Season of Seniors

I so love the season of senior portraits. Getting to know these young people on the brink of theirs lives as adults is awesome. Here is just small sampling of the beauty captured this year.

My favorite venues?

I sometimes don't think this is a fair question because my favorite or not favorite can be completely based on the weather conditions that favor photography and nothing to do with the locations. So keeping that in mind, here are my top 10 favorite venues.

#1 - Under any white tent. Can you say "huge diffuser"? Now I know most of you might not know what that is, but photographers will go to a great deal of trouble to get nice diffused light, and if you provide it by using a large white tent, then yeah, we get a huge diffuser and we will use it happily!!

Ok into the actual venues; with no particular order. :-)

Lakeside Event Center, Waterways Cruises in Seattle

Rays Boathouse in Seattle

Countryside Meadows in Arlington

Courtyard Hall in Bothell

Belle Chapel in Snohomish

Olson Mansion in Maple Valley

Shuksan Golf Club in Bellingham

Tibbetts Creek Manor in Issaquah

Forest Park in Everett

Edmonds Yacht Club in (obviously :-) Edmonds

Why no one else can photograph during the formal sessions?

I have a rule, or a very strong request during the photography of the formal poses. No one can shoot, except me.

Very often at weddings while I am making formal portrait photographs of groups of people, their friends or family want to stand next to me to try and get the same photo I am taking. This is not allowed for several reasons.

First, I am usually on a tight schedule as these photos are often taken just before the wedding ceremony is scheduled to begin and it is hard to stop and explain why I do not want them around with their cameras.

Some people have told me they think it is because I am afraid of losing revenue from print sales or that I am feeling jealous. It is not that. However, I did study with masters to be able to pose the groups in a certain way and achieve a brandable look for our company. It would be considered stealing to photograph someone elses work of art and that is what I consider our formals to be.

We often also use studio lights for formals, other flashes will interfere with these lights.

However the number 1 reason is I want everyone in my photo to be looking in the same direction. I illustrate this below.

Blu-Ray and High Definition

Do you have a playstation 3 or a blu-ray player??? Hope Haven Photography now offers all it's clients slideshows and videos on blu-ray. There is a $50 charge per disk (until the prices of disks come down) and a two week turnaround.

These make great anniversary gifts, Christmas gifts and even Valentines gifts.

FAQ -

Q - Will your blu-ray disks work on our computer?

A - Only if you have a blu-ray drive on your computer.

Q - Does a blu-ray disk improve the quality if the video was shot in standard definition.

A - I feel that it does, the clarity and colors all seem to improve.

Q - My wedding was in 2005 can I still get my slideshows on blu-ray?

A - Yes, weddings done in the past are archived in our studio and can be converted to blu-ray.

Q - Do you sell gift cards?

A - Yes, it is a great way to give a gift.

Special Request

I was asked this week what my all time favorite photograph was...and answering honestly, I said the name of the photographer. The person asking the question was surprised that I didn't name one of my photographs. So in answer to the question, all time favorite photographs is by John McColgan.

http://www.bucktrack.com/Smokejumper/Smoke_Jump/Elk_Bath.jpg

My all time favorite photograph of my own is: a shot of my daughter and her horse. This was taken with a Kodak DX6490; so please those of you aspiring photographers, it's not the camera that makes the shot. However this shot is important to me in that it began my career. It was this shot that other parents saw at this horse show and asked me to shoot photos of their children as well. That led into my full time career and allowed me to follow my love of photography. Today I am working so that someday my daughter will be able to live her dream of international competition. P.S. She was only 9 when this photo was taken.

Latest Wedding

I have fallen woefully behind in my blogging. All I can say in my defense is that I am not falling behind in my photo production for all our weddings. We are on time in all our deliveries and cranking right along as promised!



Here are a few of my favorite shots from the last few weddings. One is from Ray's Boathouse in Seattle, and the other is from the Lakeside in Seattle. Both made for beautiful weddings. But, nothing beats the staff at Lakeside! Enjoy!

Wedding Albums

Some of you might know that we use Graphistudio exclusively for our coffee table type Albums. What you might not know is that they are from Italy.

After sampling so many albums in the US, we turned to an international supplier to offer us the quality and cost effectiveness that we were looking for.

To see all the options that graphistudio has to offer please check out this link: http://www.graphistudio.com/usa/products/Book/index.html

With our extra's packages you get:
And 8x10 coffee table ablum, with 20 pages
Plus 2 parents albums
The Perfect Package and Lifetime Package add additional pocket book copies.

You might notice that we only increase our prices marginally to add these wonderful books, when other photographers charge a lot for albums. We feel that these albums are an important part of a wedding package. It is my hope that more and more brides and grooms will opt for the album package with the knowledge that these books will last a lifetime.

ENJOY!

PS - Book delivery is a big deal for us here, with wine and cheese and lots of fun!

Stolen Photographs

I guess we have all done it from time to time. You know... see a great photo on the web and save it to your computer for a screen saver or desktop photo. But I never thought someone would blatantly steal from me through the use of specialized software that takes a photo off a secured server and then use it in a training seminar. This is a very very stupid thing to do. Especially if you work for a large employer in the area that would be very easy to sue.

So, in response to this violation I have removed certain sections of our photo tour. My apologies to those of you interested in seeing what we were up to on our trip.

And to the person who stole the photos,... Shame on you.

Trip Update

We spent two beautiful days in the Buffalo area, soaking ourselves on the Maid of the Mists Tour and completely enjoying the breathtaking architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the horrid roads of the city of Buffalo.

Here are a few links to the photos from those days.

Niagra Falls
http://hopehaven.exposuremanager.com/g/niagra_falls_

Buffalo, New York
http://hopehaven.exposuremanager.com/g/buffalo_new_york


Following this we drove north to visit with family in the Sudbury, Ontario area. The photos from that portion can be found here.

Sudbury, Ontario
http://hopehaven.exposuremanager.com/g/sudbury_ontario

Today we drove East to Ottawa, Ontario
http://hopehaven.exposuremanager.com/g/ottawa_ontario

Tomorrow we will drive through Montreal to Quebec City. Those photos will be located at: http://hopehaven.exposuremanager.com/g/quebec_city_quebec


Enjoy and more to come!!!!!

Photo Tour Day 1

We are on a photo tour. But before I tell you all the great things that we will be up to, I want to give a big T H A N K Y O U to the family that is taking care of our home while we are gone.

The first leg of our photo tour takes us by plane to Atlanta and then onto Buffalo, NY. Tomorrow we anticipate seeing some of Frank Lloyd Wrights homes and touring the beautiful area of the Niagra River. Tomorrow evening we will see the 4th of July fireworks over the Niagra falls (8TH largest display in the world) and enjoy some buffalo wings. Did you know that buffalo wings originated in Buffalo? I didn’t either until I started researching this photo tour.

So what is a photo tour and how does it differ from a normal vacation? The goal of a photo tour is just that, to take photographs. I sell them on the internet through some stock sites or my own. I will be meeting with fellow photographers and wandering the beautiful area north of Toronto. So while we will be hitting the well known touristy places, we will also be taking time to chase down those out of the way locations that are hidden gems.

Some of you have asked how I can take a trip during the summer high demand wedding month. All I can say is planning and a dedication to make it happen. I am happy to report that all pending wedding items and portrait appointments were handled prior to my leaving.

I continue to be in awe of the people we were with at the wedding this last Saturday. I suffered from heat stroke at the wedding. This is a scary and unfortunate experience and one that I do not care to ever repeat. Losing consciousness at a weddng is never anything that I want to crow about but let me tell you about our team. There were 3 all together in the crew, including myself They never missed a beat The first episode came on during formals prior to the ceremony. I simply handed the camera off to my partner and he continued shooting. During the ceremony we still had three digital still camera angles as well as two video angles and even with my second episode taking place during the ceremony; they didn’t miss a shot. I am very proud and thankful for the crew I work with. So if you are reading this and thinking about who to book for your wedding; ask them what plans they have in place for emergencies such as this one. We had a plan in place and without much discussion we were able to implement the emergency plan and get me the relief that I so desperately needed. The icing on the cake was the way-cool wedding party, especially the bride and groom. For all the weddings that I have shot, these were the perfect people to take such a thing in stride. I wish them all the best and I am sure we will see much of each other in the future.