Prem and Cheridy / Arising Images - 2007 1st Quarter Newsletter
Dear friends, family, clients, etc, If you do NOT want to receive any emails from us, please use the unsubscribe link on the bottom of the email message. So far, 2007 has been a great year for us. We are very excited about the jobs that we currently have booked for the year along with some of the changes that we've been making in our business. |
At the beginning of the year we had a fun shoot for the Salvation Army to take photos of some of their attenders along with some images from the neighborhood. It was really cool to be immersed in a totally different culture that less than a 30 minute drive from us. It's so easy to forget and it was a very humbling experience.  |
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| In mid January, Cheridy and I headed to San Antonio for the Imaging USA convention which is attending by 15,000+ people. We feel like all of our time and energy has been focused on our wedding business and although we feel like our portrait image quality is good, we still had a lot to learn about the business end of portraits. In fact, we still had a lot to learn about business in general including accounting, business planning, etc. At Imaging USA, we had plenty of opportunity to take some great business classes along with learning a lot about portraiture including getting some new product ideas and marketing techniques to try out. It was very informative and really filled up our brains. While there, the weather got a little crazy. They had some major ice storms that pretty much shut down the whole city as Texas is not prepared for weather like that. Here are some pics from the Alamo and of the ice. |
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| After the conference we had a chance to go up north with some friends. My friend Barry has a cottage in Hale, MI and he let us rent it for the weekend. We went with the Santoros and the Gryniewicz who are couples who's weddings we shot last summer. We had a great time just sitting around talking, playing games, and playing out in the snow. It was great to be away from home and away from having to think about work stuff for a few days. |  |
When we got home, it was time to start implementing some of the new things that we learned in San Antonio. We knew that the only way to make our portrait business successful was to structure our business in a way where we could sell more products as opposed to just loose prints. We started coming with a whole new strategy for products, pricing, etc. etc. For children, we're trying to do more photo shoots that really show off a childs personality along with coming up with products that will do a good job of showing that off. We also want to start offering more artistic products that you just can't get at an average studio such as paintings, etc. We formed a partnership with a local frame shop so we will now be offering some really cool framed products. A lot of this is still in the works, but we're very excited about it. If any of you are past portrait clients, you'll definitely want to learn about our new processes, products, and pricing before booking another shoot because a lot has changed and we not only want to show you all the new options, but we also don't want to surprise you when you find out that things are different than they used to be. To see some slideshow and learn more about our portrait business, you can click here: http://www.arisingimages.com/portrait |
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The first quarter is typically pretty slow for us in terms of photo shoots. However, we did have four engagement shoots that were a lot of fun. We do almost all of these shoots outside, so the cold weather is sometimes an issue for people, but these were all great examples of how the weather really doesn't matter and we'll get some great shots even if it is cold outside. |
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In February, I got to go on a mens retreat with about 50 guys from our church. Our church does these retreats up at Timberwolf Lodge in Lake City MI. It was a great weekend. I went up there with 9 guys from my mens Bible study group and it was a great opportunity to get to know them better, get closer to God, and have a great time doing all sorts of fun activities. They had everything from snowmobiling and skeet shooting to foozball and pool tables. It was a great retreat!! Cheridy was a bit jealous because the weekend was filled with fun stuff that she would have loved to do. When the women go on retreats, they do manicures and pedicures and a bunch of stuff that she's not interested in. Maybe someday they'll have a tomboy retreat. |
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| I ran another one of my basic photo classes which I taught at the Kensington Art School. It was a large class with close to 20 people which was really cool. One of my goals is to get people to start seeing things differently through the viewfinder. Find interesting images and compositions out of otherwise ordinary subjects. This class did an exceptional job with that!! I won't be doing another basic class until sometime this fall, but I am considering teaching an advanced photo class sometime soon, so if you're interested, please send me an email so I can put you on the information list. |
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Recently, we had one of our most unique and exciting jobs that we've ever done. We were hired to go to the Dominican Republic to shoot photos what will be used by an advertising agency to promote a condominium resort complex that's currently being built. There's plenty more detail and stories on our blog (http://arisingimages.com/blog/?p=183) and if you just want to see more of the pics, there is a slideshow here: |
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Near the end of the quarter we did a great portrait shoot for the new baby of a past wedding client. We truly have an amazing job. To be able to be a part of their lives at their wedding and then be able to take photos during the first few months of their babies life...it's just awesome! |
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| Nothing else is too new with us. We recently realized that we have an addiction to Ikea which Cheridy got to take advantage of for her birthday which was Jan 29th. She won't want me telling you how old she is (cough cough 32 cough cough!!) Cheridy is still working part time at Tour Connection and playing soccer (indoors right now). We're trying to find a balance between personal life and business and so far failing miserably but...we're talking about it and thinking about it and coming up with ways that will give us a bit more separation. As much as we LOVE our photography job, it's also healthy to step away and keep ourselves involved in other activities too. We're also still trying to sell our condo in Warren. We just dropped the price to $114,900 which is a steal considering units like this were selling for over $130,000 just over a year ago. Things started dropping right as we listed it for sale. We're really bummed and a bit surprised it's not selling. We know the market is bad, but you can't buy anything remotely close to this property in size, cleanliness, location, etc. for that kind of money. Oh well...it'll sell eventually. If you know anyone interested, please send them this link for info/pics: http://www.arisingimages.com/temp_folders/temp/condo_ad_web.jpg We're really excited about the second quarter for this year! We'll be going to another photography conference in Las Vegas and then after that we'll be leading a travel photography workshop around the southwest. This has taken a lot of time and planning to coordinate, but should be a lot of fun! Later we'll be going back to the Dominican Republic to do more work, and then our wedding season gets going soon after. Thank again to all of our family, friends, and clients for your support/business and for helping make our dreams of doing what we love for a living into a reality. We are truly blessed by all of you. For anyone interested, we typically update our blog quite often, so check that for more regular updates: If you know anyone else that might be interested in receiving our newsletters, you can tell them to sign-up by clicking here. Again, if you do NOT want to receive any emails from us, you can click the link at the bottom of the page to unsubscribe. Please send us a quick email to let us know how you’re doing. Thanks and God Bless! Prem and Cheridy |
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