Corvid-19 update

First off, I don’t have the Corona virus.

If you’re a current bride or groom: I won’t be canceling any of my weddings or engagement shoots. I am however ready to take on any new business from those who are unable to. A majority of what I do, can be at a safe distance. Even my meetings have been switched to Skype & FaceTime. Most venues aren’t choosing to cancel dates but have mandated to do so by the government. Feel free to give me a call when rebooking with a venue and I can let you know on the spot if I have your date available. Try and work with multiple dates from a venue if possible. More likely to be able to stick with you through all this with more options.

I am currently under self quarantine. I spend the majority of my day currently thinking about what I’ll eat and when and which YouTube video i’ll watch along with that. I’m also keeping busy by organizing, editing, sorting and building infrastructure as well as marketing. This shut down of the American way of life has affected me the same as everyone else, unexpectedly. I’ve always been somewhat prepared for extended stays at home. As a wedding photographer I have to wait for my payday. I don’t ask for money up front or portions of it leading up to a wedding. I couldn’t imagine the pain of being a photographer with a canceled wedding who has to give back a large retainer or deposit. So because of not taking money before a wedding I usually am stocked up on toilet paper, soaps, cleaning supplies and food. This only meant that when I went to the store to pick up a little extra last week it wasn’t imperative and more luxuries I was partaking in; sweets, meats and salty foods.

I depend on weddings to make payments to all my bills from mortgage down to my Spotify premium account (I just can’t stand those commercials). I have yet to see any cancellations from any of my forty four brides and grooms. I’ve already shot a half dozen weddings this year with the majority set to begin at the end of April. I’m looking forward to getting back to normalcy and keeping myself nice and healthy in the meantime; taking my vitamins, exercising, resting and waiting. This post is more to let my current brides and grooms know that i’m not planning on going anywhere, fleeing to the Corona virus free island off of Massachusetts. If you have any worries, then just call of course.

I’m not going to go much further into how bad it could get or what’s already happened because of this shut down. I’ve seen too much of that on Facebook as it is and don’t need to contribute, it’s bad. I’m just waiting for the spring, summer and time to pass so I can get back to doing what I love. I feel terribly for those who are going through financial hardships as well as the mental. There’s so many businesses i’ve seen who I thought were rock solid that are being hit so hard. Some laying off employees temporarily and others struck with the possibility of having to close permanently. Those of you in the beauty industry and food industry that interact with people directly have lost their income abruptly and I wish the best for you. I hope this is all over as quick as it came.

Stay safe and #StayTheFuckHome

Here’s some of my favorite photos i’ve taken at weddings.

David & Anna at the AC HOTEL, Worcester

David and Anna at the AC Hotel in Worcester

Who steers the ship

     If you decide that you know more than the photographer it may cost you. That's not meant to sound like a threat, it's more of a small rant that will help put some of your wedding day into perspective.  It's a fast paced day with lots of moving parts and lots of different vendors who do not want to mess anything up, this means everyone is making sure they perform exactly what they were hired for.

     Most weddings will go off without a hitch, there are the small little hiccups which do happen. People arriving late, corsage mishaps, wrong colored shoes, missing socks. But most photographers have been to a few hundred more weddings than the bride and groom they are tasked to take photos of. This means if you decide to intervene throughout the wedding with ideas and direction it can cost you time and photos. One of my favorite parts about a wedding is guiding a bride throughout the day because i'm with her the entire day. I'm able to say that we're running on schedule or we're going to head back here and you're going to have a little break and then get introduced into the reception. 

     On your wedding day a wedding photographer will never argue with you, you're the boss. We've been hired to take photos and not to negotiate/argue on how you want it done. I totally understand the intervention that may happen when a bride thinks she needs to. It's a high stress day for the bride because she wants everything to be perfect. In my experience most brides don't relax or breath until after they've sat at the reception.  My goal is to get amazing photos and maybe jump through a few hoops doing so. I also want to keep the bride and groom happy throughout all this. If your face shows stress on your wedding day it's going to show in the photos. You may not even remember doing this or ever see those photos because I will make sure they don't make the final cut. 

     During formal photos I have thirty to forty minutes to get the photos that you'll be hanging on your wall and passing down to future generations. I have a method, a path that I follow and a flow. We start off big, break it down, switch it up and eventually end up with just the bride and groom. If you decide you know better then the photographer we're going to let you do so. I've had brides direct formal photos before and we started with family and then bridal party and then back to family and then back to family and then the bride and groom and then bridal party and double the time. I write this as a warning to other brides to let the photographer steer the ship at certain key points. You've hired us for a reason. I certainly wouldn't be offering suggestions to a plumber or mechanic. I want to get you as many photos as possible.

     On your wedding day, relax, enjoy, experience it. You don't have to keep track of everyones whereabouts, put someone in charge of that. Consider the day a stack of dominos, line them up and let it happen. You wouldn't start the line of dominion by tipping them and slowly readjusting them as the dominos fell. If you look worried or like you're yelling at people in your photos it's going to look just like that in your photos. I really want the best of you on your wedding day. It's not just a paycheck or an honest one if I don't think i've done everything possible to get you the best photos. So pucker up, smile and let your wedding day happen and enjoy your friends and family. No guests will ever notice the mistakes, I promise you.

The flying photographer

ThinkTank Airport Security. retractable stroller handle so you don't get stuck carrying through the airport.

ThinkTank Airport Security. plenty of space to fit my 200mm 1.8, two bodies, 4 other lenses, two flashes and tons of batteries and accessories and laptop.

usually one body and 3 or 4 lenses and a flash. Also has room for a 15inch macbook

smaller things like cables and usb devices in here

This keeps my macbooks cables organized in my bag and easy to get to.

     No this is not a blog about drones even though I may have link-bated you. This could either be about drones or a magical flying photographer or X-Men based sort of mutant who can take photos while flying. I just wanted to write a little bit about my experience traveling as a photographer.

     So traveling as a photographer can be a bit difficult. I'm not traveling with a few thousand dollars worth of gear, usually it's tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear; hope you liked that humble brag. This means that i'm not checking my gear, we've all seen those videos of luggage handlers tossing and pitching suitcases into and out of planes. This is my exact nightmare, having someone toss a case or bag filled with two bodies and several lenses with accessories into a mishmash of storage space that is being optimized for space which means fitting and squishing into place when applicable.  

     When you travel somewhere as a photographer you really don't want to leave that one tool home that you realize later you needed. So this means we will often bring everything and the kitchen sink. I regularly will travel with around eight lenses, a few flashes and two bodies as well as batteries and everything else. 

     The next nightmare is for a TSA employee somewhere along the lines to inspect my gear and pull out the smallest maybe unnoticeable item somewhere along the lines. Even when I don't have anything important in my checked bags I regularly get luggage back with either one or two locks missing or telltale signs of rummaging. How easy would it be for any of them to simply place an object into their pocketbook or vest pocket. I may arrive at my location and notice I don't have an adapter or lens and now I'm questioning if I even packed it or maybe it fell out when I was retrieving my car charger for my phone at the airport. It may be a week or two before I can verify a stolen item and the amount of baggage handlers could very well mean than I cannot narrow down a point where it was taken.

     So how I treat my equipment is having it with me on a carry on bag. This is the stuff that cannot be stolen, it's with me; the guard. On most flights you are allowed a carry on, a backpack and a small item. The carry on size is different between international and continental USA. I do have both sizes of carry on for my camera equipment. I have bags from ThinkTANK and highly suggest them.  I have the ThinkTANK commuter, airport security v2, airport international v3 and the retrospective 30 and 10 shoulder bags. One of the neat things as well is the similar bag shapes which mean they look awesome when they are all put away. They are boxy, padded and have all the right features that you need. Order on Amazon and check one out or take a trip to B&H in NYC and get hands on with it. I've had a bag collection for many years and this past year i've actually started to thin out my stash because I fell in love.

Screenshot from TSA website. In the past three years I have had four locks DISAPPEAR and have never received an inspection notice. 

So when traveling with your gear, keep it with you. If you get the ThinkTANK bags they mostly all include a cable that is attached to the bag that you simply have to loop to any pole, seat or other stationary objects to secure as well as zippers than can be locked into a stationary lock. 

ThinkTank Airport commuter. solid bag that fits enough gear for a wedding

Thinktank Airport commuter. great for a carry on and durable enough for hiking.

Somewhat disposable TSA locks (They like to throw them away)

Keep alot of my chargers in here when i travel

I made the bride's daughter cry

Okay. Now that i've link baited you i'll quickly tell you I didn't do anything wrong. Okay now that we've got that settled I can continue with the story. I also did get my bride's permission to tell this story because I didn't want to come off as mean in any sense or be disrespectful to anyone.  I'm not going to name this venue and if you recognize it then you know they have amazing prime rib and corn fritters. I have shot many weddings here as well as my first wedding and I will be back. 

     So first off, me and the bride's daughter totally hitting it off. She's nine years old and I took the time to help her find some things in a Where's Waldo type of book at the hair salon and I let her use my camera.  When we arrived at the wedding venue (I'm not going to use their name here because I really like them) I started doing detail photos while the bride ran around and made sure everything was in order. I asked my bride's daughter is she wanted to come and hang out with me while I do photos and carry the veil. 

     My little assistant came with me while I hung the dress all around the property but there was no area that was really conducive to what I was looking to do. Inside and outside I only found a few spots but nothing that blew me away.I found one spot that worked amazingly, from a chandelier by the front entrance. I hung it, tipping the lights sideways a bit but the dress was light and no troubles. I took a few photos and it looked amazing. I decided to have Sam stand in a chair next to the dress and maybe some directly behind it. I had her on a chair and I was instructing her not to touch the dress whatsoever because of the chandelier. Just as I was doing so a nineteen year old waitress rushes over with her hands up saying "I'm sorry, I just, I, you can't, sorry, you can't"  to which I replied we'll just be a few more minutes and then we'll be out of your way. She then started to reach for the wedding dress which I grabbed before she could touch it. We stood there in a small stale mate and I explained that I just needed to get a few photos and I would be leaving the area and she said that I couldn't hang the dress there (several employees had walked by me or watched me prior to this). She pointed out two places where I could hang the dress. One being on a coat hanging area with high chairs and the other by the front podium where there was no place to hang it.

     I pointed out those to areas and questioned them, over there??? She eventually walked away very quickly and I was left alone with Sam. I walked back over to rehang the dress and continue with my photos and was blocked by Sam. Sam told me "No! The lady said you can't" to which I replied, yea I know but it's okay. So I moved into position again but was blocked by Sam "She said no". Now i'm being impeded from doing my job. So I got down and tried to explain to her that the worse thing that can happen is I get yelled at again. I tell her that i'm going to be taking the photos that her mom will have for the rest of her life and I have to make them as perfect as I can. Now Sam is actively trying to take the wedding dress fro me. 

     A family member of Sams comes in the front entrance and says hi to both of us. I ask if they can take her upstairs so that I can finish taking photos. She stands there with arms crossed. She is unresponsive to her Aunt and Uncle. I ask  if she doesn't want me to take photos of the dress, she is quiet with arms still crossed "Do you not want me to hang the dress up" yessssss. Tears start to drip down her face so I say "Okay i'm going to go take photos over here, but you have to head upstairs okay". So she leaves and I walk over and rehang the dress and get a few more photos.

     Afterwards I head up to put the dress back and my bride is there to greet me. She says "So you made my daughter cry...".  She then follows up with telling me that she talked to Sam and that for the money she paid me and also the venue that I can do whatever I want and that's what i'm paying for. So Sam thought that the nineteen year old waitress was going to cancel the wedding and kick everyone out. I did talk to the coordinator for our wedding and she said she was aware of what happened and it wasn't a big deal at all and was fine with it. 

     My main goal at any wedding is maybe not following all the rules but instead getting the best photos I can without being too disruptive. I'm always on the bride and groom's side and am looking to do the best I can do.  I've included some photos of the dress below, I did only take a few shots inside of the dress.

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See if you can pick out which photo I designed and shot and which one was suggested to me.

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A

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It's not a Trump hat!

Okay, I recently got some new unitymike.com gear. That's what i'm going to call it I guess, unitymike.com gear. Just so you know, it's expensive, FUBU expensive. These shirts, hats are not H&M prices.

     Okay, so let's get where we're going. I happen to wear a red hat all the time, well almost all the time. When it's spring, summer or anywhere where it's hot out i'm not wearing a red winter hat. Which you may think of as my luxury items which are not readily available to the great public. Recently I wanted to rock a red hat when it was spring, summer or generally hot out, I couldn't; too hot. I decided I need a summer version of my hat and soon.

     So while I was in Hawaii I wandered into a LIDS, which for those of you not in the know, it's a hat store. Quick side not, I was wearing a Worcester "Fuck Yeah" T-Shirt from Worcester Wares, the person who actually designed the outdoor mall where we were happened to notice my shirt. This architecture guru or designing genius has actually designed the Greendale Mall and the Solomon Pond mall as well as dozens of other malls, anyways... small world.

     So back to the story,  I checked out some red hats, black hats and ended up getting both. So now i'm going to crap on LIDS for a second. This chain wanted the price of the hat, plus fifty dollars to create a DST or EMB file (embroidery file) and then twelve dollars to put my logo on a hat. So for a single hat it would be a little north of eighty dollars. So I decided to curt the system a bit and have the embroidery file made elsewhere. This is where I want to praise Fiverr.com. I was able to have my logo made back into a vector file, it's been awhile so why not sharpen that up. I lost my original logo file and have been working off a lesser quality version. So once that file was nice and sharp I found someone on Fiverr that would create this embroidery file for the high cost of five dollars. At this point i'm home on the mainland in Massachusetts. I made my way to the Auburn Mall to meet with the embroidery artists who are experts at putting a hat on a machine and hitting a button. This is literally what they do. So now i'll throw some praise back at LIDS. The first three hats that I brought them got destroyed while attempting my logo. A quote of around an hour turned into two hours and then turned into me swinging back later in the day to find no progress made. This doesn't sound like much praise yet, i'm getting there. So the next day I show up around eleven thirty or so and there is all three of my hats with varying degrees of mis-stiching. The kid working there assured me that the machine was now fixed and he just walked into this, I did not doubt him in the least. So again I was quoted around twenty minutes per hat and thirty minutes later I realize that they do not understand estimates.

     Okay, praise time. My hats came out awesome, they did start from scratch for the new hats. They hats fit good, they look good with one exception. The exception is it's similar to Donald Trump's hat, Make America Great Again. Okay, two things; America was never not great and secondly I've been rocking a red hat longer. I am not a trump supporter at all, so much not a support in fact that when I type out trump and it doesn't auto correct the capitalization of his name.. I don't even go back and fix it. So two second rant, watch the news, watch his press conferences, watch what he's doing in office. I want him to do good and stand up and do the job, but I doubt that's going to happen. 

     So i've had too many people comment on the fact that it looks like a Trump hat and I guess i'll have to get over that little aspect of my hat. I like it because it's a strong looking hat. I know it will eventually get dirty and crappy and i'll have to stop wearing it, but until that day comes. 

Wedding workflow

So this post is purely for photographers, maybe geared more towards wedding photographers perhaps. This is not going to be a blog where I incorporate lots of visual aids, i'm not a Buzzfeed article. If you know Lightroom or have just started using it then you will be able to follow along. If you're a bride or groom and don't know what Lightroom is then this probably isn't for you.

     So what I concentrate on is keeping things simple. It can be very easy to misplace a photo if you don't know what you're doing in Lightroom. You can add a filter that doesn't show certain types of flagged photos or you might not have photos from 2016 or 2015 included and miss a photo that you needed asap. Okay, so i'll go through everything from the beginning.

     So first off, any of my edits have usually been thirty seconds or less on a photo. I'm working with four thousand photos when shooting a wedding and between sorting, processing and delivering I have gotten pretty efficient. I'm mentioning this because I want you to understand that I don't treat my catalog like a golden goose. If my catalog becomes corrupt or has an issue and I have to restart from scratch, it won't be the end of the world. I may lose all of my edits but i'll always have my photos which is the most important part.  

     I sort my photos by YEAR, MONTH, DATE. If I need to get photos of a race from two years ago all I have to do is search my calendar on my computer or phone for RACE. Once I have the date I just look through my catalog for these photos.   

     I do have two catalogs, one on each computer. My main computer is used for managing storage between two eight terabyte external hard drives. This catalog has everything from 2007 to 2017. I'm currently teetering around five and a half terabytes but it goes up and down each year depending on how harshly I treat my past work which i'll explain more about in the next paragraph. The second catalog I have is on my MacBook Retina, this is my workhorse. It's fully loaded and meant for travel and speed. I'm able to take all my wedding photos and work through them non stop without being confined to my office or apartment. My favorite place to work is actually Starbucks. So this catalog of photos and edits on my MacBook is stored on a Lacie Thunderbolt hard drive. I'll talk more about what I do with these photos later in this blog.

     Another benefit of having everything in one catalog is access. You can keep doing triage on your photos, sorting through them and pulling out the bad photos. When years go by and you get better at photography you will be better equipped to judge your past work more critically. Every year I spend a few weeks to go back through my old photos and trim out the chum. God forbid I expire before i'm suppose to and someone is charged with sorting through my photos and see all my bad photos (I mean bad composition, blurry and other issues). I've heard other photographers talk about how inexpensive storage is, it's not trust me. I upgrade my hard drives every year due to concerns of proper backups. Hard drives fail so you should regularly upgrade. I use my hard drives pretty heavily as well. If I have a bride or past client that wants photos from their shoot I don't want to give them any bad photos. If you even show a client a bad photo there is a chance they may think it's great. Here's what happens when you show that bad photo, they say it looks great and you know it doesn't. They start showing that bad photo and telling everyone who took that photo. So I really only want my good photos out there. If it's something important then yes, save the photos, no biggie. But for me I don't want to have sixteen terabytes of good photos mixed with bad photos.

           Sorting, yes, no. It's that simple. Yes to a photo, it's good and you like it and want to share it and you want people to know it's on of your photos and i've used too many ands in this sentence. No means that you don't like the photo, it didn't come out good, bad composition, un-saveable, blurry, unflattering. When you get rid of a photo you're also saving the environment. You're also saving your wallet from having to get a bigger hard drive prematurely. So for those of you not in the know... P is for Pick or YES, X is not Reject or NO. While in the library module you have to make sure Auto Advance is clicked on under the Photo menu at the top. Okay, so now that we have all the photos and we're selecting P or X and working through the photos we realize it may not be going as fasts you would like it. This can be for two different reasons. You have to make sure all standard previews were built for the photos. Otherwise you will have to wait a second for the photo to render each time you click through the photos. Control A and then Library menu, Previews, Build Standard Size previews. Now wait and once it's finished restart your sorting process. Another reason the photos may be going slower as you pick through them is you're in the DEVELOP module. You will be able to sort while in this module but it will be a little bit slower.  

     The best part about sorting with P and X is you can do it with one hand. The more you do it the faster you'll get with it. I promise once you've done it with a half dozen shoots you'll be a master. Now here's what you do once you've selected all the bad and good photos, once you've flagged everything as a YES or NO. Now you can DELETE REJECTED PHOTOS. Now keep in mind once you've deleted these files they are moved to your trash bucket on your computer or Mac. Please please please make sure you don't have deleters remorse over your photos. This is just how I work and if it works for you then it works for you. Lightroom really allows everyone to process and do their own workflow the way they want. This is just how I work. Okay moving on.

     Once you have deleted the rejected photos by clicking the Photo menu at the top of the screen and scrolling down to it you can repeat this whole process again. So what you'll want to do is go through all of the photos and repeat this process of saying yes or no to all of the photos. I will typically do this several times if not more just because I want to make sure that my client or bride & groom get the best photos they can. You'll start to notice that you now have just really nice photos in your catalog. It will be a pleasure to show, friends and family your photos without having to delicately explain why some of the are bad.  

     Now that you are down to just your good photos you are ready to start editing. I don't use presets btw for anything. I process my photos a little bit differently and don't want everything to look exactly the same as every photographer on Instagram or Pinterest with a yellow decontrasted light flared photo. So here's what I do next. I take one photo and I apply a few general edits on it. First I add anywhere between +5 to +15 on contrast (This helps give enforce a more sharpened look) and then +5 to saturation (You should be shooting RAW and your phot may be a little flat because of it) and then +1 or +2 on clarity just to add a little bit of edge to everything. I'll also make sure Profile correction is on and sometimes i'll add increase sharpness and add a little bit of noise reduction. Once i've done this singular edit to this photo i'll want to apply it to all of the photos. I move back to the main Library loupe view by hitting the G key. Select All (Control A or Command A) and i'll mouse over to the side triangle to reveal the window to the left where it says Sync Settings. I select Sync Settings and I make sure everything is applied. Keep in mind if you decided to adjust exposure on this first photo it will apply to all of the photos. So once all these basic edits are applied to everything I can start going through with more edits. if you've noticed I don't do much with my editing. I really try to get everything correct when I actually shoot the original photo. I don't try and follow up my work with corrections. It makes my life a lot easier when I take a good photo and work from that to make minor adjustments. I'm not huge on filters, fake looking scenes and such. I would much rather get the correct tonal range and add some lights in the scene to break a subject from the background or add a dynamic little flare by using my flash a certain way. It's way too easy to add all these afterwards.   I wrote about that a little more here.

     While in the DEVELOP module you can navigate your mouse over to exposure and it should change the color slightly from Grey to white notifying you that your cursor is selecting this certain option. While the mouse sits over exposure you can now use the arrow keys to adjust exposure and also move between photos. This means you can go through all of your photos with out having to move around your mouse non-stop. I like to apply all of my exposure edits to all the photos like this. I'll eventually go back and do cropping on all of my photos to make it more pleasing to the eye. Some photos may require additional adjustments like Shadows or adjusting highlights. 

     Once I have done all my edits and i'm happy with my work i'll export the photos to a custom named folder. Once the photos have made their way to where they're suppose to be. This is usually my website IShotYourWedding.com which is made through Pixieset.com. Any photos that I really like will end up on my Facebook or Instagram. I'll also take a few photos that i'm happy with and put them in a separate folder called "Images", I know i'm super creative. This is just a folder that links to my Wallpaper and Screensaver that allows me to keep seeing my good photos. When i'm done getting the photos to where they need to be I delete the JPG files. I have no use for them. I have a finished copy on my website if I need to show them and the really good ones I have in a folder and on social media. I find it's much easier to get rid of them and it also keeps my desktop very clean and provides a really nice focus for me to get work done now.

     After most shoots, always weddings I take my photos and back them up to my Lacie thunderbolt hard drive. I sort through them as quickly as possible and then those get backed up to two eight terabyte hard drives. When I am no longer using the photos on my MacBook or travel drive as much I delete them because I have them backed up in two separate locations. This allows me to keep my computer relatively clean. If my computer ever gets stolen I don't lose out on photos and because I have a MacBook and good practices it's very quick to get back on my feet as far as editing goes. 

     I hope this is helpful to the photographers out there with a massive workload. This is a little bit of the magic behind my smoke and mirrors. This is not a shortcut to work, this still takes a great deal of time to do correctly. I'm not breezing through any photos. In fact most  weddings I take four to five weeks because I'll work on the photos every few days that way I'm looking at them with fresh eyes and processing everything in my head on which is a good photo and which is a bad photo. I always want to make sure my best foot is forward. If you don't have Lightroom yet i would highly suggest you go and sign up for Adobe's photographer plan which gives you Lightroom & Photoshop for only $9.99 a month.  Feel free to leave me any comments or criticism on this post. 

Business cards and why mine is the best.

Here's a few business cards i've put together.  You can see the evolution of my design.

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Brace yourself for a long winded rant about my business cards. You kinda asked for it... those were a lot of Facebook comments. 

      So Zazzle who I typically use for my business card had a little bit of a trimming mishap when producing my cards. They upgraded some of their behind the scenes editing software and it ended up pushing some of my text outside the cut lines. So this mishap meant they took care of me with credit and that allowed me to go back and readjust the cards. Additionally the thickness or weight of the card was so thick that during the cutting process the sheets shifted slightly. I had text very close to the edge and it showed any slight deviation. I only noticed it while dropping off a set of business cards. 

     I do want to preface this all with Zazzle is awesome. I've used other companies and I really have had good experiences with this company. The customer service is always top shelf. There has been times where I've made a mistake and other times where they've made a mistake. They have humans who work there and it turns out humans can make an occasional mistake, totally okay with that. I've had soo many people message with me various other companies that they use and I have to decline the help because I really do love this company and the fact that I have everything all ready and designed for print here.  So with this current mishap Zazzle took care of me and just recently sent me an additional box of cards which was done unpressured and just a show of appreciation. So I ended up with double the amount of cards. I've been using Zazzle since I started my photography business and it's nice to have a steady supplier like them. 

     So I've put this out to my friends on Facebook, the designing of my card. I was mostly looking for feedback on my red hat that I want to include. I've spent a lot of time designing my card to stand apart from everyone else. Typically everyone does the same exact thing. Name, Phone, E-mail, logo and maybe a slogan. Think about how many business cards look exactly the same. 

     The design of my business card has been the same with minor adjustments over the past five years. One side is always a large image of my logo, large enough to read if it's on the ground or a table. I've chosen the chubby size cards instead of the standard for two reasons, it stands out and doesn't fit behind other cards nicely. The second reason is it's different, it's usually been a tear-proof material which is always an interesting challenge to my clients to tear it up. 

     So I appreciate everyones input for the cards. Some of the advice I totally understand. Use a beautiful image you've shot, use this font, why is the phone number so big. This is not a card which I've put together quickly. It's been made to stand out from the pack.  A thousand cards will probably last me most of the year. Brides and grooms who typically end up with my card end up with it because they are in my office. Most people are finding me on Google, Facebook, Instagram or a random phone call. If these were being used for a wedding expo I would probably have something a bit different. 

     One of the biggest things with photographer is everyone happens to use a camera aperture for a logo (myself included, guilty). So I changed my logo a year or two back to something a littler bit more reflective of who and what. It now includes the words wedding which is my focus. I also have the dot come in the logo as well so now I don't have to do any additional dot come references elsewhere in the card. The main goal of my card is for it to stand apart from everyones no matter what business's card it's next to. My business name was believe it or not an AIM handle back in 1996 which was unity1818. Unity is an Operation Ivy song, not a Queen Latifah jam. It ended up as a placeholder for my website because I eventually needed one. Unity happens to work as a name for a business name but unity photography is actually taken by another photographer named Ken who I've actually met in real life. Anyways the reason I mention this is logos are hard and also very much essential to pull together a website, business card and any branding you may want to do. I didn't get to do anything cute like Two cranes photography or jumping cat photo. I based mine off a teenage Aol Instant Messenger name. 

     The giant phone number is something that takes people a second to grasp sometimes. I've had lots of people pick it up and say what is this and then it clicks. Then I have a few different sentences fit above, in-between and below the giant phone number. So whoever has already picked up my card because they don't understand the giant numbers at first and now they're reading all these sentences i've put on my card which is done is a very small font.  So they've spent anywhere from fifteen seconds to twenty seconds reading this side of my business card. I just times myself doing it from picking it up and skimming through everything. 

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TEXT LISTED CURRENTLY ON MY BUSINESS CARD

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook. Visit my website to find all my social media links.

Wow, this is a very impressive business card. Thank you, I agree. If you find this impressive then wait until you see my photos.

The number on this card is my phone number. Please visit my website to send me a more formal message.

Don't lose this card. Int has your future wedding photographer's contact info on it.

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There is a rhyme to my reason.... is that even a saying?

     So think about how long it takes for you to usually comprehend information on anyones business card. You look at a logo, an address maybe, hours possibly, phone and e-mail. I've already gotten almost twenty seconds of someones time. I've told them where they can find my social media links. I've directed them to my website to send me a message. I personally don't like a random e-mail from someone with a simple sentence "HOW MUCH" "WHAT ARE YOUR PACKAGES". So I love to direct people to my website where I have a proper contact form and more importantly all the information.  I've also included a little bit of my humor by saying how impressive the business card is. If you didn't get what the numbers were or skipped over the numbers in favor for a full sentence then it's explained here with the above text. I've also told them how important the card is and not to lose it, it has your future wedding photographers info on it. Okay, that last sentence is a little cocky but it's cool, I know I rock.

    So if you found this card and and saw all this information you would be able to get a quick snippet of who I am, personality wise possibly. As a wedding photographer i'm the person you'll have the most contact with during a wedding day. I'm literally with a bride all day long give or take some distance. The big thing I try to convey when I meet a bride and groom is the attitude of easy going. I'm very easy going, in fact most of my meetings i'm wearing that red hat and a hoodie. More meetings happen in the winter time. I'm also friending all of my brides and grooms on Facebook at some point. Since i'm spending the entire day with someone it totally benefits me to keep them in a good, relaxed and happy mood. Some of that comes from the informality of most of my approaches. I have brides contact me at eleven at night with a simple question or on Facebook on a Sunday afternoon. I'm very accessible and I make sure the bridal couple knows this. My goal is to have it feel like a friend is shooting your wedding. 

     With my current design i've chosen to remove some of the text to focus more on branding myself with my favorite object, a red hat. Affectionally worn for the past six years solid or so. I'm regularly recognized everywhere for this hat. Currently it's a red winter hat from American Eagle but i've also had many other variations of this red hat. I can't really wear baseball caps when I shoot outdoors and fedoras or these winter caps have always hung around me. I've actually gotten to meet a lot of my Facebook friends in public because they spot me somewhere in Worcester, Boston, NYC. It's a very bold color and my attire doesn't really have to match the hat. What i'm doing by including the red hat with my business cards are training anyone who ends up with this card to eventually be able to spot that exact red hat. Think about it. You have this random card with a red hat, phone, name, wedding photographer and you see a random photographer with the same exact hat. Chances are you are going to come up and say hi and tell me about how you ended up with the card. 

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I'm going to meander a bit, follow along.

     So beyond wedding photography I actually do a number of things. One of those things being web design. When I meet someone who asks for photos or video the first thing I ask is what it's being used for. They tell me they want to put it on their website or Facebook. The next question I ask is to see their website and from there I see their website is angelfire or geocities hosted (antiquated reference, totally worth googling). So from there I talk to them about web design in addition to photos. So I can put togethers someone website pretty easily with a few photos and rearranging information. Here's the other thing I do, consulting work. 

     What is consulting work as it applies to you? Okay, thats a question being asked to me if that didn't make sense there. What I do is interview a business owner and pull out content to add to their website. Often times while explaining things it leads to other questions which inadvenrtuly conclude with a change in their own business's infrastructure. One of the best questions you can ask someone is "What would this look like if it were easy". It's a question you can ask any business owner. It helps them identify a problem area and provide the easiest solution and then we can work on the actual route to getting there. I also will call out an weak areas in their dealings and suggestions I may have to changing routine. 

     So I deal with many different businesses and these owners all happen to be around Worcester and Boston and every once and awhile I get recognized in a Starbucks or while on the job shooting somewhere. I'm training everyone as well as brides, grooms to recognize and associate the red hat with Michael Hendrickson, wedding photographer. 

I have time.

So hopefully everyone will understand my reasoning a little bit better now. It's not simply a harsh design choice. I've slowly evolved it from the very simple to the more complex. My goal with my cards are to stand apart from everyone and I fear being similar to everyone else will make me blend a little too much. I've spent a few minutes to design some of what everyone's asked for in a business card just to appease some.

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I've made a few quick mock-ups of what some think would make a good business card. I've also reverted the size back to a standard business card size. This is not a dig on anyone. This is suggestions i've gotten on the initial thread on Facebook as well as in private messages. 

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Okay. So here's my final design. I did put some thought into this. If you've read this entire blog then hopefully you've fell on my side of the wall. 

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What a photographer's day is like.

Wow, you take photos for a living, that's soo cool. It must be awesome traveling and making your own schedule. Did you get to eat that after you took the photos! Wow did they pay you to fly there and take photos of that? That's an awesome camera, it must have cost a lot. You have that many lenses. 

So I get a lot of the same things repeated to me time and time over. People remark at how amazing and fun it must be to do what I do. But the fact is, it is. But... taking the photos is really only ten percent of what I do. Marketing, post processing, phone calls, e-mails, spending money on things that are and aren't tangible as well as hoping clients make their way to you if you're doing everything the correct way.  I'm going to run through some of the basics of what I do and dive into some of it and gloss over the other parts. 

I do get to make my own schedule. I wake up whenever I want, in fact I don't even set an alarm anymore. I just happen to wake up as soon as the sun comes up and my brain automatically activates and goes back to whatever I should be working on or left off on. When I wake up it's a shower, slide on my stylish clothes and Apple Watch and off to Starbucks to have a Venti Cafe Mocha. I wear the same red hat everywhere I go so that i'm easy to find, recognize and meet. I also wear a unitymike.com t-shirt on the off chance that someone wants to talk to me about hiring me. On my way down to Starbucks i'll call my photographer friends and we bitch to each other about the business. We all run into the same problems, clients who don't want to pay, clients that we're still waiting for them to pay and the clients that say they can pay less somewhere else. This topic is rehashed every few weeks or months as time dictates. This photographer friend and I will talk sometimes several times a day. We run numbers by each other and situations to get another perspective. We also share a lot of information such as negotiation tactics and we talk a lot of gear. 

Once at Starbucks I sit down and play on Facebook. I have my noise canceling headphones on which are absolutely necessary to focus on tasks.  So, when I say play on Facebook I really mean sort through my business page's messages or posts and find people who have tried to contact me. Clients contact me through, text message, phone calls, Instagram, Google+, my personal Facebook page, a Facebook thread or my Facebook business page. While on Facebook I'll also post a link to my website which I really need people to visit. I'm also taking a nice selfie photo or photo of my drink. I need likes, I need people to follow me and be remembered when they or their friends get engaged. Some of my marketing strategy is to go exciting places, eat amazing food, have fun experiences and share these. Facebook's algorithm will note if someone hovers over a photo a bit or clicks on something you posted and adjust it so you show more often in their newsfeed. This means when I post things people are seeing it. I write out a blog or two to put on my website because it actually boosts me up in Google, makes my SEO a little bit better. I also schedule a post or two for my Facebook's business page. I sort through my photos on my computer and pull out a few photos and send them to my phone so that I can post on Instagram a little bit later. The Instagram photos will have to include a nice description, location and some relevant hashtags. 

I send a few e-mails, responding back to anyone who has asked me anything. I'm very prompt with this. If I have an e-mail from a potential bride and I don't answer with in short few hours they will move on to the photographer who does answer.  My futuristic tech that I wear around my wrist is not so much to show off a toy as it is used to get e-mail notifications and text messages. I hate staring at my phone for any length of time.

I have to swing by my office to drop off some flyers that came in. I straighten out my office which comes at a nice discount. Other people have been in my office to use my giant tv. I clean up desk, arrange everything for new clients coming in. My forms are getting a little low in stock and I have to sit down and revise and reprint a new stack. I keep adding more to my forms to help me. While at my office I also have to visit with my landlord of sorts to go over his projects and what he needs done. I help out where I can. 

I have to take a drive to a clients house now because they need a family portrait.  Everything is loaded into my car, lights, camera, action. I head to the clients house where I set up, pose, photograph and repeat half a dozen time with various locations on their property. We have a good time, i'm paid and now everything needs to be packed up and brought back home and deconstructed back into it's case.  On my way back home i'm calling a client of mine who I help out at their office. I do everything from ordering supplies to photo and video and web design and consulting work. I check and see if they need anything or if theres anything upcoming that I need to get ready for. Nothing to do there, so no problem. 

I'm having clients in my car later in the week which means that my car which is also used to transport gear from Maine to Florida is nice and clean. Also, earlier I got a good deal of dirt in my car because the clients driveway was muddy. So wiping the seats down, vacuuming, sorting the contents of my trunk space as well as topping off fluids are on my to do list either today or another. 

During lunch I may eat at my dream place, Coney Island Hot Dogs or go down to The Fix. I'm going to pig out and enjoy it. I've earned it. I've been up since seven working on things.  During lunch i'm browsing on Amazon looking for little things that I've been putting off ordering and finally plunge into my wallet to accommodate myself. I also take any phone calls during my lunch time throughout the week. My phone rings about a dozen times a day with clients and also telemarketers. I can't tell the difference between a safe number and unsafe number because local numbers have been bought up to get a better hit rate.  The reason I mention this is I get to go to my favorite places to eat but a majority of the time my food gets cold. I don't let calls go to voicemail when possible because no one wants to wait and I also depend on clients coming in regularly.  I still manage to take photos of my food which more often than not leads to my food losing it's ideal temperature. 

After lunch I'm beat, worn out and ready to quit. I usually take a nice two hour nap or more. This is interrupted by the occasional phone call and I also wake up at some point and roll over and check my phone for reciprocated e-mails from clients. If I get a call from a bride or e-mail from a bride my goal is to set up a meeting asap, that means later in the day or early the next day or whenever they want. Once I'm awake I recharge again with coffee and a snack. I'm editing photos now for a gig I shot the night prior. I've spent a little part of the day making sure I have everything backed up, previews loaded and basic adjustments made across the board. I get a phone call from a print shop saying the custom frames I ordered are in, i'm still waiting to be paid for them by the client. I have to head over and pick them up and then notify my client they are in and softly nudge them to be ready to have their wallet ready. In case of any questions I have to go back to my computer and dig up the original invoice I sent them. I have several invoices out in fact totaling enough to pay my incoming bills, rent, subscriptions, insurance. 

I'm also waiting on my insurance agent to find me a more affordable insurance for my gear which I pay almost two hundred dollars a month for. I pace around my apartment, straightening things out, organizing my equipment and staring at my giant three by four foot white board. I regularly fill this board up with upcoming tasks, notes, reminders and dates. Anything that i've taken a note for has to be put into my phone and computer for redundancy, thats on my to-do list. I put on my nice Bose noise canceling headphones and pace around my apartment conquering small and mundane tasks to the bigger ones. I have a phone call to make and I spend thirty minutes circling my couch talking to a bride and narrowing down a meeting time. I have to cross check my calendar with a list of weddings to make sure I have time to meet later this week and have her wedding date free.  She can meet today in fact which is wonderful. This was a good phone call. About seven or eight times a year I get a phone call from a bride who loves my photos and she's very excited to meet with me and then tells me her wedding date. I cross check her wedding date and i'm already booked. I have a couple go-to photographers which I send brides that I cannot take. I'm careful who I send brides to because it will fall back on me if anything goes wrong. I send most of my brides to a photographer friend out in Boston. 

I head to my office for the second time today, I'm early. I turn on my tv, my apple tv, bluetooth speaker, set Spotify to modern wedding playlist, set up my Macbook to connect with the TV and get the form out and write out all the information I have at the moment. She should be here any minute, okay ten minutes ago, thirty minutes ago, text, phone call, nothing. I get a text message letting me know she'll be late. I've now been here for an hour and it's dark out by now. She arrives, we hit it off and I go through my entire pitch, I feel good about it. I head home and after dinner I sit and write up a contract and send a follow up e-mail regarding our meeting and everything we talked about. I don't know if she's going to go with me or not. I don't typically do follow up messages because it can easily put someone in that awkward position of saying they're going with someone else but thanks for... you get the idea. 

I'm now uploading photos from the gig I shot the day prior. There's a lot of photos going up so It throttles by data which means Netflix and Hulu won't work on my TV. So shower and head back to my TV to be reminded of this. I end up sitting at my computer browsing through Facebook's newsfeed and get lost in Instant Karma videos on Youtube. I'm also kicking myself to be productive still at eleven at night. I'm making a circuit between my workstation where my Macbook and main computer are to my white board looking for more tasks to finish. I write a few more things on my board that need to get finished. There's a lot of things that just require sitting and writing or following up with people about projects. The rest of my time is spent sitting on my couch with my cats swiping through Bumble to meet someone. It's hard to meet someone when you're schedule is composed of the entire day and night. Basically this app leads into a huge time suck of non productivity which re-guilts me into a productive whirlwind.  

Sleep either can be wonderful because i've accomplished so much or terrible because I still have so much to accomplish. I've disallowed any news on Trump before bed because that makes my sleep even worse. The best part of my day though is having my cats follow me onto my bed and lay next to me. They have no idea what I've done today or the day prior no matter how many times i've tried to explain it to them. That's a very calming thing, two little cats who's day tomorrow is packed with sleeping and eating. Maybe i'm in the wrong profession. 

So this is exactly how any day goes for the most part. The details may change, some days are less and some days are more. The tasks are different but each day I get thrown a puzzle and have to put it together. If I ever clear my white board of things that I should be doing that I feel uneasy and anxious because there is something I can be doing and I have to figure that out asap. There is no rest. But the best part of any of this is whenever I want I can take the day off. I can shut down and do nothing. But most every single day goes from seven in the morning to past midnight. It means I can take a vacation wherever I want on a moments notice but I also better keep a watch on social media and e-mail during that.  

Hoodie and winter cap.

Have you ever been forced to wear a tie or dress shoes. Sure, you look good in them and it looks good from a clients perspective. But is it really necessary? 

     Whenever I meet with a client I usually am dressed as comfortably as I can be. I have sneakers on, a hoodie and my favorite winter hat. This is just something that has worked out very well for me. By dressing down I think I might be giving our meeting a little less high stakes feel and more relaxed vibe. My clothes don't sell me as much as my reputation and my photos do. In ten years and countless clients i've only had one objection to my clothing and that was from a single guest who was a bit oppositional and probably just had a bad day. Most of my clients are dressed in their everyday lounge clothes and the occasional Sunday best but ninety five percent are dressing comfortably so why would I be?

     My meetings are also the same as my dress, very informal and relaxed. I'm not pitching to anyone as much as i'm casually interviewing a couple to see if we're a good fit. I usually ask a dozen or two questions and click through a couple hundred photos. Spotify is playing a modern wedding playlist and the bottles of water are flowing. 

     The first question I have for any couple even before they meet with me is their wedding date. I often have people who get to me a week or two late and I'm not able to shoot their wedding. But in most cases I have the date open and we end up meeting. My office is in the second floor of Gerardo's Italian Bakery, it's a long story of how I got there. I have my books, some forms and a big tv to show my portfolio. 

     I do have a set package but I regularly adapt it to the couple sitting in front of me. The biggest thing for me is to be fair. I can't charge someone who has fifty people coming to their wedding the same I would charge with two hundred people coming. If I have an easier day ahead of me then the price can reflect that. I walk you through a typical wedding day which is usually from hair and makeup all the way to the last dance. Now you probably weren't interested in any books but I'll show you a few anyways. They're not as expensive as you thought in the end, most times. 

     So there is three things I hear from every bride and groom. We're really relaxed, our wedding is informal and unique, we're on a budget. I agree to all of these, you don't even have to tell me in fact. I'm going to capture beautiful memories regardless of budget or if you're a ball of stress. I like hearing about peoples visions for their weddings.It's easy to match someones enthusiasm about their weddings because I really am excited to shoot weddings.  

     By the end of the meeting I run across the price and I've gotten enough information to build a contract. I don't need an answer right now, i'm not a monster. I hope that we clicked and I leave the ball in their hands. 

     By the end of the meeting you never saw my dress shoes and we might have had on the same exact hoodie so you know we both have amazing taste. I send off an e-mail later in the day with details of our meeting and a contract with some instructions attached with it. 

     Hope to have you booking your wedding with me in 2018. Have a great day / night. :)

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Filters are for the lazy.

Believe it or not, no filter. This was shot with a Canon 90mm TSE (Tilt shift) lens

WGBH Live on Boylston Street

Government Center MBTA Canon 8-15 Fisheye

I just got this question recently when meeting with a bride and groom.

Why don’t I have black and whites, sepia tones, filters on my photos? This is very simple to answer, look back in your phone a year or two. Do see all the random filters that you were using on your Instagram photos / Facebook posts; they’re awful.

     Tastes change, styles adapt and people move on from trends. These are some of the most important photos that you’ll have of yourself, why would I put a trendy filter on and especially one that is so overused by Pinterest focused wedding photographers. De-contrast, playing with the highlights and adjusting the color temperature to be a bit more yellow doesn’t make a classic photo in my mind. I’ve also seen a lot of photographers use this as a crutch when a photo is mediocre or missing something.  

     Sometimes converting a photo to black and white looks great provided you do it the correct way and know what you’re doing with levels, curves and also saturation of colors and a number of other things. But here’s what we photographers know, this doesn’t make any photo a classic or immortalized image. Being honest, the only time i’ve actually made a photo black and white in recent history is when I absolutely couldn’t do what I wanted with the photo due to a number of reasons. I reluctantly changed it and adapted it because it was a moment that I did not want to throw away. I will never myself change a color photo to black and white though just to wow someone. One more example, white or black vignetting on photos… cringe. 

     Now here’s the part where i’m a dick and say mean things about other photographers. I really do try to be positive, like way too much.. usually. I know a great number of photographers that are shooting the exact material they were two or three years ago. Most photographers that I know get better every few months, years or just plainly have breakthroughs of creativity that make me very jealous. But I see some wedding photographers that never try new things, never purchase new equipment or develop their post game (editing).  Wedding photography is simply put a gym for photographers, you’re regularly pushed to adapt, learn and get better, faster, stronger at your photography.  I can look back every year and see my deficits or where i’ve made improvements. So here’s where I tie that back into what i’m saying, filters are a huge crutch for someone trying to hide the fact that they aren’t developing themselves. For the sake of the bride and groom you should be taking the payment and rolling a good portion back into your own development and/or equipment. This is your one chance to capture someone’s wedding and why would you put an ugly filter on such a beautiful day.

     What I try to accomplish with my wedding photography is creating accurate representations of what the scene actually looked like. I use different lenses and compositions to showcase different moments. I’m trying to achieve as close to as possible correct color profiles, your flowers are rarely neon or muted colors; it’s somewhere in-between I hope. It would be too easy to add filters to my photos and claim that I’m an artist and that this is my art. What I do is document and record moments as beautifully as I can. I don’t have a particular unique skill that no other photographer could ever attain. What I bring to the table is knowledge, personality, skill and a pretty good amount of equipment to back it up. I do use some creative editing techniques that highlight certain aspects of a scene or cast a cold blue morning as a more warn and sunny one. The best editing in my opinion is the kind you can’t detect. 

     If you want to add a filter on your photos you’re always welcome to do so but as I started out saying, look at your images with filters and effects from a year or two ago.. cringe. :) Imagine your parents wedding photos and imagine what it would look like with correct color or your grandparents images if it wasn’t shot in black and white (yes, I know that may have been all that was available at the time). 

I shoot weddings and would love to shoot your wedding.

Click here to see my website and learn more.

Moore State Park,  Canon 200mm 1.8

My cafe mocha. Shot with Canon 35mm 1.4

We're not going to get everything.

     A photographer can work off a list or just capture a little bit of everything. When you work off a list you are trying to remember what is not important to the bride. In fact the bride may not even know what is the most important parts of the day, this is her first go at a wedding. That’s why I think it’s best to just cover every aspect. 

   So before the wedding you have loaded up your head with amazing images from Google and Pinterest and featured Buzzfeed articles. You’ve forwarded these links to your photographer and informed them that these photos are to be captured. This is all very doable, but when it comes to your wedding day and you incorporate this into the mix it’s sometimes impossible. So I say impossible, it’s not really impossible; it’s undoable for you as the bride and groom. The photographer can most certainly do this, but he won’t be able to do all of these requests in the twenty to thirty minutes he may have with you following bridal party photos.  I can only speak from my own experience in this of course. I would love to recreate photos and make the bride and groom happy but often during a wedding day you're busy with friends and family. Another thing to take into account is that some photos you see on the internet are purely circumstantial or in fact not even from a wedding. Some photographers will have models pose as a bride and groom just to create breathtaking photos. For the bride and groom I really suggest trusting their photographer and let photos take a backseat to being in the moment.

  So to follow up and summarize. The photographer is going to do his/her best to capture everything. We want to immortalize your wedding day in photos. We want to provide a seamless, enjoyable experience and not get in the way.  If you’ve hired a photographer because you like their work then the best thing to do is trust that they’ll capture your wedding day so you can sit back and enjoy it.

Here's the reality of it.

When you hire a wedding photographer you sometimes have these amazing expectations. You’ve seen their photos, their work, their great attitude. You’re hiring them to capture the one of the most amazing and memorable days of your life.  Here’s what he/she is going to be able to capture, not everything.

     Another reason to capture everything is you don’t know what’s important to the bride and groom. Sometimes they might not know what was important until after the wedding. Let me give a few examples of this. Let’s say you take the time to get photos of all the cousins, maybe they move away in three years and aren’t reunited until a family reunion in ten years. How about an Aunt and Uncle who come to your wedding that move away the following year. The most common thing i’ve come across is my focus on grandparents. Not to sound morbid of course but we do expire and these photos are a huge trigger for your memories. One more thought, how many times does your family get together. I’m talking about everyone, not just for the holidays which sometimes can be tough with visiting everyone. You have everyone in a room so why not take advantage of this.

    Here’s the upside that you can really work with. If you have a great photographer who is willing to be adventurous, persistent and do a little bit of poking and prodding; he/she can liberate you from your wedding reception for a few minutes to take some amazing photos and give you a moment to breath away from everyone. During the formal photos for the bride and groom you’ll also be able to get some of the shots you’re looking for but to reference or have those same exact circumstances to recreate can sometimes be tough. The photographer is going to pose you a bit and move you to different locations.  What i’ll do typically is run through all my tried and true poses that work. We only get one shot at getting your wedding photos and I do experiment and innovate but before I do that I make sure to get the memorable photos that you’ll hang on your wall. I only have a short amount of time and it would be selfish of me to ask more of the bride and groom while they’re trying to enjoy their wedding day. The same way a DJ wouldn’t keep asking for suggestions for playlists on your wedding day or a venue wouldn’t be consulting with the bride about sides during before the meal is served on the big day. 

Thanks for reading. I've been a wedding photographer for around ten years now and every year means a little more experience and a lot more equipment to play with. I would love to meet with you if you're getting married in 2017 or 2018. 508-471-0069 or www.unitymike.com to see more of my work. Have a great new year.

Jillian & Jarrod

Spent a little time on Revere beach and afterwards we got some Italian subs at New Deal Fruit.

Jenna & Paul

Jenna & Paul live in Sturbridge which happens to have lots of exciting places to shoot an engagement shoot in addition to being located somewhat close to B.T's Smokehouse.

Here's some of our shoot at their house, the town common and Old Sturbridge Village.

Canon Professional Services

So i've invested a little bit of money this past year in my infrastructure, one of those being Canon Professional Services.

I've belonged to Canon Professional Services for a few years but relying on the free or basic service. Mostly it's been nice to keep adding gear and watching my points go up. This year I upgraded to platinum which comes with a lot of benefits.  So you need to be an employee of a photography business or have your own and have at least fifty points in your CPS account. You get points by the amount of gear you own. So if you own a Canon Rebel with an 18-55 lens and a third party flash you're probably not going to cut it. Own a 5D mkIII with a 50mm 1.8, you're getting warmer. Basically you  have to be committed to photography and Canon to belong. If you have a basic rebel and kit lens and drop it, just buy a new one.  I have seven L lenses and two bodies and three flashes so I'm well above the mark for getting in.  So when you join for the low fee of $300 you get the following:

• New Member Welcome Kit: Welcome Letter, Exclusive CPS Platinum Gift, CPS Member Card, 2 CPS Pro Straps, 2 Rear Lens Caps, and 2 Camera Body Caps (contents subject to change) 

I received a Thinktank Laptop bag which has been really useful and the extra lens caps and body caps have been nice to stash away fro a rainy day. I don't really have any use for the two CPS Pro straps (You're welcome to buy them from me). I have Black Rapid and Spider holsters.

• Priority access (over Gold members) to Equipment Evaluation Loans (Try Before You Buy Program)*

I fell in love with the Canon 200mm f2. Thanks Canon for enabling me!

• Expedited 2 business day service turnaround** on CPS PLATINUM REPAIR LIST products

Dropped my 580ex II & 5d MKIII. Had it fixed before the following weekend's wedding. It was a damn good excuse to buy the Canon 600RT. The repair actually got back to me faster than the new lens, but regardless my accident enabled me to buy new toys.

• 30% discount on repairs on CPS PLATINUM REPAIR LIST products on up to 15 items per membership term

I have plans to ship out some lenses with a tiny bit of dust in them.

• Repair Coverage Loans***
• Free shipping both ways on CPS PLATINUM REPAIR LIST products sent in for service

I still have to find out more about this.

• Complimentary Product Maintenance Service**** on up to 10 Pieces per membership term

I will be shipping out some of my gear very soon before the wedding season starts! You could spend around $15 plus $40-60 for a cleaning for a single piece of equipment, why not get a bargain on this and sign up!

• Onsite event and show support, as listed on the events calendar
• 24/7 CPS Support Hotline (domestic and international)*****
• Discounted admission to select Canon Live Learning seminars and workshops

Anyways it's a good deal and you should give it a try. If you're a professional and want to know that someone is in your corner backing you up in the event of an emergency then this is the program for you.

This is also a good program for you to get to know lenses better. Sure you can watch Youtube (DigitalRev has some of the best reviews in my opinion) or you can read reviews on FredMiranda. But signing up for CPS and getting to use those lenses for a week and then paying the $15 to mail it back to Canon is even better. I've "evaluated" four lenses so far. One of those being the canon 200-400 f4. It was amazing and the looks you get from everyone is even better, priceless. 

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So my first lens rental from CPS was the Canon 200mm f2. I figured what better way to showcase this beast than putting it on the Canon EOS M3. Let me tell you, it was amazing. The image was creamy in the bokeh and tack sharp. I was able to shoot handheld in NYC at ISO 200 at night.  (Photo Below)

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How to own that Maid of Honor speech.

So I previously wrote about the Best Mans speech. The advice from that still stands.

Please read what I wrote in that blog.

So a few different points of advice for the ladies

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1. Pull on those heart strings. Okay, you are posed to make us teary eyed. You're most likely going to tear up and get the bride to tear up. You happen to feel emotions sometimes a bit more deeply then our Call of duty, beer drinking, what are feelings type of guys that we can be. So with that being said we know you're going to say something very heartfelt and deep. My advice here is to keep it at the beginning of the speech or at the end, for god sakes I don't want to cry during your entire speech because of how sweet you are on each other. :)

2. Keep it funny. You're going to be pulling on those heart strings so make us laugh to, nothing is better than that akward laugh/tearing up. Tell us what you really thought about the groom and his friends. Tell us about when you knew he was the right one, did you do the cliche "you better not break my friends heart" speech to him?

3. Remind everyone.  Remind everyone why we're all here, these two people, this beautiful wedding, how much fun you've had today. The bride knows everything that went wrong today, misorders, mistakes and small mishaps that took part throughout the day. Remind her that this is one kick ass day. 

4. Take advantage. You have the floor, ask that single guy out that you've been checking out all day. (This goes for the guys too, ask her out. Mention all the pretty ladies that are in the room). You have the floor and everyones attention, be bold. Take advantage of the day and the fact that you're all at one big giant party and meet that special someone.

5. Always end up with a hug. Theres no better way then to end a heartfelt speech then with a hug. This doesn't really need to apply to the guys. The best mans speech is literally a verbal hug from the best man to the groom.  This is also an awesome time to snap a great couple photos for the photographer. 

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I hope that this has made you smile, laugh and I hope to see you at a wedding soon.

The infamous Best Man's speech.

One of my favorite things about a wedding would be the best man speech. It's always the shining moment to throw your friend under the bus in front of all his friends and family. 

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   I didn't realize this till this past year how much fun it was to watch the best man get up and roast his best friend. Often I would get to watch the groom sink in his chair,  the bride bury her face in her hands and the parents give awkward smiles.  One of the big things that I never realize is how much emotion is poured into these speeches (the bridesmaids speech is equally potent).  I will say that the majority of the times I am glad I have a camera in front of my face, I often get teary eyed at weddings, either the vows or the speeches.

     So a few words of advice for the best man during his 3 minutes of fame.

1. Whatever you say can't be unheard. While it might be funny to throw your friend under the bus, don't screw him over royally. No mentioning of ex's, drug usage or how much porn he has on his computer. While you are trying to embarrass him a bit you don't want to make his family cringe. You also don't know if he's told his wife about the time he.... (you get the drift).

2. Keep it short.  If you have a mind blowing story that takes 4 minutes, sure. If you're just talking to hear your self talk, don't. Think SNL monologue, they get out the information that needs to be heard; they usually avoid rambling.   Try to keep it around 2-3 minutes and try to keep it funny or heartfelt.

3. Bonus points. A good speech at a wedding is usually because it's heartfelt, something we didn't know about the person and maybe incredibly insightful.  It's also great when you get some serious laughter out of that wedding crowd. Make sure to thank the ramies for coming and also do some name dropping of people in the crowd. (Seinfeld is funny because he involves us in his stories, things and people we can relate to) If your story just involves random people that no ones met from college or his work then it might seem a bit boring to everyone.

4. Format is everything.   Don't ramble, whatever you do don't ramble. So i'm going to list a simple writing format for your speech. (Excuse the words) The crap sandwich, okay very simple format this way.

You start off with the bread (something easy).

 Congrats to Mr. ******. I never thought I would see the day.. ect

(keep it at a minute or so). Now you can roast him a bit.  (the crap)

So not a lot of people know about this but ******* once thought that... (story begins). 

(keep that 1 to 2 minutes)

But you know, I couldn't believe that ******** met someone so perfect for him.

(The last piece of bread, now you pepper the

conclusion with lots of compliments about the bride and groom).

   So here's another way to do it. Start off with the roast right away, throw the friend off the bridge, destroy! But then at the end you say twice the amount of nice things or at least try to.

A big smile and long pause at the beginning of your speech while looking at the groom goes a long way. I know I have a few good friends who's secrets I'm holding onto for such a day. You want to make that groom sweat.

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5. Talking points. The main things to concentrate on would be the story, your speech. If you've never heard of this, it's simple. When you see David Letterman interviewing someone and he looks at cards every once and awhile, those are his talking points. While i'm sure he would love to have a mini wikipedia page printed out for every single guest that would be a little tiresome. Talking points are a few words or a sentence to help jog your memory.  

Your talking points for best and speech would look something like this.

a. Congratulations

b. How we became friends

c. Getting in trouble together

d. When you met your future bride

e. How happy he's been since meeting the wifey

f.  When he got in trouble with the wifey

g. Thank the families for raising two lovely people

h. What a beautiful wedding.. so far, we still haven't seen ****** and ****** dance

i. You've never seen two people so happy

(BTW, totally getting teary eyed even writing this. I've sat through a lot of speeches the past couple years and they've all been pretty awesome.)

6. Silver linings.  The silver lining would be for the groom, no matter how bad you've embarrassed him or tormented him in the past few minutes you have to remember one thing. He's going to get you back someday. He will have the same opportunity at his wedding or april foods or a random Tuesday, 

Give him hell but also don't forget to make him shine, this is his day after all. 

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My favorite place to work.

     So being a wedding photographer means I don't usually have a studio. Most of my work is done on site or at a church. So my office is my home, my apartment, sometimes sitting on my bed. So while being home for so much time working on things I am presented with many distractions. There is the awesome Tostino's frozen pizzas that I love to cook, hot showers to be taken, my cat that needs to be played with and cleaning to be done. 

     So most of the time when there is work to be done, I choose to go elsewhere. My choice is usually Barnes & Noble or Starbucks. I like these places because It feels like I have a time limit of sorts, i'm paying to be here. it works like this, I pay around $5 an hour to sit and work on my computer. That price of course comes from the delicious fancy coffee drinks that I love to consume. 

     In fact, right now.. I'm sitting in a Starbucks in a very comfy brown leather chair writing several blogs. So if Starbucks reads this, I am open to endorsement deals. 

Man Shoots Wedding, my first podcast.

I've wanted to get into podcasting for awhile. I finally went out and purchased a USB mic and sat down and recorded a podcast. It may have taken a bit to figure out the software and the settings and that you shouldn't play with car keys in the middle of recording. So this first episode is me sitting down with Matt Johnson and talking about gear. I want to keep things nice and relaxed and interesting. Hope you enjoy.