3rd Annual Turkey Bowl

My brothers held their third annual Turkey Bowl in North Ridgeville on Thanksgiving day. It was wet, cold and windy, but they seemed to have had a good time.

My younger brother is wearing the #2 jersey, my older brother is to the right of him in the dark hat. My nephew, Curt, is the miserable looking one on the right hand side! My other nephew, Nolan, is in the red hat in the center. My youngest brother (in the goofy yellow coatand hat) and my dad are under the umbrella. My brother couldn't play this year. On the injured reserved list! Two of my sister-in-laws are buried under umbrellas, coats and blankets. A good time was had by all! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Fall Folio Competition

We just got back yesterday from our fall meeting of the Profesional Photographers of Ohio. As a part of the convention and seminar, there is a folio competition. We submitted these three folios, and we got blue ribbons for all three! We were really happy with the outcome. It takes time to put these things together, but it was all worth it in the end! So I guess it's congratulations to us!!! Later. Susan

Walter's New Toy

Walter has been wanting to get a chandalier to use as a studio prop for a while. He finally got this one a couple of days ago, and is just starting to use it. Now I'm getting around to posting it! I think it looks really nice. A great girl prop! I'll post more chandalier soon!

Kelsey

Well, we had a Kesley and a Kelsey in one week, and they both go to Keystone High School. That's got to be confusing! I made sure to post one of the poses of Kelsey in the leather chair outside, because that is Walter's favorite right now, and it showed off Kelsey's heels so well! I also love the one against the white wall where I added a cityscape. It looks really neat (is that still an okay word to use?) She'll see them soon, and I hope she likes them!

Alex

Walter did Alex's session on Sunday. He is 4 years old. We have been photographing him since he was an infant. Walter was making up his session from when he was sicklast week. It was a beautiful day and they went to Cascade Park in Elyria. He is so fun to photograph! He did everything Walter asked him to do. He was throwing leaves, getting buried, and loved it all! I hope his mom likes them as much as we did. In fact, we are entering these images in a folio competition at our Professional Photographers of Ohio seminar in Columbus this weekend. I hope he does well! I'll let you know!

Halloween 2007

My friends Becky, Vern, George and I went out dressed up for Hallween last night. If you can't already tell, we went as Blue Man Group. We won second place in the costume contest at Church Street Bar in Amherst! We had lots of fun! And whenever going out dressed up like this, I highly recommend stopping at gas stations, restaurants, and miscellaneous places. That was more fun than the costume contest.

The Speedway Gas Station on Broad Street in Elyria, rocks! Those workers were awesome!

Have a happy Halloween!

Update!

Sorry I haven't blogged lately! I had a bit of a computer meltdown at the studio a week ago Friday, so I have just been trying to keep my head above water reloading all the information my computer decided to wipe out on it's own! I have also very recently invested in a really good backup system! Better late than never! It's been some serious twelve hour days, so blogging has been a little low on my list of priorities! There are several new posts to follow. That should keep me good for a few days! Hope you enjoy, and I'll get more on here soon!
Susan

New Banners!

I just put three new banners up in the front window. They look so good! I just put them up on Thursday. Just in time for the Harvest Festival that was held in downtown Grafton on Saturday. The turnout seemed to pretty good. There were constant groups of people standing at the front window admiring all the photographs. Needless to say, my front windows are a mess today from all the sticky fingers touching and pointing. I'll get to cleaning them!

So, if you have a spare moment, be sure to stop by the studio and check them out. Lots of new faces in the window. One of them might be you!

Survivor

Well, we made it through the weekend. It was Midview's homecoming weekend which involves photographing the game and the dance. The game was nice. Beautiful weather for football! The dance was good. Seemed to be a decent turnout, but it was stinkin' hot in that school! It's not normally 85 degrees outside at homecoming time, which made the indoors even worse. The gym was steaming. Everyone was dripping with sweat. I kinda felt bad for the students, but most didn't seem to mind. Homecoming candids will be posted online hopefully today, but definetly by tomorrow. Be sure to check them out! Later!
Susan

Oh, my gosh!!! Walter and I just got back this evening from Kansas City, Missouri. We went by special invitation to an amazing senior portrait studio there. The people that own the studio have an organization called SPA (senior portrait artists) that we belong to. They invited 25 members from all across the country to come and tour their studio, hang out and ask lots of questions. My head is spinning from all that I saw and learned!

Walter and I are going to have to sit down really soon, because there are changes we want to implement. It might not happen right away, because we are going to be so busy for the next few weeks with senior portrait sessions.

It's great to get away, see someone else's studio and their work and recharge your batteries. I'm sure it will be a boost to Walter's creativity in the next few weeks (Not that he is creative all the time anyway). Watch out, everyone! I'll keep you posted!

Choosing A Photographer

An interesting thing happened today at our studio, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

A mother came in today to schedule her daughter's senior portrait session. After speaking with her for a while, she confessed that she had already had her daughter's senior portraits done once. She went to a "backyard" type of photographer from the area (this is a term the industry uses to describe an individual who buys a camera and thinks they're a professional photographer.) She went there because she thought it would be more affordable. She said she was very disappointed in how her daughter's portraits turned out. She said that after looking at the poses and getting no satisfaction after speaking to the photographer, she walked away from the whole ordeal, and forfeited the money she spent on the session fee.

She realizes that she will probably be spending more at our studio, but her comment was: "I guess you get what you pay for."

I totally agree with her philosophy and live by that statement. Not only in photography, but in LIFE! You get exactly what you pay for! Keep that in mind when selecting your senior portrait photographer. It doesn't matter how great of a deal you get if you hate your portraits!

Walter has been involved in professional photography for many years. He has a Masters and Craftsman degree in photography from the Professional Photographers of America. He is also a Certified Professional Photographer of Ohio. These degrees can only be attained through education, service and print competition in the industry. What qualifications does your selected photographer have?

The Barrett Family

Tuesday we had the privilege of photographing the Barrett Family. Matt Barrett is our state representative, and they wanted to have some portraits taken at the State House in Columbus, Ohio. We have been photographing the family for years, but this presented itself as a unique opportunity for us!

We really had fun touring the State House with Matt's personally guided tour and the kids were great to work with! These are just a couple of the poses we took of the family that we liked. Enjoy!

New Blog Site!

Hey everyone! If you're an avid reader of the blog, (and I hope you are) you'll notice that it has changed.

We moved to a new site for blogging, because the old site was horrible to work with! This one I hope will be much better and faster to use, so hopefully I'll be able to blog more often!

The downside is, if you were on the blog site before, they won't be transferring over to this site, so I guess I'm basically starting new. But look for more stuff to come more frequently! Later!
Susan

session on an island....

Thursday we went over to Middle Bass Island to take portraits of Susan. She goes to Elyria High School. Her family has had a summer home there for 20 years, and there were lots of neat locations Susan wanted to use in her session. We had so much fun! We photographed her right up until sunset and got some amazing shots!

We photographed everything from Lonz Winery in the background to an old abandoned brick building we found. We also got some beautiful nature photos in between. It’s lots of fun to photograph outside of your everyday environment. Keeps Walter on his toes! Thanks, Susan!