Crocker House Country Inn Wedding Hancock Point, Maine

This was one of the weddings of the summer for me…terrific families and just fun day to capture!!

* Emily and Zak

photographers: J and Whitney
ceremony: private residence overlooking Bar Harbor and Frenchman’s Bay: Hancock Point, Maine
reception: Crocker House Country Inn Hancock Point, Maine
caterer: Crocker House Country Inn
florist: Newland Florist Ellsworth, Maine
band: Jeff Davison Big Chief Band
gown: Ultimate Bride Chicago
transportation: Ford Model A

Emily’s family has been vacationing in Maine from Virginia since 1990. Now living in Chicago, Emily and Zak chose to exchange their I Do’s in Hancock Point, the sweet village where her family has a summer camp. Combing elements of their Catholic and Jewish backgrounds, Emily and Zak wrote their own ceremony and exclaimed their giddy love in front of nearly 200 guests.

How they met, in Emily’s words:
Zak and I met at a New Year’s Eve party in Chicago. I had just moved and only new one person- Mia Clark (from sailing school in Maine)- who happened to go to Kenyon College with Zak in Ohio. She invited me to the party at Zak’s house. We were friends for 6 months and then started getting romantic!

On to the photos…
What a sweet scene. The family’s Model A, which every woman in the family has used on their wedding day.

Emily and her girls got ready on the front porch of her family’s cottage.

Meanwhile, Zak was across town doing the same.

Emily is the oldest of five sisters!

Married!

The dance floor was packed all night long!

Preview their fantastic 10×10 flush album design below:

Happy marriage, Emily and Zak! I loved coordinating the logistics of your wedding day for you, and have been hearing the smiles in J and Whitney’s voice all week long as they rave about your amazing celebration! Congratulations!!

Posted by emilie inc. at 6:46 PM Categories: weddings

Maine Wedding Photographer

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Beachmere Inn Wedding Ogunquit, Maine

This was a great wedding that I recently shot for emile inc!  This venue is terrific and everyone that was part of the day made it great for Suzanne and Michael!

* Suzanne and Michael

venue: Beachmere Inn Ogunquit, Maine
officiant: Rabbi Judy Epstein
caterer: Kelly Gendron Kitchen Chicks Catering
florist: Kate Henderson Katherine’s Garden York, Maine
cake: Arie Kidder Custom Cakes
dj: Randy Barth
tent: Sperry Tents
hair: Lena Hartford Hair That Moves
dress: Vera Wang
invitations: Kate’s Paperie
honeymoon: South Africa
photographer: associate J

After dreaming of marrying at the Beachmere as a little girl on vacation in Ogunquit from New York City, Suzanne finally tied the knot to her longtime boyfriend Michael.

In Suzanne’s words, their story:
Mike and I met when we were 17-year-old freshman at NYU. He had a shaved head and an obsession with the Beatles. I was shocked to find out he was already a professional tap dancer who had worked with Gregory Hines and Savion Glover. I had hair down to my waist, pencil thin eyebrows and a nose ring and yet I think he figured out that I remained a suburban bookworm. We were friends for a year or so before we became a couple, officially, at 19. 10 years later and we’re getting married (finally!). We really have grown up together.

The Beachmere is a special place for me, too, as it is the location of the first wedding I ever photographed- my cousin Jeff- back in 2001. It has changed a lot since then, but the impressive ocean backdrop along the infamous Marginal Way remains a perfect setting for a wedding.

On to the photos…

Clouds gave way to a bit of sunshine in the afternoon, but fog later enveloped the grounds.

Suzanne getting ready. Love her dress and gorgeous smile.

The handsome groom, Michael.

What a wonderful happy recessional up the lawn.

First dance.

Suzanne is very tight with her mom, Joanne.

The fog rolls in.

Please view their beautiful 10×10 flush album design:

Maine Wedding Photography

J really enjoyed working with you all, meeting in Manhattan and with me at the studio during the course of your planning. Happy congratulations! Can’t wait to hear about your honeymoon to South Africa!

Posted by emilie inc. at 1:30 PM Categories: weddings

Maine Wedding Photography

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Photography Diversification : Dog Photography

Today’s market is calling all of us to innovate our product to stand out from the crowd.  One way to do that is to diversify your offerings.  Ann Hamilton is a wedding shooter out of San Francisco that turned the love of shooting dogs into a business that is rivaling her wedding success!  Ann is kind enough to share her experience and to talk about how to profit from following a passion.  There is a free webinar on April 9th, sign up HERE.

liveBooks Webinars

[Drum Roll]     Here is also the World Premier of the future of dog photography…Ann’s new website which will be finished soon!

Ann Hamilton : Dog Photographer Extraordinaire

As you can see Ann has done it the right way with beautiful branding and a separate site to drive traffic too!  I would encourage anyone looking to diversify, dog photography or not, to come to listen to Ann on April 9th!

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Twitter Videos : How to…to Power User

Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media here in Portland, Maine has done a series of videos on Twitter and Twittering.  I thought I would share…for those of you that don’t get Twitter

How to Get Started on Twitter: Sign Up and Set Up

How to Find and Follow People on Twitter

How to Gain Followers on Twitter

How to Engage People on Twitter: Replies, Direct Messages & ReTweets

Use TweetDeck to Become a Twitter Power User

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jsandifer

Follow Rich Brooks on Twitter: http://twitter.com/therichbrooks

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Today’s Image

This image explains why I love shooting in Maine!  Amy Salerno captured this image recently here at a Maine wedding.

Maine Wedding Photographer :: Amy Salerno

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I’m a little excited!

No more shoveling…and I have to say that living in Maine, that means something!  We have a couple of feet on the ground and it is not even Christmas, so today I went and purchased the

Craftsman 7 hp 26 in. 4-Cycle Tecumseh 2-stage Snowthrower

BOO-YA…interesting how excited this makes me   Feeling really domesticated right now and of course spent hours cleaning the driveway and such.

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Blogging Resources

I just found some blogging resources that I thought I would pass along…both have some terrific information in them!

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Image of the Day

This looks like a wedding that was a lot of fun to shoot! Check out more of Karla’s work over on her blog… I hear she would like a little blog love!

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First Facial

Today we went to Joya Beauty to do the first installment of Em’s vendor tour. Joanne custom mixed new make-up for Em in a process that I had not seen before, but was very cool. Another first on the day was the facial that I received! You can see more over on Emilie’s blog…you should totally check it out!

Before:

After:

The Wonderful Joanne

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Image of the Day

Today’s Image of the Day comes from someone who is kinda a big deal… [b]! This is one of his signature bridal portraits from a wedding down in Miami. [b]ecker is a totally great guy that produces consistently…and that is what it is all about. He has [b] school and other avenues for photographers to get to know what he is doing to be on the top…check him out!

Thought I would also mention that [b] donates to the weekly online poker game Hope to see him on there tonight…

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Entrepreneurial Heroes: How We Got Started

I found this over on Rebecca Grinnals WEDDEX blog and thought it would be good share.

The Knot’s Carley Roney and David Liu

The article give us some insight into how the dynasty of The Knot came into being.  I am always in awe of how a business like this could some into a market and basically dominate it…with a new and cool way of doing things.

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The Blog Readability

OK…not sure what this has to do with what, but I found it over on Justine Ungaro’s blog and had to try it out. So the idea is you enter your blog and it tells you what level of education someone might need to understand your blog. Apparently you have to be Genius to read mine LOL

Try yours out and let me know what it says…

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Image of the Day

Here is another angle we don’t often see.  This image was made by Melia over at Lucida Photography.  Melia is producing some terrific work up in Vancouver.

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Image of the Day

Getting a different angle is always something we are striving for and Matt Adcock captured this image from above…

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Hijack : Commenting on Blogs: Increase Your Visibility and Credibility

I found this over on Andy Wibbels blog (by way of Rich Brooks blog) and thought I would share.

Commenting on blogs is probably not at the top of your To Do List — but maybe it should be. It’s certainly one strategy to build good solid traffic, as well as subscribers, to your blog.

Darren Rowse at http://Problogger.net recently wrote a post about Caroline Middlebrook who did a great job of increasing her traffic through the use of blog comments.

I know it’s fun to write our own content, but let’s not forget about going out there to share our ideas, while at the same time promoting good relationships among readers and bloggers.

With the New Year soon to arrive, this might be a good time to think about writing a resolution to make 10 solid comments on other blogs each week. That would be 520 comments by the end of next year. There’s no doubt in my mind that this will increase traffic to your blog. How much? I don’t know, but I know it will make a difference.

Let’s keep in mind that our comments should:

• Provide value by offering substantive material
• Further the conversation
• Be inviting and friendly so as to promote community and the sharing of ideas, and
• Be relevant to the topic being discussed

And let’s not forget about some of the benefits of leaving comments on blogs:

• Opportunity to use your creativity or problem-solving skills on a regular basis
• Increase your knowledge by learning new things by reading not only the original post, but also the other comments prior to posting your own
• Increase your visibility by leaving a link to your website in the comment form
• Increase your credibility by writing valuable content
• Increase your traffic when others read your content and want to find out more about you

If you have any success stories to share as a result of leaving comments on blogs, we would love to hear about them.

By Tara Kachaturoff | Posted in Business Blogging, Increase Blog Site Traffic, More RSS Subscribers, More Traffic | Comments (10)

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Little Rant

I found this on a forum posted by my buddy Mark Gardner. Interesting that there is such a similar thing going on right now in the wedding photography industry. The digital age has lowered the threshold of entry into our profession and so many people have made the jump. To some extent that pulls the industry down…more people willing to shoot for free or little in their first two years. What it really does is make all of us that have been here for a while get more creative and find ways to distinguish our businesses! Their will always be new photographers joining our ranks…how will you deal with it?

Harlan Ellison is the ranter here, but I have heard the same coming from some photographers out there

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Brad Mangin : Sports Photographer

Brad talks a bit about how useful his website is when competing in todays technology savvy world!

Brad has done an excellent job of SEO on his site…google sports photographer and he is in the top 4!!

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Image of the Day

Beautiful wedding and amazing coverage! I think this is one of my true favs…brought to us by the talented CHRIS+LYNN!

Just goes to show…always be shooting!

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Image of the Day

Terrific capture of a bride’s anticipation! This image was made by Biff Ulm, who has some excellent work showcased on his blog.

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New liveBooks site…

When his dreams of being a rock star were squashed when his group lost a Battle of the Bands in high school, Michael traded his Les Paul for a 35mm Pentax and moved to Boston where he earned a BFA in Photography from Mass Art. Since then, his assignments, personal work and solo art receptions have taken him all over the world, winning him numerous awards including recognition with Communication Arts, American Photo, Photo District News and the International Photography Awards.

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