Congratulations Katie and Drew!









































Katie and Drew's wedding was the second that I shot as a second shooter for On The Spot Photography, a successful outfit run by Anthony and Jennifer Stalcup. Besides paying me, Jennifer and Anthony are teaching me the business of wedding photography, opening my eyes to sector of the market only dimly illuminated by my memories of working for Vera Wang Photographer Nathen Feder back in college. Back then I was a pure free-lance, a Saturday Night Shooter, and as at the time I had intentions of saving the world as a photojournalist, I never paid much attention to the business side of things.

Nathen taught me to shoot a wedding. So I'm not nervous at a wedding and I feel pretty comfortable carrying the weight of all that responsibilty. I know my way around lights, arranging people and what people expect to see when the proofs arrive. The business side, however, was a mystery until I met Jennifer and started working for OTS.

When I shoot for someone else, I try hard too pick people who shoot like me, so there isn't much adjustment. Luckily for me, I like Jennifer and Anthony's style, which is very "PJ." The hard part is shooting the formal portraits in their style. They like a lot of movement in their shots. They'll have the bride throw her arms in the air, "swoop" the bouquet out, or sort of pose-dance with the groom. On just such a dip, I took this frame:



I think it's a funny frame because it looks like Drew is about to throw Katie off the dock. The look in his eyes is a little mischeivious.

Anyway, sorry about the long absence. Enjoy the photos!

--Notes

Congratulations Daimon and Kirsten!





























































So I went to Montana this past week. I must say, Montana has a lot going for it. I've been there twice and both times were very, very good experiences. The first time was at the end of my roadtrip through Yellowstone National Park with my friend Wes just before leaving for Korea. His dad virtually owned a little town called Silvergate just a inside the Montana state line. We hung out there for a day or two, helped out with an event and then I left for my Korean adventure.

While in Korea, my friend Daimon and his girlfriend were living out their own adventure in New Zealand. They became engaged. They needed photography. They picked up the computer and emailed Gavin and I. A date was set: July 7th, 2007.

Initially, Gavin wasn't sure he was going to be stateside. At the time, another year in Korea was still a viable option, as the money would be better the second year. I was psyched. I hoped to be stateside running my own photography business by July. I knew I'd need the wedding to build my portfolio and to add to my experience. Though I, too, kept Korea in my back pocket, I penciled in the wedding on my calendar. If I was home, I would do it, provided Daimon and Kirsten flew me up there.

Fast forward eight months. Gavin and I are boarding a plane in Hartsfield Jackson International Airport bound for Minneapolis, where another jet will whisk us off to Kalispell, Montana, thirty miles south of Glacier National Park.

Gavin decided in February to give freelancing a go. Between the two of us, he has more experience in it. Before he took the job in Hattiesburg, he slogged his way through two grueling years as a freelancer in Atlanta. He learned a lot of lessons, many of which he passed on to me night after night over Makali and Samgyupsal while we lived in Korea. One of the lessons that really stuck went something like, "there will be lots of people who want to help you. Take advantage of their generosity."

Kirsten and Daimon's offer was one of those opportunities, a mutually beneficial exchange. The better my photographs, the happier we all would be. They would have kick-ass photos and I would be one step closer to successfully entering the wedding market, a crowded and complicated place to make a living as a photographer.

To be honest, I have been reticent to enter the wedding ma
rket. It seemed like a tremendous amount of work and money, both in the initial marketing and in the running of the business. For most of the Spring I sat on my laurels. I played around with album vendors. I took no action to market my skills to potential wedding clients.

Actually, I had shot a wedding in November following my return from Argentina, but a number of people close to me told me I should build up my portfolio some more before striking out further into the wedding market. But who else was going to take a chance on me?

Enter Kirsten and Daimon. Not only were they more attractive, they had picked an amazing location for their wedding: Glacier National Park in the northwest corner of Montana. Ten-thousand-foot glacier-carved peaks crusted in snow, Carribean-colored glacial lakes and fields of waving gold wildflowers danced in my head. During my trip through Wyoming with Wes, as I pressed my face against the glass of his van window in total dumbstruck awe of the Tetons, I remembered him telling me that Glacier was even better. Wes has a great eye for aesthetics. I had to go to Glacier.

So back to the airport. Well, fast forward to flying into Kalispel. There really isn't much to say about Minneapolis, mostly because I just saw the airport, which was not terribly user-friendly.

The Airbus A320 covered a lot of American soil before dropping down into the mountains. Below my perch at 37,000 feet, I watched as it all passed by: The glisening blue lake country of western Minnesota, the green, tan and gold checkerboard fatigues of the tamed and parceled high prairie and the snaking white sinue snaking through the Badlands of North Dakota. Suddenly, I noticed that mine wasn't the only head pressed to the glass portals. Everyone was straining to look forward at something ahead of us. I too strained, and my jaw dropped.

Like a sawblade stuck halfway through a piece of wood, the jagged ridges and peaks of the Rocky mountain chain leapt out of the kahki plains as if in defiance to their unimaginative uniformity of topography. We had arrived.

We picked up our rental car from National: A spanking new refrigerator-white Chevy Cobalt with all the fixins. Sadly, it also bore all the hallmarks of sloppy design: Big blindspots, tiny trunk, sparse seating, sluggish steering and a irritatingly thirsty four-cylinder engine with no punch mated to a dimwitted automatic transmission.

The Cobalt slogged us to the North 40 resort, where we were to stay till Sunday morning. A svelte pregnant woman handed us the keys to our room: A red log cabin nestled among others in a stand of towering conifers. We quickly unloaded our gear, jumped into our ride and galloped off down Highway 2 towards Glacier to scout the location.

It took longer than expected to get to Glacier, which I had stupidly estimated to be a mere ten miles away after glancing at a couple of poor online maps. It wasn't. Try more like 23.

Once inside the park we were confronted with tourists aplenty. For their location, Daimon and Kirsten had picked the Apgar ampitheater beside Lake MacDonald. Though the beach and lake made for a beautiful backdrop, a few trees and bushes were straining to fill the blue Montana sky with leafy green distraction. Gavin and I scouted spots from which to get the best shots.

That night we joined the wedding party in Whitefish for a combination bachelor/bachelorette party. I got drunk and fell in love with a foozball table. Daimon and Kirsten's friends were an amalgation of personalities collected from a lifetime stretched out from the Montana high prairie to the rolling Missouri Ozark mountains and the jagged peaks of New Zealand. A chemistry was worked out between them and everyone had a good time. I hit the sack around 3AM, which due to the time difference felt like 5AM to me. I hadn't closed my eyes for nearly 24 hours by the time my face hit the soft cushions on the couch in my cabin and I passed out.

Friday brought bedlam. Gavin, Daimon, Kirsten, Kirsten's friend Lorenda and I took a trip back over to Apgar to reinspect the location. We stopped at a campground first to welcome Kirsten's older sister, her husband and their three children. Kirsten picked up some decorations to try out at the location.

At Apgar, Daimon and Kirsten rehearsed their vows and measured the benches for the garland. Gavin and I checked our angles, lining up shots and considering the unknown. When we got back, people were getting ready for the rehearsal dinner. Daimon's and Kirsten's family pitched in together, cooking, cutting, decorating, laughing and having a good time. People started trickling in around 6PM, drinking homebrewed wine, beer and muching on snacks.

After everyone had eaten dinner, the members of the various families were recognized. Then Daimon and Kirsten presented Daimon's parents with a gift: $800 bucks towards the vacation of their choice. Gavin and I wanted to be as fresh as possible, so we took our leave early and hit the sack.

Saturday started slowly with a pancake breakfast and then built momentum all morning till by noon it seemed like almost all the guests had a part to play in the event. As many men as could be roused were set to building the giant plastic and steel tent next to the Snowberry Center. I joined them in securing it to the building as well as rolling and carrying out the plastic fold-up tables for the reception. Kirsten's sister put out table settings while other members of the family prepared food and drinks. The musicians, a composite of various family members and talented friends, gathered in Jay Eklund's cabin to practice their set.

Just after lunch Kirsten and Daimon retired to their respective cabins to get ready for the ceremony. Daimon and his groomsmen donned faded linen pants and a sharp white short-sleeve shirts. I photographed them outside the cabin. The white of their shirts popped against the rusty red logs.

Kirsten wore a calf-length white dress with no vail and a pair of cork high-heeled sandals. The two of them gleamed as Gavin and I photographed them on the beach by the ampitheater. We had been expecting a spectacular backdrop for our photos, and Glacier didn't disappoint. A few white whispy clouds floated over the peaks towering over Lake McDonald, itself an unbelievable color of teal blue. It was almost too perfect, and some of the photos almost looked like we had simply cut the couple out and pasted them into a postcard!

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's soulfull rendition of "Over the Rainbow" escorted the wedding party down the aisle. Kirsten's brother walked her down the aisle to the "Ashokan Farewell" played by her sister Kathy and brother in law Bill. The couple's vows were short and sweet. A few heartfelt "I do's" and under the big, sparkling Montana sky they were married. After the ceremony, the wedding party splashed around in Lake McDonald, posed for a few more photos and then everyone piled into cars and headed back to the North 40 for the reception. Only Gavin, Daimon and Kirsten and I remained behind to take a few more photos. Gavin got some shots of them by the big red buses that cart tourists up and down the "Going to The Sun" road.

The reception was an equally simple, elegant affair. There was little dancing in the beginning, as most of the music the younger people wanted to dance to was a bit too much for their older, more conservative elders. Daimon and Kirsten spent most of the night spending time with their friends, some of whom had traveled all the way from New Zealand.

The next day Daimon and Kirsten spent with Gavin and I. We traveled up the Going-to-The-Sun road, a scenic highway winding its way up the side of a sheer mountain to Logan pass, 6600 feet up. As we traveled, we stopped along the way to take portraits of the couple. Daimon and Kirsten wore their wedding clothes and posed for Gavin and I over and over again. They never seemed to tire of looking deeply into one another's eyes and kissing while the cameras' motor drives burned through our memory cards. The photos, though at times a little campy, were some of the best I made all weekend.

For all of Monday and Tuesday, Daimon and Kirsten traveled with Gavin and I through Glacier and into Canada to see Waterton National Park. After we crossed the border we stopped at a scenic overlook that gave us a commanding view of Waterton. Gray stormclouds rolled across the plain like a cavalry line in a collision course with the mountains. Cold winds tore at Daimon's Honda Hybrid as we pulled into the ranger station.

Across the street a black bear was dining on berries. Tourists gathered and gawked as it slowly ambled towards the road. The rangers didn't think this was funny. One of them grabbed a rubber-bullet gun and harassed the bear until it ran up the mountain and away from the busy road.

At Waterton we camped by a huge, long lake flanked on all sides by 8000-foot peaks. Sitting on a ridge at the base of the lake was a rather corny-looking hotel called the Prince of Wales. It looked like something from Helen, Georgia, with cheesy green bavarian shutters, eves and fire hydrants painted to look like the ubiquitous ground squirrils that infested the campgrounds. On the inside it was a different hotel, and it's view down the lake couldn't be beat. Monday afternoon we had a couple of German beers in the lounge, taking in the view and talking of family, friends and the wedding.

Tuesday was spent at St. Mary's campground, where we encountered another bear. This one was totally disinterested in us, it's nose buried in a rotten log were presumably it was dining on fat grubs. On wednesday Gavin and I boarded an airplane in Kalispel and headed home.

During the course of the trip I managed to skin my toe up while throwing a frisbee around with Daimon and lose my phone charger, which the Cingular (Oops! I mean AT&T) people gladly replaced for $21. It was a good, helpful experience, and I spent a lot of time talking to Kirsten and her sister-in-law, Erin, about a bride's expectations, my services, prints and the photos I missed or fudged.

On July 14th I had my first wedding consultation with a bride from here in Decatur, Georgia. We met in Java Monkey and discussed the location, output and costs. With any luck, she'll choose me to shoot her wedding, which is scheduled for September 29th. I was nervous, but I did my best to keep my cool and be professional and thorough. This wedding is even bigger for me than Daimon and Kirsten's, and so I have to nail it on every front.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the photos. Sorry for the long delay. I am going to start simply posting photos and a brief description from now on, as this writing thing takes FOREVER. Up next: Bare-fist fighting from Wild Bills!

Notes

I had my first 'big gig' tonight: A Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce gala at the Hyatt Regency. 800 business leaders from across the state showed up in tuxedos and flashy dresses to fill the main ballroom from end to end.

Two funny things about the gig: I didn't have any idea that it would be so completely huge, and for some reason the Secretary of State, Karen Handel, knows me on a first name basis. Karen is Georgia's first hispanic Secretary of State, and a rather pleasant woman, despite being Republican. In this state, Republican and Democrat don't really say much about someone's politics.

Anyway, I was sort of shocked by the sheer size of the event. Betsy Davis, the staff PR head for the Chamber, immediately put pressure on me by assuring me that every photographer who had come before me had screwed up the awardee group shot at the end of the performance. I told her that I accepted her challenge and I would be the first to defy that awful pattern. Betsy shrugged, smiled and joined the crowd in the lobby. Hey dude, it's your dragon to slay.

After she walked out, I looked around and began to realize what had burned the brave men who had come before me. It became evident that the cavernous space in which I was too work was specifically designed to ruin photographs.

The walls were dark gray. The stage was black. The chairs were black. The ceiling was thirty feet high, black and festooned with a most busy assortment of convoluted sheet metal strips and giant plastic saucers studded with dim, yellow incandescent bulbs that added ten years to every face in the joint. It was ugly. It would take George Lucas' personal army of lighting specialists and about 30,000 watt-seconds of flash to make the room livable. I had two strobes and a digital camera.

Luckily, there was a guy in the balcony with a couple of daylight-balanced spotlights to light the speakers, and the curtain behind the podium was nicely lit with amber and purple gels. I set up a couple of my radio-slaved lights, hid them behind a giant movie screen, set up my camera for grip-n-grins and waded into the sea of tuxedos and cocktail dresses, snapping away with a smile and the flash bounced off a business card jammed into the strobe head.

There were a bunch of speeches, some awards. For such a large event, it went exactly by the books, and I had to admit to myself that working for newspapers had perfectly prepared me for assignments such as these. I could have shot this assignment in my sleep.

The terrible lighting conditions were no match for my Canon 580EX flash. As I went from table to table, taking group shots and grip-n-grins, it sent just the right amout of light to the happy faces posing for me. The room didn't want to be in the photograph, and lowering my exposure to 1/2th of a second and f2.8 was out of the question, so despite being so well lit, everyone in the photos looks like they hosted their gala in deep space.

I passed out tons of cards, and I'll be able to upload the photos to my online gallery for guests to browse and order prints from. That's great, considering I only charged the GHCC $100 an hour to do this job. A little extra goes a long way. Also, hopefully this will be an account that will stay with me for a while.

After the awards were given out, I successfully took a group shot. Those radio-slaved strobes make all the difference. I just picked them up, placed them where I wanted them, posed my nine awardees and blam blam blam...That's it folks! It could have been better, in my opinion. A third light on the background would have helped cut down on the shot-in-a-cave look, but Betsy was in love with the shot simply because it was well-exposed and sharp. Score one for the good guys!

The best part of the entire gig was after the ceremony had wrapped up. A latino band took the stage, picked up their instruments and started blasting out some explosive, lively dance music. The crowd, who had been sitting on their asses for the better part of three hours, was more than happy to take to the portable parquee and get down to business. And as I had expected, they were amazing dancers. I slapped on my trusty 50mm and did a little shooting for me.

Check out the photos!

The name of the game is branding, or so I'm told.

I went to a meeting with my business advisor, Lydia Jones, at the Small Business Development Center. Lydia is probably the best thing to happen to my business since I started it back in October. The SBDC is basically paid for with tax dollars, and new business start-ups such as myself can meet with the professionals such as Lydia and discuss things like financial planning, ideas, overhead, and most importantly to me: Marketing.

It seems like in this digital age, a good marketing solution would be a hop, skip and a -click!- away. Indeed the internet, particularly Google and Yahoo! have made marketing much more accessable to the common man. It has. Too easy. Type "Photography" in the Google bar at the top of your page and you get, well, agoogle hits. How to choose? Perhaps modify your search with the word "Atlanta" or "Portrait" and you've narrowed those hits to around 178 zillion.

And where does Stephen Jones Photography fall in that massive tome of hits? Oh, you know, I'm like on page 146,349,533. Really. Go check for yourself.

Even if a customer lost my card but new my name and added that to the search I'd still be on the fifth or sixth page. Lots of guys named Stephen Jones out there. Sheesh. So much for internet marketing. Well, not really. There are a lot of steps I could take to maximize my Google searchability, and I've taken a few of those steps. However, the best marketing mechanism remains the good ole' fashioned word-o-mouth.

There is simply no more efficient way to bring in business than referrals, especially if you happen to be a photographer. A long photography session is such a personal, even intimate experience, that people are extremely reluctant to hire a complete stranger. That's why the first advice I ever got from my dad was to start going to church. Indeed, a photographer I knew in Hattiesburg (who shall go unnamed) told me once that he can pretty much retire early thanks to the massive 3000-person congregation attending the megachurch west of I-59 in Oak Grove. I love Jesus, too.

I'm not going to church to make money. So I'm back to the tried-and-true formula for getting my name out: Run an honest, reliable business with excellent customer service. Oh, and get a good-lookin' website, which brings us to part B of my marketing plan.

My current website has drawn criticism from my business advisor. Too black. Bad fonts. Doesn't load right. Not Google friendly. Not user friendly. Time for a redesign.

Oy. Sigh. Jesus help me. It took me two months working almost every day to build the current bucket-o-bolts and now it's back to the drawing board. Oh, well. In some respects, I agree with her. There is a lot that could be improved, and this is a chance to really make my site shine.

I also felt like a re-design was inevitable, even from the first day I uploaded it to my ISP, sort of the way you know from the first week you're in a new house that furniture is not quite in the right place. This is my chance to rearrange a few couches, move that table out of the dinning room, paint the living room, install a flat-panel display and put hardwood down upstairs. Ah, the joy of anticipation. The future is bright!

Now where did I put that doggeared copy of "Adobe GoLive 6 for Dummies?"

The website also will be a cornerstone of my ongoing marketing war-o-attrition. It will tell potential customers what makes me unique. It will help to "brand" me as a certain type of photographer. In business, if you can fill a niche, you can make money (theoretically) hand-over-fist because no one else fills that need. I need to set myself apart so people have a more compelling reason to hire me other than the fact that I'm well-trained, experienced and have $8000 worth of Canon digitalia.

It's sort of like in nature. If no other organism eat that icky green slime covering those rocks, evolve into something that eats that slime and you can get fat. So I need to A) Find my slime, B) Fine a way to eat it, and C) Keep other photographers from doing the same.

Bringing this whole over-stretched metaphor full-circle, Lydia and I talked today about what makes me unique. We were discussing my child portrait business, which has recently blossomed. I told Lydia how it works: For $50 I go hang out with my client and their children at a park or hiking or something. I take pictures the whole time, turn the whole thing into a slideshow DVD and upload the photos to my finisher's website. The way it works is, parents watch the DVD, fall in love with the photos, jump online and go hog-wild with their credit card buying prints.

Lydia liked it so much that she hired me on the spot to photograph her grandchildren next weekend. She also pointed out that a few things about my system make me unique: I shoot unposed action shots, give someone a DVD that they can then keep and show to family and friends, and I come to their house. Having been to a number of studios throughout her life, Lydia thought that was the clincher. Parents hate going to a studio. Time is precious for parents, and driving all over the place for a few awkward photos is stressful. What makes me unique is that parents and their kids can live their life as they normally do. I just pop in and take pictures.

Less stress on the parents, unposed photos (what maniac tries to get 3-year-olds to sit still?) that exhibit more of the child's natural personality, low up-front cost, and a great, easy way to view and order the finished photos. Seems like I might have found my special green slime. Yum!

Now to find out if it works.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that I need to craft a slogan for my soon-to-be-new homepage that says all of that in fewer words. It needs to be a slogan that capitalizes on stressfree, creative and inexpensive photos.

Any ideas???


--Notes