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Folded Card Front

J. Love Photography has created everything from wedding invitations, bar mitzvah invitations, and save-the-date cards to graduation announcements and Christmas cards. I love graphic design. Maybe you do too.  It seems like everywhere I go, you can plug your images into a machine and order custom photo products from coffee mugs to blankets to greeting cards! They’re very popular today.

2-Sided Card Back

I’ve been sending photo greeting cards for as long as I can remember. Love ‘em! I’m not telling you not to go get holiday cards at Costco with a great snapshot you took this summer of your family! That’s great. People LOVE getting photos of family and friends at the holidays. I’m all for it. Costco, in particular, does a great job and has a friendly staff. And the quality is in line with the price.

In the event you aren’t artistic, don’t have time, or you want a professional, one-of-a-kind product, here are a few of my holiday cards I did this year for clients. What great fun! I love taking the photos, but I love creating the cards too! This is a great way to share memorable, important events of the past year with family and friends. My brother doesn’t like them, but I also love getting a newsletter from people giving me a brief overview of the year. I feel more in touch with people this way. It’s a thought for next year if you’ve already done something else this year! I’m just sayin…

So often, I talk to people about their wedding, their anniversary, a milestone birthday and no album was ever created. Images stay stored on computers or in boxes rarely to be enjoyed.

J. Love Photography had the opportunity to create an album for a couple who renewed their wedding vows after 20 years of marriage recently in  Hawaii. The photographer gave them a CD with loads of images on it and my prospective client had neither the time nor the interest in figuring out what to do with them. I stepped in and created a beautiful album for her of those images, images of mine, and even images she had taken on their trip. She gave it to her husband as a surprise for his birthday a few months later. I scanned images of their original wedding and faintly placed them within the album where they weren’t obvious, but almost gave the effect of a ‘memory’. Their comments about the album I created for them renews my belief that images of important events in our lives with an album to grab and share and relive the moments is worth every penny we pay for them.

You might have seen the album I did similarly for a couple for their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. And I’ve done such albums for things like large family get-togethers, a woman’s journey into feeling beautiful again after having children, a group session of siblings, a baby’s first year, engagement sessions, and on and on. Many people buy a duplicate album for someone close to them as well, especially for weddings and baby’s first year. All of the album examples here are double page spreads.

If you are considering making the investment in professional portraiture, consider making an album of your own or having your photographer create one for you. If you feel like it’s too much extra to invest, many photographers, such as myself, have layaway plans. We understand and want to do what we can so that you can enjoy and share the art we created for you for years to come and not store it in a box or worse yet, never have any record of  the priceless moments in your life at all.

My t-shirt I’m wearing for Help-Portrait Day here in the Ann Arbor area says “A Picture is Worth”… It got me thinking.

There is a reason digital cameras have been one of the top selling gadgets for years now. There is a reason ‘everybody is a photographer’ today. Why? Because our pictures are our visual diaries. They are the witness and our memory of our lives as it goes scorching by us at such a fast pace we have trouble remembering. And then we gaze upon a picture and the moment floods back into our senses; we can smell the scents in that moment, hear the sounds that went on around us, and once again truly FEEL the moment as we had lived it.

It is no wonder we’re all in love with photography! A picture is worth… well that’s entirely up to you. For me, a picture of a treasured moment in my life is priceless.

Here is a list of helpful tips to creating better pictures of the moments in your life worth remembering.

Tip 1:

Get closer! Please. No one cares about the surrounding scenery. We want to see the expressions on people’s faces. Up close. So when you have your loved ones get together, move in close, tell them to ‘hug in’, and capture only the top thirds of them! You’ll love the picture so much more and so will they.

Tip 2:

Don’t just stand there, MOVE! Get on a ladder, get down on the floor. Kids are best photographed at their level. Older people are photographed best from a higher angle so they’re looking up a bit. Try it. Be creative.  Tilt the camera and try an angle, move the camera when people are moving and see if you like the blur. Experiment. Just don’t stand there head on and click the shutter. Please.

Tip 3:

Learn how to use the settings on your camera! Why spend all this money on a camera with all kinds of fancy settings and then put the camera on program and pray the camera does something spectacular! That camera is nothing more than a box! It has absolutely NO IDEA what you are pointing at unless you tell it. So put it on the setting of the little guy running if you are taking action. Put it on the setting of the flower if you’re close up. You’ll be shocked at how much better your pictures will be. And once you get really good at that. Break the rules and change the settings so you learn exactly what they do and your pictures will even get better! I promise.

Tip 4:

Understand your flash! Learn how to control whether the flash is on or off. Your pictures will shock you if you do this! Don’t ruin the holiday lights on your Christmas tree late in the evening when the room is aglow by using flash. And don’t think that because you are standing in the hot sun with it glaring at you that you don’t need flash. The person in front of you would look fabulous if you would use the flash to balance out the sun.

Tip 5:

Candids are good! Don’t just pose your subjects. Catch them doing fun and spontaneous things. If they know you are there, ask them not to look at you and to just keep doing what they were doing. Click away. Remember, tell a story with your camera.

Tip 6:

Learn to use the timer on your camera so you can get in the pictures without looking like all of those FB and iPhone shots of people holding up cameras photographing themselves. They’re dumb. People would like pics of you so much better if you weren’t holding the phone/camera up taking a pic of yourself, trust me.

Tip 7:

Keep snapping. Take a million. Delete ten for every one you save.  Take crazy pics, fun pics, experimental pics.  Just keep snapping.  And then when you get things you like, remember what you did and do it again!  This is how any good photographer learns. Trust me.  I am never sorry for a photograph I took.  But oh if I had a nickel for the photographs I regret that I missed.

Tip 8:

Photos on your hard drive ARE NOT a celebration of your life. I repeat… PHOTOS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE ARE NOT A CELEBRATION OF YOUR LIFE. Pictures are meant to be printed, shared, lived with, stared at, and posted on refrigerators. The price to print them today is so minor that there’s no reason in the world not to get triples printed for you, your kids, your parents, whomever! So quit sending photos electronically to your loved ones. It’s never the same. Post them on your bathroom mirror, your desk, your refrigerator, your mantel. Celebrate your life by sharing it often, not just with people who come to visit but share it often with yourself to remind you of the special moments that come together and create the fabric of who you are.

After all, this is your life you are documenting. And there will never be a finer work of art than you.

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 am going to write a monthly newsletter going forward and send it electronically. If you haven’t already signed up to receive it, please consider doing so! It won’t be long and I promise it will have useful information. Click on  this link to read the first official permission-based newsletter (okay, I’ve done it before, but it hasn’t looked  as ‘pretty’ as this one: July 2010.

Newsletters are a way for a business to keep clients abreast of specials, important news, and relevant information. I like electronic newsletters because I can read them when I have time. I’m a ‘tree hugger’ so I like to save paper where and when I can. Truly. Ask my family how I am about recycling. I make everyone crazy. LOL.  At least paper is better than plastic. I’m so off plastic right now!! STAMP OUT plastic please! Okay. my brief rant is over. Whew.

Anyway, back to the newsletter… congratulations to Marni Schmid who answered my teaser question that came with a $10 gift certificate to Corner Cup Cafe. The question, as well as the prize, were not easy to find in the newsletter. Did my heart good at the number of people who read it and answered it correctly so quickly! Thank you! The question was who said “No try. Do or do not. Try not.” The answer was Yoda.

To ‘try’ to do something is to set yourself up for immediate failure. Put your eye on the prize. Try not. Just do. When my girlfriend, Elaine Barber, recently published her first book after having it be a dream for 20 years, and we all finally got to purchase a signed copy, I told her that someone said “The world needs dreamers. And the world needs doers. But what the world really needs are dreamers who do.” She is a doer! Amen.

So wherever you are, you have a choice. I love to ‘be’. And I love to ‘do.’ But try? As Yoda would say…. no try.