Maine Wedding Industry

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Maine Wedding Venue : French’s Point

7.07.2010
Love & Lobster exclusive venue offer

If I had a bull horn, I’d be broadcasting this to all potential brides and grooms! Race over to the new Maine Wedding Blog Love and Lobster immediately and check out the crazy generous offer French’s Point is offering to our readers! FREE site rental (um, that’s 10K+ in savings!!!) for all remaining dates in 2010 AND 2011 if you book during this month. If you’ve dreamed of marrying in a grand estate on the water, oh, French’s Point is the place for you (this venue was on our radar when we entertained the idea of marrying in Maine)!

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Maine Wedding Blog

http://www.loveandlobster.com/ is a new Maine wedding blog, being put together to help brides who are planning from afar to see the best of what the Maine coast has to offer!

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Getting the Industry to Recognize Your Talent

Just did a blog post over on the Pictage blog…get over and check it out!

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Rangefinder Radio Interview

Recently I was interviewed by Scott Sheppard over at Rangefinder Radio.  Must say that Scott did a great job of moving the discussion along and keeping the topics flying!  He is a true professional and terrific resource for our industry.  I have been working in the wedding industry for 10 years now and have some definite opinions expressed in the interview.

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Wedding Planning Resource

Terrific new wedding planning resource for brides.

brides wedding planning

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Lisa J Godfrey Photography

Adirondack and Philadelphia photographer Lisa J Godfrey has a beautiful new website as 
of a couple of months ago.

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Liene Stevens, Emilie Sommer and Angela Adams…oh my!

Email photo (at) emilieinc.com to secure your seat!

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DC Wedding Photographer

DC Wedding Photographer Greg Gibson has been an inspiration to me and many photographers across the country.  Having just seen him and met his son, Zach, in Nashville for iUSA, I wanted to bring him and his work to your attention.  Greg has been part of our Roots Workshop for the past two years.

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Starting Out Right : One Day Intensive

STARTING OUT RIGHT: ONE-DAY INTENSIVE

This is not a typical workshop.  It’s not a seminar.  If you’re looking for a day of learning more about your camera and shooting pretty models – this isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if you’re ready to go deep – and get serious about your photography business, you can’t afford to miss this. You can’t afford to NOT start out right.

Unlike most photography “workshops,” this isn’t about photography.  It’s based on business principles to help you grow your business.

Jason brings a background in management and marketing from working at as an executive at a Fortune 100 company, and the experience of starting – and building a successful boutique studio based in the midwest.

You’ll leave with answers.  You’ll leave with a PLAN.  You’ll leave with the best practices and key strategies to help grow a business built to last.

KNOWING YOUR NUMBERS

We’ll start by helping define your goals.  Using that as the foundation, we’ll get a grip on the numbers – including pricing, budgets, cash flow, expenses, and more.

MARKETING AND BRAND STRATEGY

Developing a brand – and a marketing strategy to support that brand – are key to finding the right clients.  We’ll go through best practices in marketing and brand development – so that you’ll leave with key principles you can put in to place immediately.

THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE

The relationships you develop with your clients are about more than smiles and smooth talking.  We’ll cover how we walk our clients through from inquiry to completion – and how we start the cycle over.  Our goal is to build clients for life.

SETTING UP SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS

You only have so much time, and we often find ourselves spending it on things that barely help us get by – and DON’T help us grow our businesses.  We’ll talk about how developing efficient systems can help set your business up for real growth.

WORKFLOW AND SALES

From the time you shoot it, to the time you sell it, we’ll cover how you can develop a workflow and sales process that results in real income and profit.

Sponsored by:

Who should come?: Photographer/Small Business Owners.  Whether you’ve been doing this for less than 2 years or more than 10, this workshop is designed to help you learn best practices to grow your business.

Cost: $450 ONLY $300 per person! Includes all materials [business planning and budgeting tools, contract worksheets, participant manual] and lunch.  Also includes chances at some pretty cool giveaways, including a 6 month free subscription to ShootQ, a Livebooks subscription site, a one-year Pictage Lite membership and MORE!.  More giveaways to be announced shortly!

Dates/Locations: Current Cities include: Atlanta, Nashville, Jackson, MS, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Cincinnati, Austin and Houston.  For more info, click on the Register Page!

How to Register: Just CLICK HERE to go to the registration page!

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Engage09 The Encore

Emilie and I just returned from a terrific couple of days in Vegas at the Engage09 The Encore, a luxury wedding business seminar! The speaker lineup was terrific…starting with Rebecca Grinnals, who also put on the day, and Marcy Blum to Simon T. Bailey and the brilliant Sean Low. Networking at this event was 2nd to none! Randy Fenoli, Director of Fashion at Kleinfeld in NYC and “Say Yes to the Dress” fame entertained us in the evening at Blush. Our great friend Jennifer Dominick of LoveLifeImages brought her Snapshot Studio to capture some of the fun!

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Pictage : Katrina Families Charity Event

Just four years ago thousands of families from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states were left homeless, with many of their personal belongings destroyed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. A large majority of these families lost what could arguably be their most valued treasures – family photographs.

In response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina we’ll be providing hundreds of families with charitable mini portrait sessions as part of PartnerCon New Orleans! With YOUR help, all families will be provided a CD of their images the day of the shoot, along with a package of assorted prints delivered to them a few weeks later. This is your opportunity to play a direct role in making a big difference in the lives of others, while simultaneously enriching your PartnerCon experience.

We’re seeking 100 attendee volunteers to make this charitable shoot a success. Reserve your spot now!

The Details:

The shoots will occur on Thursday, November 5, from 1 – 6 pm (volunteer teams will be organized into 2-hour shifts) We’ll be photographing more than 200 families at venues located near the West Bank in New Orleans, just 10-minutes from the hotel. We’ll have 5 – 7 shooting stations set-up (with back-drops) — each family shoot will last approximately 15 minutes. Volunteer teams will be organized in advance of the event – each team will consist of a photographer, assistant, image downloader/laptop attendant, runner and various other roles and responsibilities (team members will have the flexibility to rotate responsibilities). Those that prefer to be the Photographer on their team must supply their own camera and 2 off-camera flash units (we’ll be providing all the other gear, including light/flash stands, remote triggers, backdrops, CF cards, extra batteries, etc).

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Going on tour next week!

I am headed out on the road again!  This time I am on tour with WPPI for liveBooks!  We are hitting some great towns and I look forward to meeting new people and seeing some old friends.  If you are in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas or Boston and want to get together…drop me a line!

4 different cities. 17 different speakers. 4 different topics.

4 CITY ROAD TRIP

This coming September, WPPI is taking the show on the road for the first-ever WPPI Road Trip. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity like this! Atlanta – Monday, September 21, 2009 Minneapolis – Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Dallas – Monday, September 28, 2009 Boston – Wednesday, September 30, 2009

17 SPEAKERS

Each city will host 4 distinctive speakers that you’ve come to know and love at previous WPPI Conventions. The 2009 WPPI Road Trip roster includes: Bambi Cantrell, Tony Corbell, Jim DiVitale, Kay Eskridge, Beth Forester, Jim Garner, Doug Gordon, Kevin Kubota, Robert Lino, Lori Nordstrom, Sarah Petty, Ken Sklute, John Solano, Eddie Tapp, Vicki Taufer, Jed Taufer and Kirk Voclain.

4 HOT TOPICS

Each stop on the tour will cover 4 specific areas, designed specifically to cultivate your technical skills, inspire creativity and enhance the productivity of your professional photography business. Business & Marketing Lighting & Posing Wedding or Portraits Workflow

ALL FOR JUST $149

Each stop along the WPPI Road Trip includes 4 programs, a buffet lunch and a mini trade show with some of your favorite exhibitors, companies and sponsors all for just $149! Choose 1 city and pay just $149 Or… choose 2 cities and pay just $249 Or… choose 3 cities and pay just $349 And because we know someone will ask, come to all 4 cities for just $399!

BONUS!

For a limited time, WPPI is offering FREE registration to the 2010 WPPI Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, to all attendees who register and attend any one of the stops on the first-ever WPPI Road Trip! If you’ve never attended WPPI before, there is no time like the present to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity near you. To find out more about each city and the specific speakers, please click on your city of choice below.

Atlanta Boston Minneapolis Dallas

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Aurora Photographers Annual Meeting

You never know when you will meet someone that will lead to new business.  While in NYC for the PDN Photo Annual Party back in May I met Jose Azel on the roof of Tribeca Skyline Studios.  Jose is the man behind Aurora Images which just so happened to be based right here in Portland, Maine!  After a few meetings and a nice lunch, we found that we could have an interesting partnership with liveBooks and Aurora’s archive.  Jose was kind enough to invite me to his photographers annual meeting on Sebago Lake last week!  I was pleasantly surprised with the amazing talent that was in attendance at the meeting.  Photographers from across the country and from right in my back yard were taking part.  There were break out sessions, group meetings and a pretty sweet soccer game!

Future of Our Industry Q&A session in the sun. Speakers Jose Azel, Miriam Marseu (SI), Amber Terronova (PDN) and Rich Clarkson.

Image taken from Aurora Twitter Stream...not sure who took it.

Thanks so much for having me out Jose!  I look forward to a terrific partnership…

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Branded Marketing

Marketing is the lifeblood of a business! I have said that marketing (and sales) feels like walking up a down escalator…when you stop you begin to go backwards. Not all marketing is created equal however. Studios that have consistent branding will continue to see better and better results. The people receiving your message will begin to trust your company more as they see your brand driven on all your marketing or anything that touches the client/potential client.

A good example of this is a branded newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to keep past, current and future clients informed about your studio and it’s activities. They keep your brand on the forefront of the persons mind, so if they need your services or know of someone that might need your services, your name will come up. Here is an example of the recent emilie inc newsletter:

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Monthly Newsletter : August

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Boston Wedding Photographer : Ned Jackson

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting and spending a few days with Ned Jackson at the Roots Workshop in Cape Cod.  Ned is one of those people that you can instantly like and as you dig a little deeper it only gets better.  Ned is a husband, father, teacher and Boston Wedding Photographer, please get over and check out his stuff!  His business is taking off!

Boston Wedding Photographer

Ned on Roots Assignment taken by :e:

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the business of BEING CREATIVE

If you have not checked out Sean Low’s blog to this point…you should certainly get over and see his new one!  His site is clean and to the point…kinda like Sean.  I met with him last week in NYC briefly and was highly impressed with what he has to offer our industry!  Make sure to post a comment and continue the discussion he is starting with his thought provoking posts…

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Roots Workshop : Cape Cod

This week has been a terrific week of instruction and making of new friends! This year I functioned as the cook for the crew and worked my normal job for liveBooks. The students did a terrific job with their photo stories and each person took away a little something different from the workshop. Eric Laurits was the staff photographer and did a fantastic job of documenting the learning process.

Here are a few images from the week at Roots Workshop:

roots workshop

roots workshop

roots workshop

roots workshop

See more of the week on Em’s blog, Facebook or on the Site.

Already looking forward to next year…it just goes by so fast!

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Laudholm Farm Wells, ME

* Catherine and Greg

Laudholm Farm Wedding

photographer: J
venue: Laudholm Farm Wells, ME
officiant: Bob Berkebile
caterer: Kitchen Chicks Catering
florist: Calluna Fine Flowers Ogunquit, ME
cake: Let Them Eat Cake Kennebunk, ME
hair/make-up: Freedom Salon York, ME
gown: Ella Couture Montreal

J spent his 4th at one of our favorite venues, Laudholm Farm, set among rolling hills of Wells, Maine. Typical of our season so far, ominous weather rolled in just an hour before the scheduled ceremony with rain- and hail! A quick decision was made to have the ceremony in the barn and guests were happy to be indoors, and even happier when it cleared for a beautiful afternoon.

Catherine, who met Greg through work connections at Harvard, recently moved from Montreal to Maine. Her family all spoke French, so an interpreter was on hand for both the ceremony and toasts at dinner, providing many laughs throughout the evening. The day ended where it began, with a bit of dancing in the barn.

On to the images…

From gray to bright blue skies. As they say in Maine, if you don’t like the weather wait 20 minutes.

The bridal party gathers before the ceremony.

Dramatic ceremony scene inside the old barn with twinkle lights.

Greg and Catherine.

The light at Laudholm is magical during any part of the day.

Adore this image of Catherine’s son running ahead of them in the field just before sunset.

Sweet reaction to toasts at dinner under the tent.

Awaiting the cake cutting. Priceless.

See more of their imagery in the album design below.

Felicitations, Catherine et Greg! Je vous souhaite de faire un beau mariage et d’avoir une vie à deux pleine de bonheur, et bien sûr une lune de miel merveilleuse au Mount Katahdin!

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