I thought I’d start off the new year with a newborn. If you keep up with our Facebook Page, you may have seen some of the previews we posted from this session. While we still focus on weddings, we have started doing more and more kids sessions, and we are really enjoying them. It’s especially meaningful for us when we are photographing the children of past clients. For the past few months, I’ve been putting together backdrops, set pieces, and all kinds of goodies for newborn and baby sessions. This particular little guy is the son of one of our couples that was married in 2010. We were thrilled when they got in touch with us and told us they were expecting. Say hello to Baby Griffin.

So you know how I said I have been putting together sets and backdrops? Well the funniest part of this session was that Griffin wanted nothing to do with all that. So we ended up keeping things simple. He seemed happiest laying on his momma’s lap. When you are photographing newborns there are some tricks to the trade – such as feeding the baby right before so he’s nice and sleepy, keeping the room warm (we even pre-warm blankets), and having lots of soft towels and blankets nearby to gently position the baby. Griffin had no interest in all our little tricks. Maybe he was just really excited to get his picture taken- he was super alert for a newborn. He was awake for most of the session, so we were able to get great shots of those beautiful eyes of his.

These adorable hats were all purchased by Griffin’s mom on etsy. (Everyone who sees these photos wants to know about the hats!) We will definitely be getting some to keep at the studio.

Hope everyone had a good New Year, and thanks for stopping by our blog!

Want to be a winner yourself? All you have to do is enter by commenting on the blog post for any of our weddings between now and October 31st, 2009. If the wedding reaches at least 30 commments, A drawing will be held 30 days after each wedding is posted. ON TOP OF ALL THAT: you will help the happily married couple win free prints. Full details and rules can be found HERE.

Paul and Nikole reached a record of 55 Comments!! winning them an 11 x 14 print of their choice. Nikole chose the sepia print on the right:

Thanks so much for playing!! And don’t forget to check out Zak’s work as well.

Lynn and I were tagged for a wonderful little meme by Brandi Thompson (Thanks Brandi!    ). It goes a little like this:

1. Sit down.
2. Take a picture of yourself right now. don’t primp, just snap one!
3. Upload it.
4. Tag 3 people to do the same.
That’s all!

In an effort to play along ( I hate pics of myself, mind you), we post these fine gems taken with the only camera we didn’t have to go digging for, My Macbook webcam. (OK we cheated, took 4, but it was all in a row with no primping).

So, We hereby Tag the following: Sarah Brown Downtown at Sarah Brown Photography. Gail Werner of, well…Gail Werner Photography, and Kelly LaBruyere of True Expressions Photography.

Email was down for almost 16 hours today (Feb 10th, 2009) due to a GMail hiccup. After many Support requests, emails are just now slowly trickling in. (11:58 PM).

If you did not hear from us, you can call us at the studio line at: 313.915.2302 or wait, and we will get to you, we promise.

In the mean time, we had a great weekend off to do some photography for ourselves and for fun. Here’s one from Belle Isle in Detroit of the crazy 2 story Ice Sculpture. See more at our Flickr pages here:

Andy’s Flickr and Lynn’s Flickr

In other news, we still have some prime spring dates available. Contact us for details.

Once all that really sunk in, it hit me how absolutely awesome this ride has been so far.   I am so grateful and excited about our prospects for this coming year, and if things continue to grow at this pace, look out 2010!

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of client meetings, bookings, and brainstorming for this coming year.   We’ve met some great, interesting, and down-to-earth couples and are honored to have been selected as their wedding photographers – and not just because all the brides we’ve met with are smokin’.  None of this would have been possible without the trust our earliest clients put in us, and for that I am very thankful.  Seriously, you have all been AMAZING and it’s been a privilege to work with you.

We got the chance to learn about some great venues this year, and met some wonderful people.  We are looking forward to making friends with a LOT more people this year, including, but not limited to, some of these awesome Michigan wedding coordinators we’ve been networking with online:

• Ana at Two Foot Creative
• Amanda at Bliss Weddings
• Lindsey at Emma Lynn Designs
• Christie at Outstanding Weddings & Events

Yeah, that’s right ladies, I’m calling you out!  And my goal is to work with you on at least one event this coming year.     Also, while I’m giving shoutouts, I’d also like to recommend the Wed Michigan Blog.  Lindsey, the creator of the blog, is a Michigan-native temporarily living in Boston.  She posts about creative wedding ideas, local vendors, and practical advice on budgeting and enjoying your wedding day.  If you’re a Michigan bride, you should be following this blog!

Before I wrap up, here’s a couple things currently going on with West Park Photography that I wanted to share:

• We are working on our new childrens & lifestyle photography site.  We’d love to add some more childrens work to our portfolio.  If you are in the Metro-Detroit area and are interested in having unique, unscripted portraiture of your family done, shoot us an email.  We will be giving away a FREE 1-hour session to the first three people in Grosse Pointe that make an appointment.  We figure this is a good way to help us make some local contacts.
• In the next couple weeks, I will be designing and ordering our new sample albums and guestbooks for 2009.  If you have already booked with us and want us to contact you when the new samples are available, let us know.  We’d love to show them to you.
• Also, I just want to put the word out that we have started getting some inquiries about offering Boudoir Sessions.  This is something we’ve been interested in offering, but not something we’ve really advertised, so we were plesantly surprised when people started asking about them.  If you have any interest in setting something up, send us an email and let us know.  If we have enough inquiries, we may set aside a day to rent a beautiful location and offer a series of private mini-sessions.
• While our June calendar is starting to fill up, we still have some great dates available for this spring and July.  If you’ve been procrastinating on booking a photographer, we might be able to help you!
• We get a lot of questions about how far we will travel.  Generally speaking, everything is negotiable.  We have a wedding booked in St. Joseph on the west side of the state this year, and others  up north.  We are also willing to travel to surrounding states and SW Ontario.  And while we aren’t actively seeking destination events right now, we definitely would consider them.  I am familiar with the SW Florida Gulf Coast area after living there for almost 2 years.  Any event taking place on the gulf coast between Sarasota  and Naples would be very do-able for us.  It’s 19 degrees here.  It will not take much prompting to get us on a plane!     I realize the chances of us getting a Florida wedding from this blog post is slim, but hey, I’m throwing it out there!

Okay, that’s it for now.  Coming up next will be Erin & Ian’s beautiful wedding at River Birch Lodge in Hartland, MI. I’ll leave you with this photo I took a couple weeks ago.  Why are the best sunsets on days it’s FREEZING?

]]> http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2009/01/21/excited-for-2009/feed/ 4 http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2009/01/19/foundation-for-exceptional-children-ii/ http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2009/01/19/foundation-for-exceptional-children-ii/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:41:24 +0000 Lynn http://www.blog.westparkphoto.com/?p=48 Last month I mentioned that I once again had the opportunity to photograph the annual Christmas Party for the Foundation of Exceptional Children, which is a local school for children with developmental disabilities.  Once again I was humbled and amazed to meet these amazing children, as well as the staff, which takes such excellent care of them.  It must be such a comfort to the the families of these kids to know that there is a  program like this available to them locally.  You can tell that every person working there loves what they do and it is plain to see how much the kids love and rely on the staff.  Here are some of my favorites from the day!

Yes, it’s his second appearance on the blog, but with a face like that, how can I resist?