I’d also like to thank my second shooter Mark Nabong for capturing some great images from this day.

Wedding Ceremony: All Saints Catholic Church

Wedding Reception: Marina Community Center

Wedding Officiant: Father Ramon

Videographer: Lumitone

Make Up Artist: AnNha Artistry 

Hair Artist: Silvia (family friend)

Florist: Family Friend

Cake: Katrina Rozelle

DJ: DJ DVS

Linens: First Class Linen Productions

With the internet these days and especially the social media sites where everyone is posting images its very easy for anyone to get a hand on your picture. I bet you didn’t know that when you upload images to Facebook they are being uploading in high resolution. It’s no longer an option. Did you also know that there is a download link? Yep, anyone that has access to your profile can go in and download images from any of your albums like your Hawaii vacation with the family or Christmas time etc. I’m not trying to freak you out and prevent you from posting pictures of your family on Facebook, but I do want to warn you of something that is very real.

There are a lot of people out there that want to become photographers. Some are so desperate that they take other photographer’s images and use them as their own. They slap them on websites and pass them off as work that they have done. Which may be all fine and dandy until the time that the “photographer” shows you your images and they look nothing like the ones you saw on their website.

This is why a watermark, or a logo on an image, is so important. I don’t want my clients coming back to me saying that they saw their picture on a billboard (or somewhere else that isn’t so public) when I had nothing to do with it. The reason I put a watermark in the middle of the image is not to necessarily throw my name out there so when their family and friends look at the image they know who captured it, but to prevent the issue of some random person downloading that image and selling it as their own artwork.

I’m writing this to inform not only my clients, but everyone. If you have your pictures taken by a photographer and they give you watermarked images to use for social media sites use those instead of the files that are the high resolution ones for printing. If you don’t purchase any high resolution files, but want to put some on your Facebook from the session check with your photographer some will sell these watermarked images for cheap or maybe even gift them to you. Trust me they will appreciate the fact that you are obeying the copyright portion that you signed to in your agreement.

Posting watermarked images from your photo session doesn’t just help your photographer, it helps your family stay out of the public places that you would rather not have your family displayed.  I hope this short blog post will help my clients understand why I place a watermark on each image that I place on Facebook and my blog.

By the way the picture below is one that I downloaded directly from my Facebook page and loaded onto here. It is not the original file. I wanted to show you an example of what I am referring to above. This image isn’t pixelated in anyway and if it wasn’t watermarked anyone could download it and put it anywhere they wanted.

First of all this was taken with my iPhone…how awesome is it!? WOW. What an upgrade. My last phone, the Droid Incredible (it was hardly incredible) would restart itself after taking a picture, so I rarely took them, but now the quality is just amazing!

So I know that this picture has nothing to do with friends, but its pretty and uplifting and so are friends. This last week I got together with a bunch of friends. Some I met up with for cofeee to talk photography, Friday night I went out with some friends from college and had a great time and Sunday I met with some great photographer ladies and we each took headshots of each other for our websites. It was a very fun week full of lots of laughter and great company.

I also completed my electronic brochure for my portrait clients in order to go more green instead of having them have all this paper that I send them after booking a session it’s now all online so I’m happy that’s finally complete.

I hope everyone had an incredible week like I had.

That’s the one thing that I enjoy so much about her the fact that she is personal. It’s not so much that I grovel over her pictures, which are nice too, but I admire how she runs her business. So she did this speaking engagement where she visited a dozen different cities throughout the US. It was titled “The Fix”. It wasn’t a workshop on the technical aspects of shooting weddings; not what camera settings to use etc. It was plain and simply to encourage us to better our businesses.

I will be the first to admit that the last couple of years I didn’t have many photographer friends in the industry, not because I didn’t like making friends(because I LOVE making friends), but it was because I was intimidated. I felt like the people that I wanted to interact with were on a totally different level than I was in my photography and they wouldn’t want to grab coffee and chat. So one of my goals for 2012 was to make more friends in the industry and build my referral group. Little did I know that Jasmine Star would help me accomplish that goal.

When I purchased my ticket for this event I saw that there was a Facebook Group dedicated to the San Francisco speaking engagement specifically, so obviously I joined it. I was able to virtually meet a ton of other photographers that were in my area (don’t you just love Facebook). So I set up a dinner a couple weeks before the event and about 12 people from the group showed up and we had a blast talking over dinner and getting to know each other better. It definitely made the actual event with Jasmine that much more special because I was able to mingle with people instead of just finding my seat and not speaking to a single soul.

Everyone in that group is so friendly and are willing to share their success stories and give each other tips. If you aren’t familiar with the photography industry people tend to be very private about their work and how they accomplished their success. Which as Jasmine Star had pointed out, only hurts the photography industry more because you have these Craigslist photographers that are charging pennies and giving their clients everything under the sun and it’s hurting the photography industry as a whole. And to be fair I don’t think a lot of them are getting help from anyone and some I don’t think are really in it for a business practice. I feel many of them look at is as a way to make a quick buck without realizing all the time and effort it actually takes to run a business. I completely understand that people have to start somewhere, I was in that boat back in 2008 just starting out and had no idea how to be successful without charging pennies, that’s because I had very few people willing to help me out. Luckily I had James’ mom, Rhonda, who is a wedding and portrait photographer in the East Bay and she helped me out a ton. She pointed me in all the right directions to help me get my business legit (business license, cards etc.). That’s me with Rhonda and Jasmine below

I’ve never been the kind of photographer to be private to other photographers. I get emails from time to time asking me questions about the business and I write them back and sometimes I write too much to where I think it overwhelms them. And Jasmine Star’s speaking engagement did a wonderful thing. It brought together people that are super successful in their business, people that are doing well, but could grow and then it brought the people that are just starting out and are looking for answers. It’s great people I can still get advice from people who are at the point where I hope to be someday and then I can give advice to the people that are where I was. And you are a fool if you are in this industry and think you know everything there is to know about it. It’s definitely an industry that is constantly growing and changing. You have to keep up with all the latest equipment, software clients needs and desires with the latest products etc. It’s a constant learning type of job and that’s fine with me because I love to learn.

I’m excited to keep growing in this industry and with my new awesome photographer friends by my side I know we will do big things!

If you have a favorite iPad app that you would like to share with me feel free to comment below and let me know of the awesome gems you have found

Anyways so with the new business color changes I’ve had to order some new business cards and some packaging stuff so that it all matches! And I’ve came across Moo.com! I must say that the quality of their business cards is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. And I’m not just saying that. I use to order my business cards from the lab that I order my prints and products from, but a friend had mentioned Moo.com to me and now I’m hooked. Not only am I allowed to have a different image on every business card, but the actual quality and texture of it is amazing!

So I wanted to share with you a great coupon code that will allow YOU to get 10% off your first order with Moo! They offer business cards, stickers, greeting cards, post cards and labels! Now go check them out and make sure you use the coupon code to get 10% off! Click this link (or any of the other Moo links) in order to get the code

Happy Shopping People!

Oh yeah and because all posts are better with a picture.

Some of you may or may not have noticed the subtle changes occurring on my Facebook page, my blog and website. Truth is when I first was coming up with the new logo for the new business name I desperately wanted to change the pink theme of it. But I had so much packaging that was pink that I felt like I had to keep the pink theme until I at least got rid of it all. Unfortunately the packaging that I did have wasn’t the kind that you go through quickly. It was boxes that I had for wedding clients to put their engagement sessions in and I have a lot of them. In fact when I saw them for the first time at Hallmark I called everyone and everywhere to get as many of those suckers as I could. Literally there is a whole corner in my garage dedicated to house these boxes. Lovely right? Quite the opposite. It’s been eating at me lately that the pink theme just wasn’t representing who I was as a person and most of all my personality.

Pink is a pretty color. And don’t get me wrong I still love pink, but isn’t me. So I dug around and tried to think of colors that popped out when I thought of the word “happy”. The following color scheme came into play when I finally bogged down on what it was that I was trying to showcase with my branding.

I think these colors definitely fit me. They are fun and fresh and that’s the kind of person I am. So I ditched the pink and now I have all these pink boxes, crinkle paper, tissue paper, envelopes, etc that I have to get rid of. Luckily I know a lot of great photographers and I’m hoping that they will take advantage of a steal deal with the prices for the boxes and take some of them off my hands.

So wahla. I created my color pallet that I wanted for the new color scheme of my business and incorporated it into the new logo that I do still love so I knew I didn’t want to change that.

So there you have it. An answer to why the heck you’ve been seeing these changes on Facebook and elsewhere without any information as to why. The lesson I learned was to not keep the colors the same only because you have some packaging that you don’t want to waste. Listen to your heart and be true to yourself.

Facebook tends to be the place for people to vent on their personal profiles. If they are having a not-so-great day, they post that. Some people even post what they are eating for EVERY meal of the day. To be honest I don’t even like it when I see my own friends post negative things constantly and what they are eating all the time so what makes you think that a client would want to see that?

I’m 25 years old and I still go out and have fun with my friends. Some of my friends post stuff that doesn’t look so professional on my page, which is completely fine because it’s my personal page and my clients aren’t on it. I created a separate profile that I use to just add my clients as friends and it’s used to tag them. I don’t go on their profile and comment on things because I don’t want to invade their privacy because when I do add them to my friend’s list I let them know that it’s only for tagging purposes.

So if you don’t have a separate profile for your clients than you will have to watch out what gets posted on your profile. Think of it as an extension of your Facebook page. I strongly suggest creating a separate profile so that you don’t have to always sort through what people are posting and saying on your profile.

It’s nice to be friends with our clients, but they don’t need to see everything that goes on in our lives.