VLV Photography

Anyone with me when I say I was ready for school to start like yesterday?  I think it’s time for school to start when my kids go outside to play and they get bored!!  Seriously?  I would be outside all day long at their age and only come inside to eat, then I was gone again.  My brother and I would spend hours playing cars, trucks, and tractors and making play roads in the gravel alley by our house.  There wasn’t an ant hill that didn’t meet its demise either! lol!  Oh…the good ol’ days!  I still do play with ant hills when I’m out with the kids.  I find their teamwork just fascinating!  Really, I could just be easily amused! LOL!

So it’s been a while since I posted a “My Life Monday” because I’ve had sneak peeks to post instead.  Tomorrow I will have the sneak peek from my senior session with Emily from over the weekend though.  We had a great time but more on that tomorrow.  Today you get to read about my boring life!  BUT…I guess it’s better to have a boring day than a bad day!  Right?

For the past 20 minutes I’ve been sifting through my digital images looking for some lightning shots I had gotten from one of the recent storms but haven’t been able to find them. :/  So instead I’ll share some cute little hands & feet. We recently had some concrete work done and of course we had to put the kids’ hands & feet in it!  I had to literally wrestle with my youngest though.  She just wouldn’t have it but I wasn’t about to just have the two kids.  You can especially tell with her foot prints!  MOM=2/Jozlyn=0  Moms rule, end of story.

In other news, a while back I had shared a link to a blog post by a husband & wife photography team on my Facebook fan page.  It was all about “The Reveal Moment” or as I like to call it “The First Look.”  Anyway, I mentioned I would share my thoughts on it in a later blog post and this is that blog post.

In a nutshell, I really feel that if you want to really be able to share a moment, be able to soak it in, express your emotions to your loved one and be able to embrace about it, then having a “First Look” is the only way to do that.  When my husband and I got married we had a “First Look” and I was so glad we did.   I don’t think I would have been as relaxed otherwise.

For selfish reasons, as a photographer, I prefer when couples choose to have a “First Look” because it does allow me more time with the bride and groom.  Time aside though, I think it sets the tone for the rest of the day.  When you’ve had that alone time, you’re able to tell the one you love how beautiful or handsome they look the moment you see them, as if they just stepped out of a magazine.  You can shed a tear together, talk about what the day means, and possibly exchange gifts.  All those things you COULD do that you can’t do when you first see each other at the start of the ceremony, really add an element to your day, that I think, will mean so much later.  It’s really hard to remember the first moment you see each other as you come down the aile because you’re either too busy looking at the guests on either side of the aile or looking down because everyone looking at you makes you uncomfortable.  More often than not, those walking up or down the aile are usually looking down or to the side, rarely straight on.  This includes the bridal party!  Most people just aren’t comfortable being “the center of attention.”  If you’ve had the time to ease your nerves, talk to the one you love, it really will show in the images and you will also get images you never would have gotten by not doing a ”First Look.”  Plain and simply-the images I get when the bride & groom see each other for the first time at the start of the ceremony, are just not as storytelling as when they have a ”First Look.”  I’m a fan of the ”First Look.”  There, I said it.   Here’s an example I posted previously in a sneak peek from Sami & Dion’s wedding.

Alright, so in other business news….I’ve been mentioning to clients this welcome packet for portraits & weddings I’ve been working on.  So, just to prove I’m not making it up and there really are some good things in the works, here’s a little sampling of what will be included in my portrait welcome packet.  Wedding welcome packets will be a little different but ultimately I wanted a cohesive look for my brand.  When you see something across the room, I want you to know it’s in reference to VLV Photography.  I have been a “green” business, doing everything online for over the past year, but I have found that the information was getting lost among all the other emails my clients receive.  So, in order to have information to refer to at their fingertips, I decided to put some information together that I will mail out once someone books with me.  I’m really excited to get this all squared away and once I get everything designed, ordered, and photographed, I will surely share pictures here!  I’ll be too excited not to!  The image below is the backside of my welcome note.  I have to blur out the text because there are not-so-nice people out there that like to copy copyrighted text.  But you get the idea.

Alrighty, well I hope everyone has a great evening.  I have to say evening because this post would have been posted at 4:30 this afternoon but then ended up losing 1/2 my post and had to re-type it.  :/  The joy of computers.

Until tomorrow….Live, Laugh, and Love the one you’re with like every moment is your “First Look.”