Hitched Photography - Ocean City and Rehoboth Beach Photographer

New location, new adventures, and new services.

2010-10-01T16:33:00.001-04:00

Well they say that location is everything in business, and now Hitched Photography is located on Rehoboth Ave near the boardwalk. Working in association with Renove Med Spa, it’s a relationship with many benefits. Having an office here I’m able to chat with clients, showcase my work, and advertise my services right on this busy road.

With new adventures I get to learn more about these med spa services while I’m here and within ear shot of what everyone is chatting about. Finding out about facials, botox, radiesse, and so much more, as I’m working with photography I want to take photos making you look your best, and many of these services and help assist that.

I’m also offering glamour shots here at the Renove location as well as before and after shot for Dr. Parsons with people getting various procedures done. On top of offering wedding photography services, and beach portrait services to the spa clients, I’m able to give them glamour photography too.

Check us out in Rehoboth at Renove Med Spa, 416 Rehoboth Ave.

Beach Portrait Ideas Welcome

2010-07-07T01:05:00.002-04:00

When choosing me, Hitched Photography, or my photographers, you should feel confident knowing we’ll have some fun. Processing some beach portrait images from today, I was thinking how cool it can be collaborating with the client and making the photo shoot into something special by coming up with ideas together.

Just today, I had a family of three, Mom, daughter, and son. And with a family of three and the neat ideas bouncing off each other, we ended up taking some 650 images, a lot more than if I had a family of 20. Which is not to say that with a large family we can’t create some cool photos together, we often times create some very memorable images.

What I want future clients to know, that I’m not one to shoot down any idea that comes my way.A lot of times I’ll photograph a family for beach portrait and I’ll come out there with my preset ideas based on what most people like. I usually try to do something new and fun, whenever possible. Whenever possible I take in client ideas and suggestions, and make them into what you want, using my equipment and skills. I’ll have fun making these ideas into an awesome image and I’ll come away with a new cool photo technique that I can share with the next family.

With my family of three, the little girl of 8, had some pretty cool interesting photo suggestions.By taking in her creative ideas, I was able to have some fun shooting out of my normal shoot zone. There are times when I don’t have time to get these shots, or maybe the client isn’t looking for something so different. But in this case I had time and a willing model to photograph.

So before any photo shoot with me or any other photograph, think about what you would like to come away with. It’s your photo shoot, shouldn’t you make it into what you would like. And always have fun with it!

Great times with Beach Portraits

2010-07-04T15:00:00.003-04:00

With the full swing of summer, we are working the beach portraits and having a good time with it. If you haven't gotten your family together this is the summer for your family's portrait on the beach with us.

Melissa and Harry Wedding

2009-11-23T20:22:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-22T12:32:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-17T13:17:00.000-04:00

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.”

2009-10-16T22:32:00.001-04:00

“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

2009-10-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

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

2009-08-15T22:29:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-04T09:36:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-30T10:07:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-28T21:29:00.003-04:00

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 !

2009-07-25T12:06:00.001-04:00

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

2009-07-23T23:45:00.001-04:00

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!

2009-07-10T12:51:00.004-04:00

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!

2009-06-27T08:29:00.001-04:00

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 !

2009-06-19T12:34:00.000-04:00

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

2009-05-31T11:51:00.002-04:00

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”

2009-05-26T14:54:00.000-04:00

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

2009-05-21T11:25:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-13T13:33:00.004-04:00

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

2009-04-30T16:01:00.001-04:00

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

2009-04-15T23:31:00.000-04:00

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

2009-04-05T21:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-03-30T01:18:00.001-04:00

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?

2009-03-22T13:47:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-21T16:33:00.004-04:00

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

2009-02-15T23:09:00.001-05:00

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

2009-01-14T11:43:00.001-05:00

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

2009-01-13T07:27:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-12T00:25:00.004-05:00

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.

Wedding Spots in Ocean City, Maryland

2008-12-30T19:03:00.003-05:00

Ocean City Wedding Spots Getting married in Ocean City and you are not sure where you'd like to get have the wedding location or reception? Allow me to inform you of the places that make for some great Ocean City Wedding Photography spots and give you my thoughts about them. Please keep in mind that these Ocean City venues are looked at from a photographer's point of view and what I've experienced there working.

Seacrets - a great place to check out, you can't go wrong with Jamaica USA in Ocean City. Often times couples book their dance club area which can fit a lot of people. What I liked most was the staff was off the hook friendly, and being there as a wedding photographer, they let me go everywhere I wanted to go to get the good shot. This place offers some great sunset shots, out by the palm trees and on their pier, plenty of little hidden areas that will make for some interesting photos. They have their own catering and chatting with one couple they said it was at a really good price. Keep in mind in the summer this place is a mad house but in the off season its cozy and relaxing.

Fager's Island - Pretty close to Seacrets which offers a nice reception area, hotel close by, great food and the staff was really nice. There are so many cool places in Fagers to get great photos; you often getting lost and you can take a couple to like 10 - 15 different spots and make 50 -75 images unique. Plenty of palm trees, a gazebo on the water, the upper deck reception area is a little tighter but for smaller weddings this is a really good place.

Lighthouse Sound - this little gem is hidden away right outside of Ocean City, a little ways over the first Hwy 90 bridge in into Bishopville. It's located right on a golf course which is a good thing because you have beautiful landscapes to get great photos on and one thing to consider is adding some time with the photographer as you might like to take a golf cart to some of these very pretty photo spots. You'll end up having Ocean City on the bay as you backdrop which makes for an awesome photo. The staff is great, food it good too, I like the huge fireplace they have indoors, and the overall area is able to accommodate a lot of guests. If you get a chance to get you and your guests together for a group photo, you have a couple of hills to get height on the crowd.

Golden Sands - this hotel and condominium is located around the north end of Ocean City right on the beach. You can get married right on their little patch of sand or you can get closer to the water and have your ceremony there. Depending on the time of day and weather conditions I might lean towards closer to the beach, were you'll have more sun, the building itself is cuts out a lot of sun for sunset ceremonies. They have a really lovely reception area up on their top floor; hope you aren't afraid of heights. Nice dance floor, easy to accommodate a lot of guests, and even though you are up so high take advantage of the rear of the building on the 22nd floor for some quick photos of the sun setting.

The Clarion - another hotel not too far away from the Golden Sands, and every bit just a good. What I found unique about this place, if you foresee bad weather, this place has several giant rooms for having the ceremony and reception. The whole inside offers a lot of great spots to take some fun and unique photos and chances are you will have sun for your wedding, you have the beach right there. keep in mind the building will shadow you and your guests quite a bit, so by getting closer to the water, you'll enjoy some better photo opportunities. They have an onsite coordinator here, Lisa I believe who is super nice and will bend over backwards to help you.

Ocean Pines Beach Club - Located on the Ocean side of Coastal Hwy and not be confused with the Ocean Pines Yacht Club and Ocean Pines Country Club. If you aren't careful you'll find family and friends heading to the yacht club or country club and might miss out. Here is another place that has their own patch of sand close to the main building structure and if you are planning a sunset wedding you might find a very distinct shadow going on here which depending on your timing you might deal with as they have a nice huge deck to place chairs on for your guests to sit on. They have a nice little second floor section where all the brides end up getting ready at. The poor guys end up hanging out in the basement area, down under the deck. Part of the deck wraps around and makes for some lovely sitting and eating outside. Plenty of spots for a DJ or Band to set up and while the guests are relaxing you can roll out on the beach for those beautiful sunset photos.

The Beaches - Ocean City beaches are some great beaches to get married on. Unlike the Delaware beaches right up the road they don't require permits to be on the beach or get married on the beach. Getting married in Delaware isn't as easy as in Maryland where you can walk right out there on the beach with the wedding minister and say your vows and walk right back off. All the beach ceremony's I've photographed, it happens 100 percent of the time, were you have very friendly and accommodating people that step aside for you to get married and often times they cheer, clap, and whistle when you get to "you may now kiss the bride". To get the better photographs I'd recommend scheduling your ceremony around Sunset whenever possible and the next best time would be around sunrise. Those high noon weddings always end up with dark shadows under the eyes and lots of other unpleasant features. And if you can decorate the beach a little with an archway, flowers, tiki torches, or something. A naked beach is ok, but it really reflects well and looks like wedding photos when you have things to enhance the photo. For brides I'd stay away from heels in the sand, it's a no brainer but every year someone does it and it's difficult on the bride to walk in. Also a runner would be pointless, as it will get ripped to shreds.

There are many other wonderful places that I have not mentioned here that I could turn this article into a full blown book, but I wanted to name a few of my favorites. Some other ideas for wedding locations in and around Ocean City, Maryland that I've photographed and liked: Assateague Island State Park
Coconut Malorie
Catched 54 (used to be known as Sharks Cove)
Ocean Pines Yacht Club - Ocean Pines
Ocean Pines Country Club - Ocean Pines
Ocean City Inlet on the Beach
Harrisons Harbour Watch - Inlet area
The Hilton - Ocean Side Fresco's - Bayside
Macky's - Bayside
Princess Bayside - Bayside
Princess Royale - Ocean side
Carousel Hotel - Ocean side

Have a Happy Wedding Day!

Doing business right

2008-12-29T15:08:00.001-05:00

My wife’s friend brought her computer to me to get fixed, it’s among one of the things I like to do along with photography and web design. While I was in the Air Force I picked up this talent and once I got out I did freelance computer repair. Well my wife’s friend told me she took her computer to a computer repair store a year ago and at $100 an hour, she asked them to check it out in an hour, not to go over the $100 mark and to let her know how much to fix it. They called her and said your computer is fixed and ready to be picked up, and your bill is $800. Well that is just wrong, after some conversations with the owner/manager they knocked it down to $132. She said fine and she’ll come by and pick it up. The one technician offered to bring it to her on his lunch break. He arrived and she handed him a check for $132 and he said it was going to be an additional $95 for delivery. You can imagine how upset she was.

My point of the whole story is, that is wrong. You shouldn’t do business like that. It’s not how I do business and it goes against everything I believe in. My belief is to treat others as you would like to be treated, to be fair and honest with each other. And that’s how I do business with my photography clients, I’m not going to force a sale on you, or talk you into something you don’t want or need. I’m here to provide a service that you want, and I like to provide that service to you the way you want.

On a side note, my wife’s friend is also the mother of the little boy I photographed a year ago. It was a treat to see him again.

A Peyton and Zach Wedding

2008-12-19T12:12:00.004-05:00

The Zach attack!
The Peyton Experiment!

Both can be said here as affectionate ways of describing the two. My buddy Justin who is a DJ referred this couple to me for photography and about 2 – 3 weeks before the wedding I hadn’t a clue what I was getting into. Usually I’d have a couple of phone calls with a client before the wedding discussing different aspects of their wedding or I’d have a chance to do an Engagement portrait session if they lived locally. In Peyton and Zach case, Justin gave them my number and I met them about a one week later at a bridal show in Ocean City.

What made this couple unique and what made this wedding special for me was I really had to relying on my ability to think on my feet. I knew the church they were going to be getting married in as I had photographed a wedding there the year before. And their reception was at a house down around Assateague State Park. Anyway, the couple was very flexible with getting photos; I was able to pull them away from the reception twice to get some stunning photos. Zach and Peyton were also pretty creative with what photos they themselves wanted. The combination of creative ideas made for a fabulous time photographing.

Holiday Photo Time - Parties and Pets

2008-12-17T13:35:00.006-05:00

It’s time for all the holiday parties to happen! We recently had our Squadron Holiday party at Dover Air Force base which was a great time. I was there in a photographer capacity but enjoyed hanging out with friends and sampled some of the food there. Every one there really liked the fact that I could take their photo and print it right on the spot. There was also a second holiday party going on that took advantage of photos I was printing there. It was so much fun that they had a 70s theme going on, which made for some interesting photos.
Because so many folks had a good time with me, I ended up booking up two more parties for December and a portrait shoot in our studio. It’s pleasant to know my Mitsubishi Printers are finally paying off. I’m hoping for next year to not only be booked up for Christmas parties but also for Halloween.

I also got called again to photograph Pets with Santa at the Gold Coast Mall, in Ocean City and once again I was happy to do it. I enlisted the help of my father to play Santa and my good friend Sue LeMar to help set everything up. This year with Pets with Santa, we had LeMar Custom Framing design custom mats for the customers for their 5x7 photos that went over really well. The mats had cute little paw prints and Season’s Greetings stamped on the mats.

Biker Cowboy photo shoot on a Sunday

2008-12-14T16:52:00.005-05:00

My mother called me up the other day and wanted to get some photos of her friend so that he could give them to family and friends. In these current economical times it makes a great inexpensive gift, giving photos in frames and it comes across more sentimental. I was pleasantly surprised by the gentleman’s outfit and look he was wanting to go with, and that of a biker / cowboy. Kind of rare. His name was Jacob by the way, and he made for a good photo subject.
We started off with some warm up shots, playing around. And then we start to focus on some of the looks Jacob wanted and then played around with some creative ideas. After the shoot, which didn’t take long at all, he came here to the shoot with some specific looks in mind and we were able to hit them all on the mark and he was happy.
After that, I imaged they were just pleased to have regular 5 x 7s printed on the spot, but I whipped out some effects, like black and white, and filters that made it look like an old time photo. They weren’t in any big hurry, so they hung out and watched as I pull out some photoshop frames and effects that transformed the images into way more than they were expecting. They were happy. And I was happy to have an interesting subject to photo. It’s always rare to get men to want to be photographed and when you get a chance it’s fun to take some interesting shots.

Memorable Milestones Event Services

2008-12-11T20:57:00.001-05:00

I was providing some videography services to a wedding Memorable Milestones Events was providing coverage for, and they were working great. I've seen alot of weddings where the bride and groom can seem uneasy, a little lost, or things go pretty wrong, but not when these ladies are taking care of things. I highly recommend a wedding planner for every wedding, it just makes things run so smoothly and takes the load and worry off the bride's shoulders.

Check them out at http://www.memorablemilestonesllc.com/

Donna Duffy - (302) 383-3294‎

Wedding Tips

2008-12-02T22:04:00.002-05:00

1. It is best to have your flowers delivered to where you are getting dressed at least an hour before you are going to leave for the ceremony.This allows some extra time in case the florist is late and some time, as well, for the photographer to pose you with your flowers.
2. Before the wedding day, be sure to inform your family members including parents, grandparents and siblings that they need to remain at the ceremony site after the wedding to be included in formal group photographs.
3. When planning the schedule of your wedding day be sure to include adequate travel time from location to location, the expected length of time for a receiving line, 35-45 minutes for the photographer to pose the formal photographs and 15 additional minutes at an outdoor location with the bridal party.

Bubbles – to bubble it up at Weddings

2008-12-01T12:58:00.002-05:00

I recently had a wedding on a Friday and Saturday and both utilized bubbles after their ceremony has concluded. And in both cases it was a bit of a hassle to get working right. I’ve been to about 10 other ceremonies where they had bubbles there and they never even used them. I think in a lot of cases couples dreamed of walking through the bubbles but either couldn’t coordinate it right or forgot about them entirely. So I’m hoping to pass along my experience with the hopes it will help. What typically happens after a ceremony, the Bride and Groom kiss, they are now husband and wife and start walking back down the aisle. Well the couple could just walk out the door and get into the car but it doesn’t work out like that. One main factor is you have to get the people outside first and ready for you. And the second problem is because most couples go the traditional route of not wanting to see each other before the ceremony; they usually end up doing the formal photos after the ceremony. So you can’t expect the people to wait outside for 30 minutes while the pictures are being taken.
One idea that would be super helpful is to get your formal photos taken before the ceremony. By doing this, it will help you tremendously because you will get the wonderful shots, without tying up all your time after the ceremony not to mention if the couple is nervous, and we all know they will be, this takes that nervous edge way. It’s like a mini glimpse of the future that can set the bride and groom at ease. You don’t have to rush, and you can definitely get all the shots you want, and more. Another idea is to get your ushers or various family members to help spread the word of what is going to happen. Every wedding is a bit different, and so most guests won’t know what is going to happen. I personally, as the photographer would leave the bride and groom inside the ceremony location, go outside and rally up the guests. Being accustom to working with large number of people, I’d give a shout out letting the family and friends know the couple is about to exit and would like a bubble storm. And to get your bubble blowers ready, set, BLOW!
But if I’m not there as your photographer, I’d suggest appointing someone to orchestra that for you. It can make for some awesome fun photos that you’ll love.

Fabulous Time at Fagers Island

2008-11-30T17:06:00.001-05:00

Weddings in Ocean City, gives you a regular buffet of reception locations and among some of my favorite places is Fager’s Island. Some of the highlights are the staff, all very accommodating, nice and easy to work with. With photography it offers a lot of locations for shooting, such as the lighthouse close by, you have 10 or so backdrops and spots that make for a cozy photo. The sunsets at Fagers is something to stop and take notice, every evening around sunset they play classical music as you gaze out on the bay. The gazebo and back deck are other fun places to take some photos. The couple, Terry and Todd, were such a nice couple to photograph and by the end of the evening, it felt like I was part of the family. I had quite a few conversations with a lot of their family and it was so real easy going and real easy to photograph. The couple needed a DJ, so I suggested my close friend Leo who’s been a professional DJ for 29 years and together we made it a fun night for all. You can imagine how fun it was when you had the bride calling me in to the ladie’s bathroom to photograph her and all her bride’s maids relaxing on the couch. That of course was brought on by the grandfather calling me into the men’s bathroom to get a photo of him with all his grandson’s there. nothing bad, but pretty weird. I like weird, it keeps it interesting.

Yoga Photo Shoot

2008-11-26T23:52:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!
I got called to do a photo shoot for a yoga company and found it to be a really cool shoot to do. The Yoga place is called, Sumatis Om Studio Yoga, in Berlin, Maryland. For those of you in the area and who are interested in Yoga check it out or give them a call, 410-641-4499. I’ve never done yoga before but after photographing them in action, I found them it to be very peaceful.
For this photo shoot we wanted to capture images of yoga for their website and brochures. My wife, Olga and I were there photographing this from several angles and with two ideas in mind, with her experience in yoga it proved to be a really good shoot.
One of the images we wanted to capture and convey was “couples yoga”. We had a couple come in and get dressed up in their wedding clothes, a suit and a dress and perform some poses. I found out later that the model I was working with who was recently married and is one of the main instructors there.
Suzanne is the owner of the studio and a real blast to chat with and she played the main role of director for setting up a lot of the shots we needed. I really liked her right away, and for those of you looking to take up yoga in that area, you in for a treat with a great group of people there.

High School Photography Class

2008-11-21T15:41:00.004-05:00

I logged into my facebook the other day and my high school buddy found this photo of me. And its so weird because it was me and our photography class. Back then I never knew that I would be working in photography as my employment and making a living at it, but here I am. If you are curious about my facebook, take a peek at it, here is the link.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1430346594&ref=profile

Since I started using facebook I’ve found old friends, made some new friends, and I’m able to keep in touch with a lot of them easier. It’s pretty cool.

Looking at the photo, I think back to High School and where I am today and its pretty interesting how I ended up here. When I took that photography class I just didn’t think I’d have as much fun with it as I do now. Ms. Fagan my photography teacher was pretty informative teacher and really cool in my opinion. She would send us out on little photo shoots around the school for class projects, little did she know my friend MJ and I would find most of our shooting assignments over in McDonalds across the street from the school. Taking photos in there and bringing them back to class didn’t go over very well if you can imagine. Every since that class I’ve always owned a camera and whether I was in Cambridge, England shooting some of the beautiful buildings or in France photographing the touristy things, her teachings have followed me to this day. It wasn’t till I met my friend and Mentor Dave, a pro photographer in his own right that I feel in love with capturing the beauty of weddings and photographing all those special moments that take place on the special day. Thank you Ms. Fagan and Mr. Dave for all you taught me.

Seacrets Wedding - Going Jamacian

2008-11-19T01:04:00.002-05:00

Giving a shout out to Holly and Walter – to you, your family, and your guests, I had a great time and thanks for having me as your photographer. Holly's dress was very Very Unique and Beautiful.

For those of you thinking about a wedding location in Ocean City, Seacrets is a pretty awesome place to say your “I Dos”. I chatted with the Holly and Walter about it briefly and they said it was a pretty good deal as far as venues go. The food was great, can’t go wrong with Jerk Chicken. There was so many fun spots to shoot there, I could have spent all day photographing there. it was so funny how every time I took the couple and bridal party around they were getting lost. Just like the Seacrets saying “find us and get lost” it was a true factor here. Back in the day when I was in high school I used to work at Seacrets as one of their line cooks, and they have grown so much since then.
The staff there was pretty awesome and accommodating everything that I could have needed. I wanted to take a photo from the high up balcony and they pointed me there and I was able to get the shot. The DJ was a Seacrets DJ, and he was so very helpful in letting the crowd know we were cutting the cake or doing a dance. And when it came time to take that photo of the whole group of people, DJ BK helped get everyone together. Cool Dude!
Anyone looking for a photographer for your up and coming wedding at Seacrets please give me a call, as I not only work as your photographer, but as a tour guide so you don’t get lost up in there. And if you aren’t getting married there, and never been, definitely go there and try the Jerk Chicken, it’s the best in town in my opinion.

Ocean City Bridal Show

2008-11-10T11:51:00.006-05:00

This Sunday at the Golden Sands in Ocean City, Maryland, put on the second ever Bridal Show, and I think it was a pretty awesome turn out. The first Bridal Show at the Ocean Pines Yacht Club was interesting and a good show to get our feet wet. But with this show we got a pretty big turn out of future brides. There was a fashion show that was pretty impressive, with all kinds of dresses, all from cocktail and evening dresses to the fall / winter time wedding dresses. The dresses for the Fall Christmas season were by far my favorite and I'm looking forward to the Winter season and photographing wedding with the hopes of photographing a bride in one of those lovely dresses.

We got alot of good responses speaking with the brides, towards the end of the show it felt like i lost my voice, talking so much. And I'm all ready for our next show in Feb 2009, for those of you wanting to attend, its alot of fun! check it out.

Will in Action

2008-10-11T15:43:00.003-04:00

My wife, Olga did videography on this wedding and she grab some fun shots of me in action. After some splicing and tweeking, I now have this lovely little 5 minute clip to share with you.

New Photography in Rehoboth Beach

2008-10-11T08:56:00.002-04:00

Well I’m excited about a new photographer in town, which is rare to say as many a photographers don’t like competition. But this photographer is one that I can relate to and one I don’t have worry about as competition. I’m proud to present “Olga Photography” ! ! !

You’re probably thinking, “That’s Will’s wife’s name, Olga” and you are right. The new photographer is my wife Olga Vickers. Keep in mind that she’s not new, New, she’s been photographing for years and she wanted to do her own thing with the photography.
What she is planning on doing is weddings, portraits, children and pregnancy photography, as well we’d like to start doing Boudoir Portraits and trash the dress photos and it’s an idea that some brides and female clients would relate to her better in certain situations.

To check out her photography please visit http://www.olgaphotography.com/ and her blog which was just created http://olgavickers.blogspot.com/ .
Enjoy.

Free Wedding Coverage for Destination Wedding

2008-10-09T18:25:00.003-04:00

Free Wedding Coverage including Photography and Videography

Here's the thing: We love shooting weddings. We also love to travel! Anytime, anywhere. And Destination weddings allow us to do both. You get a professional wedding photographer and a videographer for free and we get to travel. It’s a win win situation.
Every year we set aside Five weekends exclusively for this "free wedding photography" promotion. Aside from a few basic restrictions, there are no strings attached to this offer. Having said that, here are a few strings:

1) It should be scheduled between November and March.
We live in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. This November - March period could accurately be called our off-season. So sure, we'll shoot your wedding for free! As long as you meet requirement #2, which is:

2) It should be someplace WARM and not in Delaware or Maryland!
In Rehoboth Beach, between November and March, it's probably cold and windy outside. Let's get away to Florida or Cancun or Australia or something. Work with us here. Sunny and warm or maybe some place Unique. You probably want that too, right? We're willing to consider not-so-warm locations as long as they are, well, cool. Venice during Carnivale? Sure. NYC on New Years Eve? Okay. Paris in the springtime? Absolutely. And finally, requirement #3:

3) You cover the COST of travel and accommodations. We do the rest.
Airplane tickets, a hotel and some food. Any associated transportation, to-and-from. That's it! Well-rested, excited photographers will give you REALLY Awesome photographs. That's all you have to cover, and we don't mark it up with bogus "day rates" or first-class fares. Get us there, put us up at your hotel and we are ready to shoot. We'll probably need 4 or 5 nights accommodations, depending on the scope of the project. If we stay longer, it's at our expense.
Is it really that simple?

Yes it is. Look, with destination wedding they are always beautiful. But sometimes, frankly, it's a stretch for our clients to be able to fly two professional photographers to the Caribbean and to pay full price for the photography package. So this is a pretty good deal. And there are other benefits too:

• Destination weddings don't have the same time restrictions as our regular packages. In other words, we'll be at your disposal for the rehearsal AND all the way through the wedding. The day after the wedding, if you'd like to go out and get some "extra" portraits (on the beach...under a waterfall... on a jet ski...top of the Eiffel Tower) without having to worry about your dress, WE'RE THERE!!!

• If you live in Delaware or Maryland but wish to have a destination wedding, it will be much easier to do all of your post-production wedding album stuff with us a local photography studio. (If you live outside of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, then ignore this point. We're easy to work with regardless of your home base.)

• With Hitched Photography you won't be stuck with some cheesy, unknown, in-house, trainee STAFF photographer shooting your lovely wedding! Wouldn't it be better to retain the services of a known and trusted company? These are your precious WEDDING photos, after all.
Help us to help you! Let's go to England. Or to Cancun. Or even Sydney, or perhaps Tahiti. Think of how fun it will be!

Five openings each year. They fill up fast. Call today: 443-513-1304
We have our passports ready!
Contact at Will at willvickers@hotmail.com

2009 Weddings in the Bay Adventure

2008-10-08T23:20:00.001-04:00

Greetings, Brides and Grooms of Summer 2009
For those of you getting married in around the summer of 2009 and are looking for something different, so you know, I have something for you. If you don’t have any big, Big reception plans, maybe not a lot of guests, looking for something just all out romantic, than our weddings on the bay might suit you.
We are working on 3 different options for couples to choose from, starting with our 10 people or less wedding. We’d take the bride and groom out with up to 8 of their friends and or family on our pontoon boat, to a nice romantic spot on the bay. Perhaps it’s during the day and you’d like to get your feet wet, we could pull up on a sand bar, jump out and have a cute little ceremony right there. We provide the wedding officiant, the professional photographer, music, complimentary champagne, sodas, and water. After the ceremony we can toast, take a few more photos, and maybe head off to another great spot for a nice photo shoot, where I’d arrange the lovely couple in a series of poses the express love and feeling. And then off to shore, were you can continue on to your reception, dinner, or maybe you are eloping.
Option 2 would be better suited for couples, clinging to tradition of not wanting to see each other before the wedding and have more than 10 guests. The max number of guests would be 20 split up between two boats. The idea behind this wedding is to have the wedding minister drive out with the groom and various guests to a predetermined spot, ready to go and eagerly awaiting his bride. Boat number two would have the photographer, the bride and her various guests riding out to the wedding spot ready to be married to her future husband. We can pull the two boats together and perform the ceremony on the boats or if you so desire we can perform the ceremony on the sandbar or nearby island. Afterwards, we toast, take photos, ride off to a great spot for more photo opportunities, and scoot back to shore. Just like the first package, we provide the minister, photographer, champagne, sodas, and water. If you would like we could arrange for a limo pick up and drop off, for an additional charge.
Ahh, but say you have more than the 20 guests, you want something bigger, something more fun, FUN. We can take you out on the Party boat which can accommodate up to 40 people. We can provide catering, drinks, and whatever else you might need. What come with the package on this one are the minister and photographer. We’d have to discuss what all you might like to have in addition to the ceremony. Without a doubt this will be one fun ceremony and ride. We would like to do the ceremony as you would like either on the boat, on a sandbar, or little island. Taking photos, before, during, and after the ceremony. Afterwards, finding a nice spot for some truly romantic photos of the new Husband and Wife.
For those of you interested please give me a call so that we might discuss options, ideas, and what you want to make your wedding magical with us. 443-513-1304 my number, Will.

To "See" or "not to See", that is the question....

2008-10-06T08:25:00.004-04:00

I recently went to a wedding expo to pick up some new fresh skills in wedding photography. There were three big photographers there teaching some thirty seven of us. And one of the things they were teaching us was to try, try, and try to get the as much of the photos done before the wedding as you can. One of the crazy problems we run into in our line of work as wedding photographers is when the couples say the “I Dos”, kiss and walk down the aisle, everything quickly descends into madness. People start to swarm all over the couple, if we start working on photos, and say for example we want to take the photo of the bride’s mom and dad with the bride, it never fails we are missing someone, Either dad’s at the car, or mom maybe in the restroom. If you have a large bridal party and its time from the bridal party shoot, we are always missing either a bridesmaid or groomsman after the ceremony.

Why not get these photos done, before the wedding? I ask this question, and 90% of the time I get the same response, “no we’d like to stick to tradition”. I ask myself what are the pros and cons to getting your photos taken before hand, and on the pro’s side we have:
* It helps ease the bride and groom before the wedding, much like a little preview of events to come or a mini rehearsal of the wedding.
* Everyone is pretty much standing around waiting anyway, it gives everyone something to do while they are waiting for the main event.
* After the ceremony you are free to move along to your reception party a lot sooner and meet up with your guests.
* It’s much easier to take shoots of the couple leaving and walking through bubbles, flower pedals, or other cool leaving ideas. It would be weird to walk through everyone throwing rose pedals at you and you get to the car, and then have to turn around to go back in the church for pictures.
* If we missed any shots before the wedding it would be easier to take those quick few we might have missed instead of taking them all right then after the wedding.
Now on the con’s side of the argument:
Tradition. That s it!
Time and time again, the only thing, one point that all brides and groom try and make with me is “we’d like to stick with tradition” now, I’m all for giving the bride and groom what they want. It’s their wedding, why shouldn’t they have everything they want. But If I’m giving them something that makes their wedding run smoother and better, why not take it?
At least weigh the pros and cons for yourself and give it some serious thought. I mean really think about it, you have a bride and groom here, what they were a few days ago? More than likely you had an in love couple, probably living together still and planning their wedding. Chances are they lived together and seen each other all the way up to the day of their ceremony. Tradition not too long ago would be for the couple not to live together, not to even really hang out like we do these days, and certainly no pre marital sex before marriage. That was way back in the day, and times do change. Why not start changing this ago old tradition? Well something to think about.
~ Nuff Said.

My Space for Hitched Photography

2008-09-30T00:11:00.004-04:00

"http://www.myspace.com/hitchedphotography"
Find me on MySpace and be my friend

Are all DJs created equal?

2008-09-21T00:44:00.002-04:00

This Saturday’s wedding came with a powerful point that I’ve been trying to hit home with couples for years. We got hired out to photograph a wedding and we had to interact with a DJ we’ve never worked with before. And I would have to say the DJ is either new to the business or totally burnt out, as he exerted NO professional courteous to anyone else in the wedding business, namely the photographer (I’m not sure about anyone else). When it came time for the cutting cake, that’s like an important part for a photographer to shoot, we plan for that, we ask the DJ or wedding planner to let us know when that’s happening. And what did this DJ do you might ask, well as the bride and groom were eating we stopped for a few minutes to eat as well, and with no extra place settings, dinner was eaten out in the hallway. The food was only partially eaten when we checked on the bride and groom to find they had cut the cake in our absence. The DJ could have waited; the DJ should have had the respect to let us know, come on. We checked with him as soon as we came in the door, so there was no misunderstanding on our part, he knew we needed to know.
Now when a Bride or Groom calls me wanting to book photography services, my second question I ask them is, “Do you need any other wedding services, a DJ, wedding Minister, Videographer, or limousine?” Because if they say “yes we need…..” right away I’m saving the new couple money by combining services, I’m also saving them any kind of complications as I’m recommending Great professionals that I’ve worked with in the past and have had wonderful experiences with. Take for example, DJ Jawz also known as Jason. Great guy and Awesome DJ, there have been times when I’m off photographing say the parents outside, or grabbing bite, or even using the restroom, and I know for a fact that Jason has got my back in that wedding. He’ll give me heads up on everything that might happen, along with keeping that dance floor hopping.
I got booked at one wedding and there was a DJ Casey, and I can tell you right now, not the best choice, shy on the microphone and not all that in tune with the crowd. Just keep all this in mind, if you are looking for multiple wedding services, please let me know so I can let you know what works well to make your day a great one.

Biker Wedding

2008-09-20T00:07:00.005-04:00

It was biker week in Ocean City and I had a wedding to do on a Friday. I got called and booked up last minute so I didn’t get a whole lot of details on this wedding. I dread driving into Ocean City during bike week, not because of the bikers but because of my lack of a bike. I had a Honda Shadow 600 that I wanted to trade in for something newer but never got around to getting a newer bike.
Anyway catching up with the bride before the wedding, first thing I noticed was the helmets on the table. After some discussion found out Sherri was a rider, which I got a kick out of. I snapped some photos then went out to where the Minister was ready for the ceremony. I was pretty surprised to see biker after biker coming around the corner with their group colors and vests on. I knew then we were going to have a good time with this wedding.
You can check out the group at https://www.leann2thelimit.com/Home_Page.php
And the photos online are at http://hitchedphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/5953534_iMJK7#371453817_MXT5j

Why a phone call can save you money.

2008-09-15T17:16:00.002-04:00

I often wonder why I get as many emails as I do, but not as many phone calls. With my phone number all over my websites and on my business cards, why not call instead of writing an email. Not unless someone is price shopping and sending out the exact same emails out to different photographers but still they aren’t getting the best deal I’m sure. Here’s an example of how a phone call saved me money and why I encourage people to do the same. My wife and I were going on vacation down to Busch Gardens with her mother and I called up the number on the brochure we had to ask the question, “is it cheaper to buy tickets online or at the gate?” The woman on the other line mentioned a special discount just started at McDonalds, where you get $12 off each ticket. She then asked if I was military by chance and I said yes, Air Force. Apparently military get in for free there and I didn’t know it because the last time I was there was when I was in high school. So because I called and the woman gave me that good information I brought my ID card and the coupon to the front gate. Not only did I get in for free but also my wife, and in the end we saved over $100 just from phone call.
If I were to get an email, all I might know is their date and they are looking for photography. I would then suggest my lowest package for $1000 for 3 hours of photography with various items in the package.
Now what if it were a couple getting married and the only people present to this event would be the children. Why charge them $1000 when I could offer then say a beach portrait price package of $300 and it includes prints and an hour of photography. So a phone call would have saved them $700.
Just something to think about next time you are shopping around. Even if its not with me, call around, you never know the other person on the phone might be a helpful person.

Summer 2008

2008-09-15T17:11:00.003-04:00

Its been one heck of a busy summer, which is the reason for not Blogging in a long time. If I'm not out photographying weddings, I'm working on the new Ocean City Wedding Guide which goes into production this month. Also busy working on various web pages, and photo editing. I'm looking forward to the off season as it will give me a chance to play catch up on Blogs, projects, web design, photoshopping summer's wedding photos, and creating new ads for our wedding guide domains. So definately check back to the blog for some updates, news, and fun.

Maternity Shoot

2008-07-24T13:40:00.006-04:00

On monday, 21st of July, My wife Olya and I had the extreme pleasure of photographying Anne and John. Two great and awesome people we just love to photograph. She is due to deliver a baby boy in just under a month, and we were like "we have got to photograph you and your belly". And it all happen on that monday. What was nice was that my wife, Olya was with me and it helped tremendously. When I went to get us some refreshments, she was photographing them and when I exhausted all my ideas, she came up with new and creative ones. With out a doubt it was a pleasure being part of Anne and John's special time and capturing the love.

Check out some of the photos here.

PPASD Photo Shoot

2008-07-24T13:32:00.004-04:00

We had one of our first workshops with the new PPASD during our July meeting and it was a great time. Paula from Barefoot studios was our instructor that day educating us on the use of available light. Getting us to basically stop our impulse to use the flash and work with what you got. Towards the end of the evening we got to playing with the Flash bouncing and it was alot of fun. I'm happy to have had a chance to work with these fine models that evening.

Kim and Matt Wedding

2008-07-08T08:02:00.001-04:00

An Air Force wedding, I’d like to get more of these weddings as they have a different feel to them then beach or regular weddings. And by different I mean, the man in uniform were laid back kind of people but while in uniform they have that military baring that keeps them standing in certain positions and holding themselves in that military way. And I know that wearing the uniform gets awfully hot, so I wanted to be quick about the photographs I take. It’s always good to catch our men and women in uniform on camera so that they may look upon these images with fond memories of their time in service.
I really liked the church Kim and Matt choose for their wedding day, the layout was fun and easy to shoot in. The pastor was a super cool guy, with a church as fancy as that one was, I thought for sure he wouldn’t let me use my flash, but he was totally ok with it. And after the ceremony the pastor and I were talking and he gave me some new ideas for photographing the bride and groom. One of the obstacles I had to overcome was the height difference between the bride and groom. Positioning them in certain ways was the key to making the photos look right. I brought along a new assistant photographer, Damon for some training. I photographed him before for his own portfolio and for his music album cover and I really liked his creative ideas he had for posing and locations. I know he will make a great photographer. I am starting to get rather busy and so I know that I’ll need to support of my crew to continue providing the best service I can to the clients and friends.

Rehoboth Beach Thunderstorm

2008-07-08T07:18:00.004-04:00

Living in Rehoboth beach and having a place on the third floor has given me a nice front row seat to a lot of Delaware’s weather. I’ve always been fascinated by weather, from snow storms to hurricanes and I’m a big fan of rain, not sure why. Granted when I have a wedding to do that day or a beach portrait, I pray for sunshine and good weather, but when I’m working on photos or just chilling out indoors, I love to look out and see the rain fall.

I’ve always wanted to capture my own images of lightning strikes but never took the time to walk out into a storm and photograph them. Number one it’s not a good idea to take $3000 worth of gear near or around water. You can put it in baggies or use an umbrella but why take the risk. This time however, the storm was off in the distance and it was a awesome site to see. On these images I held the camera by hand, I had the shutter speed on 1 second, and manual focus. I had to guess approximately when it might flash again. But in some cases, it would flash, I would snap the picture and then a second flash would follow and I got it.

Jen and Mike Wedding

2008-06-15T21:17:00.001-04:00

Well over 1000 images were taken this Saturday and the transferring of over 12 gigs of data took a good bit of time on Sunday. The wedding that Justin, Justin and I attended was in Baltimore at the Sheraton Hotel. Justin, That DJ Guy, was our driver and the reason we all came together on that fine afternoon. He knew Jen from back in the school days and when she needed a DJ for her wedding she turn to her childhood friend, Justin. Justin and I have known each other for close to 2 years now and I was the one who photographed his wedding a year ago. So when Jen said she needed a photographer too, Justin suggested me. Lucky me!
For this event which was big, I brought along my photographer friend and business partner in Miniloc Marketing, Justin Michalski. You can’t image how the 2-3 hour journey from Salisbury to Baltimore flew by with the three of us in the minivan, joking, telling stories and having a good old time. Definitely was a great ride. However getting back into Salisbury at 1am was not pretty. And it took me till 2:30 am to get myself home after dropping Justin off at his place along the way to Rehoboth.
The wedding went great with only a few bumps along the way. Jen allowed me ample time to get some fun creative photos before the ceremony, and with 6 bridesmaids and 2 junior bridesmaids and a flower girl. We were supposed to take photos outside the Sheraton entrance where they had these cute waterfalls, however the construction did not allow for that. Bump 1. After the ceremony the bridal party all wanted to enjoy the cocktail hour rather than grab the after ceremony formals and that caused a ripple that was felt later when it was so hard to get the bridal party out for one quick shot after the cake cutting. So what is normally a 20 – 50 photo shooting experience turned into 3 pictures of the whole group and that was it. Bump 2. We had a 4 year old flower girl that was as darling as could be, but after the first photo was taken, she wasn’t into it much anymore. After a while she warmed up but when you need instant smiles to grab the shots in a few minutes, we don’t always have hours for the one person to come around to smiling.
The dance floor was “HOPPING” with a capital Hop, as I knew it would with Justin, That DJ Guy. His charismatic personality without a doubt a powerful force in helping people have a good time. He was joking with the crowd, played all the right songs, and even stuck around 20 plus minutes after his time had ended just to please the people. Having worked with him before I knew I was in for a good time. But Bump 4 showed up unexpectedly, there was this Drunk guy that was shouting, “worst DJ ever” and it took every ounce of self control not to walk him out the room. Justin was going by the long list of songs that Jen and Mike requested. The song in question was that “we are family” song. What can the poor guy do, but play the songs he was hired to play. Granted he mixed it up a bit, throwing in some good dancing songs he knew would please the crowd. It’s just, he nowhere near a bad DJ, the guy was Drunk and I just had to keep telling myself that.
All in all it was fun to do this wedding and with my crew with me, it was more fun than work.

Ocean City Air Show

2008-06-11T23:27:00.002-04:00

It was the last day of the first annual Ocean City Air Show and I almost didn’t go. I’ve got all this work to do, building websites, getting photos ready for printing, and photos to scan. But my wife says I should go, and take a break. So I did. And boy was it ever cool. I’m used to seeing big air shows at RAF Mildenhall, England when I was stationed there in the Air Force. I got to see the B2, and I even got a chance to touch the F-117. I found out later I wasn’t supposed to, because of the material its covered in. by far my favorite aircraft is the B1B Lancer. When I was at Mildenhall and worked on the flight line I parked my truck right next to the runway, I heard this plane was inbound and wanted to see it. It came in with its wings swept back and zoomed through, it was sooo loud and powerful the whole ground shock around me. It was incredible!

Now Ocean City is having the Air Show and I was thinking that it would only be Bi planes or Cessnas. My father saw it the day before and told me about the F16 and the F15 both Super cool planes and I missed being near fighter planes. So I had to see it. Sean’s parents had a place right there on 19th St, right on the boardwalk. It was the sweetest place to view it all; I definitely had the hook up there. Later we left the family party but they hadn’t shown the F16 yet so I stayed. I was seated right near the beach, and when it came out from behind the hotel area, it scared the crap out of me. I couldn’t focus the camera, I was shaking so bad. It was just so loud and all of a sudden, but it was so cool. So with this being the first Annual Air show, I’m looking forward to the next, how to see you all there.

Kung Fu Panda

2008-06-11T22:53:00.003-04:00

It’s not photo related, but hey it’s my blog and I’d like to pass on the good news. For those of you who are looking for a fun, I mean FUN movie, this was it. The last movie I saw before this one was Iron Man and it was really, Really good (saw it twice good) but with Kung Fu Panda, I was laughing so hard, and then crying the next. The action sequences were so amazing I was on the edge of my seat. The color and graphics had me going “ohhh, Ahhh” left and right. Without a doubt I’m wanting to own this movie. I was a big fan of Toy Story when it came out, and this is right up there with it. Now I know it’s a cartoon, and I’m not a kid, but it was pretty Awesome. “Will Recommended” Enjoy!

Patron Party at Ocean Pines Beach Club

2008-06-11T22:40:00.006-04:00

I got called up to one of the weirdest gigs I've ever really had. I put together a type of “Party Package” where I would take photos at an event and print them out on the spot, something like a photo booth but with a lot more fun and flexibility. And the goal was to make it work in the reception part of a wedding, however at the Ocean Pines Beach Club we were demonstrating it and they people there really liked it. And that’s how I got this gig, even though it wasn’t wedding related it was certainly a lot of fun and I’d like to get more photography jobs like that in the future.
The Patron party was pretty, I’d like to say “off the hook” but it wasn’t really that hopping. There was a really good turnout of people and another 10 to 20 more people might have made too crowded. As people would sign in, I’d greet them and offer to take their picture in front of cute little backdrop I created. After words, I’d let them know their photo would be printed up in about 3 minutes and could pick them up over on the table. Everything was paid for, and so the photos were free. I’ve done this at other events where the customers would pay for the images, this way it actually just worked out for everyone. I was happy, the music was great, they would bring around all the free Patron samples you could try, and I sampled a few. Not enough to make wallaby but the right amount to blend in with all the other people and have fun with them. It was great, hats off to you folk with the Ocean Pines Association. http://www.oceanpines.org/
View More Photos Here

Doug and Michelle Wedding

2008-06-04T22:01:00.002-04:00

I can’t say this was the smallest wedding I’ve ever photographed, as there are a few times when its only me, the couple getting married and the minister. Those are small events. But with Michelle and Doug’s wedding what it lacked in size it made up with in character. The ceremony took place down at Assateague state park; right on the beach and we were actually able to have a pony show up on queue. With it starting at 6:30pm the light was a bit harsh on the skin and hard to see without sunglasses. All in all it was fun. I had my video crew out there videotaping the wedding. My wife Olya manning camera one and Big John as I like to call him manning camera two. They were both capturing the event from all angles. Olya was able to get the pony walking ahead of the bride before her grand entrance.
Afterwards I photographed the bridal party on the beach and the broke it up to just the bride and groom shots. We then headed over to the Harrisons Harbor Watch down by the Ocean City Inlet, where the reception was being held. I did a wedding there with my buddy Leo before and we already knew of some cool spots to photograph the bride and groom. Soon it was time to get down and get funky with the crazy tunes DJ Jaws was playing. DJ Jaws by far one of the coolest DJ’s around and as a matter of fact he’s due to get married in 2009 and we were talking about where he is going to have his wedding. We just couldn’t decide whether I was going to do the photography at his wedding here in Ocean City, or in Cancun, Mexico. My vote is for Cancun.

Meghan & Ross Wedding

2008-05-30T17:50:00.003-04:00

Congratulations Meghan and Ross! You two were great to be around and I really loved photographing your wedding. Both Meghan and Ross are New Yorkers that converged in Ocean City for their place to host their wedding vows as it accommodated more family members. Not to mention Ocean City is a great place to have wedding, where we have the beach with all the sun and fun you could want. The Clarion was their choice of venue and a cool place to have a wedding. I had my second photographer Holly with me on this one, and my buddy Justin Darling was there doing the DJ. And what a time we had, when Justin gets going doing his DJ thing, he really is getting the party going.
Towards the end of the evening, we got all the shots we could get, we all had a fun time dancing and grooving to the hopping tunes Justin was playing.
Ross and Meghan were super cool and photographed real well. There was a person issue going on with the couple that we picked up on, but I like to think Holly and I kept them in good spirits to help their day along and to get great photos.
I can recommend the Clarion as a really nice place to get married, as you have the beach for outdoor shots and lots of indoor spots to grab photos. And without a doubt I wouldn’t have had such a great time if my buddy Justin Darling wasn’t there, he kept the party rolling.

Damon with X-Factor Unknown Photo Shoot

2008-05-22T10:43:00.003-04:00

I met Damon when I got called into fix some computers for Maximum Video on 64th St. He is the manager there and an inspiring music artist. We got to talking about websites and Myspace, which led into me telling him about my web design ability. I mentioned that with http://www.minilocmarketing.com/ we only charge a small monthly fee to design a web site as opposed to a large onetime fee of $1000 or something. Anyway, I wanted to hook him up with a photo shoot to go along with his new website http://www.x-factor-unknown.com/ and we choose to photograph him around Ocean City but with unique backdrops or different places around the inlet. It just so happens that it was raining around 8am when we decided to shoot, and decided to go with it. I personally thing the rain and over cast added an emotion to the photos that you don’t always get when it’s nice and sunny. We hit the other side of the 50 bridge and got some great warm up shots. Then we moved on in and parked near the bridge so we can photograph under it. I think those shots turned out great. We also took pictures closer to the inlet parking lot and then headed up to Seacrets to grab some of those wild backdrops. All in all it was a great time even though it was raining. By the end we were both totally soaked but we were totally happy with the way the photos turned out. Damon was an awesome model to work with. He brought a ton of creative ideas to the table which made almost every photo different from the next. Damon was so cool with the wet weather, he never complained, not once. And for me it’s rare to get guys to want to take photos, so to me it was a rare fun time.
I look forward to seeing which photo he decides to go with for his album cover, and if you’d like to listen to some of his tracks, they’ll be on the website, when I get it finished and he’s also on Myspace look for him there.

Dan & Shelly Wedding

2008-05-22T09:57:00.004-04:00

Well its Blog make up time for me, I got behind in keeping up with this.
Saturday was crazy for me this time around, as I had to photograph a Air Force Retirement ceremony, a wedding, and a family reunion all on this day. I’m very fortunate to have a good group of support photographers to assist me. My right hand man and business partner, Justin did a stellar job with juggling the wedding and the family reunion. And Holly with a creative eye and drive to do a fantastic job, I couldn’t have made this day happen without either of them.
Dan and Shelly picked out this super gorgeous location called Ransome’s Chesapeake Retreat. Run by Percy and Marie with whom I had the privilege to meet. This spot was by far one of the most beautiful that I’ve had a chance to work in. It offered up so many wonderful backdrops for our photos, we just didn’t have enough time to hit them all. If we weren’t careful their wedding day would turn into Photo shoot day, if we took too many photos. I definitely see myself going back out there again just to take photos of the water and different spots. If you are looking for that one of a kind wedding location this is it. http://www.chesapeakeretreats.com/ or call 1-888-726-7662

I wanted to give a shout out to the DJ’s that were there as well. Jim with http://www.jumpingjukebox.com/ (1-302-629-3079) is a pretty cool guy, keeping me informed of the upcoming events of the evening. When I first got there, he came up to me and introduced himself. What was weird is he knew my name right away, and I’m like “Do I know you?” , he just took the time to find out who all the key players where in this event and that just showed me his level of professionalism. A couple of times I had a hard time holding the camera still as I found I was grooving to the music they were playing. This wedding was by far a lot of fun. And to Dan and Shelly, thank you for a lovely time. Both Holly and Justin said you guys where great to photograph and hang with.

Lucis Art & Ocean Pines Yacht Club Wedding

2008-05-08T12:57:00.002-04:00

This was a great wedding in the month of February. Because I'm new to this whole blog thing, I'm kinda working from now and going backwards, discussing weddings and various other events. At the Ocean Pines Yacht club it had alot of great back drops for photographing. It was not going to happen photographing the wedding party indoors as the space was some what limited. We were lucky this day as it wasn't too cold.
These photos were run through a Photoshop plug in called Lucis Art and thougth it made for some unique creative images. For those of you that play with photoshop it's a fun plug in and it can really warp and image or enchance it just enough to be interesting.
The time of day these photos were taken wasn't the best as the shadows were a bit harsh. But I was limited on time and worked with it. It was a bit chilly and I would have liked to have spent more time outside taking some creative pictures, but I could tell the bride was getting cold.

Shannon & Roger Wedding

2008-05-08T12:40:00.001-04:00

This was a fun wedding to photograph. I liked having a larger bridal party to work with and with the colorful dresses it made for a very cool picture. About the only thing that I would say was a negative, was the groomsmen were difficult to work with. Later I found out that, they were ready to go for pictures at 3pm and the bride and I discussed 4pm with pre wedding photos and somewhere those poor guys got some misinformation and they weren’t in the best of moods.

Shannon looked very beautiful and it was fun working with her veil as I’m finding some brides just choose not to go with them. And Roger was cool to work with, he is one big dude. And the Pastor was so awesome, 90% of the time I’m not allowed to use flash in the church during the ceremony and he was really ok with it. After the ceremony and we were photographing outside the church he himself was working on posing the bride and groom to take a few fun shots. It’s always a treat when everyone gets creative and we make some fun photographs.

Vogal Wedding

2008-05-08T01:38:00.001-04:00

This was a really cool wedding. I've been itching to do more with the Air Force and wedding photography, but because I live so far south and because I’m not on orders at the moment, I don’t get many Air Force clients. It does my heart good, to help others who serve in our nation’s armed services, so keep that in mind if you are Active duty, Reservist or Guard, I’ll take care of you.
This was a wedding renewal which is something I’ve wanted to do with my wife and I. But in my case, I plan to have the wedding in Russia with her family present. I was able to have my assistant take the high shots from one of the bridesmaid’s room, which made for some pretty neat photos.
Any time you get a beach wedding, you can’t help but get some fun pictures.

New with Pictage

2008-05-08T01:28:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to announce I'll be using Pictage for all my photo hosting. After reading several reviews, talking with other photographers, watching testimonial videos, I’ve decided to go with this company over Smugmug, which is what I was using.

Some of the benefits to clients:
~ a lot of times I’ll get bogged down with projects, meeting with clients, and working on everyday life stuff, I’ll get pulled in so many directions. I wanted to provide the client with great pictures after an event, and with Pictage they have a team of people that color correct the images, help with the photo ordering, and even album design and framing. So it’s like having an assistant, without having to direct them all the time.
~ prices will remain the same on prints and albums.
~ with Pictage they’ll offer 2 for 1 deals, discounts, and other savings I might not have offered before.

Well I hope you all will enjoy it as much as I will, and if you don’t please let me know so I can correct any issues.

New Hitched Website

2008-04-21T11:57:00.000-04:00

I finally finished up the new Hitched Photography website. Its not totally completed yet, as i would like to add various pages detailing some of the photography services. But as of right now I like it a whole lot better then it was.
check it out.
www.hitchedphotography.com

Updated & Linked MySpace

2008-04-20T17:14:00.001-04:00

It’s funny how I'm not into MySpace at all, but I found myself there today, updating my page and tying in my website and working on networking. There isn’t much there now, but if you’d like to check it out its:

http://www.myspace.com/will_vickers

I’m about ready to overhaul the entire Hitched photography site was well as fine tone some things that have been bugging me. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Photographing Vintage Clothing

2008-04-14T23:22:00.003-04:00

I recently started working with a client who is opening a vintage clothing store near Salisbury, MD. Its been alot of fun photographing these antique cloths. When I get the photos finished I'll have to post them here on this blog. I'm pretty sure I can create some sort of photo gallery in this blog. We'll have to see.