Dancer Days

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June 12th-16th (11am-6pm) only!

Bring your dancer into our studio for this special mini-session. On a high-key white background we will document your dancer at this stage in their life. Once your session is complete you’ll view your dancers photos and have a chance to purchase both traditional prints and artistic options like collages and paintings. This special portrait session is meant to go beyond your traditional dancer portrait and make your child feel like a star. There is no session fee for this special event.

To book your child’s session please e-mail us at photography35@aol.com or call the studio at 352-371-9735.

For pricing click here

 

Sports Mini Session

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Sports Mini Session May 17th-19th 11am-6pm

This special mini session will go way beyond your typical sports portrait session.  We start by capturing your child in their favorite sports gear in our studio.  After their session is complete, you’ll be able to purchase traditional portraits at mini-session pricing or chose your 3 favorite images and have us create a Photo Fuzion!  These special composite images are available at 30% off our standard prices for this event only.

For pricing info on our Photo Fuzion contact Angel at photography35@aol.com

To schedule your session contact Angel by phone at 352-371-9735 or at the e-mail address above.

Photo Tip: Better Camera Phone Pictures

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Everyone has a camera on them these days – your cell phone. More and more people are going away from carrying traditional dslr or point and shoots in favor of their camera phone for pictures.  Heck, even I do it sometime.  It’s quicker to post to Facebook from my iPhone than it is to download and post from my point and shoot.

Here is the problem, in many cases the pictures & the quality are awful.  Camera phones give you very little control over apature, shutter speed and ISO which are the key components that make up a good picture. Many pictures posted from peoples camera phones are so blurry (camera shake from a slow shutter speed) or so dark you might as well have saved the time to post the pictures.
But don’t fret – I have a few tips for you camera phone enthusiasts that will ensure better pictures.  And you don’t need to be a professional to be able to do this. :)

Tip #1 – Shoot in bright sunny locations.  Part of the problem with your camera phone is it is picking all your setting for you (basically auto on your camera).  In bright sunlight the camera phone will pick a fast enough shutter speed for you to hand hold and get a good sharp picture.

 
Tip #2 – Don’t hold the camera out at arms length.  You are less steady and there is more of a chance for camera blur from your hand not being steady. Keep your elbows in close to your body and hold the camera close to you.

Tip #3 – Steady the camera – if you can, steady your camera up against a wall, rest it on the back of a chair, use something that is solid and not moving.  This should eliminate camera blur.

Tip #4 – Use an app.  There are a million apps out there for camera phones.  Dan Burkholder, a very good fine art photographer and author on photography.  He works exclusively with an iphone for his camera these days and makes super huge prints.  They are amazing.  But he is using a bunch of apps to get these amazing pictures.

Tip #5 – Practice!  Get to know your camera phone and what it can do.  Especially the apps.  Some apps like Hipstamatic have some pretty cool tools, but if you don’t know what they do, you’ll never get good pictures from them.

Tip #6 – Have fun!  You don’t have to be Ansel Adams to get fun memories! (If you don’t know who Ansel Adams is – google him!)

Remember, this is not your point and shoot or your DSLR, but it can be a very fun creative tool just like your camera.  If you know its limitations you can capture some amazing images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{All of the above images were created using an iphone.}

Making a Difference Part 2

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Ronnie, her husband and her son started tearing everything out from inside the house.  It was all ruined.  Her husband and son decided to take the washer and dryer to a salvage place to see if they could sell it for parts.  It wouldn’t be much, but at this point something was better than nothing.  The neighbors across the street heard what they were doing and asked if they would take their washer and dryer too.  Heading to the salvage place, they were pulled over by a cop who asks what they are doing.  They explain the situation and the cop replies “yeah right, you must have a lot of laundry to do with 2 washers and dryers.” Ronnie’s husband said, “hear I’ll call my neighbors, you can talk to them.”  The cops response, “I ain’t got time for that, now turn around and take them back to where you found them.”  And proceeds to write them a ticket.  After following them back to there house on Weber Avenue, the neighbor comes out and yells at the cop who says, “there is nothing I can do, the ticket is already written.”  A few weeks later they’d go to court and the judge would drop the case.

Then a couple days after that at dusk, Ronnie’s family got a storage mall for what little they could salvage.  Once they started to unload they had a feeling the really small one just wasn’t enough space. So her daughter and son-in law went to go look at a bigger unit they had available.  By this time it was dark.  The storage mall’s walkway was not lit and the girl from the storage mall failed to warn them that there was a step up.  Her son-in-law fell and hurt his leg, needing to be taken to the hospital by ambulance.  The storage mall told Ronnie and her family – get out, you are evicted.  So they packed up their stuff back up and left.  Ronnie’s son-in-law is still in physical therapy.

Ronnie’s saga has not ended.  It has been over 3 months.  They had $24K in flood insurance, because that was all they could afford. Since they had gotten FEMA assistance of $5,000 back in 92′ to repair, they are not eligible for money from FEMA.  They could get rent assistance, but they have no furniture, no cloths, nothing – they wouldn’t know where to start.  So they’ll stay at their daughter’s for the time being.

There have been benefits by Bon Jovi, Bruce, etc…but they haven’t seen the money.  The federal goverment… well enough said.  They aren’t looking for a hand out, just some help.  They keep talking about a federal buy out of the homes since almost of all Weber Ave. homes were destroyed.  But everyone here is hearing 18-36 months before that will happen.  And if you do complete any work on your house to secure it or try to save it, the amount of money you invest will be subtracted from your buy out amount.

For now, the 4 of them live with their daughter in her 3 bedroom/2 bath home about 30 minutes from Sayreville.  Some morning, Ronnie wakes up, stares out the window and cries.  This just can’t be happening.  We brought a little joy and a lot of tears to her as we handed the gift cards to Bed, Bath and Beyond, Kohl’s and Target.  It warms her heart to meet so many generous people who don’t even know them, but are willing to help.

So for everyone who donated, Ronnie says a huge “Thank You” and wishes she could do something for each and ever one of you.

{The last 2 pictures are of a few of their neighbors homes on Weber Avenue}

Making a Difference Part 1

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Ronnie and her husband have lived at 38 Weber Avenue in Sayreville for 42 years.  They have three grown children they raised in this house, their 2 boys have recently been living at home.  Their beautiful ranch style home has been hit by flood waters before, but never like this.

“After the 1992 flood and we fixed the damage on our home, my husband said we should sell.  Other homes in the area were selling for $400,000.  We could buy something small and have a nest egg for retirement.”  But Ronnie had lived there so long.  She has all her friends and family around her, she couldn’t leave.

The night Sandy hit, Ronnie had gone to her daughter’s home about 30 minutes away – but her son and husband decided to stay behind with a friends row boat in the yard incase it got to bad and they needed to get out.  In the dark of night, tidal surge came from the river.    The water inside their home came rushing in.  In a matter of 9 minutes, her husband and her son were in over 4 feet of water and knew they had to get out.  So they headed to the row boat and spent over an hour rowing against the current and wind to get to higher ground.  They got past their elderly neighbors home, she was crouched on her counter top in her kitchen screaming for help.  Then they heard her fall in the water.  They knew they couldn’t get to her, the current was to strong, they needed to get to higher ground where they could call for help.

The next day, Ronnie’s family all headed back to survey the damage.  It was worse than they imagined, it was gone – all gone.  The water in front of their ranch style home at the height of the storm was 11 feet deep.  The water inside there home rose to 4 feet.  Mud, water debris was every where.  And the worse part, the foundation had collapsed in the back corner of the house. All there belongings gone, no furniture, no cloths and they used lots of bleach to salavage the little they could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You would think that it couldn’t get any worse, well  for Ronnie’s family it did.  Read Part 2 next week….

 

Superbowl Commercials – Bang or Bust?

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For the most part, I think everyone agrees, the Superbowl commercials were a bust this year.  Really it is sad, that advertiser think so little of the average consumer that they put out commercial with no substance.
I miss the days of the Budweiser Lizards, debating their next adventure.  Or the frogs in front of the bar on their lilly pads saying “Bud-Weis-Er.  Last year Coke had an awesome series of commercial (okay, I am a little bias, I love Coke) with the polar bears watching the game, one in blue cheering for the Giants one in red cheering for the Patriots.  Clever and entertaining.

Now I will admit, I do not like stupid for stupid sake.  The E-trade commercials are not my thing, but I will give them credit that it is a clever idea.

Now on the the few that were Super-Good.  Most of the Budweiser commercials were lame, but the one with the trainer and his horse was really touching.  The Jeep troop commercial tugged at the heart strings as well.

But by far my favorite one was Dodge Ram “So God Made A Farmer Commercial” (in case you missed it http://youtu.be/nHjV-FPMm_I).
 It is created from still images from 10 different photographers.  The commercial is based on ABC announcer Paul Harvey Speech during the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention telling the story of farm life in America.  Even thought the speech was given in 1978, ever word of it is still relevant today.

And no great commercial goes without some controversy.  Some people are complaining that the ad copied a youtube video put out by Farmers.com in 2011 (http://youtu.be/QuzhwkaNC40).   If watch both, you’ll see that Dodge commercials takes the idea to the next level using amazing still images by 10 noted photographers including National Geographic icon William Albert Allard and renowned documentary photographer Kurt Markus to document American farm life, yielding a beautiful and comprehensive catalog of farming images.  These images are used to convey a feeling of hard work, struggle and conviction, something the 2011 farmers.com video is lacking.

All and all, this years Superbowl ads were a bust.  The best I can hope for is never having to see that Go-Daddy commercial again.

The Price of Wedding Photography

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Since I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel, I got this content from (http://tiffinbox.org/the-new-wedding-guest/).  A Connecticut based wedding photographer, Richard Esposito did a very good, but extremely long, article about today’s wedding guest.  I agree with and love everything he said, but I feel the second half of his article was more important, the price of wedding photography?  Suzie Q down the street, who is a professional too (she has a website, she must be professional), has the same camera as you and charges $500 and I’ll have the images in a week or two.  Website and camera do not make someone a professional.  Imagine if that was true for a doctor or lawyer.  You can find answers to almost an question on the internet, you don’t need a degree. Just put up a website, meet your client at Starbucks and trust all your legal woes to them.  NOT!  You’d be in jail or on the losing end of a lawsuit.

Please take a few minutes and read the second half of Richard’s blog post.  It is extremely interesting and may make you think next time you ask a real professional to do it for free…

So how do we convince an engaged couple to spend $3-10k with a professional? According to Market Watch, wedding photographers are the most overpaid jobs in America, saying “Total work for each wedding is generally a sit-down consultation combined with a single day spent following the happy couple. While equipment costs and film development must be covered, thanks to digital technology such costs have been heavily reduced. Unfortunately for the consumer, photographers do not offer any reduction in price for missed photos, amateur shots, or other mediocre work product.”

So let’s talk briefly about what it costs to be a professional wedding photographer. My second photographer here was looking to buy his own equipment. Just to start off with the basics he was up to $8,000. Imagine the cost of what I carry. Oh, and I have to insure all of it. Then there’s vehicle expenses, commissions for running credit cards, equipment repairs, I spent $1200 on postage this year (postage!!!), continuing education, computer and software upgrades, hard drives, hard drives, hard drives, it costs to make albums, some of us pay staff… I really could go on. Oh wait! providing for my family? Putting food on our table and the discount outlet clothes on our back? A professional photographer doesn’t have a “real job” during the week so we have to pay our own health care for our family, save for retirement, and hope for a weeks vacation that comes out of our pocket. I did 25 weddings this year and my expenses were double the average 2 person family income in Connecticut (according to census.gov).

For the other side of the story, the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers did an awesome survey of photographers recently. I know when I started my business, everyone I knew thought I just worked weekends and did nothing during the week. We have a great lifestyle of taking photos, traveling, and partying.

The Perception Of A Working Photographer

Here’s reality: 70 hours a week through our 6-7 month season and 40 hours a week off season. There is no mention in here regarding time with family, charity work, and taking any time off. Only 12.2% off our time during business hours is spent taking pictures.

The Reality Of a Working Photographer

If I didn’t have the expenses that I have, or spend this much time getting everything done, I’d be out of business. I’d have to get a full time job and just do photography on the weekend. I’d be your Uncle Bob.

Again, huge shout out to Richard for a really well done article.  Digital is NOT free.  It actually cost my almost 2x as much as film.  Why – new cameras every few years, new software or software upgrades every year, tons and tons of time behind a computer tweeking, editting and prepping images for the lab.  Your right, I am not buying film or paying for processing – that was cheap compared to today.

Birthday Highlight

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This portrait session is designed specifically for children having a birthday this month (up to age 12). This is a great way to share your child’s birthday photos with friends and family. There is no session fee and prices are as much as 50% studio pricing.

For more detail please call 352-371-9735 or e-mail photography35@aol.com.

 

We’ve got your back!

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With the holiday’s quickly approaching a lot of photographs will be taken by you, Uncle Bob & your kids.  All great memories of time together with your family.

Holiday memories are some of the very best for me.  When I was a kid, Santa was a tricky guy.  Gifts would be hidden in the weirdest of places, so that after everything was open and I was happy, but still missing the one gift I really wanted -then,  there would magicly appear a present from Santa in another part of the house.  Hence the drum set below…

But many of today memories keep getting lost.  People are no longer printing images.  And in today’s crazy busy world, people put stuff off until later and sometime later is too late.  We’ve heard countless stories lately of a hard drive crashing and the pictures from this year’s vacation – GONE.  Or an external hard drive that has the families last three years of pictures on it has stopped working.  The person this is happening to is crying, begging for someone to find a way to get their memories back.

This is the main reason I preach to everyone, please print your images.  A print is there.  You can see it, feel it, smell it (not really sure why you’d smell it, but I needed 3).  Can it get destroyed,? The answer is yes.  Anything can be destroyed.  But there is a much higher percentage of it lasting longer, than a digital file on your computer that you can not hold in your hand.  Or that CD/DVD that your grandkids will find in the attic one day and ask, “what is this?”.

Many people today are doing their own family photos, or having Suzie Q photographer from across the street take them because the price is right and she’ll give me the digital files and I can print whatever I want.  Go up two paragraphs and read the last 2 sentences.  Suzie Q photographer is actually doing you a dis-service.  She is not storing your precious memories, that’s not making her money.  She is doing what we call “shoot and burn”.  Once the burn part happens, she trashes your precious images.

This is where we’ve got your back!  Yes, we are more expensive than free or all the images on a disk for $100.  And we do not give you a file to make your own prints, we get them printed for you.  Why – because as we discussed earlier – your busy and in many cases may never get around to print those images.  It’s called customer service and quality control.

When you use Suzie Q, you’ll most likely use an online company to make your own prints.  And when your prints come back in the mail from that online company and look awful, you’ll have to get on the phone or computer for 30 minutes or more to straighten out whatever happened.  When you use us – you just swing by and pick-up your beautiful finished prints, it takes less than 5 minutes.  And remember how precious time is these days.

Here is the other thing about using a real studio and not just someone who puts “photography” at the end of their name.  Part of the service is backing your images up.  Storing them for you.  So if something were to happen, like a hurricane, flood or fire and the prints were destroyed, you just call us and we reprint the images for you.  We are constantly keeping up with technology and spinning all of our hard drives.  So when a technology like “zip disks” disappears, we have already moved the information to the newest type of storage device.

And we are not against giving you digital files, we just aren’t giving you the files to print, printing is what we do.  All of our clients who do custom or mini session always get share files (digital files for your social media & your phone) so that you can show off your kids or your family photos to friends and family when you are out at dinner or an event.  But, we also give you prints.  The thing you can see, feel and smell.

 

Spring Portraits in the Park

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Join us at the park for our Portraits in the Park Mini Session
April 27th & 28th from 10am-7pm.

For two days only we will offer outdoor mini-sessions with special pricing. These are quick sessions designed to help you create a perfect outdoor portrait.  Sessions are approximately 20 minutes – perfect for the antsy husband or kids. You will have approximately 10-15 images to choose from to find the perfect portrait.  
Print prices for our mini-sessions are as much as 40% off standard print prices!
Session fees for this fun event are only $25.
Questions??? Contact the studio at photography35@aol.com or by calling 352-371-9735.
You can also schedule your session online by filling out the following & paying your session fee through our secure PayPal account: 

Date & Time Preference
Best Phone Number

Lesson Learned

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Many of you may know that I was recently in a car accident and had my cell phone stolen all in the same day!  Ugghhh.  The reason I was most upset, I had lost all my pictures on my cell phone because I am super bad at plugging it into the computer and backing it up (last time I did that was June 2012).  Most of the pictures on their were quick grabs at events or cute things Jeter did, but they were my pictures and my memories that I no longer had.  The phone, though extremely expensive to replace, can be replaced.  My sweet picture of Jeter being silly can’t.

The good news, I got my phone back. (Someone tried to activate it and since it was reported stolen Verizon took it from them)  The bad news, they wiped it clean. No apps, no pictures, no notes.

I’d like to give you a few tips, so that you’ll never have to suffer the same loss and disappointment I did.

Tip #1: Get your images off your phone.  Whether it is plugging your iphone/smart phone in once a month and letting it sync or using an app like Photo Transfer App (it’s $2.99) take your images off your smart phone and put them on your computer. I was lucky enough to use this app to recently download all my snaps from my 3 week vacation since I am printing 4×6 for a photo album. (If you can’t remember what that is, feel free to call me).

Tip #2: Make backing up your phone a something you do atleast monthly.  Just like you remember to pay your mortgage or rent, make backing up your phone and all its information a priority on that list.  There are bunch of phone numbers and info I lost that can never be recovered.

Tip #3: If your phone get stolen, immediately report it stolen to both your carrier and the police.  Re-Tech said I’d never get it back and even gave me a refund policy if I did.  I was super happy to prove them wrong.  It still cost me over a $100 to “rent”(I bought a used phone and since I could return it, I consider an inconvenient rental) an iPhone until mine was recovered, but I was lucky.

Tip #4: This is a no brainer – keep track of your phone.  The girl who tried to activate mine said she bought it somewhere and had no idea it was stolen.  Since this happened I’ve heard lots of stories about other people not as lucky as me.  Technology today is great, but everyone wants it and some people will get it anyway they can – including stealing it.  If you can put a tracking app on your phone, great – but if they turn the wi-fi off, you’ll never find it. (Female customer at Re-Tech yesterday was shocked at that fact!)

I hope you never have to go threw this hassle, but if you do, I hope these tips make losing that piece of technology not so painful.

Melody Story

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Melody is an amazing woman.  Her story is not unlike stories you’ll her from many other women in bad relationships.  What makes her special is that she never gave up.

She found herself in a bad relationship, with a newborn daughter and unable to go back to work just yet.   Melody made the very brave decision that her and her child were the most important thing and that no matter what -  she was going to get out of the situation she was in.  So with only the cloths on her back, Melody & her daughter left to find a new direction in life.  One of CHS’s case workers helped Melody find a safe place for her and her daughter stay and gave her a voucher for the thrift shop to get new cloths and a new beginning.

The thrift shop gave Melody a chance to start over.  She was able to get necessary things for her daughter like a crib, cloths and toys.  She was able to get things she needs as well.  And today, Melody is a big supporter of the thrift shop.  She shops there as well as donates her gently used items to help the next person who might be in a similar situation.

This picture was taken a few weeks ago.  Melody daughter is almost 2.  She has a good job, is attending classes at Santa Fe and has created a loving home for her and her daughter.  Way to go Melody!
You can help other people in Melody situation just by simply donating to the thrift shop.  The thrift store is always looking for furniture, house hold goods, and gently used cloths that they can resell to help fund programs or donate to people in need. Last year the thrift shop was able to help 289 families to get back on their feet.  So next time you remodel, buy new furniture or are down sizing – please donate to your items to CHS’s thrift store. You never know who you’ll be helping.

Juno’s Journey

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Every day across America hundreds of animals are euthanized.  Juno could have been one of those statistics if not for the loving people who care about animals at the Alachua County Humane Society.

 Juno’s Journey starts a few weeks prior to this photo, when she was captured by animal control wandering the streets of Gainesville, FL.  No collar, no leash, just pregnant and alone looking like she had not eaten in a while.

 

 

Juno sweet temperament was quickly recognized.  After hearing about her from some of the staff at animal control, Juno was taken off the euthanasia list and picked by a staff member from the Humane Society.  She was immediately taken to a vet so that the health of the puppies she was caring could be determined.  Juno was in good health and due to have 8-9 puppies any day now.

She was so little to be caring that many puppies.

 

 

Juno would spend the next 6 weeks as a foster.  Fosters are animals that need special attention and are not ready for adoption just yet.  So people like you or I volunteer to bring these special animals into our home and take care of them for a while until they are ready for adoption.

Because Juno was pregnant she needed to be fostered by a staff member in case there were any complications during birth.

A week after arriving at the Humane Society, Juno gave birth.  She had 9 healthy puppies.
Juno was a great mom.  She was very attentive to her little ones but still jumped up and wagged her tail when you walked in the room.  She loved people.  Even if all she got was a pat on the head, she was content.

 

The puppies were so darn cute!  In just a few short weeks they went from having their eyes closed and feeling there way around to being very mobile, very alert and very talkative!

Juno’s pups went up for adoption in April.  Because they were puppies they were adopted quickly. Below is the picture of all 9 of them getting into trouble in the studio. 

I have owned a few dogs in my life.  After getting Jeter at age 1, I am actually happy to say, “I’d rather adopt a dog than a puppy.”  Jeter has his issues, but he came to us a house broken and a non-chewing on everything dog.  And I can say it was great.  So if you are considering adding an addition to your family, look to the Humane Society first!  And never rule out the dogs outside the puppy room, you may be surprised what you find.