A few phone calls later and we had Adrian and Ilana scheduled to come in. If you’ve never seen Muy Thai (the national sport of Thailand) I highly recommend checking it out. It’s fast paced and absolutely worth it for the sound.

Thanks to Adrian, Ilana, and Debra for being part of the shoot and Judie (Adrian’s mother) who piped up during the discussion that Adrian would love to come in for a shoot. Both of them will definitely be featured in another session that isn’t planned in the course of 15 minutes.

Debbie Macomber with John and Marcia MacDonald

My calendar says this is Hyak Blog Day (All Day) and so I should be blogging. Those who read my wife’s site, aKnottyHabit.com, or have dropped by recently know one of the reasons I’ve been busy.

For those that don’t: Debbie Macomber, New York Times bestselling author multiple times over was here on Friday. The photo to the right is after the event and it’s completely unfair that she can still look good after a 4 hour drive, 2 hours signing books, and preparing for a 4 hour drive back.

It’s also our 2 year wedding anniversary today and just over 1 year for the yarn shop and the (I’m still going to say new) studio. Thanks to everyone who has helped us come this far.

Six photo sessions are in the editing stage this week and, as always, client work trumps blogging. I’ll finish up some of the draft posts later this week. I also have some upcoming ad deadlines mid-July that require a huge amount of work to get the shoots done in time to get them off to Ben who creates most of the wonderful advertising material you may see of mine.

I do promise to get back to my promised blogging schedule after that, and I will do my best between now and then.

Show will be at 1pm at Sheep’s Clothing in Kennewick, next to Costco.

We’ll also be shooting a lot of promotional material.

Planning for this event is why things have been quiet the past month or two. Hope to see you all there, though.

To call the last few months exciting, busy, interesting or all three would be an understatement.

Prior to the entire “My wife bought a yarn shop!” I made a post that I was going to be starting “Free Studio Saturdays” and I’m writing this post to see how many quotation marks I can use.

Two Saturdays a month we’ll be offering 30 minute sessions without charge. You will need to call, e-mail, or use the contact button above ahead of time to book a slot. There will be no set start and stop time on Saturday.

The goal is to make it possible to do a month by month series of kids growing up (and more new packages this year will include that), update profile pics for social networking, grab a shot with a couple of friends who are in town, etc. This will also be the time, if you are a Sheep’s Clothing customer to get your photo with your project for the contest they’ll be running.

Like every Hyak Photography photo session these include the online viewing gallery where you can grab images pre-sized for e-mail, use convenient share buttons, show slide shows, setup lightboxes, order prints, etc.

We’ll be shooting for every 2nd and 4th Saturday so the next dates are January 8 and 22 and February 12 and 26th. March 12th I’m unavailable so it’ll skip to March 26th. April is tentatively the 9th and 23rd.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, ideas, etc.

The only stipulation is that the photo session needs to be either of a veteran or for a veteran, be shot in the studio and fit in the 1 hour session. Sessions need to be booked in advance and take place in the remainder of this year. (Mothers of veterans count, Pamela).

Some ideas I thought up, just for ideas, not for limitations: family portrait (obviously), updated photos of the kids, new photos of yourself to send to someone deployed, a sexy book to give him when he comes home, maternity photos, photos of a deceased veteran’s flag or medals, or simply a bunch of people dancing around in the strobe lights.

Please remember our veterans, past and present, both on veterans day and the rest of the year.

Yesterday, though I caught Chase Jarvis’ interview with Jasmine Star and understood what all the fuss was about. Jasmine Star is a top wedding photographer from southern California doing a 5 day online seminar. You can check it out at http://creativelive.com/live/ if you have the time it’s available free in real-time. Alas that I won’t have time to view all of it as it happens, but there will be a download for $99/$149.

I’ve had mixed-feelings about the content on Creative LIVE from my own perspective, but think it’s a great service.

Stop in, say hi, find out about our new offerings.

8551 W Gage Blvd, Suite H
Kennewick, WA 99336
By Tony Roma’s, next to Costco

We’ve signed papers on the new studio space.

No, I’m not going to do away with in-home portraiture. This has very little effect on what I see as my primary focus which is bringing in a level of fun while reducing the headaches of going to the portrait studio.

So, if business as usual, what does going from hourly rental to having our own studio mean? Reduced in-studio sitting fees! Lower minimum time requirements! It’s simple math: the current fee schedule includes up to 1 hour travel time each way for in-home sessions and matches the minimum 3 hour studio rental that we have now. A fixed location means lower set-up times, less wear and tear on equipment, etc.

I don’t know how this will affect scheduling yet. Right now when you book a session a 3-4 hour section is blocked out on the calendar. That means I can do 2 or at most 3 sessions per day. As existing clients know we make an effort to keep a number of blocks available each week so that wait times are at most 2-3 days. I will be floating the idea of “studio days” where we’ll block off, say, 8am-6pm on a Saturday and divide that time into 30 minute sessions. That’s not enough time to do a family of 6 or a full maternity set but would be enough to do as part of a series. A newly born child could schedule a full newborn session in studio or at home and then use 30 minute sessions once a month to produce a first year wall collage.

I encourage everyone to read my post on What Questions to Ask Your Wedding Photographer, which both gives some questions you might think of, and some that you might not that you should ask every photographer that you are considering. It includes my answers as they stood last year and I’ll be adding a new post or page to the site with the minor changes, mostly in equipment, that have happened over the weekend.

As usual, my wife and I will only be taking on a handful of weddings this summer due to extensive obligations. If you are interested in having Hyak Photography provide your please contact us soon so that we can at least pencil you into the schedule. (509) 205-1673 or the contact link at the top.

We are also very excited by our portable printer service for events and are looking to add more printers through the spring.

They live 2,000 miles away, so there isn’t a whole lot I can do for them from here, and, honestly, there isn’t a lot a photographer can offer. Many photographers in this situation make calendars as fundraisers, and I saw one very good poster, but the amount of money they bring in for the work involved seemed unreasonably small to me.

So, my contribution is very simple. If you have been diagnosed with breast cancer, are undergoing treatment, or have recently completed treatment your photo session is at no charge, includes an 8×10 print, and will have other printing discounts. No obligations at all, and no major caveats on what it doesn’t apply to. Portrait session of yourself, portraits of your family, boudoir so that you still feel sexy, or an image for a campaign for cancer awareness.

The offer is available indefinitely.

Concert went well, about 1.5 hours. Only took about 150 frames. Might have an idea for velcroing strobes to their carpet walls for tomorrow, need to see about finding where my velcro went. Tape doesn’t work.

Stop by the Tri-Cities Women’s Expo, the Bzen Solutions booth has a raffle to win a free portrait session including a free 11×14 print. They also have some discount cards to hand out that are worth picking up.

The in-home aspect of what I offer is now my new focus. My studio has always primarily consisted of lightweight gear, most of which goes in bags that sling over my back. I’ve paid a hideous premium for my Bogen ultra compact (19″ collapsed!) lightstands. Half of my umbrellas are double-folds. My entire backdrop support system is one of the bags that sling across my back. A lot of my best children’s work has been in people’s homes already.

Moving completely to this has a lot of upsides, both for my and for my clients. For me there’s no studio rental overhead. For clients I don’t have to pass studio rental overhead on. (I still have the option to use a local studio, if clients so desire). But, really, that’s not the biggest thing. Children are more comfortable at home. My wife likes to tell the story of pair that raided their play chest and came out in dozens of costumes, wanting photos in each and every one.

The foremost of the new site features is the “What’s New” section, which doesn’t actually use that title anywhere. It’s the three columns at the bottom of the new front page. The leftmost is blog entries (ie this), the center is recent portrait sessions, and the rightmost is recent events, including the school sports that I cover. This replaces the “recent galleries” section that was automatically updated whenever I changed anything in a gallery, so often wasn’t actually recent. It also includes a link to see all, which I hope will make it easier for people to find their photos. I may also try out a <yourname>.domain system, probably with my confidentphoto.com domain so I could also do a splah page to help people find them.

From a technical perspective the site is now basically running on WordPress, which was a blogging engine that has emerged as a decent content management system. It’s a pretty flexible framework that I’ve made a lot of changes to to get the look and feel right. This is going to be an ongoing process. The galleries, and the portfolio slideshow, are done by PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter provides infrastructure to manage the many thousands of images I have online, provide online sales, etc.