Elk Creek Winery

Had a great time Saturday at the Elk Creek Winery located West of Dry Ridge, Kentucky. The weather was great, maybe a little too sunny but we all survived, slightly red around the edges but that beats a wash out!! Actually it was pretty nice, had a breeze blowing, and the AC inside felt great!

We had the chance to do an engagement shoot with this couple, it was really great, if you have read our past blogs you probably have seen their picture. At the end of reception our last picture was a pose that we did in the engagement shoot that was a fun moment. We are like our couples, we like to have fun too, and these "fun" shots are always great for that. We got a lot of great pictures for the couple and hope to have them all posted up for their viewing very soon.

On a personal note, our son graduated Kindergarten Friday morning, it was really cute to see all the kids in his class perform their show for us parents. Sunday we went to the Zoo with our son and our nephew's family and had a great time with just a few sprinkles, we got to see Curious George at the zoo, the kids just loved it as did most of the adults!! (yours truely included)



We are looking forward to some upcomming photo shoots, weddings and parties coming up this summer. We do have a few dates open for your parties or special events, so give us a call or email for our rates on what you need. We also can still schedule family, children, maternity and Boudoir sessions over the next few weeks. Give us a call, let us know what you want and we will go from there.

Name the couple and get 100$ off deposit.

There are times

I talk to a lot of photographers, it seems those that enjoy weddings are a rare breed. Most consider them something they have to do. We don't see wedding this way, we enjoy being with the wonderful people we meet, seeing them get married. We enjoy meeting their parents, their friends and family, and sharing their stories with them.

Of course like with anything there are times I question if this is something I want to continue, There is a lot of work not releated directly to photography involved with our part of the weddings. All the paperwork involved and then keeping up with orders and the like during our busy seasons. There is a lot involved with weddings too, I spend about 3 hours doing equipment checks, verifying everything is loaded in the car. The wedding itself is the fun part where we do what we really enjoy. After the wedding it takes time to get all the pictures ready for presentation, in most cases about as long as the wedding and reception it's self. I do this because I refuse to simply give our clients RAW work. If there is an album involved it can take even more work and time, depending on the number of changes they require.

Sure this is the reason most photographys don't want to do weddings, but for me, I can't wait to get home and in front of my computer to see the images we captured, and when and album comes together the feeling is great. Next is my favorite part, delievering the prints to the customer and getting their feedback. It makes all the other work we do totally worth while.

In 10+ years it's all been good, I've had one issue with one bride that took a long time to get her album approved, and with some changes made to it that went wrong where I sent the lab my original copy of the album to print and had to get it back from the customer to have repaired which took a while. She loved her Prints, and got the Digital Images very early on so I guess she wasn't in a big hurry to review the album and then got impatient. I guess with all the bad news about fly by night photographers assumed she had been taken and wasn't getting her album or something.

Anyway one complaint in 10 years from someone that loved her pictures and is taken care of. I guess 1 out of all the wedding over the last 10 years that we have done isn't bad.

Even with all that is involved, we both still love shooting weddings, and always have a good time with them, and capture lots of nice images. The image above is just one of many cake portraits we do, we cover weddings totally and gets several different views of most shots, we never know what will look best to a clients in their album until everything comes together.

I try to add something personal to my blogs from time to time, not just all business and my rantings about different things. Here is my son, as he was standing on 1st base saturday at his first T-Ball game of the season. If you have met with me before and seen some of my portfolio work you will now that his pictures is the last page in one of them that I love to show people. I keep his picture there to remind me why I do this, besides the point that we like it, it does help pay for the extras in his life.

Family is important and we believe this and we really do like being part of your family for a day.

Thank you to the brides I've delievered work to over the last month, it's your kind words that keep us motivated to keep doing this!

Weekend in the Country

Had a refreshing wedding Saturday out in the country on a beautiful little lake, with a gazebo and a small group of the couples families and friends. It was a really nice time, the couple made us feel at home. The reception was held at a winery. The couple was kind enough to feed us and the food was great and although I didn't taste the wine I did take a sniff of the Raspberry wine and it smelled really good.

On Sunday we went to breakfast and followed it up with another day in the country, this time at a family birthday party for one of our three year old great nieces.

Two for one

We had a busy weekend but it all turned out well. We had a great time with both weddings, everyone showed up on time and everyone was in a good mood and the pictures turned out great. They are both posted up for the couple and their guests to preview within a week of their wedding!! We always shoot for a week, althought we quote two.

Looking at one of the couples pictures they posted up on facebook made me think that while it is good to have a pro take your pictures because of the quality of the images it is good to have family and friends take some too. While as professionals we try to get everything we can your friends know the people better and sometimes get a shot that we might not get. However, don't depend on them to get all the shots you want, or in the quality that you might want to hang on your walls or in an album. While small digital cameras have improved over the years, they don't replace having profesional cameras and professionals taking your photographs.

It's is always fun for us to see the pictures your friends and family take, so feel free to include us as your friend on facebook or myspace or just shoot us an email with a link if they use something else to share them.

If we are doing an album for you and they have one that you just love we would be happy to include them with our images.

We have one wedding this weekend coming up and I'm looking forward to it and hopefully the weather will hold out.

A new Season Starts

Our first Wedding of the season (not of the year thought) is this coming weekend. Actually our first two is this weekend with weddings being scheduled on both Saturday and Sunday. We have kept busy over the winter months with other types of shoots. We enjoy both, but our real love is weddings and we are glad to be starting out new season out with a bang.. Granted, we will be busy though June, but we love it!

We've been sharpening our skills with some new training materials and classes too. And look forward to putting our new skills into practice.

We are going have a few price changes, basically the prices are remaining how they are, just a little less confusing for our customers and us too. Maybe a few more options but easier to decide what you desire. We are not really adding any new products this season.

Snow on the Ground again this morning!

Woke up today with snow on the ground again. Icey roads ont the way in, and generally cold. Looking for an image to post I thought I would post the one above, from a rather warm spring Day last year. As a lot of you know I do mostly Weddings, but I also do photography for the love of it too. I've been in the mood to hike a little and do some nature photography and can't wait for warm weather to return.

The economy must be turning around because dates are filling up quickly this season, and already booking into next year. It's exciting to see all the new faces and can't wait for wedding season to start.

Through the wintner months we have done a lot of Boudoir and Maternity sessions, and expect that area to continue. Remember we have specials for members of the Armed services and public servants. We also offer a 10% discount for our weddings for members of the Military.

Spring is also a popular time for Senior portraits, We do offer them at your location and very flexible times.

Gearing up

Wedding have been slow this January but a lot has been going on. We have had lots of shoots and social events. We have also been busy meeting with our new brides. It looks like 2010 & 11 will be pretty busy, so book your Wedding, events and parties early.

Personally I've slacked a little on blogging, I have had albums and other order processing to keep me busy and blogging is something I always did after processing wedding pictures because it was fresh on my mind. More time behind the camera and not infront of a computer is good. I know a lot of you have been following my blogs looking for news on what we are up to and I hope you continue to do so and I'll try to keep up with my blogging a little better.

Thank you for all your referrals and kind emails, it's through word of mouth that our business started up and now continues to grow.

Congratulations are in order!

To All of the newly ENGAGED couples. We've got great news that a lot of you have got engaged, and we are very happy for you. Finding that special person you desire to spend the rest of your life with is something very special.

We've got the news by your requests for our services, and dates are booking up fast, so be sure to book you wedding as soon as you can. I hate turning people down that have been refferred to us, but it happens every year.

I've added a build you own package to or price list, Starting at $695.00 you can add onto it just what you need. Do you need more proofs, more time, a High-Res Cd set with a release so you can print your own picture, or perhaps you want an album and don't need all the extras that are in our packages. Our packages are still the best deal, but in these times we know people also want a lower price and still get quality service.

We are still booking sessions for Mothers-to-Be show off their bulge aka: Maternity Photographs. Also we are extending our Boudoir Session Special for a limited time, Free Sitting fee and a free 8x10 to all Militay, Police or Fire service personal or their spouses.

Tis the season

Tis' the season... To heat things up.. Nothing is more fun than giving a gift of yourself. Boudoir photography is an excelent gift for your husband who might be overseas, or away on a business trip this christmas, or even just opening presents with you on Christmas Eve/Day. A Boudoir, Glamour, Pinup session is a great personal gift to give. I don't know of any husband (self included) that would not love to get a litle black book filled with pictures of his lovely wife. Even those that have been married for years might find this brings back old emotions, and years from now, looking at them is sure to remind them why they fell in love with you.

Not all Boudoir images need to be revealing.. This one is from a recent shoot, this one is sure to bring a smile to his face as he looks at it and see the woman he loves, how he would actually see her if he as at home. One over the summer that I loved was wearing a long bathrobe, tied at the waist, just revealing a hint of cleavage.

Also there must be a lot of Christmas babies coming up, I've done several maternity shoots in the last month, and have some scheduled before Christmas. This is such a special time for Mom's to be, and a special moment to capture. The shoots are done in a classy fashion and we respect your desires and limits. We've had brides the totally keep their stomach covered. We also encourage your partner to join you for some of the photographs.

Parties

This is the season for family get togethers and Christmas Parties and like anyone else we have our own families and friends. We are not available the weekend of Thanksgiving nor the weekend of Christmas. We have had a lot of request for those times, however, we place our families first. We have some dates open the week after Christmas for those family portraits.

Babies... We are getting a lot of babies... and women ready to have them.. This is great and we love it.

Family Weddings

We had another family wedding this weekend, I enjoy shooting family weddings but I will admit they are more work than weddings where we don't know anyone. We had a great time though with this one, the hall where everything took place was great, and I had plenty of help.

We got some great pictures, The little ring bearer set a new world record for not only the speed in which he got down the isle, but also in the number of trips he made during the wedding. I love kids in wedding they are always fun and add lots of life.

Below is a picture of my #1 assistant and myself, he took his job very seriously. Although he did get distracted by a pretty little girl later in the evening, she came up to me and ask if she could marry him. I'm not quite ready to let him go yet, but I can see where he would be a good catch.

Wonderful weather - Red Tail hawk

It's been nice out during the week, this hawk was captured trying to have lunch while I was on my lunch. His prey, a little gray squirel, managed to tease him badly. This guy went after him 3 times before giving up the chase around and around the tree trunk. It was funny to watch, hopefully he found lunch somewhere else. You could just see the fustration in his eyes.

We have a family wedding this coming weekend, I'm actaully shooting it, something I normally tell people not to do, but it will be fun. We are handling it like anyother wedding, with a few exceptions, We will acutally have three photographers plus my son shooting (okay, so he may just be doing grab shots, but for a 5 year old thats a lot). My only hope is that he don't show us professionals up and get better pictures.

To by couples with upcomming weddings, Don't worry you won't have a 5 year old showing up at your wedding to take pictures, unless he is on your guest list.

We have a party this Thursday night as mentioned before, a Pure Romance, Mary Kay, and Glamour/boudoir portraits. This is a first for us and we are looking forward to having a good time and getting some great pictures. If you are attending see you there, if you are interested in perhaps doing one of your own let me know.

Out Shooting while the weather held out

I was out doing an engagement shoot this week on thursday, and wondered across some duck playing on the lake up at sharon woods. I wanted to just post something besides people so here are a couple pictures of a duck that I got a couple quicksnap shotd of. The color you see in the water was from the reflection of the leaves.


I was using my Canon 100-400 IS "L" lens which is a great lens for weddings and wildlife. It's a little long for most weddings, but does great on those ringshots for the pews..


We have our first Pure Romance - Mary Kay and photo shoot coming up on the 5th of November, should be a blast, I'm told it will be a full house. Hopefully there will be more of these to come. I do ask if you are coming for pictures that you also consider the fine products offered by Mary Kay and Pure Romance. Our host is being kind enough to provide a private room for individual sessions so there is complete privacy. Glamour to Boudoir setting, Albums and Print packages available.


If you are interested in setting up a Party of you own let us know. I don't control the other vendors but I'm sure they will work with you too.

Loving the Colors

Another beautiful Weekend, I love this time of year. The fall colors are great this year. Sharon Woods in Sharonville Ohio (Northern Cincinnati area)is beautiful up by the lake, This weekend should be even better. It makes a great setting for Family Christmas portraits. Be sure to book your session early, be sure to also order your cards soon to avoid the rush that always happens right around Thanksgiving.

The last couple years it’s been a busy wedding season to boot, and this year is no different. We are getting request already for Next October, so booking quickly will ensure you get the date you desire.

We’ve added some new albums to our galleries over the last couple weeks, take a look and let us know what you think. http://starrphotos.net/galleries.htm


Okay, a little business, The Photoreflect web site we use for previewing pictures has been undergoing some upgrades and changes. As a reminder, when you submit your order directly to me, I need the image name and number, not just the order number from the web site, and I can not order for you from your favorite’s or albums. Proof prints are not selectable by you, these are to show you the images we think you are most likely to want for an album or to order for enlargements. We do a pretty good job of selecting them for you. Due to the large number that is included we can not let you select them. You are more than free to order 4x6’s as part of your package prints though, each 8x10 print is the same as four 4x6’s. In addition all your proofs are available for online viewing. This helps keep the price of our packages down, as hand selecting 200-300 proofs would add hours onto your order and I have no way of automating this process.

If you need a larger number of regular prints(proof prints excluded), we can meet and you can select them using our laptop or if you give me a list I can work from. Discounts are available for large orders.

Friendly Photographers

I heard on the radio today that the Recession is officially OVER! Hopefully everyone is in agreement on this and it really is and I’ve had the last person that wanted a full blown wedding package with Albums, Engagement sessions and a ton of prints to display call to inform me that they have decided to let their Uncle Fred (or a friend) take their pictures.

I’ve got more of those this year than I ever have, and I feel for these couples and Uncle Fred. He has a lot to live up to, first off, he might need to go buy equipment, chance are he doesn’t have a camera and lenses of the grade needed to shoot a wedding properly. Then there are lighting issues, does he have off camera flash, does he have extra lights for the formal portraits (you know those big light with the umbrellas). Well chances are some might, some might even have a second set of everything, but chances are not good that he does unless he does wedding photography. We also use a second photographer, not only backup equipment, but a backup photographer.

How well trained is Uncle Fred, We are constantly training and following advances in the field of photography. We like to take photographs, not just pictures, and for us weddings is something we love to do, not something we are just willing to do.

Lastly, while everyone is having a good time, enjoying the wedding, and dancing, poor Uncle Fred is having to be on alert for getting every memory on film (or digital media).

Another thing people don’t think of with using family and friends, is how do we get our pictures? On CD? From the grocery store mini-lab? Maybe a wholesale club because they are cheap? Well with a Professional photographer who makes his money on pleasing you, you will get Photographs that are printed at a professional lab on high quality paper. And that 39$ software for making a wedding album or scrapbook? Is that going to give you what you want your grand children looking at in 30 or 40 years?

If by chance you are forced into having someone that is not a professional take your wedding pictures have them read this first, then go online and look at some photography training tutorials. Even my blog that you can access from my site has some good tips for a beginner. There are a lot of resources out there to help someone. I still say hire someone, even the $300.00 starter photographer will be a better person to hate that your best friend or Uncle Fred when the pictures don’t turn out the way you dreamed.

Over the years if you paid $3495.00 for wedding photography needs, and you are married for 50 years, you have spent just 69.90 a year for your wedding photography, albums and prints and your Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren will have something nice to look back on.

Unpacked

I finally got my office totally unpacked at home so we should be back up to full speed. Fall is coming on soon.. Leaves are already falling in our new back yard for me to rake. This weekend was uneventful and the only pictures taken were a couple family portrait sessions. (Christmas card portrait season you know!)

I'm looking forward to our wedding this weekend. While we do have fun doing portraits our true calling is with weddings.

We are still offering a free 8x10 and portrait session to members of the armed forces, see our web site for other specials. We have also started offering training for photographers or beginners, we've got a lot of request from people wanting to know more and even for photography jobs. I'm pretty well covered for people to work we me and we don't let people shadow our weddings, even if you are willing to work for free, which I get a lot of offers.

Busy! BUSY! And more BUSY!!!!

This was a very busy weekend, it started out with a shoot Friday, a Wedding on Saturday, and moving on Sunday. The wedding Saturday was a small wedding, but it was a nice time for the guest, the DJ was great and played exactly the music the party requested, a lot of Pearl Jam. The reception was held at the Mill Race Banquet Center, a really nice place for a small reception or party, the food they served looked really good, the lighting was good for the candid’s and we did formals outside. All in all it was a pretty good day and location for a wedding.

I’d like to mention a few services we offer that people don’t always know that we offer. We offer Family, Christmas, Maternity, Glamour, Maternity, and Boudoir (pin-up) photography in addition to or Wedding Photography services. We also are available for Senior Portraits and parties.

I’m going to keep it short this week, I’ve got a lot of other stuff to get done this week. Getting ready for a couple Halloween Parties and themed portraits sessions.

Size and Effects

It was a little wet Sunday, but Saturday was a great day for a wedding. Over the weekend I heard an interesting collection of wedding songs. The one that I heard that I had to laugh at was “The Big Bopper’s Wedding” You have to be a little older to really know who I’m talking about, and remember “Chantilly Lace” but if you get the chance check out the song. Before you ask, it was not played at a wedding, but I could see it being played at one with a real sense of humor. I’ll have to blog sometime on a few other funny songs, and serious ones that we’ve heard. Being in the wedding party (sort in it at least) we hear things, and one of the father/daughter dances we heard this season the father composed the song for, which we thought was really neat.

We just took a large order for prints and got asked the old age question. How Big is an 8x10, now before you laugh, you would be surprised how may times I get asked that question. To set the record straight, one side of the print is eight (8) inches long and the other is ten (10) inches long. Another thing I get asked is about cropping, All the images we take are in format you are used to seeing that dates from the 35 mm film days, you can call it 2:3 ratio or a 4x6 size for this example. An 8x10 no matter how you will not perfectly fit into this ratio, the math would mean you would have to go to a 8x12 size print to have a full frame print. This is where cropping comes into play. You have to lose 2 inches to fit onto an 8x10 sheet. If you look at a lot of our proofs you will notice that there is extra room at the top and bottom, this is why. Same goes for 11x14’s and 5x7’s, the math just does not equal up. Every now and then a picture will just not crop to a different ratio and fit the way someone would like onto the page.

Okay now for another fun thing which we like to do is meet with you to show you your pictures before you order, now we can’t always do this, and the web is a good thing for that. But what we can do in person is actually show you how the pictures will crop, and some of the effect we can offer. If you look through our galleries you can get an idea of this. If you can’t meet up again that is fine, we will do the best we can to select the best cropping for your images. One thing people ask, do we charge extra for effects, the answer is no, however we ask that you do accept the fact that we only do those effect on 5x7 or larger images only because they don’t show up as well. Collages are only available on 8x10’s or larger and limited to 3 images on one sheet for this same reason.

I love it that people are reading my blog, I would like to take this chance to ask you to make a comment or two about what you read so I can get a little input about what you like.

The above images is an album page taken from a wedding where the young daughter or the bride was given a ring along with a set of vows pledging to be a good father and to cherish her like she was his own. A very touching scene to witness, she was so excited!!

To DVD or NOT to DVD

Had a busy weekend with a shoot Saturday evening, and spent Sunday preparing for a move, I wasn’t going to do a blog entry this week but I got a few minutes between jobs and thought why not.

During one of my relaxing moments this weekend I was going through some older photography magazines from the PPA (professional Photographers of America) they had an article on brides that get just a CD or DVD of their wedding shoots. Well the short of the article was that if you get just the DVD you never wind up getting any prints. This is one of the reasons but not the real reason that all of our packages included prints. I want my couples to have a professionally done product, it might not be all their pictures, or an album but I want them to have something to hold and to show to others. I also don’t want the only photographs they get to be printed at a grocery store or super-department store.

On our packages that include albums and a lot of proof prints we INCLUDE a DVD copy of the entire wedding. I don’t think this distracts from the prints, and I would hope it is really just used as an archive or to email the images to friends and family and not their finished prints.

I take pride in the images we make for our clients, and would hope that they see the value in professionally printed prints. The debate has been brought to me before not to offer a DVD set of images in my packages, which I feel is not the best solution for us. What I did do, which some people have had issues with is remove the ability to get the DVD on my lower end packages. Simply upgrading to the next package up will get you the ability to get a DVD set of images plus the upgrade gets you a lot more to boot, for instance 100 proofs and an engagement/boudoir session plus extra time at the wedding. Also our price for prints is very fair if you choose not to get one.

Waiting!!

It was a busy weekend with an early afternoon wedding on Saturday. A great time was had by all. We had a lovely couple and attendants to photograph, The chocolate fountain was GREAT, and the food was good. Above is a picture we captured of our lovely bride being nervous right before her walk down the isle. She hid her shakey knees well!

Last week I devoted some time on another blog for brides to be, more so than a what this blog is this new one is meant to give tips to brides/grooms to be. Although I still suggest reading through this one a little just to see what we have been up to. There might be a Photography TIP blog in the future if there is any interest in it. What spawned the wedding tip blog is a few of our brides requesting more and more information about what other couples are doing and what other vendors offer.

I am working on a Book or booklet to hand out to couples that are looking for photographers and other vendors, in order to get the most out of their pictures. It's not going to be a sales pitch for us, but more a resource for brides looking for vendors and photographers. I know not everyone that gets it will even be able to consider us for their photographer and that is fine, it will be packed with what to look for and ask your photographer, your DJ, your minister, and so on. Plus it till have a section for suggestions for different and unique twists to your wedding and reception. If you are in a hurry and can't wait I could use a few proofreaders, and test readers. It's getting enough info that it could be a book to publish someday.

I got some good response from last weeks picture on my blog for Maternity portraits and looking forward to meeting a couple mothers to be.