Fiance2wife.com recently posted, on June 29th, 2008, some typical questions that you should ask a photographer. I’ve probably have answered some of these already in my own posts. I’d like to build a dialog; thus i’d like to answer some questions that the blog addressed. Keep in mind their blog is local to the UK so things might be a bit different; Regardless, these are some typical questions a bride would ask.

Questions provided by fiance2wife.com. Many of these are specific to our practices. I just wanted to respond to these questions because they’re commonly asked throughout the internet and you never know who is searching for these answers on the internet.

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Bridget and John Neam got married on June 22nd, 2008. I’m just catching up to their photos right now. I have been busy working on something big. You all will see!

Here Bridget is dancing with John.

I absolutely love this photo. Bridget’s ladies were amazing on the dancefloor. They’re so full of energy  and fun! They were ubiquitous on the dancefloor.

This photo is definately a Kodak moment. There’s so much emotion going around toasts. Here maiden of honor gives a speech right after bridget.

This is Bridget and john walking down eastern market. We were lucky that the rain had stopped that day and we’re lucky to find our way to eastern market with enough time at the end. It was not the most sunniest day but it made for beautiful dramatic wedding photography. As a photographer you have to make good use of unplanned tangents that life throws at you. Another reason why i love my job!

Here they  caught a moment of playing a game that i’ve instructed them to do. They’re pretty good at it. No posing at all! This is actually all natural light shot in front of a metal panel in eastern market. Eastern market is such a great stop for photography. It’s like a playground.

Here Bridget is laughing at some instruction i’ve gave her. I can’t remember what it was. She knows i’m funny. Shes such a fun bride. Here we were shooting under the awning of the Fox Theater to take cover over the rain that day.

Brides and grooms for some reason love photographing jump shots. I don’t blame them they’re fun watching them jump up and down. it’s their wedding day they have lots of reasons to jump up and down. Here John and his crew is doing the same as I instructed Bridget: To jump up as high as they can. This is a great thing to do to build rapport with your client actually. It is all about subject management: which i thank Craig Tanner for teaching me.

Here we see Bridget the bride in Angelo’s (i think her step father’s) Corvette. It’s a beautiful ivory colored corvette. I’m not a car buff so I wouldn’t know what year it is. We decided to have her hop in and take a photo right before she was leaving her mother’s house in Fraser, Michigan.

Here we see Bridget posed right in front of her favorite tree at her mother’s house.

I really love what hour magazine has done on youtube. Check out why these individuals love Detroit.

I love Detroit as well. It is an underrated city in this world. I love the D. We have the best sports team of the world. I’ve lived here all my life. I couldn’t be more proud of anywhere I could call home.

This is from a Taylor Wedding I did a while ago. I’ll have to catch up. I’m really behind in the blogging process. Recently, I’ve moved to Ferndale to be closer to things. It’s made life more convenient and I’m very happy about my new place.

But check out this one photo I took in Taylor while shooting with Mary Potts Photography:

Forget Posing:

Being a portrait/wedding photographer gives you too many variables to remember to control. Lighting, your camera settings, how your subject is working with you.

Recently, it’s been a very favorite photo of mine. Very simply executed as well. I’ve noticed brides usually love to hear stories about how you create the photo to give an idea of how you work with people. In this photo it was very simple. This is something inspired by another photographer: Jerry Ghionis (an internationally renowned and very distinguished award winning photographer that i’ve had the pleasure of listening to in Las Vegas). Jerry emphasizes directing your subject and not posing them: giving them an activity. Fluidity of the action relinquishes your subject from thinking about the act of photography. Thus, eventually giving you more possibilities for what artists call, “happy accidents.”

Giving them an activity while also communicating with them is essential for subject management ( a term coined by RadiantVista’s  Craig Tanner ).

Last night I volunteered to shoot Geftaki’s Bikini Fashion Show. Tough job.

Well if you’re looking for the photos the photos will be posted by Sunday Night if not even earlier.

The photos will be posted at this gallery: http://holymoleephoto.smugmug.com/gallery/4956515_YTaWG

With my experience and contact with a handful of Brides I’ve have collected some online websites over the past year or so to help brides with planning.

The advent of ease of information it has become increasingly efficient for brides nowadays to plan their own wedding: Finding places of information for brides. Here is my list of top 10 free online websites and communities that help brides in finding and working on their perfect wedding.

1. Museweddings.com - Currently in beta, this online web application provides brides with a productivity tool and ideas for brides to set a to do list.
2. Weddingparty.com - If you want a website with less annoying banner ads, easier to find content and a less cluttered website. This is probably ideal for you. This directory is for those who are sick of “The Knot.” The directory also contains one of the best wedding photographers that you could find. The project is originally created by Marcus Sark a photographer from the Ann Arbor area.
3. Wedfog.com - This free resource provides clear answers about Wedding photography from photographers. The wealth of information is aplenty and helpful for brides answering their many common questions that brides have so your consultation with your photographer will go much less hectic and smoother as planned!
4. Yelp.com - Not commonly seen as a tool for weddings, it can be useful because it is one very popular website for rating services from restaurants to hotels to shopping in areas where you have not been. This is especially useful if you are planning a wedding from a different state or even a destination wedding in a different area of the US.
5. Weddingbee.com - This website/blog/community contains many blog posts and a wealth of information that vary from dresses. The website even features its own wikipedia that has been written and created by the community of weddingbee.com readers.
6. Flickr.com - This website is primarily a photosharing website. Recently, I have seen a trend among web-savvy brides to tell their guests to post and tag their wedding so that everyone at their wedding can see share and post other people’s images. The service is free and provided by yahoo! Users of this service have several privacy options as well
7. Myspace.com/facebook.com - For most Millenial brides this is already a given. Many brides already have profiles as well as myspace pages. But for those who are unaware of this service. It is very helpful for passing invites and informing your closest friends and network of friends about your relationship status as well as reminding others when your wedding is. This might not be helpful if you haven’t been meeting and adding friends to MySpace or Facebook. But nowadays both social networking websites are so ubiquitous the chances of your friends being online are very good. Even my friends ant farm, and pets are on MySpace. All in all Facebook / Myspace are the modern way of managing your contacts with friends / relatives / and everyone that you may come into contact with. It can also be useful for you to create guest lists and to figure out whom you might want to invite.
8. Blogger.com - Set up a blog for you and your fiance! This way you can write about your progress up to your wedding date as well as keep your friends, relatives and guests updated as well. It only takes a couple minutes to set up this blog. The blog allows you many different themes. I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure someone has probably already created a wedding related theme by now.
9. Google Calendar - If you don’t already have a google calendar this is probably the best calendar i’ve ever used. Google calendar has lots of features that lets you put important dates online and then will remind via mobile if necessary. Google calendars also allows you to share important events with others. You can even create seperate calendars for you and your fiance so that he/she can be updated with dates as well.
10. Me. Feel free to email me if you have any questions or just want to send some love to my email box. That is always great!

Today I took work off and attended Terry White’s InDesign Productivity CS3 Seminar. For those whom are not familiar with InDesign; it is a professional text and image page layout program utilized primarily by print professionals to produce brochures, annual reports, business cards, and pretty much anything that is printed.

If you like my review of this seminar. Please do me a favor and link me in your blog or twitter or whatever you can to pass this along. That would be most appreciated!

My Thoughts about this seminar

I attended this seminar to improve my speed and effectiveness at InDesign CS3. In short, I was blown away and very impressed with Terry White’s Seminar.

Seminar Costs

The ticket costs $99. The ticket includes a full day of instruction by Terry White: 10am-5pm. There were 5 different sessions. Each session had a break and one session had an hour long lunch break. I’d say there was about 5 hours total of instruction. 30-45 minutes devoted to commercials and sponsor announcements. Unfortunately, lunch was not provided. Which probably was beneficial to keeping the costs low.

I’ll give you several reasons why to attend the seminar in the following sections:

Burton Manor, The Venue

The seminar was held at the Burton Manor in Livonia, Michigan. I have had been there previously for a polish wedding where I attended it with a friend a couple years back. It’s located right by the free way on Schoolcraft. From what I remember Burton manor is a very popular place for people around Livonia to hold wedding receptions so it seemed uncommon to me to goto Burton Manor for an InDesign seminar.

Arrival at Indesign Seminar, Tips & What to bring

I brought everything I needed: a laptop, my printed out ticket (which looked well laid out on a Creative Suite application). I made a last check to make sure I had my printed out ticket, a warm hooded sweatshirt and my power cable etc.

Make sure you print out your ticket! It is definitely helpful as in order to save yourself some time. I showed up at 930. The email mentioned that you should be there at 9am for registration. Honestly, I showed up and the doors just opened up at 945. So if you want a good spot to sit at show up 30 minutes after registration. Pretty much what I did. It worked out perfectly.

One disappointment I had with the venue was that there weren’t any power cables to plug my laptop into. The Venue is just one huge square; typical of wedding reception halls and bucket tungsten lights. The venue provided coffee and water. Nothing too sophisticated

They had catering for those who wanted to pay extra for the food that the Burton Manor provided. I was not sure of the costs. I went for on go cheap sandwich shop nearby. Which starts with sub and ends with way. I hope Subway sends me my promotional check now for endorsing their shops.
One tip of advice. If you are super impatient and abhor waiting you should grab fast food after the first 15 minute break. I’m very speedy and efficient and really dislike waiting in lines. So I quickly snuck out drove to the nearest subway grabbed my sandwich (with no one). I did this because if you wait till around noon you’ll have to wait for all the fun people to file out and it becomes super stressful and the risk of hitting someone is probably greater. That would make me a sad panda.

One more tip of advice. Don’t bring your laptop if you don’t need to. Terry moves fast and if you’re not paying attention you’ll probably get lost. So don’t play with your laptop. Do that on break to check emails and return calls and show the man some respect.

Final thoughts about the seminar

I thought the seminar was very worthwhile! It’s a great deal for $99. My only wish was that it was longer and possibly covered more advanced topics as well. But this doesn’t mean that you won’t learn lots of new things!

Terry is an excellent presenter. You can tell that he has extensive amounts of preparation into this presentation and he has done this many times before. His humor keeps you hooked on the instruction. He is very professional and does very well to make sure that he is on time. He uses a timer to make sure that he doesn’t go over breaks and lunches and makes sure hes answers every single question that would be brought up.

He does a great job setting expectations up by providing expert tips even when the subject is very rudimentary and seems very novice and for many different levels of skill. An example would be he would show techniques and even if you already know how to do it he’ll provide usually more than one way of doing it so that you’ll know of a more product way of doing one task. Like for example, Terry shows you how to move to a different page 4+ different ways.

Terry white is also very patient. He does an excellent job of moving fast but not to a pace where you get lost. Luckily with the cost of your ticket they provided you a workbook for you to follow at home in case you didn’t get to it or jot it down. Terry often always goes on tangents and provides bonus tips and techniques that aren’t covered in the book and are presented by questions from the audience which makes every event unique and worthwhile to attend. I don’t think Terry is doing another seminar tour in a different city but theres another indesign instructor listed. I couldn’t imagine the seminar being in any different format.

Mr. White is also very authoritative. He is very knowledgeable and knows almost all the insides and out of indesign. He also provides good reasons why Adobe designed their product a certain way.

All in all I strongly suggest you attend the InDesign Productivity Tour at a city near you whether you’re an amateur, a novice or an intermediate InDesign CS3 User.

You can learn more and sign up for their seminars at photoshopseminars.com

Currently, Colgate is having an online voting contest which has several cities the chance of winning a Fun center added to their Hospital Facility. On the list are the following cities: Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, New York, Philedelphia and Baltimore.  The contest has the Children’s Hospital of Michigan pitted against other hospitals across the nation to compete for a fun center to be built into their hospital facilities. Having a fun center in Detroit would be definitely beneficial for national coverage if Detroit wins.

Heres some information about the hospital that is talked about on their website:

Founded in 1886, Children’s Hospital of Michigan is the largest and only freestanding hospital in the state dedicated exclusively to the treatment of children. An international leader in neurology and neurosurgery, cardiology, oncology, and diagnostic services, Children’s Hospital of Michigan is ranked one of America’s best. Staffed by more than 300 pediatric physicians and 500 pediatric nurses, more Michigan pediatricians are trained at Children’s Hospital than at any other hospital in the state.

Please vote for the Detroit Childrens Hospital here

Currently, at this moment Detroit is behind by .2% and is in second place next to Houston.

Outside of Oregon there is a tree farm that we went to do some Christmas tree shopping. Apparently, it’s a swiss tradition to hunt cut down your own Christmas Tree. I don’t know if this is true or not. Luckily, this was the only day it stopped raining in Portland, Oregon.

This is part of our expedition for the perfect tree. That day me and my brother in law were talking about the paradox of how one can be alienated by the freedom of choice.

This is the turkey i help make. One of them. There were two birds. The bird we bought was grown on a whole-foods type farm. Organic and cage free. Thus the turkey was very tasty and supported local farmers in Oregon.

This is in downtown Seattle, Washington the day after thanksgiving. More specifically at the Westlake Shopping center. This tree is the macy’s tree. They lit it with LED lightbulbs that day and had a huge turnout of people.
This is Seattle. I traveled there after Thanksgiving with my parents. They wanted to travel to Vancouver. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of Vancouver. It rained alot and it was pretty cold so I had no chance of shooting photos.

I visited the Seattle Art Museum. I did a previous post about that earlier too.

Wedfog (Wedfog.com - Wedding Photography, Demystified) is a great resource for brides and grooms looking to research wedding photography pricing, contracts of sample wedding photographers, advice and tips from wedding photographers  and information about wedding photographers in their area. The website features an advertising directory that is primarily founded by a community called the digital wedding forum (or DWF). The digital wedding forum DWF was originally founded by Jeff Caplan as a way to build a subscription based community that would support and help other photographers in the field and eliminate the inherent barriers of entry.

The Digital Wedding Forum moderator, Mark Lutz eventually spearheaded the Wedfog (wedfog.com) requiring members of the digital wedding forum to help fun the advertising network that will eventually provide their community with leads as well as mutual benefit for all photographers. For wedding photographers of the Digital Wedding Forum its a win-win situation!