Captivating Imagery: Pittsburgh Wedding Photographer and Professional Photography Services

It’s hard to believe it’s already November and the holiday season is right around the corner. So if you’re the type who likes to send custom holiday cards (I am! Our dog Brownie usually graces our Christmas cards…), it’s the time to start thinking about ordering yours before the Dec. 9th deadline. Here’s a sample for Katherine and Robert who were married this July at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. This design is great for newlyweds who’d like to share a wedding portrait with their family and friends. I also have designs for family and newborn portraits.

These flat 4×5.5 cards are full-color and two-sided with space for you to write a message on the back. The cards include envelopes and are sold in sets of 25 for $35 (sales tax included).

Here’s what the back looks like:

I’m working on my order now so that I can have them ready to go before all the hustle and bustle begins. The turnaround time for design, printing and shipping is 10 days. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to email or call me. I’d be happy to talk with you!

I’ve been offering engagement guest books for a while now and they’re catching on with weddings in here Pittsburgh. Engagement guest books are a great use for the photography from your engagement session and they actually make the guest book something that you’re naturally drawn to years after your wedding. It’s like a mini-album of sorts. We had a standard guest book at our wedding and I honestly can’t say where it is now, but if it had photos of me and Brad from our engagement, I’d absolutely treasure it and keep it close by!

So here is the latest engagement guest book I designed for Corey and Jeff’s session earlier this month. We went to Raccoon Creek State Park and they had a sweet date theme, complete with props: a picnic basket and blanket, a camera, and a guitar! I love their creativity and when clients wants to go for a theme, I will jump right in!

This is the first page. I’m still waiting on the actual book to be delivered, but I figured I’d show the actual page design in the meantime.

The pages are hinged so that they lay flat when the book is open. And that’s a good thing because guest books are typically displayed open so that guests can easily sign it.

The pages alternate so that images are on the front and back of one page and then the next page is left blank for guests to sign.

I have my watermark on these images, but there is no watermark on the actual pages.

Corey and Jeff picked the images to be included in their book from the web gallery that I created for their session. They also get a disc of their edited images as part of the engagement session. After they let me know their selects, I retouched the edited images and designed the book.

I’ve done some sessions at Raccoon Creek before, but I decided to head out a little earlier and scout around to see if I could find anything new and not far from the park was this lovely hillside.

One of the reasons I’ve been drawn to this park is that the lake at North Park in Pittsburgh is currently being drained. And the park just doesn’t have the same appeal without the lake. So clients who want to be photographed by water needed an alternative. Raccoon Creek State park is only a 30-minute drive from Pittsburgh, so it’s a great option. And there’s a dock that’s just big enough for me, my light and a couple if they sit at the very end of it. My wide angle lens makes it look bigger than it really is.

Corey and Jeff are getting married in southern West Virginia in October. They already had a photographer booked when they contacted me about an engagement session in Pittsburgh. If they hadn’t I would definitely have traveled to photograph their wedding. They are so much fun to work with!

The design for this book is one of my newer approaches to albums. The backgrounds are actual images of wallpaper that I’ve altered by neutralizing the color and adding some texture. I like them because they’re not too contrasty so they don’t take away from the photography, but they tie the book together with a consistent look. I can customize the backgrounds for each wedding or engagement session and I think they’re fitting as if the photos were framed and hanging on a wall.

I’m a bit of a realist in my approach to photography and design. I don’t want to go over the top with a trendy look and have my work feel overly dated in a decade. This is a fine line and I’m always happy to adjust my approach depending on my clients’ preferences.

I love switching back and forth between natural light and off-camera flash. Sometimes my approach with flash is subtle and sometimes it is more dramatic.

Well, that wraps up the design for Corey and Jeff’s engagement guest book. It’s a 20-page book and can fit 280 signatures. I designed it so that it could be used for a small or large wedding. There are no numbers on the lines so that guests at a smaller wedding can use several lines to write a short message.

So now that the wedding season has slowed down, I’m making some time to brainstorm ways to improve my wedding photography business here in Pittsburgh as well as implement some of the ideas that I’ve been tossing around over the past year. Because it seems when I’m in the thick of it, I get a lot of great ideas, but I’m too busy to really stop and consider them. It may seem odd to blog about this, but I see it as a way of holding myself accountable. So here’s a running list and some of the thoughts behind it:

Web site:
Create new intro page, make logo more prominent in design
Create introductory video
New bio, new portrait
Update wedding and engagement galleries
Create portraits site and portfolio galleries
Get royalty-free music for sites

My website is the main way that clients find my business and I want to put my best foot forward when it comes to first impressions. There are lots of great wedding photographers in Pittsburgh and great web sites for that matter. I want mine to communicate my style and personality so I can attract clients who are a good fit – that way, it’s a win-win for everyone. So the design, video, bio, portrait, galleries and music all play a role in communicating my brand. Music is something I’ve held off on for a long time because it’s not recommended by web designers, but I’ve always loved combining different art forms for an experience that appeals to more than one sense. It can be so powerful, so I’m going to give it a try and see what kind of response it gets.

The way people communicate and gather information is changing so quickly, so I want to make my site more mobile-friendly. I heard the other day, that by 2013 most people will rely on their smart phones and personal computers will become less and less useful. That’s crazy, isn’t it? If not this year, I will definitely be looking into optimizing my site for mobile devices for 2012.

Marketing:
Blog three to five days a week
Use twitter and facebook more
Read a few marketing/small business books
Get published on blogs or in magazines
Create new print materials
Create new products: rehearsal dinner coverage, engagement guest books, gift certificates, etc.
Create incentives for referrals, reviews, comments on the blog, etc.

Ok, blogging so much will be a challenge, but maybe it’s like getting into a work-out routine where after a few weeks of consistency, it becomes second nature. At least I hope it’s that way. And after I get that routine down, I’m going to get back to exercising—I was doing so well until July…

Back to the way people communicate—I know social media is here to stay and it’s a great venue for marketing. My trouble has been putting myself and my business out there. I’m a bit shy, so I haven’t been making the most of social media and after attending a seminar by Jasmine Star, I decided that I’m going to put my big girl panties on and just do it.

I’m not a natural marketer and if I’m truthful, running a small business has been an eye-opener. I’ve learned a lot from making some mistakes along the way and I find inspiration from the people around me. I feel truly blessed to have a great network of people who are willing to share, listen and collaborate.

I want to put more effort into getting my work published. I’ve been fortunate enough to have photos on the covers of Expectant Mother’s Guide to Pittsburgh (2009 volume 2) and the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Summer 2010 Catalog, but those were pretty luck coincidences. I’m going to reach out to bridal web sites and local magazines with the coming wedding season, because I have some great clients lined up and it would be pretty exciting to see their weddings published.

I need to freshen up my print materials like the price sheet and general info about Captivating Imagery. I need to look through the latest weddings for photos to use in those pieces.

Ok, past, present and future clients out there: what products do you want to see? I get all kinds of requests and it’s hard to know what to offer. I’ve been thinking about offering rehearsal coverage, custom-designed guest books with images from engagement sessions, framed prints, canvases, and gift certificates that can be purchased online. The gift certificates could be nice for couples who would like to add additional items that weren’t included in their package after the wedding.

I also would love to set up a few incentives for referrals. I like to reward my clients when they spread the word about my business, but I never really formalized a plan for incentives.

Ok, it’s time for some chocolate to keep me motivated as I’m realizing this list is too long for one post. More to come about my goals for next year. If you have any ideas or experience with some of the things I’m planning to implement, please let me know. I’m all ears.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted some updated photos of wedding albums, so I’m posting a few from a recent order from a December wedding.  I visited Alex Jones’ SteelGate Studio, in Pittsburgh’s Southside, for a proper product photo shoot.  Alex has over 20 years of experience as a photographer and has carved out a great business here in Pittsburgh and across the country.  And he’s a nice guy, so I feel fortunate to know him.

Anyhow, this recent album was ordered with a black fabric cover, which is different than the standard leather bound album, but just as elegant.

Here’s a view of the pages edges.  You can see that the print is mounted to a rigid black cardstock.  This increases the durability and feel of the flush mount album pages:

With this construction, the albums can lay flat for a better views of the photos:

The pages are designed and mounted as spreads, making for beautiful panoramas with no loss of the image at the hinge of the album:

I’ve also upgraded my packaging for DVDs for all weddings booked in 2010. Each client will receive a custom-designed case featuring one of my favorite photos from their wedding. This is a nice way to store the disc of images from your day:

Because digital wedding photography is relatively new in the grand scheme of things, I thought I’d show the Captivating Imagery products that are included with the engagement sessions and wedding photography packages.  

Engagement sessions and each of the wedding photography packages come with a CD or DVD containing the edited, ready-to-print digital images.  DVDs are used to hold more/larger files.  If your computer does not read DVDs, please indicated the need for CDs.

The DVD is labeled with a couple’s names and date and printed with a photo from the engagement session or wedding.

Albums are available as part of the Traditional and Premium Wedding Packages.  They can also be ordered separately through Captivating Imagery. Clients can view the album design online as part of the review process before the album is created.

Albums are available in a variety of covers.  This is a leather-bound cover.

This is a gallery wrap cover.