I ran out of apples to shoot, so I instead we headed up to Lake George today to hang out with Jennifer and her family to do some portraits at their family lake house. It's been awhile since I've had the opportunity to get up that way, and you couldn't have asked for a nicer day to be near the lake and hang out with such a nice family. Thanks again to the Curtis family and hope you enjoy your vacation!
It's been an amazing week this week, and an extremely busy one at that..... I've had more client meetings in this past week alone than the entire month before I think! The good news is that we booked an amazing 5 more 2008 weddings within the past 5 days, which is definitely a record. (it's crazy how business can spike all of the sudden like that). I love all the new couples that have signed on for their 2008 weddings and am really excited to be a part of their weddings next year!
Due to the busy week (and it's not over yet), I'm a bit behind on my blog entrees, so figured I'd post something to try and keep up to date with things. Lately, we've been branching into a lot of different projects, which is a treat to get away from weddings to try new things every now and again. Today's prjoect was working with John, who is the owner of Sticky Fingers Apples, and offers an amazing service and product to his clients. They are a reasonably new business and decided to get some new "eye candy" photos of their products for the website. Not only was John and his wife great to deal with, but I was so impressed with what they can do with an apple.... I can't say I've ever craved an apple as badly as today trying to shoot this stuff!
Anyway, you should without a doubt check out their website and try a few of their products.... they have very unique flavored candy apples, and even offer cool gift baskets... you can check out the website at http://www.stickyfingersapples.com/! (by the way, John left me one of the "peanut butter cup" apples today, and it was so amazing, it's almost good enough to include in a wedding package :)
You can see the rest of the photos on their site that we shot today, but here's one of my favorite photos from today's project with them. We have more blog entrees coming soon this week, so be sure to check back if you get bored :)
Without a doubt an exhausting weekend, yet two amazing back to back weddings I'm extremely proud to have been a part of! Tonight, we celebrated the wedding of Don & Mallory and had a blast working with them and capturing the day as it unfolded. It's amazing the love these two share for one another, and I have no doubt they are going to have an amazing marriage together. 
While photographing another wedding nearly 3 years ago, we had the opportunity to meet Carrieann & Marc (who were guests), and it wasn't long after that we planned to shoot their wedding! It seems like an eternity ago when I think about it, but the day finally came for them to wed, and I'm so glad to have been a part of it (not to mention, it was awesome to see the couple who's wedding we shot and introduced us so long ago)I have only a few hours to get all the photos downloaded, backed up, batteries charged, and a few hours sleep before getting up and doing this all over again tomorrow, but I wanted to sincerely thank Marc & Carrieann as well as their family and friends for allowing us to spend the day with them. We have tons of photos that I look forward to going through, and hope to have everything sorted and uploaded for online viewing/ordering within 2 weeks or so.
For those interesed, you can pre-register your email by clicking the link below to receive confirmation of when the images go live and are available for viewing. On that note, I'm off to bed to get some rest for tomorrow's event!
http://mattramosphotography.instaproofs.com/enterEvent.php?id=19014
Since the release of the Blackberry smartphone a couple years ago, I have been absolutely addicted to them, and find myself constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest model (I think my wife is about to kill me). I picked up my now 5th Blackberry this week (the 8803 World Edition), and absolutely love it! I've never been known to be an organized guy and always prefered to sorta go with the flow, rather than have everything planned out..... with business being absolutely insane right now, I couldn't possibly keep track of all the places I need to be and things going on, so having my entire schedule, phone & email in my pocket at all times really helps me to stay super organized!
As usual, it's been another busy week trying to keep up with the flow of things (hence my lack of blog entrees). Since adding John to our team, I've been doing a lot of training on album design, general workflow, slideshows, etc and once he's up to par, it will make a world of difference, which I'm really looking forward to! John also assists his first wedding with us tomorrow, which I'm really excited about (I'm sure he's freaking out like I did the first time I ever shot a wedding - yikes!)
Anyway, we've been able to crank out and entire wedding and 2-3 albums this week, which is great since we have two more back to back weddings starting tomorrow! The Parga wedding is the latest album to be completed and thought I would throw up a quick sample so you an watch it if you're interested... of course this is a rough draft for them, however think it came out really well... this is going to look fantastic in the plush leather album they've selected!
Check back this weekend for samples of two more back to back weddings.... fow now, I leave you with a link to the Parga Album slideshow!
www.mattramosphotography.com/parga
I was going through some of the photos today from last night's wedding and found one I forgot to post last night - it's great when you find yourself "in the right place at the right time," sometimes, isn't it?
P.S. Let me know if anyone wants a print.... we can go up to 20X30 with amazing quality on this one :)
We had a blast today celebrating another amazing wedding with a fantastic couple! Chaddick & Laura are from Texas (Laura grew up here), and drove for 3 days across the country to be here and get married amongst their friends and family. Chad gave one of the most amazing vows I have ever heard today at the church, and it's awesome how much in love these two are with each other.... there is no doubt they will have a very happy and long marriage together!Sorry for my lack of blog entrees this week... been busy! Stay tuned for samples fo tomorrows wedding with Laura and Chaddick! This is for all you U2 fans - I wonder what Bono would think of this - lol!
Imagine going to lunch with your husband, only to have nearly 100 people hiding behind the bushes waiting to celebrate your birthday with you. I've never had the honor of having a surprise party thrown for me, but I can tell you I'd hope it went something like what I saw today, which was amazing.
Tonya had PRK eye surgery done this week, so I've sorta been on call to help her since she's been in some pain and can't open her eyes too well yet. She has to wear these dark sunglasses around the house for 3-5 days, and it's been rather interesting to say the least - after seeing what she's going through, I've never appreciated my better than 20/20 vision more!
Aside from doing some of the backend work on some of this past weeks projects & weddings, I have been making some updates to our online viewing & ordering system by adding some new features and products. One of the new items we are now offering, are these really cool, custom photo puzzles! They come in 3 sizes and can be done in traditional or metallic finishes at the same price. Here are the options they can be done in:
4X6 - 20 pc. puzzle - $19.95
8X12 - 50 pc. puzzle - $30.00
12X18 - 300 pc. puzzle - $55.00
I think I'm going to order a 300 piece, 12X18 puzzle of myself and see how many years it takes me to put it together. On a serious note, these will make for great gifts and I look forward to filling the first few orders. For those interested, they have been added to all current and future weddings and portrait sessions in the online viewing/ordering sites!
I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.... I'm off to do another eyedrop application for the wife, and then getting things organized for tomorrow's surprise party (which I can't tell you about yet :)
I spent the morning in a local grocery store this morning shooting a bakery department and getting dirty looks from customers wondering why I had this huge tripod and camera in the grocery store while they were trying to shop :)
I'll admit wedding photos are more attractive to look at, but I wanted to quickly try out my new MP-E65 Extreme Macro lens today since I haven't had the chance to do much with it yet. I don't plan on leaving the wedding industry anytime soon to shoot insects, however they certainly make for interesting subjects when you have such an amazing lens that can actually zoom in on something like this.
Luckily, Pete here was willing to pose for me (although he wasn't easy to get to smile much). I'm hoping to get into more macro-type work for some of the larger companies needing this type of extreme closeup photography. Anyway, I thought it was insane that you can actually see the hairs on a fly (by the way, this was a very small fly), and wanted to post my first sample shot with the new toy. I may have to do a "guess what this is" post in a future blog entry for fun!
Ok... off to shoot more scary creatures....
I'll preface this blog entry, by saying it may not be my normal thing to post, however since my blog has in a way, become my journal of events to look back at, I'm posting it anyway! As I mentioned before, we have been working a lot more lately in other projects outside of the wedding industry, and have recently been doing some amazing projects with new friends & business collegues, Studio Macbeth. Ray and Maria are the owners of Studio Macbeth, and their company (based out of Manhattan), does some of the most amazing work I have ever seen in regards to graphic design and animation. They do illistration/animation work for some major companies and partners such as Pfizer, Nasa, Pesico, Compaq, etc, and I am extremely excited about having some recent opportunities to work with them.
As of late, things have been EXTREMELY busy for us (which is an awesome thing), however has left little time to do some of the needed updates and things I like to keep up on. Our business has continued to grow at an unbelieveable rate, and therefore we are doing all we can to make sure we not only keep up with the times with equipment, products offered, and website management, but we are also expanding our services in some of the photography that we'll be offering.
While we have become known for our wedding photography as 80-90% of what we do, we have recently began to invest more time in various other corporate projects, and will soon be getting into things like architecture and macro work, amongst others. I spent most of the day revamping the website today, and you can see some of the newly added galleries (including a new 3rd wedding gallery!)
This week is another crazy week for me (lots of shoots and blog entries coming), and I'm excited to show you all the new piece of equipment I just purchased to get into the extreme macro work we're going to be offering various companies. You'll have to check back in a day or two to see some samples of what I'm talking about.... there's also a new gallery on the website which will be activated shortly for this type of work.
Anyway..... I'm off to bed - here's a link to check out the new wedding gallery we just added below. You'll notice lots of photos from last night's wedding of Maria and Alex! (I told you I could almost do a website of just them :)
www.mattramosphotography.com/gallery10.html
Be sure to let me know which photo you like the most!
Without a doubt, last night's wedding of Alex & Maria is one of the most amazing weddings I have ever been a part of. They had everything you could ask for and an absolutely beautiful ceremony and reception held at two different venues. Despite the intense heat and an extremely long day, I can't even begin to tell you how many incredible images we were able to capture of their wedding day.As you can see, I went a little blog crazy with all the photos, however I had such a hard time trying to narrow down only a few images to share, so decided to double it up a bit (that and I haven't done a blog entry in a few days anyway, so it sorta evens out :) The above photos are just a very small sample of hundreds and hundres of absolutely stunning images, that I can't wait to share with the bride and groom as well as their family and friends. If I wanted to, I could probably built another entire wedding website with only photos from their wedding!
For those interested, you can pre-register your email at the link below to receive notification of when images go live and are available for online viewing & ordering.
http://mattramosphotography.instaproofs.com/enterEvent.php?id=19012
We'd like to once again, congratulate and thank Alex and Maria for allowing us to capture their special day.... we hope you guys have a blast on your honeymoon, and talk to you when you return!
P.S. By the way, I think our prices are going up after this wedding! (only kidding :)
