(a good reason to friend me so I can share them with you faster, http://www.facebook.com/hitchedphotography)

Back in the day, when I might have had only one wedding a weekend, or maybe a few photography events a month, I could process those images in 48 hours and have them up online. But these days, I’m getting booked up for weekday weddings, followed by family beach portraits, and with a few seniors splashed in for a busy month.

With the summer crashing down upon us like waves, I find it difficult to give my clients images the attention I like to give each and every one of their photos. And so I have hired on “image processors” to help in processing the images from the events. These two guys are my image manipulators, they are the ones taking those ordinary images that might come out of any camera and making them into fantastic art, of course leaving some images plain but slightly enhanced. Both gentlemen were handed picked by me, because of their background skills in photoshop and their speed and dedication to the images I’m entrusting into them. Both my guys were trained by me, given specific instructions on what I expect the images to look like. And to give the images the exact care I would.

I still process images myself, but I’m happy to have the help so that I can continue to focus on you the client. It also frees up my time to gather new skills to apply at your wedding or family portrait. Taking the time on your images is something I personally feel is important, making them unique and memorable, something you will cherish always. So just think that every time I snap a photo of you, it will be “Hand Crafted” to be the best image It can be.

Choosing the Date!
If you are arriving on a Saturday or Sunday and staying for the whole week, get settled and let’s aim for a Monday or Tuesday at the start of your trip. This will give us the rest of the week as possible backups to your shoot incase it rains or something comes up. As both my wife and I both shoot, we can easily accommodate people on the day they are requesting. Just try not to ask for a Saturday as we are Wedding Photographers and will most likely have a wedding on Saturday.

Location, Location, Location.
We would like to direct you to one of our many beach locations that are closer to where you are staying while vacationing. However if you have viewed some of our work and would like to request a certain location, base on the photos you saw, please let us know. I like to get you to one of our closer locations to where you are at, to keep any children happy and from staying in the car for too long. I’ve included a google map I’ve put together to make it easier for you. And if you have GPS unit you can easily put in one of these addresses to get you there.

Arrival on the Beach photography Scene – To be late or not to be late?
Now you might arrive before I do, or I might arrive before you do, don’t feel as though you have to rush for this. We want you happy and relaxed as this will be a fun experience. If I were to show up late, its not to keep you waiting, but to move with the sun as I say. A lot of times I’ll get there when the sun is just too high and then we may feel forced to start. I delay my arrival to avoid starting too early. And I anticipate sometimes clients being late because they are often from out of town and don’t know all the little beach photography spots we drag you out to. If you arrive a little late, don’t worry, be happy, it’s all good. The flip side to that is – if you have a large family and we are due to start shooting at 7pm then if you show up 45 minutes late, then it will put a damper on the amount of time we have left to photograph you. What I aim for is to get there and meet you at a location an hour and twenty minutes before the sun sets, that will give us a good hour of shooting time for before we run out of light.

Your clothing options – No speedo’s please.
You can choose to wear whatever your heart’s desire. It’s your photo shoot you can do what you will. However if you are looking for my opinion and what experience has taught me, I’d like to make a few suggestions. I’d recommend solid colors, nothing with a lot of stripes, dots, or wording. A nice white shirt or nice white sundress would work. And you can go the other way if you would like, with a black shirt or black sundress. If you have a couple of different families together in the shot, you can keep them all in the same colors or use different color variations. Like a light blue on one family and Light green on another. But the safest bet is to go with white or black and you can’t go wrong. An issue with black clothing – once you start rolling around in sand, the sand will show up more on the black, where as you don’t have that problem with white.

Parents with Children or Children with Parents – Depends on who’s in charge.
Try and allow your kids rest early on, like a nap. As we are shooting around the evening time, they could be tired by the time we shoot, and you will want them to smile but they will be cranky and tired. So nap time if at all possible. Brings snacks is always a good idea, as we can the little ones to smile with little treats when all else fails. When I first walk up to a new family, before I take out the camera, I say “Hi” and introduce myself. With kids in the portrait too, I’m getting to know them as well, and allowing them to get to know me. There might be a little bit of bonding before hand, as it will make getting them to listen to me easier.

Parent Tip – when time to photograph the children and you aren’t in the photo, you would be best to stand behind me, so that the child’s attention is focus in my direction for the picture. I could also recommend, allowing you to take a back seat, behind me so to speak so that I can talk and work with the mini model. Sometimes they may cry for you or you may want you to pick them up, but we want to give them a chance to listen to my instructions so I can grab the shot. One of the best things you could do is stand together behind me quietly so I can chat with the little one or you want speak softly you can if it helps. If my attempts do not work we can try another approach. I defiantly know that screaming and yelling behind me to capture the child’s attention doesn’t work well.

The beach portrait family – breakdown and rebuilding – Basic shoot outline.
As you are there for a beach family portrait, what I like to do is take a group shot of the whole family together and then break it up into other family configurations. This is a basic outline that I’m about to go into, and as it might not fit with all families I’m sure you can fill in the blanks as needed. Say you have a family – set of grandparents and those grandparents have 4 sons and those 4 son’s have wife’s and each one has either one or two kids each. You can imagine that as a large family photo there, and we like to start with the center of the family, the grandparents. As I sit the grandparents down in the sand, I like to get them comfortable as possible. For all of remaining family members standing around, it might be nice to pay attention to what I’m showing them because I’m setting you up with way to make you look good. Once the grandparents are seated, I like to take a few shots of them to get them going and to show the kids, “Hey nothing to worry about”. I’ll grab a few shots and then get their children in the photo, in this case the 4 sons. Snap a few photos, and then I’ll call the wife’s with the children on over, to add to the over group shot. Snap, click, captured, done. Chances are I’ll snap a few photos like 10 – 15 to make sure all eyes are open and we got a good shot.

Parent Tip – Don’t focus on the children in front of you, try and keep your attention on me, and allow me to get their attention because as soon as I have the child’s attention I snap the photo, and what I end up with is the child looking directly at the camera, and the top of the parent’s head, or a blur of hair. So try and keep looking at me. Once we have the group photo, great, we can now move on to individual shots of families, and what better way to start then with the grandparents with all the grandchildren. The parents get up, leave the children around the grandparents, and step behind me, you may want to stand beside or off somewhere, but what you might end up with is the little kiddie, looking at you or for you, and everyone else is looking at the camera. Moving on, we can get Son #1 with his family, and then Son #1 with just his wife, Son #1 with the kids, and then switch, Mom #1 with the kids. We can even do so far as to do a little “toddler tossing”, where the parent’s are throwing the children back and forth. Just kidding, checking to see if you are still reading. But whatever other ideas you might have, we can shoot them. And we would go down the line with all the families shooting in different combinations. I’m out there, and we are having fun, why not snap some more fun photos, and so we can walk on down to the water, snap a few pictures with the waves coming in. If your family feels up to it, we can get some photos of you all running along the water, jumping in if you want, it’s towards the end of the shoot, you can get wet if you want to, or crazy if you’d like.

The Beach portrait is done, Dude – now what?
As we finish up some last shots of the portrait session, we are walking back to our cars, and hopefully no one left anything on the beach. Try and keep all items close together so it’s easy to collect at the end. We’ll chat back to the cars I’m sure, but your images can take up to about 7 or so days to process. If we are doing beach portraits then it must be summer, and if it’s summer that means it is also wedding season, so processing of the images takes a little while. Once the images are online, you should get an email from me letting you know where to find them, and if you are on facebook, I like to add a link to your profile that will easily take you to your gallery. Your package would include various prints, as you go through your images keep track of the numbers below the photos, and write down the pictures that you love. This way, when it comes time to let me know which images, you want as per your package you can just email them to me. For those other family members that were part of the group they can order directly from the gallery, or if they have any special requests, you can email me or call. Your gallery should remain online for the duration of the year, as you might not have had a chance to purchase extra prints, because you might be paying off the vacation itself. You can also look at your gallery close to Christmas time and order some Christmas cards to send out to family.

Tip – Just give us a call early before the mad Holiday card rush starts happening. You can order more than just prints from your gallery too, from playing cards, to T – shirts, to coffee mugs, and even bags, all from the gallery and shipped directly to your home. If you ever have a problem with your order, if the prints turn out bad or something, ship them to me, and I will re order you new ones. As an artist and a business owner, I take great pride in my work, and it’s just good business practice to treat people right.

Justin and Dody – at one point in time before I was photographing full time, I was doing computer repair and I had met Justin and fixed his laptop. At that time he was single, and it was a year or so later that I got booked to photograph a wedding and I knew the bride’s name was Dody and the Groom’s name was Justin but I would never have guessed that it was the Justin I knew from fixing his laptop and who owned Dewey Parasail. So to my surprise when I arrived on location on their wedding day, it was a super cool time being able to photograph their wedding. Justin did not know I was into photographing these days and just thought I fixed computers still. Now a year and a half later, he calls me up to take professional photos of his business and boats, he takes my wife and I out for some parasailing whenever we want, and we have a good time. We both have each other on speed dial and I’m looking forward to taking their family beach portrait when their new baby is born. Shelly and Dan – I got a call about a wedding and when I went to the client’s house we got to talking and I found out that Dan’s sister runs / owns Pohanka of Salisbury. And so after some fun conversation, I offered the suggestion if he could hook us up with a good price on a car, I’d hook him up on the photography. At that time we only had one car between the wife and I, and we were in the market for a new one for Olga. A couple of days later, he suggested we come in and he’d take care of us, and sure enough my wife found a car she really liked and without hesitation he gave us a pretty sweet deal. They got married and at their wedding we have a couple of photographers out there, got some amazing shots and he got the hook up as well. Now a day’s Dan and I are still friends, we both have each other in our phones and we keep in contact on facebook.

In other cases, I’ve met people in this industry like ministers, wedding planners, disc jockeys, and many others, through our constant running into with each other we often become friends. That is really the case in this next story.

Jason and Stacy – I meet Jason through a mutual friend and he was DJing at weddings. It wasn’t long before just about every wedding I was going to he was DJing and rocking the house every time. I found myself hanging out at these receptions longer then I was paid to be out there for and still taking photos and having a good time with Jason. It might have been a year later that he asked me to photograph his wedding to Stacy and without a doubt I was really honored. I met up with them to discuss their wedding day and their photography needs and we often had dinner chatting about it all. On the day of their wedding I had myself, my wife, Olga as second shooter, and my father to capture some video, and we had a great time partying. Stacy and Jason insisted we put down our cameras and have a drink and have some fun, and we did. They fed us good and by the end of the night it was not a job but a good time. And to this day, Jason is one of my closest friends and Stacy is really dear to me. They are both great people.
There are many more to mention but that might just turn into a book and not an article.
So if you are ever thinking of hiring a photographer, watch out because you might be making a new friend.

Anyway, his camera was found by a guy and his son at a skate park not to far away, and because my camera cards are all labeled with my name and number they were able to contact me and let me know they had found it.

What is rare about this is that most people would have kept a $700 camera and not thought twice, but this gentleman was super cool and called wanting to return it. He mentioned that he would not have been able to do so if my camera card wasn’t labeled with my name and number. I had picked up that little tip from the Digital Story Show, and with his podcast “Inside Pro Tips”

Thank you “good Samaritan”
And thank you Derrick Story!

Some of the more memorable shoots I had were Kate and Neil over at Seacrets in Ocean City. They had DJ Rupe in the house playing it up and it made for a good time. The bride and bridesmaids rode on in on the taxi boat which was kinda cool, and we even had a guest appearance by a Paris Hilton (look a like?).

One of my favorite weddings so far this summer was Holly and Mark at Fager’s Island in Ocean City. What made this one so meaningful to me was how the bride and groom invited me in and embraced me like family. Checking to see if I’m eating and having a good time, they had a section of the beach all to themselves and it felt like we were in some tropical paradise.

About one of the worst weddings I had was at the Fountainhead in Ocean City, there was nothing wrong with the bride, groom or Ceremony but with the staff at the Fountainhead. We chatted with the manager and the security informing them we were there to photograph a wedding and they threaten to call the cops on us, as well as have our vehicles towed. It wasn’t until the couple talked with the manager and security that we allowed to park or get near around the building but by then we were parked a crossed coastal highway which made it difficult to carry our equipment from our cars to the wedding location on the beach.
A little tip for you brides out there, make sure you let your wedding venue, managers, security people know you are getting married there, or they might cause you unforeseen difficulties and avoid the Fountainhead at all costs. They are super unpleasant.