facebook Fan Page

If you wanted to become a fan of Hitched Photography, I also have a Hitched Photography Fan Page. From here you can keep up to date on various activities that we do and are involved in. I will also be setting up promos and specials for my Facebook “Fans” that they can take advantage of.

Keeping up with us on Facebook works out to your advantage, where I’m tying in all the photograph galleries into it, my blog as a RSS feed going into my profile, I upload my videos I capture to there for easy viewing, and when I have a photo shoot, I might take 7 days or so to process the images, I usually like to add a few fun, favorite images straight away to facebook.
Well I hope to connect with you online.

Family Beach Photography Tips and Information

For you the client, this information is for you. I wanted to educate you on some helpful information that you might enjoy before we actually start shooting your Family Beach Portrait. By now you might have contacted me and we would have discussed some date possibilities.

Choosing the Date!
If you are arriving on a Saturday or Sunday and staying for the whole week, get settled and let’s aim for a Monday or Tuesday at the start of your trip. This will give us the rest of the week as possible backups to your shoot incase it rains or something comes up. As both my wife and I both shoot, we can easily accommodate people on the day they are requesting. Just try not to ask for a Saturday as we are Wedding Photographers and will most likely have a wedding on Saturday.

Location, Location, Location.
We would like to direct you to one of our many beach locations that are closer to where you are staying while vacationing. However if you have viewed some of our work and would like to request a certain location, base on the photos you saw, please let us know. I like to get you to one of our closer locations to where you are at, to keep any children happy and from staying in the car for too long. I’ve included a google map I’ve put together to make it easier for you. And if you have GPS unit you can easily put in one of these addresses to get you there.

Arrival on the Beach photography Scene - To be late or not to be late?
Now you might arrive before I do, or I might arrive before you do, don’t feel as though you have to rush for this. We want you happy and relaxed as this will be a fun experience. If I were to show up late, its not to keep you waiting, but to move with the sun as I say. A lot of times I’ll get there when the sun is just too high and then we may feel forced to start. I delay my arrival to avoid starting too early. And I anticipate sometimes clients being late because they are often from out of town and don’t know all the little beach photography spots we drag you out to. If you arrive a little late, don’t worry, be happy, it’s all good. The flip side to that is – if you have a large family and we are due to start shooting at 7pm then if you show up 45 minutes late, then it will put a damper on the amount of time we have left to photograph you. What I aim for is to get there and meet you at a location an hour and twenty minutes before the sun sets, that will give us a good hour of shooting time for before we run out of light.

Your clothing options – No speedo’s please.
You can choose to wear whatever your heart’s desire. It’s your photo shoot you can do what you will. However if you are looking for my opinion and what experience has taught me, I’d like to make a few suggestions. I’d recommend solid colors, nothing with a lot of stripes, dots, or wording. A nice white shirt or nice white sundress would work. And you can go the other way if you would like, with a black shirt or black sundress. If you have a couple of different families together in the shot, you can keep them all in the same colors or use different color variations. Like a light blue on one family and Light green on another. But the safest bet is to go with white or black and you can’t go wrong. An issue with black clothing – once you start rolling around in sand, the sand will show up more on the black, where as you don’t have that problem with white.

Parents with Children or Children with Parents – Depends on who’s in charge.
Try and allow your kids rest early on, like a nap. As we are shooting around the evening time, they could be tired by the time we shoot, and you will want them to smile but they will be cranky and tired. So nap time if at all possible. Brings snacks is always a good idea, as we can the little ones to smile with little treats when all else fails. When I first walk up to a new family, before I take out the camera, I say “Hi” and introduce myself. With kids in the portrait too, I’m getting to know them as well, and allowing them to get to know me. There might be a little bit of bonding before hand, as it will make getting them to listen to me easier.

Parent Tip – when time to photograph the children and you aren’t in the photo, you would be best to stand behind me, so that the child’s attention is focus in my direction for the picture. I could also recommend, allowing you to take a back seat, behind me so to speak so that I can talk and work with the mini model. Sometimes they may cry for you or you may want you to pick them up, but we want to give them a chance to listen to my instructions so I can grab the shot. One of the best things you could do is stand together behind me quietly so I can chat with the little one or you want speak softly you can if it helps. If my attempts do not work we can try another approach. I defiantly know that screaming and yelling behind me to capture the child’s attention doesn’t work well.

The beach portrait family - breakdown and rebuilding – Basic shoot outline.
As you are there for a beach family portrait, what I like to do is take a group shot of the whole family together and then break it up into other family configurations. This is a basic outline that I’m about to go into, and as it might not fit with all families I’m sure you can fill in the blanks as needed. Say you have a family – set of grandparents and those grandparents have 4 sons and those 4 son’s have wife’s and each one has either one or two kids each. You can imagine that as a large family photo there, and we like to start with the center of the family, the grandparents. As I sit the grandparents down in the sand, I like to get them comfortable as possible. For all of remaining family members standing around, it might be nice to pay attention to what I’m showing them because I’m setting you up with way to make you look good. Once the grandparents are seated, I like to take a few shots of them to get them going and to show the kids, “Hey nothing to worry about”. I’ll grab a few shots and then get their children in the photo, in this case the 4 sons. Snap a few photos, and then I’ll call the wife’s with the children on over, to add to the over group shot. Snap, click, captured, done. Chances are I’ll snap a few photos like 10 – 15 to make sure all eyes are open and we got a good shot.

Parent Tip – Don’t focus on the children in front of you, try and keep your attention on me, and allow me to get their attention because as soon as I have the child’s attention I snap the photo, and what I end up with is the child looking directly at the camera, and the top of the parent’s head, or a blur of hair. So try and keep looking at me. Once we have the group photo, great, we can now move on to individual shots of families, and what better way to start then with the grandparents with all the grandchildren. The parents get up, leave the children around the grandparents, and step behind me, you may want to stand beside or off somewhere, but what you might end up with is the little kiddie, looking at you or for you, and everyone else is looking at the camera. Moving on, we can get Son #1 with his family, and then Son #1 with just his wife, Son #1 with the kids, and then switch, Mom #1 with the kids. We can even do so far as to do a little “toddler tossing”, where the parent’s are throwing the children back and forth. Just kidding, checking to see if you are still reading. But whatever other ideas you might have, we can shoot them. And we would go down the line with all the families shooting in different combinations. I’m out there, and we are having fun, why not snap some more fun photos, and so we can walk on down to the water, snap a few pictures with the waves coming in. If your family feels up to it, we can get some photos of you all running along the water, jumping in if you want, it’s towards the end of the shoot, you can get wet if you want to, or crazy if you’d like.

The Beach portrait is done, Dude – now what?
As we finish up some last shots of the portrait session, we are walking back to our cars, and hopefully no one left anything on the beach. Try and keep all items close together so it’s easy to collect at the end. We’ll chat back to the cars I’m sure, but your images can take up to about 7 or so days to process. If we are doing beach portraits then it must be summer, and if it’s summer that means it is also wedding season, so processing of the images takes a little while. Once the images are online, you should get an email from me letting you know where to find them, and if you are on facebook, I like to add a link to your profile that will easily take you to your gallery. Your package would include various prints, as you go through your images keep track of the numbers below the photos, and write down the pictures that you love. This way, when it comes time to let me know which images, you want as per your package you can just email them to me. For those other family members that were part of the group they can order directly from the gallery, or if they have any special requests, you can email me or call. Your gallery should remain online for the duration of the year, as you might not have had a chance to purchase extra prints, because you might be paying off the vacation itself. You can also look at your gallery close to Christmas time and order some Christmas cards to send out to family.

Tip - Just give us a call early before the mad Holiday card rush starts happening. You can order more than just prints from your gallery too, from playing cards, to T - shirts, to coffee mugs, and even bags, all from the gallery and shipped directly to your home. If you ever have a problem with your order, if the prints turn out bad or something, ship them to me, and I will re order you new ones. As an artist and a business owner, I take great pride in my work, and it’s just good business practice to treat people right.

Building relationships that last!

Over to course of time photographing weddings and other events I have found that I gain so much by the people I meet and the lives I’m able to touch. What tends to happen when I’m hired to photograph a wedding here at the beach or if I’m called upon to take seniors pictures or even pregnancy shots, I will often times develop a friendship with that client that continues on. Here is an example of some of my former clients who are now my friends.

Justin and Dody – at one point in time before I was photographing full time, I was doing computer repair and I had met Justin and fixed his laptop. At that time he was single, and it was a year or so later that I got booked to photograph a wedding and I knew the bride’s name was Dody and the Groom’s name was Justin but I would never have guessed that it was the Justin I knew from fixing his laptop and who owned Dewey Parasail. So to my surprise when I arrived on location on their wedding day, it was a super cool time being able to photograph their wedding. Justin did not know I was into photographing these days and just thought I fixed computers still. Now a year and a half later, he calls me up to take professional photos of his business and boats, he takes my wife and I out for some parasailing whenever we want, and we have a good time. We both have each other on speed dial and I’m looking forward to taking their family beach portrait when their new baby is born. Shelly and Dan – I got a call about a wedding and when I went to the client’s house we got to talking and I found out that Dan’s sister runs / owns Pohanka of Salisbury. And so after some fun conversation, I offered the suggestion if he could hook us up with a good price on a car, I’d hook him up on the photography. At that time we only had one car between the wife and I, and we were in the market for a new one for Olga. A couple of days later, he suggested we come in and he’d take care of us, and sure enough my wife found a car she really liked and without hesitation he gave us a pretty sweet deal. They got married and at their wedding we have a couple of photographers out there, got some amazing shots and he got the hook up as well. Now a day’s Dan and I are still friends, we both have each other in our phones and we keep in contact on facebook.


In other cases, I’ve met people in this industry like ministers, wedding planners, disc jockeys, and many others, through our constant running into with each other we often become friends. That is really the case in this next story.

Jason and Stacy – I meet Jason through a mutual friend and he was DJing at weddings. It wasn’t long before just about every wedding I was going to he was DJing and rocking the house every time. I found myself hanging out at these receptions longer then I was paid to be out there for and still taking photos and having a good time with Jason. It might have been a year later that he asked me to photograph his wedding to Stacy and without a doubt I was really honored. I met up with them to discuss their wedding day and their photography needs and we often had dinner chatting about it all. On the day of their wedding I had myself, my wife, Olga as second shooter, and my father to capture some video, and we had a great time partying. Stacy and Jason insisted we put down our cameras and have a drink and have some fun, and we did. They fed us good and by the end of the night it was not a job but a good time. And to this day, Jason is one of my closest friends and Stacy is really dear to me. They are both great people.
There are many more to mention but that might just turn into a book and not an article.
So if you are ever thinking of hiring a photographer, watch out because you might be making a new friend.

Something Rare – Something Cool!

A lot of times I photograph weddings and events with an assistant or second shooter, someone I’m training or a newer photographer wanting some tips. Well my buddy, Matt just happens to be one of my “Padawan learners” and the poor guy had his camera stolen from the beach in Lewes. It just so happened that we were photographing a wedding a week prior and I needed his camera card with the images on it. I did not want to leave him without a card, just in case he wanted to so some shooting on his own, and so I gave him one of my compact flash cards.

Anyway, his camera was found by a guy and his son at a skate park not to far away, and because my camera cards are all labeled with my name and number they were able to contact me and let me know they had found it.

What is rare about this is that most people would have kept a $700 camera and not thought twice, but this gentleman was super cool and called wanting to return it. He mentioned that he would not have been able to do so if my camera card wasn’t labeled with my name and number. I had picked up that little tip from the Digital Story Show, and with his podcast “Inside Pro Tips”

Thank you “good Samaritan”
And thank you Derrick Story!

Lots of Weddings - Its Wedding Season !

Well it’s been a busy couple of weeks, with this being wedding season and all, it’s difficult to find the time to write or even email sometimes. We’ve had quite a few weddings to photograph, a few beach portraits, a lot of one hour weddings on the beach, and even got to photograph some of the Ocean City Air Show.

Some of the more memorable shoots I had were Kate and Neil over at Seacrets in Ocean City. They had DJ Rupe in the house playing it up and it made for a good time. The bride and bridesmaids rode on in on the taxi boat which was kinda cool, and we even had a guest appearance by a Paris Hilton (look a like?).

One of my favorite weddings so far this summer was Holly and Mark at Fager’s Island in Ocean City. What made this one so meaningful to me was how the bride and groom invited me in and embraced me like family. Checking to see if I’m eating and having a good time, they had a section of the beach all to themselves and it felt like we were in some tropical paradise.

About one of the worst weddings I had was at the Fountainhead in Ocean City, there was nothing wrong with the bride, groom or Ceremony but with the staff at the Fountainhead. We chatted with the manager and the security informing them we were there to photograph a wedding and they threaten to call the cops on us, as well as have our vehicles towed. It wasn’t until the couple talked with the manager and security that we allowed to park or get near around the building but by then we were parked a crossed coastal highway which made it difficult to carry our equipment from our cars to the wedding location on the beach.
A little tip for you brides out there, make sure you let your wedding venue, managers, security people know you are getting married there, or they might cause you unforeseen difficulties and avoid the Fountainhead at all costs. They are super unpleasant.

Mini video clips

We here at Hitched are all the time trying at new ways of doing things better and finding ways to be different from our competitors. One of the things we found to add a little fun to our shooting is to grab some video from weddings and splice them together for an enjoyable mini recap of the wedding day. With Olga’s new camera, we are able to capture high resolution video footage of the event, when not in shooting mode. For example when we are at a wedding, I’ll be ready to shoot that garter toss or bouquet toss and she’ll be standing by to capture the event in a mini video. Or you might be dancing your first dance with your new spouse and while I’m snapping away catching the stills, she is able to capture it on video. That way after the wedding, as you are looking through your online gallery, you come across the video, and it’s a pleasant little recap of your day. After you watch it you are able to send the link to the video to family and friends. Keep in mind that it can’t replace the videographer and it doesn’t have the elegant editing that a good video editor can do, but it’s just something fun and extra for you to enjoy!

Bride: “This is my first wedding”

Bride: “This is my first wedding” – what you might need to know!
Bubbles
Disposable cameras
Alternative to Disposable
Wedding planners
Meet and Greet and Testimonials vs. References

Bubbles
I know I’ve touched on this subject before, about bubbles and your wedding, however given it some more thought, and came up with some ideas. That if you are going to have those little bubble containers at your wedding what are you going to do with them? People can blow bubbles when you leave the church, when you leave the beach, or maybe when you get into the limo. These are all great ideas but you might not have considered, during the first dance, or during the parents dances. So long as you don’t have a slippery surface it would make for a more enchanting wedding moment, then without them. It definitely makes for better photos, when you are dancing with your new husband and the music is just right, and then bubbles start to cascade down around you. Talk about memorable. Another point to be aware of is that those bubble containers don’t often come full, they can have some evaporation or some could have leaked out. So when people are blowing they are often spitting near or on you. One idea is to get a bubble machine from Walmart, I picked up one for my photo shoots, and it was only like $20 or so.

Disposable cameras
I seriously don’t think they are worth the time, money or energy that brides think. They are good in theory but here are some things to consider. You might spend anywhere from $5 - $15 on each camera, sometimes forcing you to buy 10 at a time. Before you know it you just added $100 to your budget in cameras. Then you have to processing, you’ll have to take them to a developer, and wait a week or If you pay the money for the 1 hour processing you are looking at another $10 a camera to process, all with the hopes you’ll get some good fun shots. One major drawback with those camera is the flash, as you will often be using them at your reception, maybe around the night time, the flash doesn’t provide all that much light and when you have mom, grandpa, or guest, trying to take photos of you on the dance floor some 15 – 20 feet away, those images might just turn out black. Or what about little “Jimmy or Suzy” running around with it, she might get a fun one, but who knows if it is being used right and you might develop a who camera with some blurry, dark pictures. That is why having a professional photographer stay an extra hour or two might be more worth it to you. They have that more powerful flash that reaches some 15 – 30 feet and they can change their settings to allow for more light in the camera, a feature disposables don’t have.

Alternative to Disposable cameras
Something I have not seen a single bride try to do as of yet. You will know who is coming to your reception mainly because you invited them. Find out what kind of digital camera they have, and buy a memory card for you. Chances are most digital cameras I’ve seen at weddings and receptions are point and shoot cameras that take SD cards. You can run to Staples, Wal-Mart, even find them on line and buy these cares for $7 each. And these memory cards do not need to be that big, maybe 256 megabite would be the minimum to buy, but now a days you can get those 1 gig cards for $7 at staples. What you do is have a designated person, hand out the cards to the guests with the cameras, ask them to take pictures with your memory cards, then when they leave; they drop the card with you before they leave. You have to do this because the biggest problem people have is taking 100 photos, putting it on the computer and forgetting about it. You’ll end up looking like the bad guy, constantly asking “Uncle Bob” or “Best friend Kim” to send you a disk in the mail of your images. This way, you have some 10 memory cards at the end of the night, you pick up a $20 card reader and you take the images with you on your honeymoon.

Important note:
Now I might have talked myself out of a job here, but keep in mind, that point and shoot cameras are still no match to the skill and knowledge a professional photographer will have at your wedding.

The Wedding Planners
If you can factor this money into your budget a wedding planner is the way to go. As this is your first wedding, you could gain a lot of insight and benefit from a wedding planner’s knowledge on weddings. Much like I have years of experience photographing weddings, and I give tips to brides all the time, my knowledge can’t compare to what a planner would know.

Like making sure the cake is situated just right. I’ve seen it happen before when the cake shows up half melted, leaning and looks bad, but a planner would have the foresight to call the venue and make sure they have a place in their freezer to accommodate it and to pull it out at a certain time and keep it cool during the ceremony. That’s a whole thing on to itself that you as a bride don’t want to deal with on your day. I’m sure you’d much rather be thinking about your new husband, having fun, enjoying the friends and family. If you try and do it all yourself, you are going to be worrying about the flowers, making sure the dresses are there on time, making sure everyone gets paid for their services, the whole wedding day time table. The wedding planner is there to be your brain for the day, to think about all the things you don’t want to think about and certainly a whole while investment.

“Meet and Greet” your wedding professionals
Even if you are planning a bit of a destination wedding or something local you should consider meeting with your service providers, Cake makers, wedding planners, photographer, videographer, DJ, Minister, etc. I’m sure that all goes without saying, but some don’t meet with them till the day of the wedding and I often feel it can put a strain on the day if you aren’t careful. Like if you meet with the DJ beforehand you get to chat about the evening’s events and the time line. What if you only email that information over and something got lost in translation, you might anticipate your reception happening one way and the DJ does another. Or not meeting with a wedding officiant, I’ve seen it where the minister called the bride by another name because they had another name on the paper and I’ve seen it mispronounced. You don’t want that on your wedding day.

And to tie into that same topic, ask for references, if they professional say’s to you, “here are my testimonials” that doesn’t tell you anything. Yes they could be true and accurate, but to know for sure, the references are what is going to let you know. A reference will be someone that wedding professional has worked for and can tell you firsthand how they performed. You will find out early if your decision to hire them was a bad move or will put your mind totally at ease as you then found out this person was “Heaven Sent”. Those testimonials could have been embellished or made up or they could be right on the money. You just don’t know.

So these are just my thoughts to you as a bride.
I hope they help.
- Will Vickers

To DJ or not to DJ at your wedding

With all the wedding professionals out there, each one has a purpose and each one is uniquely important. The wedding planner, often the brains of the wedding, taking the pressure off the bride and making it all come together. The cake maker, bring you that taste treat that is a beautiful ending to a fun evening. And to have that fun evening you’ll need that DJ, which is the heart of any good wedding.

I bring up the DJ because as a photographer I’m often relying on the DJ for information on how the evening will go. I know with a good DJ, the dance floor will be hoping, and keeping the evening events moving in a forward motion. Many of my friends are DJ’s and I wanted to say a few words on their behalf to thank them for making my job easier and bringing me to fun photos and videos I have to for the brides and grooms out there.

The Disc Jockey:
What I have come to realize is a commanding person. They are often confident in their abilities and will control the rhythm of the party to suit the needs of the wedding couple. Without a good DJ, events often spiral out of control and before long, its 11pm and you haven’t even cut your cake yet. The DJ often is fun and entertaining, as they will often be the focus of attention when on the microphone, and bringing the spotlight onto the newly wedded couple. As the lights are dimmed and the music is playing the new husband and wife will enjoy that special song that they will remember forever as “their Song”. More often than not, the DJ will bring tears to your eyes as you are on the dance floor dancing to that special song and you glide along with your parents, the daughter with her father, or the son with his mother. I have seen the father get choked up with tears dancing with this daughter or the mother’s face buried in her son’s chest, probably thinking back to when their kids where just babies. It’s the DJ that helps bring those feelings to the surface and lets it all show on this one special day.

“Hey Mr. DJ keep playing that Song”, it’s those songs that bring out the craziest dancers out on dance floor and allows me to get the coolest dance pictures. And with the right DJ you’ll even have the groom out there on the dance floor cutting a rug, as they say. There are a lot times when I need to steal the bride and groom away for pictures and it will be the DJ watching my back keeping the dance floor going and the rest of the party entertained while I’m out taking the photos.

Without a doubt a DJ for a wedding is your wedding reception life blood and to have things go smoothly you’ll need said DJ. When looking for a DJ keep some of the following things in mind:
1. Ask for references, names and numbers of people who they have done weddings for. Testimonials are ok, but they could be fabricated.
2. Meet with the DJ before you wedding, you want to meet the person who will be at your wedding and see if personalities click. And make sure who you are speaking with is the person who will actually be the one showing up.
3. Inquire about the DJ Equipment: Do they have backups? Any kind of lighting? Are they using Discs (they can skip in players) or laptops (who library of MP3s)?
4. Do they travel to your venue? If the DJ is not local find out if there is a travel fee, sometimes that gets sneaked in and you don’t want an unexpected bill.
5. Also check to see how much it costs for an extra hour or two, I’ve been to a lot of weddings where the party just isn’t done yet, people are still having a good time and they don’t want the DJ to leave.

If you are in and around the Eastern Shore area, like Ocean City, Maryland or Rehoboth Beach, Delaware I have a few suggestions of DJ’s that I have worked with on several occasions and found their performance to be outstanding. The following DJs are in order based on their names and not listed by who is better than whom.
Justin Darling – 443-527-1778 - thatdjguy@comcast.net
Justin Mac – 410-726-7936 - keep.livin@gmail.com
Leo Weigand – 800-439-6600 – leosometimes@gmail.com
Jason Williams – 410-845-9425 - jawzhouse@yahoo.com

Jason and Stacy Wedding in Ocean City

My good buddy Jason and Stacy recently got married, and they asked us to photograph it as well as video the event. This is a sample video by my video editor Zack, who continously does an awesome fast job and great work.

Doreen and Dan Wedding

I had a great time on Saturday with Dan and Doreen and their wedding in Rehoboth at the Atlantic Sands. This was a small wedding only really and hour but we had a lot of fun with the photos. One of the coolest things I found when I was there was a runner that ran from the boardwalk to the wedding arch and it was made in such a way that the bride could walk on it easily in heels. And any thing that makes the bride’s life easier is always a good thing.

The wedding minister was my good buddy Leo Weigand, and he did an awesome job making sure the couple got what they wanted. After words I had beautiful weather, a lovely sky and a fun group of people to photograph. This particular wedding with it only being an hour and with my living only a mile from the wedding location, I was back home and done editing the images by the end of the night. It took all night to upload them all but after everything it was nice to have the photos captured, edited and up online all in the same day.

Back to back photo shoots at the Studio

We recently had two photo shoots back to back. One on Easter Sunday, a lovely couple from Dover, Lisa and Joe, and the other was on Monday, Dasha and Corey from the Rehoboth Beach, Lewes area.
Lisa and Joe made an interesting couple and a unique challenge. The unique and interesting part was with Joe being so tall in comparison to Lisa, and with Lisa being such a darker completion then Joe. Joe was pretty funny and goofy, in some cases it was difficult to get him serious, but he gave me a wide range of emotion that I really liked. I really got into and enjoyed photographing Lisa, with her special beauty; it is truly rare to photograph someone like her. Lisa was born in Bangladesh and has that India beauty about her. She has already invited us to fly out to her county to photograph their wedding there.

On Monday we had Dasha and Corey join us out in the studio for some fun photography. I liked shooting Dasha with her short hair and crazy Russian personality. She was bouncy and eager to try new and poses. With Corey, he was a bit shy and after while he started to open up, but I felt like he was still holding back on some of the shots. We invited him back later into the summer for another shoot, and I think he will be more comfortable with Olga and I when that day comes.

I found these days to be fun photographing in the studio, Olga and I had a chance to experiment, and I backed off from behind the camera to let her do most of the photographing. I spent most of my time working with the lighting, adjusting and trying new things. I was also in the director mode, getting the models to strike different poses and when I ran out of ideas, Olga would come up with some new ones. We had our buddy, Zach out there videotaping the Monday session of which he will splice together a fun video I’m sure for all to enjoy. On Sunday I had the video camera on a tripod and just got some video footage of Olga and I working with Lisa and Joe.

Here are some images for those two days and stay tuned for the video as its on its way.

Bridal Shoot Video

We had a fun time taking our willing couple out to Cape Henlopen for a Bridal Shoot. With time to take these photos, we got some awesome images. Thank you to Yuliya and Rob, you both were great! It was a photo shoot iIve been wanting to organize for a while now.

Hitched Web Updates

Well I’m happy to say; today was a productive day behind the computer.
Most of the work was website related things I was putting off.
So what’s new on the website?
· New better wedding gallery on the Hitched Photography website!
· Updated the High School Seniors page with package pricing and images.
· Added a Wedding Venues page for fun wedding places around the area.
There were a lot of cool new images that I ended up editing and getting ready to spread around the website.
One of the more challenging items was editing the video from the bridal shoot the other week. With more and more people checking out videos online, I’d like to keep adding more videos for clients to enjoy. So we have that to look forward to. Keep an eye on that Hitched YouTube Channel!

What are the chances?

What are the chances of there being another "Will Vickers" in this world? With my full name being William Franklin Vickers the 4th. I prefer to go by Will Vickers. And as I was in the process of Twittering, I wanted to change my Twitter name from "HitchedPhoto" to Will Vickers, I found that it was already taken. As it turns out this other Will Vickers is in the UK also doing photography. That's what I mean by way strange and come on, weird.

Anyway, check it out: http://www.wvphotography.co.uk/index.html

Yuliya and Rob - Bridal Photo Shoot

Well I have a lot to blog about and I can see I haven’t blogged in a while. After our trip to Phoenix, AZ for the Imaging USA conference, we picked up some new techniques from the TriCoast Photography guys, Mike and Cody. Well we got a great chance to implement these new skills with a fun and willing couple, Yuliya and Rob. This lovely couple was willing to allow us the time to take these great photos. This whole shoot leads me to another blog topic but also an article I’d like to write, on “Allowing the Time for Great Photos”. But before I get into all that, allow me to go share with you what we did.

We invited Cathleen with Weddings by Cathleen out to perform the ceremony; I met Cathy at a recent wedding and had a great time working together so we’ve been chatting ever since. We invited Leo from Bridal Beginnings out to shoot with us, as we like working together; I thought he could pick up a few new tips and have fun. I had our new assistant/photographer Matt with us in a training capacity and a videographer Paul J, which when we get the video edited, you’ll get to see some footage of it. And of course there was the lovely couple, Yuliya and Rob, they were so spirited and fun to work with, Thanks!

I’d also like to give a big thanks and shout out to Julie Norwood, Master Colorist & Stylist, for providing the fabulous updo for Yuliya. She did an awesome job and not once did we have any hair problems. For you brides out there looking for a really good hair stylist check Julie with Spa by the Sea at 302-227-8640 or 302-670-6757.

I’ve wanted to organize a shoot like this for some time now. I’m hoping to get a shoot going like this at least once a month for us, photographers to come together and horn our skills.

I found that I did a lot of directing as opposed to actually shooting, I was pleasantly surprised with how much my wife took over the shooting. Shortly after the ceremony Olya became the main photographer doing most of the shooting as well as getting some fantastic shots in the process. All the images in this post were images that she had captured. I was on babysitting patrol with little Drake and assisting with the equipment, when I got a chance I’d take a snap shot and worked with our lovely couple and put them in the right places.

All in all it was a great time, a fun shoot and we plan on doing it again, so if you are bride who is getting married or already married and would like to wear your beautiful dress again and get your guy out to get some photos, give us a call.

Bride’s Dress provided by Weddings by Cathleen – Check out her wonderful brides at http://www.cathleensweddinggowns.bridalsnet.com/

V Photo Style

New name, with a new design, creating a whole new look, while still doing what we love to do… Photography… only now … adding a new “style” to it.

Introducing:
“V Photo Style”

In the past it was mostly me handling the weddings and photography, everything including the post production, customer support, networking, and marketing. And last year, with me, and a team of people including my wife, Olga, we were able to keep up with the demand for our services. And as we grew as Hitched Photography, that was great for weddings, which is what we specialize in, but this year we wanted to do more seniors, more pregnancy portraits, more children’s photos, and more parties and events. With Hitched Photography being a wedding photography name we wanted something that can house all our photography abilities. And this year will be the first year my wife will be with me 100% of the way. In years past, Olga would help me with a wedding here and there, or I’d help her with a portrait session, or she’d work with an event. Now with Olga here full time, we are changing our image and creating our style as husband and wife team. We still specialize in wedding photography and our skills are only increasing with time, we’ve picked up a few new tricks and cool things for 2009 weddings, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. This year we hope to keep our weekdays busy with seniors and portrait work, at our place at the beach, or at the studio out in Georgetown, we’ve even partnered up with a few new contacts to include a horse ranch, and a couple places on the water. (More on that one later).

As we bring V Photo Style online in 2009, we’ll slowly move Hitched Photography towards the back, which will still be around, but our main name will be V Photo Style. The “V” for us is for “Very cool”… nah just kidding… its stands for “Vickers” and with the “photo style” it will be the style of photos we create together. Olga and I actually came up with the name while on our trip to Imaging USA in Phoenix, AZ, there was a speaker there, the owner of 303 Photo Design, he made a very strong point about creating a brand or “Style” and making it your own. There was also another speaker, Julia Woods who photographs with her husband and they too are a husband and wife team and I really liked the idea of having us together on a lot of big weddings as it would allow for a lot of fun photos. After watching another photography company, Photos by Vicki, after 6 years in business, she also grew and finally changed her company name to “V Gallery”. (Got to love that “V”) So after weeks of discussing this with Olga, we decided to make the change, now before it’s 10 years down the road and then changing it.

Well here’s to a great 2009, we hope that you will like the new changes. Change is good, most of the time, and it is time to change for the better.

Day 3 of Imaging USA - Last day

Day 3 of the Imaging USA and it’s the final day. It was the final day yesterday, we got in pretty late yesterday night and I was too tired to write anything. There was an awards ceremony for some people that was between 7pm and 8pm and the dinner they offered presented by Kodak was at 8:30 so we waited around for an hour and a half to get the free food. It was actually pretty nice, the first dinner on the first day had a theme, it was “under the Phoenix skies” of which we had Mexican type food. It was ok, can’t say no to free. But last night’s dinner theme was “next stop, Nashville” which is where the next imaging USA will be. And they had some good food there, all county type food like pulled pork, mashed potatoes inside potato skins, corn bread, you get the idea. That was last night and so we got in late, but let me back up and tell you about the day.
We started day with only some 4 hours of sleep and we were both pretty exhausted. Olga and I could fall asleep the night before, we had just had a great day of classes then had dinner with Autumn and Allen, and we chatted at the Olive Garden till they almost kicked us out, we were the last customers in there. The first class we had was “the Joy of Pricing” with Sarah Petty as the speaker, and wouldn’t you know it, she started us off with a slideshow of her work. We felt that this class would be a good one, because if you ask any photographer in this business, you tend to struggle with this one a lot and its what makes a great photographer. If you charge too little you end up, working too hard for too little money to support you and the business, and clients become unhappy and it spirals out of control. You end up burnt out and looking for a new job somewhere. If you charge too much and you have no justification for that high price rate, you don’t attract any clients, you sit around wondering what’s wrong, soon the rent is due, electric gets turn off, and you don’t have money for gas to go anywhere and you just fall apart. And so to find that happy medium is what we want to strive for, something that both you and the customer and agree to. One of the points she made that I had come to understand well is to not do discounts, in this line of work, the money you charge, every dollar of that goes to something, so when you take any of that away you will wobble, and the best alternative is to add value instead. Offering additional hours, extra prints, maybe even an album, and so if you aren’t already contemplating that, think about it. She too also talked about having a strong brand, with a logo and constant look and feel to everything.
Following this class, the order of the day was different then the days before. First two days was 3 classes, Expo, class then a final event, this time it was one class, expo, and 3 more classes and then final event. We did the expo thing, walking around talking to vendor, they had awesome deals, like custom backdrops, for only $100 and Wacom tablets 6x8 normally $350 for $280. And with the last day many vendors were offering deals and what not, like four 4x6 albums for $20 and the like. What is great about this expo is you get to see what new products that are out there, like the Radio popper, these pretty awesome Wacom tablets with a built in screen, cool awesome software, and the great thing is you get to pick up and touch and feel everything. So if you saw a company’s website on backdrops for example not you get to really see how big they really are.
When it comes to software, they have live demonstrations on what it can do. Normally you’d see an ad for say Success ware or Studio plus, and maybe you can download a demo from their site, but chances are you don’t know how to work it and so you dismiss it. But here at the expo, at their booth they have a big screen TV hooked up to a computer and they are demonstrating it for you.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the main eating area there, and at the rate the line was moving I knew we were going to be late for our next class, “photoshop Automation Tricks”. And can you imagine who the speaker was going to be, the main man Kevin Kubota, no less. Now I’ve used his photoshop shop actions before, and knew the name “Kubota” but to put a name to the face of the guy who came up with this concept was awesome. It’s like being into science and meeting Ben Franklin or something. Well as luck would have it, I was walking into his class late, and he’s up on the stage, and throwing what looked like fresbies, but he was giving away some of this disks and mouse pads, as I was walking by was able to try and catch one and it bounced off my hand and into some guy’s lap, I kept walking. The second time, boom it hit my hand and landed at the feet of this woman, and I was like no, that one is mine. Well when I took my seat and got settled, I was kind of too far away to see what he was doing so I had to move forward, knocking down a few people as I went. Not on purpose! He took us through what it takes to make an action of which I knew but it was a good refresher, but later he got into making droplets and scripts that I thought was awesome. And as he’s telling us, he’s like “Hold on, I know what you’re thinking, it’s not that hard, I know you can do this”. He was also quite comical and had a great personality.
The next class was on “expanding your wedding business” and you can imagine I was all excited about, with some big photographers out of New York that have been doing this for 3 generations. We were only there for 20 minutes before we left, nothing new, kind of stale. We walked into “Subtle art of family portraiture” and as we walked in the do was singing. We were like oh no… are we going to have to walk out of here too? He was going on about “la, la, la, la, la, la” you know singing high and low notes, but we gave it a chance before leaving and glad we did. He talked about how posing a family is more like writing music, where you position the heads, much like what you would do on a music scale. And it makes for a more interesting picture. If you had a row of people and their heads where all even, you’d end up with a steady song, boring. But if you position them, staggered up and down, you have something better. The speaker’s name was Drake Busath, and the dude was interesting as he was funny. Drake got into working with children and his gets tip he gave was, don’t focus on the children. Get the kids to focus on you, when you become interesting and you are standing near or behind the camera, you take better pictures. And looking at his work that’s so true! And most of the time we kind of take two types of children photos, pictures of them smiling and then pictures of them crying, because they are done and bored. Well he gets all kinds of emotions out of them by telling them interesting stories, like if Drake was working with a little girl, he would say “oh I had a pretty dress like that when I was a little girl” and the little girl would look confused. Snap take a picture. Or he’d tell a story like “how do you like your teacher at school, do they lock you in a dungeon with snakes and scary things?” and you’d have fear, snap take a picture. He uses a puppet a lot and communicates with it as if it were alive and when he wants the kid to sit up straight, he’d get all mad at the puppet and not at the child, and the kid would see, “uh Oh, the puppet’s going to get a spanking, I’d better not do what he did” and so its so cute. Or he’d talk to the flowers or the grass the child would walk on, “ok little grass fairies, don’t you go biting the little kids toes this time ok” and the child would look down in wonder like, WOW… Snap take a picture. Great speaker and a crazy singer, but well worth.
Last one of the day was “photoshop Tricks and Tips that will blow your mind” another class with dual speakers, not what I enjoy but it worked out, we learned some cool things. It was cool to see them do things in photoshop that might take 5 minutes or something, and it would only take them seconds. I’m not going to get into all they did, but if you are into photoshop, I’d recommend checking out http://www.adventuresinphotoshop.com/.
All in all we had a good time. Three days of intense learning from some of the top masters in the field for such a small about of money, is without a doubt well worth it. We both could not take a fourth day, it’s just too much. I plan on writing another email or blog entry that would encompass all of what I think would be good, some tips, and some ideas. And one thing I could pass on now is, get that sleep when doing 12 hours a day of learning, it’s pretty important.

Day 2 of the Imaging USA Expo

Imaging USA – Phoenix – Day 2 of our adventure
The day started much like the day before only we were a little more tired but got out the door a few minutes earlier. Olga was able to get a starbucks coffee for the road and I grabbed a red bull.
We had our new Photo Buddies, Autumn and Allen, with us again this morning and we are so happy we met them. They are certainly a nice couple, easy to chat with, and we have a lot in common, not just the photography, but I’ll get to that later.
Olga and I went to see the first speaker together, his name was Todd Van Fleet and he was there discussing Senior photography. Our photography friends, Autumn and Allen, with http://www.thomsenphotography.net/ were also there to pick up on Senior photography. Now you wouldn’t know it by the way he spoke to us, but it was his first time speaking. He had a lot of great ideas about designing your own backgrounds and making or redesigning your own templates, mainly because you want to be unique and different from every other photographer. I like that he had a video of himself on a photo shoot with a senior, and that he’s out on location riding a skateboard and having fun. He had in his studio a dressing room for the clients that they could change into different out fits, and while they are changing he has an IPod hook up right there in the dressing room that is hooked up into his sound system. He talks with every senior to get to know them before hand and finds out what they are into, and if they are into say dirt biking, the kid might or might not ask to bring his dirt bike in, but if Todd finds out about it, he’ll want the senior to bring it in with all his riding gear. Todd made a point that cracked me up but is so true, that its cool to be fun with the seniors but you always want to watch yourself, he said “ you don’t want to become “that creepy photographer guy”” – always have a parent, assistant, or someone with you, and as that maybe common sense to some of us, don’t become that guy. – A great speaker, Fun and well spoken.
On the next class we split up, Olga and I. I Took “10 steps to building a successful studio” and loved it. The speaker Kay Eskridge was really nice and she had her parents in the audience, and she said she was more nervous with them in the audience the with the place full. I took a lot away from this class some of her key points that hit home were:
BRANDING – got to develop a brand just like Starbucks and Tiffany’s – and the speaker Todd in the first class mentioned that too, so if you don’t have one, it’s a great idea to get one or have a designer design one.
Customer Care – she talked about having everyone make an appointment. If you are picking up, coming in for a session, or just wanting to discuss products, to have appointments so that you can make each and every customer feel they are the most important. Now this is like the 3rd speaker I’ve heard that from over the last 6 months, so its super important.
EVERYTHING Matters – she talked about that she did everything to make the client happy. Making sure the floors were clean all the way up to having complimentary snacks, like chips, sodas, mints, and in her bath rooms, the guy’s room have everything complimentary they might need, comb, gel, shaving cream, razor, etc. and in the woman’s bathroom, Brushes, make up, diapers for the babies and in multiple sizes, hair pins, etc. She made sure the whole studio was neat, smelled great, sounded great. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Now every speaker today seemed to dive into the same thing and that’s marketing. Yes we all know that, but there was a pattern that emerged and that was they all had: a email newsletter, Website of course, Blogs, they all mentioned having a Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, they all did sales of some sort and did it with gift cards, some did direct mailing and got great responses.
Moving on Olga and I caught up together and saw the next speakers on Portraiture in Today’s world, which wasn’t so good. They had David Huntsman and Jessica Vogal speaking and they weren’t bad speakers but, I don’t know, I didn’t like the way Jessica would be speaking and David would jump to the next slide and then she had to finish up that topic. And by this time, this was class three of the day, close to lunch and they were saying pretty much the same thing. BRANDING (3rd time today), your business name, if ever you’d like to sell it, its easier to sell a General name like “Rehoboth Photography” then to sell “Will Vickers photography”. They too talked about facebook, twitter, and blogs, and websites. But along the same lines as branding your should make your logo, color scheme, and designs pretty much the same across the board, on your letterhead, website, blog, business cards, everything.
We scooted out of there early and check out the expo right at 12 noon. Now during the expo part they had little mini theaters with speakers going on, in one hour sessions. These speakers were usually speaking on behalf of a company, such as Microsoft, and Grafti studio. Olga suggested we see this one Australian photographer speak, by the name of “Yervant”. Didn’t know the name or what its about. But when I saw this shorter, older guy, I was like “He looks so familiar”. He started to introduce himself and said he was going to talk about his wedding photography and then I was like Oh my god, I’ve seen this guy before. It turns out I watched these videos on 5 of the worlds top wedding photographers and he was on the video. I had watched these same 5 photographer videos over and over again and really liked his style and here I was seeing him in real life. I hung on his every word, and he had a lot of great advice. And if you can imagine by the end, I was so “Wowed” by this guy, it was like seeing Mickey mouse and then going to Disneyland and seeing them up close. I wanted to get my picture taken with him, but he left in a hurry and I didn’t get it. I was bummed, but I was happy to atleast see him. Oh and I did ask him a question. Because he is Yervant, that’s his name and brand, but he has two other photographers working for him, I asked “do brides only ask for you or will they be happy with one of your other photographers?” and he said that if he’s not available that the brides are happy with one of the others because they know they will still get the same Yervant experience.
Now I’m up to about some 1200 words and that was just half my day. Its 12:15 and I have to be up again at 5am. So I’m going to skip ahead and get to the best part, Anne Geddes. She was so awesome to see and hear, I can’t go into what it was like. Sure we were in the nose bleed seats, we didn’t care, when she walked out and spoke, she filled up that room. Some of the key points she talked about that I felt I’ll take with me where ever I go, is that as a photographer, we are capturing life and emotion with every click of our shutter. She spoke strongly about as a group of professional photographers we need to stop giving away the control of our “negatives” that we are creating art. She spoke out about child abuse and how wrong it is, that each and every baby and child is precious. It was nice to hear that she is a dreamer and to never stop dreaming, we need to keep dreaming in order to succeed. That she started out with nothing just like we all did, she had her dream and with everyone telling her, it will never work, she did it anyway and kept going strong. Remarkable woman! The room was totally packed with people and when she entered the room, Standing and applauding for what seemed like forever. And when Anne was done speaking, everyone was standing up, cheering, clapping, nobody wanted to leave. To me it was like seeing a rock star, or whatever business or passion you have, one person shines brighter than the rest and you can’t help but be drawn to that person’s energy. I think she impacted everyone there.
Well I hope this was an enjoyable read. Email me and let me know what you think.

Day 1 in the Imaging USA Convention in Phoenix

It was the First day of the Imaging USA convention for us and the main reason we came out here. We woke up at 5am and when you aren’t used to waking up that early it can be a pain.
The night before we made our way to the hot tub of which we hoped it would be empty but it was not our luck, there was a couple already in there. The couple we met as it turns out was there for the Imaging convention as well, and they had flown in that day from Missouri. It was nice to chat photography business with them and because they didn’t have a car and would have to rely on a bus and rail system just to get to the convention, we offered to take them. What really sucked is that they would have had to miss out on the first section of classes because of the shuttle. Autumn and Allen own Thomsen photography and are a great couple to chat photography with. Olga and I were wondering if we’d meet anyone while we were out here and its cool we did.

The first class we took was all about shooting with wireless flashes on mono pods. These two photographers where a trip to listen to, they are http://www.tricoastphotography.com/ – it was Mike and Cody speaking with Mike doing most of the speaking but Cody was cracking us up. That dude is seriously funny. What I liked most is, now a days you have just single photographers, or you have husband and wife photographer teams, I had never seen two pro photographers come together and work together so good. One would take photos sometimes while the other holds the flash, or visa versa. They said they don’t care who gets the shot as long as the client is happy. And the humor they use keeps the clients, happy and makes for a great time. Super great lecture on the use of wireless flashes and the use of the new “RadioPoppers”, http://radiopopper.com/ they are supposed to be the biggest newest thing.

Second class was on Magic of Posing and Lighting with Hanson Fong speaking. He cracked me up so much I thought I was in a comedy club or something. Hanson had a challenge that anyone could pick out any couple in the room and he would make them look good and if he couldn’t he would give them his whole backdrop and stage lighting, but no one did. Hanson did however take some larger people and put them together and showed how to slim them down and make them look better. When he was building a family group with the various members it was much like what Paula had taught us in a PPASD class before, so it was some good learning. Towards the end, they had a wedding couple come out and they started up some cool music blasting. He would go around them and pose them up in so many different ways, that you could easily get at 100 plus really cool images for the couple to enjoy. Good learning there.

Olga stay in that class room to learn Bellies & Babies while I took on a combination class on “Employees- Can’t live without them” and “Ring a Ding, Don’t be a Ding a Ling on the Phone” . Out of those two speakers I like the second one better. The first speaker talked about what are some good questions to have for the interview, having benefits ensures you might keep them around longer, working with incentives rather than just an hourly wage. But the second speaker, Angela Carson, was really good and seeing how the best tool we have as photographers is the phone this was pretty beneficial. Like when someone calls you should stop what you are doing and smile, it puts you in the right mood to chat. You shouldn’t just ramble on about yourself; listen to what the customer wants. Asking leading questions and before asking a question you should say, “May I ask you a question”…. Don’t know why that is but it makes sense. All in all found it to be really educational.

I hit the imaging expo between 12 – 5pm and my head felt like it was about to come off. There was some much stuff there; every software that I’ve ever seen in a magazine was there, Graphic Authority, On 1, Kubota, and even some I hadn’t seen before. Nikon was there with all kinds of lens and cameras, and so was Canon but I stayed away not to be swayed to the dark side. I think every speaker I saw today was a Canon shooter. All manner of printers and album companies, the place was awesome. Anyway too much stuff not enough money, sad to say.
Last speaker of the day was Julia Woods on Profitable Portraits, very inspiring and a real eye opener. She talked about low volume, high priced sales and selling some really impressive wall mounts. If you can imagine a wall mount showcasing some 6 images hanging over your couch for about $4000 - $5000 just for the one piece. She talked about how you chat with clients, discussing with them what they want, and what you can do to make it happen. To plant the seed of an awesome wall mount hanging over their bed or couch, setting up to do the photo shoot. Discussing the price toward the end of the private session because she said herself, most clients get the urge to throw up when they see the price. But after they go home and think about it, giving them some two weeks to think about it, they tend come around and drop anywhere between $2000 - $8000 on her work.

Well its time for bed as we have to get up again at 5am. Tomorrow will be a challenge as there will be multiple classes I’d like to go to but can only choose one at a particular time frame. And we also get to see Anne Geddes tomorrow night, the line just to get tickets was wrapped all around the main lobby, as you can imagine Super long. I had to set out of the Hanson Fong class to use the bathroom and I was able to pick up our tickets with no line, thank goodness.