Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

It is almost Valentine’s Day and I am just now updating the blog. Fortunately, I have been busy to start the year.

Let’s get caught up!






Kona, Hawaii
For the last three years, my wife, Karen, and I have been asked to join our friends in their condo on the beach in Kona, Hawaii to start the year. Watching the turtles surf in the waves and the whales cruise by with their babies is inspiring. Okay, it’s tough, but someone has to!

This year, it was Kenny’s 70th birthday. We celebrated it by taking a tour that went to the snowy top of Mauna Kea at 13,796 feet above sea level. This is where the world’s largest telescopes are located and it feels like you can see every star without them. It is simply amazing to go from the beach to a snow- covered mountain in “Hawaii.” Fortunately, you don’t have to remember to bring warm clothes with you from the mainland so you don’t freeze to death on top of the mountain. The tour operator we selected was Mauna Kea Summit Tours (www.maunakea.com). They supply you with a parka and gloves plus a great box dinner provided by one of our favorite restaurants, Jackie Ray’s. The other odd thing is that it is hard to walk around in the thin air at almost 14,000 ft, so you have to stop at the visitor center at 9,500 ft for an hour just to get your body ready to go higher. I highly recommend your taking this tour the next time you are on the Big Island.



Also, if you need a place to stay the next time you go to the Big Island, let me know. I would be delighted to introduce you to our friends that own the condo. It is a beautiful place to stay, right on the beach, just 2 miles south of downtown Kailua-Kona. If the melody of crashing waves is not up your alley, then save yourself a call!






Weddings and Our New Team Member

After spending a lot of time last year focused on editorial work (and by popular request), I am returning to photographing more weddings this year. I missed all my brides and grooms and am happy to be doing this work in a bigger way again! So, we are reconnecting with all of the professional service providers in the wedding business with whom we previously worked as well as connecting with new ones so they know about our services.

To help me with this task and others, I am really delighted to let you know about a new addition to the team. Her name is Marie Nelson. She lives across the street. When we moved to our new location a couple of years ago, she heard that I was a photographer and asked if I might help judge the art competition for the Marian Bergeson Elementary School. This year was my third year and these young artists constantly amaze me with their talent. I really enjoy giving back to my community this way and appreciate Marie for asking me to lend a hand – especially with all the changes in education these days!

A bit about Marie…After years in corporate America, Marie became a stay-at- home mom. This year, she wanted to find some part-time work. Our experience working together on the art competition made it easy for me to ask if she might want to become part of my team. She can walk to work and I have a great person who cares about preserving family histories and important events as much as I do. So, the next time Marie calls, please extend her a warm welcome. She is looking forward to meeting you all!


Negatives for Sale!

One of the first projects Marie is working on is to contact all of our past clients and offer the negatives for sale that we have been storing since we opened our doors 27 years ago. While we have some contact information, many of our more than 1250 wedding couples and over 2000 portrait clients have moved. So, if you are a client or were part of a wedding or event, please be sure and keep us up to date on your whereabouts. The prices for the negatives vary based on several factors. We will make a concerted effort to find clients over the next several months or so. After that time, we will decide if we want to offer to continue to store them for a fee or recycle them. By the way, if you have negatives or images of your family histories or events on CD that you want to store, please let us know as we are evaluating technology to offer that as part of our new suite of services.

Something to know about storage technology: Unlike DVDs, CDs, and hard drives that are only made to store digital information for a short time, we know from a 100 years of film history that negatives are made to last for many decades – depending, of course, on how you store them. This makes the negative files I have even more valuable. Who is the keeper of your family history?

Another tip: The best way to keep your favorite images is really to make prints on good quality photographic paper. And, remember, ink jet printing for archival purposes is not as stable as other types of paper and inks, or dyes. If you decide keeping them on media, like DVDs, CDs, flash drives, etc is really for you, you must keep updating to the new media and hardware to read it or you will lose it.

Judging - Western States Print Competition

Wow!
I was so proud to represent California and the Western Region as a judge last week for the Western Region Print Competition held in San Diego, California. We had two (2) prints that score a perfect 100 and many albums that scored 85 and higher. The very first set of images to be judged was albums. And, the first album scored a 93! What a start, and it just keep going over the next two days.
See for yourself on the PPC website:
www.prophotoca.com

For those of you that don't know, I have had the honor of being an affiliate juror for the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) the last 8 years. It is a long hard road to become a juror for PPA, and there are only a 100 jurors on the "list" at a time. Moreover, not every one that wants to be there will make it. You start out working in the minor leagues, judging as many of the local and state competitions as you can, trying to learn from, and catch the eye of affiliate jurors that are judging beside you. About this time in the process, you have to take a week long course on how to be a PPA judge. Once you have your Master of Photography degree from PPA, you have passed the course, and you have great reviews from the other judges, you can then be invited to become an affiliate juror by the head of the Print Competition Committee (PPC) for the PPA. Once you are an affiliate juror, every time you judge you are reviewed by your jury chairman and the other judges. If you don't do a good job, you’re out! You must also continue to submit images for print competition and they must score well or you can be taken of the list. Every year, the judges meet and are trained on the latest techniques so they can spot good and bad use of that technique in the competitions. Each competition is run the same way, with a well-trained chairman and jurors so that there is a great deal of integrity and consistency in every competition. If your image is judged by a PPA panel of judges to be an excellent print, you know it is! www.ppa.com

Having the honor to be able to judge the International, regional, and state competitions for my professional colleagues gives me a front row seat to see the newest ideas from photographers from around the world each year. I have been able to stay in tune with what the latest trends and techniques are by sitting in judgment of these images under the lights of competition. I see what works and what doesn’t, and I am inspired to go out and keep my own work fresh and up to date.

My next judging assignments are for the Orange County (PPOC) and San Diego (PPSD) local photography groups and then the Heart of America regional competition in Omaha, Nebraska in March, and PPA Nationals in July.


Professional Photographers of Orange County (PPOC)

Speaking of PPOC! A group of past presidents, of which I am one, joined together with the current board of directors to help to make the group stronger. New mentoring and other programs are being put into place to give the members more value in their membership, and to give the long time members a chance to help the “new” colleague be the-best-they-can-be.

If you are photographer in Orange County, please consider PPOC and attending our meetings to see what is new. Please go to the website for more information. www.ppoc.org


Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI)

I will again be speaking at this year WPPI convention in Las Vegas, NV March 16 – 19th. This year I will be talking about the secrets of getting great results in taking low light photographs for editorial, wedding and portrait photography.
The talk will take place at the Fuji Film trade show booth on Tuesday and Wednesday. Stop by the Fuji booth to get the schedule and to check out how they can help you with your photographic capture and printing needs.
www.wppionline.com



UCI Extension Class – “Keeping it Simple: Photographing People

For the 7th year, I will be teaching my basic portrait photography class for the UCI Extension program in the spring quarter, April1st to May 5th. The classes are held from 7pm to 9:30pm on the UCI campus in Irvine.

If you would like to sign up or need more information please call 949.824.5414 or go online at www.extension.uci.edu.

That’s all for now!

Cheers!