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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Playing Around a Little

As part of my on going training I'm always learning something new, This picture was from a couple weeks ago and was just handy.. The effect is called "stepping out of the frame" I'm a little rough with it yet so be kind.

I missed the car show this weekend, but that happens. It's been really busy lately and Just needed the day to relax.. Our son got up at 8am and climbed in bed with us and we slept until 10, got up and I made breakfest and the three of us just enjoyed the day.

Got an interesting question today about weddings, that does come up from time to time. What if we have to move the date? Generally we will work with you to move your date, provided we have your alternate date open. If you let us know as soon as you can then chances are good we can work with you. We have a backup team for weddings in case something happens and we can use them if all else fails. Also Sunday's are better for alternate dates. If you think it might change, for a small fee we can hold the second date for a while.

I'm going to start a section for Tips for Brides where I can share some questions I've got over the years. How to select a Photographer, or DJ or floist, etc.. one of the best ways I can say on any of these is look at the work of the PERSON you are hiring, not just the company. When you hire us, you get GEORGE STARR, not a photographer that just happens to be around and able to go to your wedding. You see my work here, some of my Second Photographer's work might appear in the albums, but in general you see the work I produce personally. If you see flower designs ask the florist, did YOU do these, or of a DJ ask him, are you the one that is going to be at my reception.

Now I will say there is the posibilty for a substitute lead photographer if something would happen with me. Generally it would be my wife or another well qualified Lead photographer. This has NEVER happened, but I am human so I won't say that it never will.

Next Time around I'll post up a little something on thing to remember.. You will be suprised what people forget.

Okay this Blog is titled Playing around a little, Here we see a Groomsmen doing what a Groomsmen does best on the day of a wedding.. KILL time..

On a kinda sad note: With rising prices everything goes up, and the same is with Wedding photography. Our price have been and always will be very reasonable, but there had been a slight increase in our package rates. Nothing earth shaking, and some of the packages have been updated to add more features. We have added Press Printed books, and guest books, even Canvas Gallery Wraps into some of our packages. We have also added Social Media Sized files of some of your favorite images so you can share your images on all the Social Networks out there like Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace. If we quoted you already don't worry we will honor our quoted prices for a few months. The new prices are on our web site http://starrphotos.net/weddingrates.htm It not all bad... some nice things have been added.

Stormy Weekend

It was a stormy weekend but we stayed dry *MOSTLY* Our wedding on Saturday went well, when we were doing pictures outside we got ran back in when it started pouring rain. We got all but the wedding party formals whre they the bridemaids and Groomsmen were together outdoors, and we finished those up in front of the alter of the church. They all turned out great and are already posted for the couple and their guests.

It was really a busy month in May and we kept up pretty good. All the wedding photographs were up for display withing 3-4 days of the weddings which is well before our contract goal or 2 weeks!! We had a lot of great weddings last month and like always people are having a rough time narrowing down the pictures they want.

It's nice to finally have some warm weather for a change too...

Photo Tip: When you take a picture, any picture, divide the frame up into 4 sections and check the four sections to see what is in them, v/s your main subject. Look for things like Trash cans, bottles, trash, outlets, or other unsightly things. This simple step will become second nature after you've taken 20 or 30 thousand pictures... (okay, you might catch on before that)

Gearing up and Adding Boudoir

Gearing up for a busy season, April and May are always busy months with weddings and we are looking forward to shooting in a lot of nice Churches and locations in the upcoming weeks. This weekend we are going down around Georgetown Kentucky, for a much anticipated wedding. Two weddings are scheduled for the next weeknd and several in May.

We’ve started offering Boudoir Sessions a while back but really never promoted them before now. If you read our web site you will find a link for http://starrphotos.net/boudoirphotography.htm On the page it list some questions you might have about Boudoir Photography, what to expect, costs, and a limited time offer for a select few people that want to Model for some samples that will appear on the website. We do have samples available upon request from previous models that requested not to be placed on a web site that is open to the public but are fine with them upon request. We do have releases for the pictures we display and your pictures will never be shown to anyone that you don’t show them to.

Boudoir photography makes a great gift for that special person. Over the years these images have become a popular to be given as a wedding or anniversary gift. Our limits are your limits as long as it is legal and not pornographic. We are open to Individuals, Girls Night Parties, and Couples. If there is something special you need we can probably help you. We do Mini-BLACK book albums and custom prints.