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.

To celebrate the love that we share, and that other couples share, we’re proud to roll out “Love Portraits.”

Love portraits are for couples in any stage of their relationship, new love to 90th anniversary and anything in between. We’ve spent the past months putting together some packages that fit what we would look for as a couple. We’d also like to thank those like Terris and Cheryl (pictured) and their new puppy (yup, dogs are allowed!) as well as the others who helped out with the development process. You’ll see many of those who helped out in the advertising this year.

Packages start at $150 and include a large print for your home and silk accordion books to keep or give away. In studio, out and about, both, or an entire day of your choice anywhere within reasonable driving distance. Several of the packages also include custom cards that can be used for announcements, wedding invitations (love portraits make great engagement gifts), Christmas cards, or anything else you can think of.

We hope you’ll love Love Portraits as much as we do. Drop by the studio or call for more information or to book your portraits.

If you are a US military service member who is about to be deployed, home on R&R, or just home from deployment your love portrait session is free.

Here’s why: My personal story for the weekend.

As most readers know I’ve been spending the bulk of my time working with my wife’s yarn shop Sheep’s Clothing. I’ve been moving my focus back to photography the past few months and have been doing pretty much exclusively in-studio portraits. With nothing that can’t be rescheduled I loaned out a spare camera and lens set to a friend’s (another photographer) daughter who doesn’t live close.

Long story short I’ve been shooting the past few months with only a single camera in the studio with the option of having another one show up overnight FedEx from one of the various rental houses or, if necessary a new one from one of the major shops. This is a great scenario if, say, the camera gave out Monday – Thursday. I say gave out because while I’ve lost strobes, lenses, radios, etc from dropping I’ve never lost a camera that way. Never until Friday night.

Thursday night, after an exhausting shoot,  I knocked the camera, 24-70 f/2.8 lens, and pocket wizard FlexTT5 off of a stool that I should never have left it on. 6-7lb dropping 36″ to hit a hard floor did bad things… but other than the sheared off FlexTT5 everything seemed to be working. I didn’t test a Plus II at that time, though. Saturday morning… not so much. Camera wouldn’t power on and even after diagnosing and fixing that problem a Plus II on the camera wouldn’t fire.

My shoot on Saturday went off wired to the lights and with the camera literally taped up (with white gaffer’s tape since I couldn’t find the black) and went well. Thank you to everyone who offered to loan me a camera for Sunday. The camera won’t fire a PW Plus II anymore that I was planning to use on Saturday but it will fire the FlexTT5 and MiniTT1 and with some work I got it to accept batteries Saturday night so Sunday went off without a hitch (and without tape!). There are some advantages to my past career and electronics hobby.

In the end replacement parts are winging their way to me as I type this but the moral stands. If you are ever on a shoot that will be expensive or impossible to reschedule (weddings come to mind) carry backup equipment for everything. And from now on even during light times in the studio I’ll always have a backup camera.

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.

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

This also heralds a change of assistants. My wife, Marcia, is no longer able to assist with most of my shoots because of her new venture. On your next session you can probably welcome Kris who has worked with other photographers in the area, kept Marcia’s sanity intact at our wedding, and has been on the other side of my lens before.