As we have stated many times before on our blog, the best part of our job is meeting cool people.  Tonight we caught up with Stephanie and Thomas, we’ll be photographing their wedding in May.  We hear it from most of our clients, people say “we are just regular people and we want to have a low-key wedding”.  We sat down with Stephanie and Thomas and came up with some ~really cool~ ideas!  I am so psyched for their wedding day now!  I don’t want to give away any of their details, but I am really excited to take these “shots”!

A note to Stephanie & Thomas — you two are really special folks, far from boring, and we can’t wait to capture your day!  Also, your vehicle sounds amazing!

Spending the extra time with our clients is one of the areas that Lana and I really try to focus on.  It’s extra easy with clients like these two, but we tend to connect well with all of our clients.  We are always so excited when folks select us because we meet new people, are present on the most important day of their life, and help them remember that story forever.

Have your read about the Wedding Photography story that went viral last week?    A couple in England paid a student to photograph their wedding and ending up with 15 pictures.  The Couples Big Day was ruined by a student photographer.  Its really tough selecting all your vendors, especially photography.  Prices range between $500 all the way up to $10,000.  It can be a daunting a decision to select somebody you trust within your price range.  My only advice to shoppers is take the time to meet your photographers and choose somebody who knows the business.  This poor couple brought their photographer to court for a refund for their $700, but that hardly covers the absence of wedding photos.  Spend the time to meet your photographers.  Choose a photographer that spends time with you too!

Our wedding season is about to kick off in full force!  We have weddings in Boston, Gloucester and the Cape this year!  We are so excited to start shooting again and doing what we love!  Let’s Roll!

Have you ever stopped to think about pictures?  How many pictures have been taken in the history of mankind?  The camera showed up in the early 1800s.  In that entire century, there were a few million photographs taken.  In the early 1900s, a familiar company named Kodak introduced the first widely available camera.  The camera cost $1 ($25 in today’s value).  Not a bad deal!  These new film cameras produced about 1 billion photos a year.

The world’s love of pictures continued to grow over through the 1900s at a crazy rate.

• 3 Billion in 1960
• 10 Billion in 1970
• 25 Billion in 1980
• 57 Billion in 1990
• 86 Billion in 2000

Today, people take about 400 Billion pictures annually!  So how many photographs have been taken by humans in total?  Get ready for this… about 4 trillion!

That’s 4,000,000,000,000,000

Every two minutes today, humans take more pictures than existed in the entire 1800s.  What about printed pictures?  Only about 1 out of every 100,000 photographs taken today is printed.  But fear not, people are actually printing more of their pictures today than 10 years ago!  Between online print services and photographers, the number of prints made almost doubled in the last ten years!

People still love to experience photographs in print.  Nothing beats flipping through a leather wedding album, a beautiful wall canvas, or nicely arranged series of framed pictures hanging on your wall.

Last year Lana and I took about 24,000 photographs.  About 800 of these were taken at a beautiful wedding at the Double Tree Ball Room in Danvers, Massachusetts to celebrate Lory & John’s special day.  We included 125 of these photographs in their album.  This beautiful album had 30 amazing pages that covered their day.

Lory and John came over this week to pick up their album and have some dinner.  We love showing couples their album for the first time, it brings on a rush of emotions as the couple relives their wedding day.  All of the small details, special moments & time spent with friends and family is remembered forever.  Their wedding album captures their one special day.

To Lory and John, their wedding album is One in a Million!  Thanks Lory & John, we loved capturing your special day and gaining two great friends!

Being in the Wedding Business for a few years now and having taken over 70,000 wedding images, I always come back to something that is so sentimental to me – our first wedding!

It was something new and exciting. Something I never thought we would venture into from studio photography! I remember spending multiple hours prepping for that “Big Day”. I wanted to feel confident we could handle it, that we are capable of producing quality work our clients are expecting!

I remember waking up in cold sweat before the wedding day worrying about our equipment malfunctioning, forgetting the memory cards, batteries ,etc… Paying attention to shadows on faces when using natural light… Making sure we capture all of those precious moments… I kept thinking “Our clients trust us! They are confident we can capture their once in a life time memory! We have to do it right!”

As all professional photographers know, weddings don’t always go smoothly. But we were lucky! It was a perfect day with a beautiful couple, an exquisite ceremony and a warm reception. No hiccups, no equipment malfunctions… We were hooked! That was a huge millstone towards becoming exclusively focused on wedding photography.

Oh… My… God!

As the years went by, we captured some great photographs for all our brides.  But this image is sentimental.  This image is from “our” first wedding.  It brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.

Lana and I attended the Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) conference in Las Vegas this week.  We absolutely love this show and plan on becoming more involved the next year!

We started the event with some educational seminars from our favorite photographers.  One of the really cool traits of the photography community is the general philosophy to share knowledge.  Our two favorites are Jerry Ghionis and Roberto Valenzuela.  Jerry gave a very inspirational presentation on setting the bar higher for wedding photographers, while Roberto is a master of lighting and shared some great tips.  Light has amazing characteristics on how it travels & bounces, which makes the difference between professional and profound photographs.

Another great aspect of the expo is meeting vendors.  We had a chance to catch up with our partners at the expo!  Arnaud Collin joined Zenfolio, our online gallery service, as the General Manager last year and introduced some wonderful new features.  Their gallery service is awesome & we provide it to all of our clients.  Zenfolio keeps ~your~ pictures safe for years to come folks!

Our album vendors were there as well.  We recently switched to Zookbinders for albums, their quality is really hard to beat.  All of our brides have been very happy with their product.  The founder and CEO is Mark Zucker, who gave us some insight into some new albums they have planned for 2016.

We also use Graphi Albums, which as amazing high-end albums made in Italy.  This community is just so close it was awesome to see all of partners in person and learn about all the amazing products they have coming out for this year!

Lana and I are taking some rest & relaxation in Aruba this week.  We have a wedding down here, but the majority of the time will be spent on the beach!  Lana’s camera is never too far away, and we captured some great sunset photos this evening.  We also met a couple from the Boston area who are planning their daughter’s wedding in Gibbet Hill… small world!

During one of our beach walks, we ran into Marc Mangia “The Aruba Sandman” building one of his awesome castles!  We captured some great shots of Marc’s work.  What a super friendly guy too!  It’s amazing to watch Marc work on his creations.  Every single detail is just perfect!

Tomorrow we are spending the day driving around the island to explore new areas.   Aruba… what a great little island!  I would strongly recommend this location to for a get-away wedding or just for some beach time.  Put it on your bucket list!  We’ll post some additional photos from the wedding soon!

You can contact Marc at Arubasandman@gmail.com for more info on his amazing work too!