A New Kind of Ice Cream

Last week following the monthly Association of Bridal Consultants luncheon I had a chance to taste some great ice cream. Pure Magic Ice Cream setup one of their ice cream bars in the back of the room at the Rosen Centre.

Pure Magic makes all sorts of ice cream flavors for your wedding guests right in front of them with the help of liquid nitrogen. It's a great and entertaining feature to have at your wedding. I mean who doesn't like ice cream. Well yeah you're right those who are lactose intolerant but other than them most love ice cream.

Pure Magic starts with cream in a metal mixing bowl and adds ingredients to make the flavor you want. Then they flash freeze the mix with liquid nitrogen and mix the concoction until it is ready to serve in a bowl. What's really cool is watching Pure Magic mix the ice cream in front our your guests and seeing the clouds of vapor from the liquid nitrogen roll off the bowl. Looks like a scene from an old mad scientist movie. The difference is what's left is yummy.

Pure Magic can make all sorts of different flavors of ice cream. From vanilla key lime pie to chocolate brownie they can mix and match what you want. And they can even add in extras to the ice cream like Kahlua or rum for ice cream like you've never had.

I think it would be a cool (yes pun intended) idea to have at any wedding or function especially in hot Florida.

Redesigned Business Cards Are In

They're in! It may not be exciting to you but it is to us. We redesigned our business cards and had them delivered this week. It's been a few years since we last had cards printed and this was a chance for us to freshen up the brand.

The old cards didn't have a photo on them. They were very professional-looking but I made the decision to not include a picture for the reason that it might date the card. This time around though I felt I need to have an example of my style to help a bride remember me better after our consultation.

So a couple of weeks ago I sat down at my iMac and started to search for a picture that exemplified my documentary approach to wedding photography. Another aspect the image needed was to have attractive people. I needed to keep in mind that I needed an image that was an easy read. Due to a business card's size I needed an image that was absent of extraneous compositional elements. So off I went to search my archive for that magic picture.

Let me tell you it's not an easy task to edit to one image that will brand your business for years to come. Some images were great but needed size in order to appreciate it's grandeur. Others just didn't quite fit my style. Then going through images I shot during my best friend Robert's wedding I found it. I remember when I shot it thinking it was a great moment of Angela and Robert on their day. They had a sincere look of love for one another in their eyes. They also looked like they were letting out a sigh of relief. I thought it showed what almost every bride feels about their wedding day... complete exhaustion and exhilaration all at once. This was it. This image captured my style of unobtrusive and "shoot it as it happens" photography.

The next step was designing the card. I chose to use the FedEx Office website to design and print my new cards. Being that I am the primary caregiver of my 2-year-old son I needed a way of getting the cards designed and ordered from my home office during nap time. I have to admit the FedEx website for ordering business cards could use a little help from my friends over at Apple but the end product is fantastic. I was able to create the front side in Photoshop and upload it to their site. Then fill in the details for the back of the card before completing my order. They have some nice options for small businesses which I liked and the fact that my cards arrived within 5 days was a nice finish.

I can't wait to hand out these new cards at tomorrow's Central Florida Association of Bridal Consultants luncheon. Let you know how it goes.

Small Weddings are Special

A few years ago I shot a friend's wedding where there were only three witnesses and we had to be mindful of the tidal changes. Sounds interesting doesn't it?

Stephanie and Brian told me about their wedding plans and had me hooked when they told me they were going to say their vows on "disappearing" Key a few miles off the coast of Key West. They were only going to have two friends attend and along with me would be the only witnesses. I couldn't wait.

I took the first flight to Key West so that I would have the entire day to document the day. All weddings are special and hold many sentimental meanings by their very nature. But when you have to take boats out to a sandbar that barely keeps the six people standing on it dry it's a different kind of special.

My job wasn't any easier. In fact in some ways it created more pressure because my images would be the ones to tell the story to everyone that wasn't on that tiny Key. Not to mention I had to make sure my cameras didn't go for a swim.

It was a fabulous 20 hours I spent in Key West. It was filled with a lot of smiles, laughter and love. I consider Stephanie and Brian's wedding the most unique wedding I've ever photographed.

So when a bride tells me they're having a small wedding I always tell them I've probably photographed a smaller one.

Arthur's has Great Taste

One of the biggest concerns a bride can have (of course after finding the right photographer) is selecting a caterer for their special day. They can hire their cousin who dabbles in catering and makes the best mushroom poppers for their Superbowl party or they can hire a professional. I would lean more towards the professional. Brides always are concerned that their guest are happy and having a good time. Guess what if the food isn't good or late your guests aren't having fun.

I met Arthur's Catering a few years ago shooting an event for one of my corporate clients. Since then our paths have crossed several times.

What I like about Arthur's is they always have creative ways to showcase their artistic yumminess. And it always seems that the serving stations are popular locations at these events which tells me what I already know. The food is awesome.

Some of my favorites from the Arthur's menu are the Seared Ahi Tuna Canape which is better than some of the local Sushi restaurants. I also love the Roasted Bosc Pear Salad which Arthur's mixes in candied pecan to compliment the pear and gorgonzola cheese. Just talking about their menu is making me hungry.

Another Blog

I'm excited to announce that I have started another blog in addition to my main blog. This blog will be geared to my wedding photography. It will focus more on my experiences shooting weddings, a way to post some selects from a recent wedding for clients and their guests as well as my suggestions for brides when planning for their big day.

In the last few years blogs have become an integral part of the wedding photography experience and one that couples look for when selecting their photographer. They want to be able to see what their photographer is doing leading up to their wedding as well as see their wedding promoted on the web following their big day.

So here I am writing another blog in addition to my personal one. It will be a vehicle to not only promote my wedding photography but also a resource for brides and grooms as they plan for their wedding. I'll give some suggestions for other wedding vendors with whom I've previously worked.

I'm excited about this new way of communicating with others focused on weddings or in the business of weddings. I want to be able to use this blog as a way of reaching out to present and future clients. after all it's about developing a relationship that doesn't end after the I Dos.

A New Design

It's been quite a while since I did anything with the website and I had so much new to showcase. So a few weeks ago I decided to redesign the site with new information and new images.

I played around with the redesign a while back but got distracted with other projects before it was completed. Thankfully I still had that effort saved on the hard drive which kept me from completely starting over.

My wife Cathy helped me with the copy and design of the site which had it's moments of creative frustration. I valued her input and help not only as a bride but also as a former copy editor. In the end some of the decision were mine.

The biggest thing for me was to not only freshen up the look of the site with recent weddings but to also add some of my personality to it. I did a lot of research by looking at other wedding photographers' sites to see how they worked in their personality to their site.

Another big thing for me in redesigning my site was to make it look different than the other wedding photographers'. If you are a bride you've probably looked at dozens of wedding photographer websites. To me they all looked the same. By that I mean they are all flash-based and have the same dreamy wedding music blaring at the start of the viewing experience.

I wanted my site to be html based so that anyone could view the site no matter if they were on their PC at home, iPhone while waiting at a light or showing their parents on their dial-up AOL account. I was told once by another photographer that their reason for not having a super fancy flash site was because the person paying the bill may be of an older generation and may not have the latest and greatest computer. Wouldn't want to inhibit the paying party's viewing experience.

The other aspect of music on my site is a personal one. I have a feeling that many brides do a lot of their wedding day planning at work. The last thing they need is being busted by coworkers because a vendor had loud wedding music on their website. As a colleague said to me, "Pretty music isn't going to make your pictures better." So true.

I have to say that I'm very happy with the way the new site looks. It's easy to navigate. Has some nice design elements and the pictures load very quickly which is key when I bride typically makes an initial decision on whether to consider a wedding photographer within the first 30 seconds of being on their site. If she has to wait for images to appear or has to click through them one at a time she won't be happy.

The bio piece was the tough part for me. Normally photographer bio pages go something like, "My passion is taking pictures. I feel fortunate to have made this my calling... blah blah blah." It better be your passion or you're in the wrong business bud. I found some bio pages that were more insightful like, "If it weren't for Starbucks caramel machiato I couldn't exist." Those are the bits of a person's personality that I wanted to see.

So I decided to write my bio like a series of tweets. My thinking was that my target audience of women in their mid-20s are used to reading things like Twitter and could get a sense of me this way. Cathy and some others didn't like it but they were also outside this target demo. Again I didn't want some drivel. I wanted personality and thought this hit it head on.

Redesigns are always tough. It's kind of like what Janet Jackson says, "What have you done for me lately?" It forces you to look at your work and review whether or not you've pushed yourself. They are also time consuming. And most importantly they are greatly needed in order to move your business forward.