Engagement Season Approaches!

Warm weather is right around the corner! Be sure to schedule your engagement session early. We are booking about four weeks out for prime times and dates, so call early to get your time reserved now!


PS. Start thinking about some cool locations (although I already have a few tricks up my sleeve too)!

New York, New York!

Okay, seriously...this is the last of the travel until June! I promise! We will be judging and speaking to the Professional Photographers of New York and will be out of the office, Friday, March 27 until Tuesday, March 31st. We love being able to teach, but living out of a suitcase gets old!

Ohio 'Top Ten' Photographers of the Year

The Professional Photographers of Ohio’s annual convention was a few weeks and our Regional Competition was earlier last month. We entered three wedding albums from the 2008 wedding season and were honored to win two Fuji Masterpiece Awards and Kodak Gallery Award for Best Wedding Album in the State and the Region. We both also placed in the Ohio Photographer Top Ten. Here are the winning albums. Enjoy!

Brittany & Josh

Nikki & Ben

Mark photographed Nikki's mom's wedding too (over twenty+ years ago)...pretty cool, huh?

Amber & Chad...you'll be able to see more of their wedding in this Fall's Issue of The Knot Ohio.

Handmade Eye Candy!

I love Etsy...a great web site for items made by hand! I have bought items for Charlie from Etsy, but just recently looked at some of their bridal items. Wow! They have some really unique items and the prices are great. Check them out for some great wedding accessories from cake toppers to veils. All the items above are available on Etsy...love the shoulder wrap!

Hint: Can one of my brides this year wear a blusher veil this year...please!? With the awesome prices on Etsy you could by the blusher for photos and then wear a regular veil if you wanted for the ceremony. A blusher veil would also be great for a Trash the Dress Session...and for under 30 bucks...go for it!

Va Va Voom CCN!

The lovely Pam at Country Club of the North asked us to do some publicity shots of CCN with lighting by Party Pleasers , rentals from Finch, and flowers from Oberers...talk about a wedding "Dream Team." The lighting looked AWESOME! I can't believe I haven't seen the arch at CCN lit up before...it was meant for it! Love the dance floor set up with the white inside and the black border all the way around. (For my brides, an all white dance floor looks way awesome too. All you have to do is call a rental place that has two black and white checkered dance floors and have them combine the white pieces from both.)

PS. If you are still debating on a ceremony/reception facility, check out CCN. It is truly one of our favorite spots and the service and decor is great! They are one of the few (if only) reception venues that gives you access to the facility all day and not just for a few hours, which is just one of the many reasons why we love CCN!

Thanks for thinking of us Pam!

POTY Awards!

No...its not what you think! The POTY Award really is the Photographer of the Year to be correct! (Mark just calls them that for fun.)

You can see us in this month’s issue of Professional Photographer featuring their Diamond Level Photographers of the Year. To become a Diamond, you have to submit four entries into the International Print Competition. Each work has to merit by receiving an 80 or higher score. Once an entry has merited, it is then judged for the Loan Collection.

The Loan Collection is considered to be the ‘best of the best.’ All four competition entries have to merit and all four then have to ‘Loan’ to earn the photographer “Diamond Level Photographer of the Year.”

This is our fifth time earning the ‘Diamond Award,’ and we are very honored to have our work amongst some of best photographic works in the world. It certainly provides a tremendous incentive to keep bettering ourselves and our work continually.

Published!

The 2008 Loan Collection has been published, and we are thrilled to be a part of such an impressive body of work. We’ve been published in the Loan Collection numerous times and it is still a thrill every time.

You can purchase a copy of the Loan Collection from Marathon Press for $69.99. Certainly a great resource of beautiful and inspiration photographic works.

Holly & Mike's Save-the-Date

Front
Back

We've had an awesome time getting to know Holly and Mike and truly can't wait for the wedding! Their color scheme is beige and champagne with a hint of gold, which we tied into the color scheme of their save-the-date cards. We had them printed on pearlized paper for an extra 'glimmer' in keeping with their theme. I think they turned out great!

Congrats to such a wonderful couple!

PS. A little planning tip: I like putting a full image on the back of a 5x7 card because the recipient can then frame the card in a 5x7 frame. This gives guests a better keepsake!

Bahamas International School Highlights

We just returned from BISPP in Nassau. We had a great class of about fifteen students from the states and the islands. We taught four 8 hour days of in class instruction mixed with photographic assignments around the island.

Mark and I have been to Nassau before with another photography group a few years back and knew about some great places to photograph. My absolute favorite is Compass Point, which is an exclusive 'boutique' hotel. Right on the ocean, guests get to enjoy private bungalows, private beaches and fine dining. The week before Alan Jackson stayed there and this week while we were there, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were shooting a calendar and DVD. It was fun watching all the commercial photographers. Between our class and them, no one was on the beach without a camera!

We also then went to Graycliff. The oldest resort on the island that looks like it could be on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." In fact, we had just missed Prince Edward who had been visiting Graycliff earlier.

We were also blessed to have Stephanie, a former Miss New Hampshire, model for us and the class. We found an abandoned house right on the beach to use as a backdrop. Sounds funny to say, but I wish I had this abandoned house as a studio. The lighting and architecture was perfect...our model was too! All in all a great week and a great class...but we are very glad to be home!