We had a great day in early August doing portraits all day for Facebook, dating sites, and business portraits.  Thanks to everyone who participated.  We will do it again Friday, September 24 due to the popularity of the event.  Please call to reserve your time if you are interested.

Here are a few of my clients who chose to have professional business portraits made (which can also be used for Facebook, etc.)

We now have a full list of makeup artists and hairstylists available to help our clients get a polished, professional look.  Most of these professionals will come to your home, my studio, or you can go to their place of business… an added convenience for you!

So whether you need a great portrait of yourself for Facebook, a dating site, your website,  or a professional business portrait for marketing purposes, reserve your time during our portrait sessions on Friday, September 24. Either in-studio or outside portraits are available with four different price ranges to choose from based on your own needs.

In the professional world today it becomes increasingly more important to convey yourself in a professional, friendly, and approachable manner.  And with social media of all kinds taking hold like it has, personalizing who we are with a portrait gives people a sense of knowing us better. Investing in a professional portrait is something some business people just don’t get around to doing!  Set yourself apart by setting your best foot forward.

And anyone who has ever used a dating site will tell you that it is rare for someone to look anything like the portrait they use. Of course, this is usually because the selected images are very outdated or don’t really show someone ‘close up.’ All of our images are professionally enhanced, but certainly look exactly like you! So when you meet someone for the first time, they’ll know you from your picture.

I understand that not only is it uncomfortable to have your portrait made professionally, but it’s an investment.  People tell me all the time I make them feel very comfortable and they end up actually enjoying their session with me. J. Love Photography offers a full, 100% money-back guarantee if you are not thrilled with the portraits we make for you.  So what are you waiting for?

In Vanity Fair’s September 2010 issue, there was a poll asking people several questions.  One of the questions was,  ”The King Tut exhibition is currently in the U.S., showing the objects that were buried with him in his tomb, because the Egyptians believed the pharaoh could take things with him into the afterlife. If you could take one of these objects with you to use in the afterlife, which would you take?’ The choices were..

a family photo album (47%)

a pet (25%)

an iPhone or Blackberry (9%)

A favorite car (5%)

A big screen TV (3%)

Our family photos are mostly being stored on computers, rarely printed, no longer put in albums, and ultimately not looked at very often!  We are taking more photographs than ever before in history… and we aren’t doing much to care for these family photos for future generations of our own families.  Ask any computer technician how many people they work with who have lost ALL of their family photos on their hard drive that crashed because they had no backup.  It is common today, unfortunately.  And the statistics in restoring those family photos from a crashed hard drive  are painfully low.  

Let’s start creating photo albums again.  Years and years from now, no one is going to feel a CD or DVD pull at their heart strings as they rummage through old memorabilia!  But if they were printed images of family members, friends, pets, vacations, and cherished memories, these tangible photos would be little priceless pieces of the past that family would hang onto, preserve, pass down.  This is what they were talking about in the survey, NOT our hard drives. 

I briefly touch upon how I am guilty of not printing family snapshots and how I’m turning a new leaf in a post entitled Capturing The Moments That Matter Most.  It’s been great fun to go through my personal photos, choose the ones that make me smile, print them, and store them in my acid-free box that I created marked “Our Family 2010.”  Finally.  Our friends and family are enjoying the little capture moments on our coffee table. 

Now I’m hoping I can encourage more of you to create tangible treasures of those scads of images you’ve left unattended on your hard drives!  Photograph, back up, burn, AND PRINT!

My husband and I just came back from a vacation to the upper parts of Michigan.  We try to go every year.  It gives us an opportunity to reconnect, spending uninterupted time together enjoying the beauty of Michigan during peak weather here.  I didn’t touch a computer for 10 days.  That was very foreign for a self-described computeraholic like me.  The only thing I needed on vacation was my husband and my cameras!!  LOL.  He’s okay with not being my one and only, as long as he’s my first choice. Being married to a photographer must have its pitfalls.

We visited friends and relatives and spent the rest of the time wandering beaches and shoreline and interesting sites in Michigan that we take for granted or haven’t seen since we were children like the Soo Locks and Tahquamenon Falls.  We didn’t keep track of time, we didn’t have a schedule, we just wandered and enjoyed.  Oh, I let him beat me at putt-putt golf. If you ever get to Petoskey, it’s the best putt-putt course anywhere!

Michigan is surely beautiful.  I think the thing that always strikes me the most when we travel elsewhere is the lush greenness of Michigan. Ireland was the only place I’ve seen that’s as green and it’s green in a different way.  

Here are a few of my favorites from our summer vacation for you to enjoy. It’s hard to spot, but there’s a surfer in the water in this image taken in Charlevoix. Crazy guy! The sand was whipping my face so hard I could barely see but he was joyfully riding the waves…. in Michigan. Go figure.

As a photographer, I should get tired of pressing that shutter but, ironically, I never do.  I even dragged my tripod on vacation and used it one time; to snap this photo of Rod and I. I get lots of great photos of ’stuff’ on vacation and once and a while of him but never him and I. So glad I dragged it along! LOL.

For years, I’ve photographed letters and numbers and signs. Don’t know why.  Just do!  Signs fascinate me; “Big Ass Beer”, “Moose Crossing”, etc.  One of these days I’ll create something with all my photographs of signs… or at least I think I will. LOL.

I’ve always meant to do what others have done and create letter art using the alphabet and numerals so I can create these cool name plates for people.  Procrastination!  I was again inspired between our trip to New Orleans in October and our trip to upper Michigan this month.  So here is my name.  I have more than enough images to create the alphabet several times over so I think I’m finally going to quit procrastinating about it and start working with them!  Check my website, J. Love Photography, and also check Dexter Picture Frame, where I have my work.  I’ll keep you posted! And don’t hesitate to contact me with an unusual letter or number you see out there somewhere.

I prefer to spend an hour to two hours with a bride and groom before the wedding to create lovely portraits in a comfortable, fun, and often familiar setting.  We want to document the day and tell the story through pictures.  It’s very important because as all of us know who have been married, our weddings fly by and we barely remember them between the adrenalin and whirlwind events.  So it’s up to the wedding photographer to capture all of the emotionally charged moments of this big day so the bride and groom can relive them over and over!

The art-related theme for Meg and Sean began early at the bride’s parents’ home.  I can easily say that the setting there rivaled the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which we would move on to next!  Maureen, the mother of the bride,  is a true artist and has paid attention to every detail in every corner of every room creating the most artistically decorated home and gardens we’ve ever seen.  The bride and groom had a great time playfully posing for us both inside and outside and we captured it all for them.  We were also able to get many great family photos as well. 

J. Love Photography only does a limited number of weddings a year.  At this point, I want to do them myself working tandem with another pro who is exceptional (many of you know Dawn).   Our wedding photography speaks for itself.  So do our albums.  I believe this one day in people’s lives is a story worth capturing from beginning to end. 

It is an investment that comes back tenfold because the collection of images in an album bring people back to the moment.  I know firsthand. 

My husband and I just celebrated our 9th anniversary.  We played the same music we danced to at our wedding.  We drank champagne out of our flutes, and we went through our wedding album page by page, picture by picture.  We were sad at some of the people who are no longer with us smiling at us through the pages.  We laughed at the fun we all had.  And we remembered exactly how we felt that day; happy, in love, excited, and so blessed.  Next year we’ll do the same thing all over again.  The years can’t erase our memories because we have our momentos like our album to instantly transport us back there. 

Your wedding day is too important not to invest in a professional wedding photographer to capture these moments for you!