Graphi Studio Album Deadline for Christmas

We are up against a Christmas deadline with Graphi Studios and will be sending this same notice out to all brides and grooms. I will need your photo list by Oct 31 to allow time for design work in order to expect Albums by Christmas. Otherwise, they will be available next year.

If you can't visualize this e-mail click here
Dear Valued Customer,We would like to remind you that the Holliday Eve is fast approaching and we want to take this opportunity to communicate our deadlines to ensure your Print & Bind orders are received by Christmas:
P&B orders must be sent by November 9th, 2008
If you are going to place "full service design orders" please note that they must be sent by November 2nd 2008.Thank you for your attention to this notice.Best regards,
Graphistudio
Warning:in order for graphistudio to complete your orders by Christmas, all orders must be submitted with a completed order form, PDF's must be approved promptly, and payments must be authorized without complications.

Family Christmas Card Shoot

We had an absolutely fantastic kickoff for our Christmas Card Portrait Season. How do you ever choose which one for the card????

Wedding Packages and Prices

Just click on the image for a full size listing of our packages as well as a special discount offer.

NEW - We now accept monthly payments !!!

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!