Well everybody; it’s that time of year again when everybody starts looking backing over the previous year, working out what mistakes they made and what they can do to make things work better in the new year.
My wife and I have spent a lot of time looking at our business over the last couple of months trying to work out how to lift our business off its feet and get it running properly rather than the few drips and drabs we have managed to get over the past year. From this we have drawn up a list of things we want to achieve this year, and ways we are going to achieve them. So here we go... I am sure you will like this and I hope one of the below will affect you in some way:

Weddings

We have always wanted our business to be based around wedding photography and that is the thing we are finding most difficult to attract clients for. We also realise we only have one complete wedding in our portfolio to date which we need to do something about before we can think about getting many enquiries for work in that area. As such, we want to offer two completely free weddings (shoot to CD) for two couples in the Swindon area. The weddings must be off-peak (ie not Friday or Saturday) and we will give you the top of the line package excluding any printed products. This will be both photographers with coverage as follows:

• Engagement Session

One to two hour session on location with bride and groom some days or weeks before the wedding
Relaxed portraits and gives you a chance to get to know us which makes your wedding day itself that little bit less stressful

• Wedding Preparations

Full coverage of Bridal preparations and Groom’s where possible

• Wedding Ceremony

Full coverage of ceremony at church, registry office or other location

• Formal Portraits

Maximum of five groups to be pre-arranged and shot shortly after ceremony
Short couple portrait session with Bride and Groom after ceremony at location nearby

• Wedding Reception

Coverage of reception until organised events finished

The whole wedding will be shot in the photojournalistic style which you see in the vast majority of our event photos
Once the wedding is finished we will treat the photos and hand over hi-res Jpegs on CD.
Should prints or albums be requested we can organise those for cost from our suppliers.
Get in contact if you think this fits you

Portraits

Whilst we want the bulk of our work to be based around Weddings, we want to also keep up a strong portrait business as well. We already have plenty of this kind of thing in our portfolio, but we still want to expand that to be able to split out the different types of work and be more specific in our marketing and pricing.
As such we are lining up some people in different categories but there are still a few things we want to be involved with for which we don’t have direct contacts (or enough of them). So we are looking for the following people under the same terms as above, ie provide a CD of Hi-Res Jpegs for your time and can arrange prints/albums at cost:

• Maternity Session

We are looking for one lady (or couple) for a pregnancy session. At this time of year this is likely to be in the persons house.

• Corporate Photography

We have recently finished a large project for a business which involved some photography that we will be able to post soon however we do want to expand this side of the business. Initially we are looking for local artists or dancers or the like who are looking for some environmental portraits (portraits that show the subject in their environment, in this case as a dancer or artist or something similar). We are looking to help out local arts centres and will be getting in contact with some anyway, however if there are any volunteers we will be more than willing to discuss

From time to time we will continue to give away sessions as we decide on where else we have holes in our portfolio. We might be looking more at baby photography or even boudoir photography but we want to show how good we are in a just a few things at a time and not spread ourselves too thin!

If you think you fit any of the things we need above and want to put yourself forward then please get in contact and mention this post. Make sure if you are sending this to someone else that you link to this original post so they can read the full story.

I will be updating this post as spaces are taken and even if you don’t fit into any of the above, get in contact and let us know what you want and we will see how that fits into out business needs at this time.

Hope to speak to many of you soon! Take Care...

Right, its been quite a while since my last post, and mores the pity, not much to say!
I have almost had a very cool shoot, but was unfortunately postponed at the last minute by the client. Hopefully we will have that rescheduled in the next few weeks. Today I was asked to do a baby’s party as well, which if I do get will be great.
As far as the site goes, I have revised the price list on our info page, and have started using Permalinks within the blog. I have gone back as far as my Brazil photos adding in the info so they appear correctly in the normal view (ie without having to click through to read the post), and all posts from now on will appear correctly as well as have a proper Permalink as this one does with the name “random_updates” which should make it easier for others to link to specific posts as well of Google finding specific posts of course.
Photography-wise we have both been playing around with some new tips and have just taken delivery of a nice Sunbounce Mini which is not all that Mini amounting to a 3’ x 4’ golden sail. I can’t wait to give that a try; hopefully we will get a chance one evening this week to give it a test drive. I bought it from The Flash Centre who where exceptionally helpful as their stock had run out and they ended up having the Sunbounce Rep bringing the cloth over from Germany and them posting that separately to the frame and flash bracket I also bought. Very happy with the service I got from them and will definitely be buying more from them as time goes on!
Hopefully we will be taking part in the Strobist Boot Camp II photography challenge over the coming few weeks trying to improve our photography through the assignments that will be set. If there are any other photographers reading this, I would really suggest you give it a go to try and see just what you can achieve with a fixed task and all your creative skill to make it happen in a way that will make somebody go ‘Wow’ which is really what all we do is about!
OK... before you all go to sleep from all the text, here are some photos from the last couple of weeks which I really liked in no particular order:
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Well... after a busy week of my normal day job with little time for photography, today we made the most of the sunshine we had and went and made ourselves a nice picnic at the local park. I can honestly say that Ryvita + Philidelphia + Raspberry Jam = The best snack known to man. Hmmmmm

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Sorry people! I know I have been pretty dodgy at updating but things have been getting pretty nutty around here.
Firstly... my wife is back!!! Yay! She arrived back on 14th February which she has yet to burn into her memory as being Valentine’s Day which made all my surprises all the better. If it wasn’t for the fact she arrived back here nicely flued up we would have been off to a masked dinner that evening which would have looked great on digital, but alas it was not to be! Having seen the photo’s of my friends who did go, I don’t think it was going to be all that good, but hey, it would have been nice.
Secondly, as you see we are now functioning as a company. I am ordering our business cards and today bought a receipt book. I have also ordered another light stand, brolly and batteries for flash. We might have a job coming up within the next week or so which is quite exciting for me in artistic terms - it will be beautiful if it comes through!
Unfortunately, the third part of my news is pretty sad: My Dad’s Dad, known to one and all as Papa is extremely sick. Any of you who are that way inclined please keep him and the family in your prayers. We will be going to stay with my parents from Thursday morning to see him, so we will have to see what God has in plan for him.
Well... trying to end on a lighter note this is the single photo I took whilst waiting for our coach sipping hot chocolate in Terminal 5. I took this one, looked at the screen and decided I didn’t need to take anymore. It was actually fairly gloomy inside, so this is up at ISO 1600 on the D40x, hence the grain, but I love the texture of it.
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Right, had some difficulties with my internet connection last night, but all back up and running again now and have finally be able to upload the newly layed out site... Still need to modify the homepage although I want a much better photo of my wife and I to stick on it...
She arrives in the UK on Saturday morning, and it’s going to be a day to remember! Photos will follow on the blog, and I am sure you will be interested in what we have lined up for you over the coming weeks!

Take care! Read More...

Hi Everyone.... just a quick note to make sure you update your bookmarks and/or RSS readers later this evening once I have moved the site around a bit. I am going to tidy things up - simplify the site a bit and make the whole thing more user friendly. Once I have done this, there shouldn’t be anymore changes unless I start getting some really heavy traffic on the site and my provider complains!

See you when the ball is over! Read More...

Wow... I have just watched a lecture by Malcolm Gladwell who writes for The New Yorker on the subject of creativity. I got pointed to it by a post on Chase Jarvis’ blog.
Absolutely amazing and very thought provoking lecture, a little over 30 minutes plus a short question time at the end with the host. Anybody who is the least bit interested in accomplishing anything with their lives would do well to take heart from his words of wisdom:

Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success

I promise I will get around to blogging the wedding today as well Read More...