I love weddings in general, all the friends and family gathered to celebrate the fact that in this great big wide world two people found each other. It’s all the more special when you’re celebrating the fact that it’s a dear friend who found someone. Deborah, words fail me when I try to explain how happy I am for you and and Steve. All I can say is
Live
Love
Be Happy
This weekend is a dear friends wedding and last night my wife and I attended their rehearsal dinner, less the rehearsal. It was great meeting all the other people they’ve brought into town of course the hilight was hanging out with Deborah again. While we didn’t turn it into much of a photo event I did have some great shot opportunities when the maid of honor and father of the bride started working the pool tables.
It’s Friday morning and as I get ready to go into the studio today I’m thinking back over a few notes I’ve received lately from last years senior session clients. All those great kids who where at the brink of adulthood are graduating over the next few weeks and now thinking about the next stage of their lives.
I love the fact that as a photographer I got a chance to meet these wonderful people and capture a moment that is a true turning point in their lives. It’s really what this job is all about.
Of course I’m also now looking at what I’m going to be offering for senior photos this year, while it’s not a big part of my business – I usually do less than a dozen select senior shoots a season – I do enjoy it.
But, before I talk about what I’m doing this year for senior photos I want to plug what some other photographers are doing and what in my opinion is the best, the most original, and the out and out coolest “Senior Photo” special going on in Denver this season.
Billed as “The Ultimate Senior PHotography Experience” I don’t think they are stretching the truth at all on this.
20 Seniors. 5 Photography Studios. 5 different locations all over town. Party Limo to transport everyone from spot to spot.
This truly will be an experience and not just a photo session. I’m urging everyone interested in a unique and one of a kind senior session to go check this out. If you decide this really isn’t you – come on back and I’ll take care of you.
Now I know at this point a lot of you out there are scratching your heads, “Before I even talk about my own senior sessions I’m pushing people towards my competitions senior sessions”. Doesn’t seem to make a lot of business sense does it. Well it might not make much business sense but to me it makes a lot of people sense.
See this is the coolest idea I’ve seen in a long time. Treated like a rock star for a day and getting photos from 5 different studios. If I where 17 this is the session I’d want to do. If I had kids (or even nieces and nephews) that where seniors this year, sure I’d go out with them and do some cool stuff for them, and then I’d sign them up for this tour. This is just such a fun idea, it’s going to be a great experience for these kids to carry with them, and that’s the big thing. It’s the experience. I can do the photos, I can’t match that experience through my sessions.
Also for me senior photos isn’t a big part of my business. I do only a handful of select sessions a season. I don’t make a lot of these sessions, but I have fun. If I do half the sessions this year from last because the others booked the tour, at the end of the year it’s not going to affect my bottom line that much.
So go check out the Senior Rock Star Tour.
Now if they’re booked up, it doesn’t quite fit your budget, you don’t think it’s your style and you’d rather have something more suited to you, here’s what I can do for you.
I’m doing senior photos this year as part of my “Anytime Sessions”. There’s two different levels. The short session at $200 and the extended session at $500. Both include a memory book, softcover for the short, hardcover for the long, and both include print pricing at our special lab print prices. ($5 5×7, $10 8×10, $4 4/wallets). This season we’re having you pay more for the session, but then let you get all the prints you want at a super deal on the prints.
As an added bonus for the first 6 sessions booked this year I’ll include a $50 print credit with the extended session. With that the $500 session fee gets you everything you’ll need, shoot, book, and prints.
Our new online host also allows digital downloads of small images perfect for use on your phone (they look awesome on my iPhone), facebook, myspace, etc. For just .99 an image you can download your favorites.
Of course before you do that add us as a friend on Facebook and we’ll post a few of my favorites from the shoot and tag you with them, so you can then use those on facebook free of charge.
So if you’re interested use the contact form above and we’ll get back in touch.
I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite senior photos from 2008.
I’ve finally been able to update the gallery site over at www.mhp-studio.com to include some recent weddings and restructure it a bit.
First of all I’ve broken the “Anytime Sessions” galleries out from the weddings. Then the wedding galleries received a new breakdown:
The People – Posed shots of couple, family, and bridal party.
The Details – The small touches that made your wedding so special and unique.
The Moments – Those fleeting moments and memories – what it’s really all about.
The Art – The fine art images of which I typically create a few of on each wedding.
The Story – one wedding, the full day in about 118 pictures.
The clients section was moved under the portfolio section since this is in fact mostly just a collection of specific wedding slideshows and albums.
I had an interesting break today from the normal weddings and such that I normally do.
First up was Marina, a wonderful woman I met a few years ago while working on a pageant for a local russian newspaper. Seems Marina and her mother now work on russian fashion clothes for collector dolls. So the morning was spent with Marina dressing up her dolls for me to shoot.
Actually it was fun to dig out the macro lens I usually just save for wedding rings shots and get it some good use on something else.
Marina hasn’t finished her website yet so I’ll post again and give her a link later on.
After Marina I had just enough time to swap lenses before Jessica of J-Chan’s Designs . I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jessica for a few years now, photographing her once of a kind fashion designs both for her website, catalog and various magazine articles.
Today though would be a little different, we’d be working on some new shots of Jessica herself as well as my old buddy Moose, Jessica’s dog.
Since Moose needed less time in front of the mirror we went ahead and got a few shots of him first.
Of course it didn’t take long for Moose to loose interest so we’ll get some outdoor shots of him at a future session.
Then some work with Jessica. Usually she’s on the back side of a shoot, helping the model, pinning clothes or doing makeup so it was fun to get her on the far side of the lens for a change.
