It’s wedding season! Thankfully, we’ve been extremely busy, finishing at 9PM most nights just in time for Kate to get back from crew practice, throw something together for dinner and relax. We’ve had some wonderful weddings and I plan to start finishing more blog posts. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. It’s also senior portrait time and we’ve had a lot of sessions, especially in the last 2 weeks. I’ll be here in front of the computer if you want to chat ;}

I can’t live without my Iphone and I’ve been working on making our blog more Iphone friendly. It’s going to take an update in December to make it fully compatible, but I’ll be changing many of the slideshows to You Tube format once things slow down.

We’ve always offered multimedia presentations and plan to expand on those presentations. With some of the new technology,  a new style of “fusion” photography is in it’s infancy and I plan to explore how we can incorporate more video into our still presentations. More to come on that in the off season.

Many of our recent clients have had babies and it’s been so much fun to have the opportunity to see them as new parents and to photograph their bundles of joy.

We hear from a lot of our current and past clients on Facebook, so please send us a friend request. We would love to hear from you!

Kristan and Andy, one of couples, are featured in the June issue of Redbook Magazine and online in an article that asks a number of couples what they can learn from their parent’s marriage.

Kristan and Andy were married at Armstrong Farms in Saxonburg, an ever so cool location for a unique wedding. You can view their engagement photographs here and their wedding slideshow here.

Congratulations!!

If you have images of canvas displays or studios filled with Simply Canvas prints, please send them to christine@simplycanvas.com. And, feel free to stop by our Booth, Booth 1101, at WPPI in February to chat!

Thanks,
Christine, Marketing Coordinator
Posted by Adam Fried (Simply Canvas) at 12:19 PM

I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately, which usually means we have so many things going on that our blog posts suffer.

January is always our time to finish all of our albums (I’ll show some off soon) from our late fall and winter weddings and prepare for the upcoming year. We have a lot of great things planned and we are really excited.

This year is shaping up to be very busy. While we still have a few open dates, many of our Saturdays are booked for wedding season. We’re working on our plan for the year, trying to find new ways to provide even better customer service and quality. We just installed new studio management software to help with efficiency and order tracking.

New sample albums are the works. Our album companies have been been busy too, with fresh new albums and products.

We can’t wait.

We attended Imaging USA a few weeks ago, the national convention of the Professional Photographer’s Association. The inspiring seminars and talks and the chit chat with our fellow photographers, always stirs the creative juices.

Marketing is a necessary evil for us. If we can’t find new clients, we can’t do what we love. Barb has been working on a marketing brochure and campaign for high school seniors and was thrilled to find that she won first place at the international AN-NE marketing awards ceremony, which was presented at Imaging USA. Kudos to our wonderfully creative graphic designer Anne Lehman. The award wouldn’t have been possible without her.

I’m proud of Barb – it was a ton of work.

Steve

We had hoped to take a few days off after working most of the Thanksgiving weekend and did manage a few days to ourselves. We went to visit Barb’s sister Kathy in Narrowsburg, NY along with 37 other family members on a cozy sleepover. Short of a flu bug going around, it was a lot of fun and great to see everyone- pictures available on Facebook. Search for Stephen Barry and be my friend!

We’re so excited about the upcoming year. We’ll be attending our national convention. With some educational programs and seminars along with the largest trade show in the world, it’s always inspiring.

We have a lot of great plans for the upcoming year.

Like many of you, we pulled out our old albums and photographs and had a bunch of laughs reminiscing.

Here’s a few that I came across – most from a time when I spent hours in the darkroom printing black and white photographs and when Barb and I had a lot of time to handcolor black and white images with artist oils. It’s a chance to show off our new blog format which gives us more room for BIG photographs.

Realistically, we would need to place orders this weekend. We’ll include next day air shipping at no additional charge.

If you’re interested in a gift of memories, please give us a call at the studio at 412.781.5773 to order directly.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 14th,  we’re donating our time and expenses to photograph The Reindeer Ball, supporting abused and neglected children through The Mercy Foundation and A Child’s Place. If you’re attending the ball, please stop by to say hello.

I’m putting the finishing touches on some very cool wedding albums. Most of our work is actually after the wedding. We spend a lot of time on creative design and making each and every photograph look it’s best, enhancing and retouching for blemishes.

Here’s a couple of before and after samples from an album I’m working on today.

straight out of the camera

The final version after color and density correction and some selective highlight and contrast filtration.

I knew I wasn’t going to leave the other figure, but wanted to have some extra room for cropping.

The final version – this just worked best in sepia tones with some selective darkening or burning in, to enhance the mood – toned down the graffiti on the wall.

Barb and I hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!!

While we’ve had weddings every weekend, we did decide this year to take a weekend off to attend Barb’s aunt and uncle Andy and Betty’s annual Big Deal picnic and camp-out at their property in Evans City.

It was a bit of an expensive weekend to give up a wedding but well worth it. We had a great time. I’ve posted some pictures on Facebook.

Barb and I have been forcing ourselves to bike or work out every morning before sitting in front of the computer and have really taken some nice rides. It’s a great way to start the day and the light is absolutely beautiful at dawn.

We photographed Leann and Jason’s wedding at Nemacolin over the weekend. It was a beautiful affair with a very cool reheasal event, Casino Night with real casino games and dealers. I’ll have some photographs posted shortly with a slideshow when they return from Hawaii and have a chance to see their pictures.

We just finished a major redesign of our blog to more of a magazine look with access to posts in one location. There are a few styling tweaks to finish, but I hope you like our new look.

Please let me know what you think and if you’re having any problems with the navigation.

Steve