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We are so excited to have a booth in the Perfect Wedding Guide’s bridal show next Sunday – at Petruzzellos in Troy – (OMG – that’s in 1 week!). We haven’t done a bridal show in over 10 years… Working hard on marketing and promotional pieces – I like to design these myself, love it, but tend to take forever on every little thing….Come say HI! Tickets are free if you sign up online.

Happy St Patrick’s day everyone – ENJOY! I just got back from the Detroit Zoo and it was packed already – great day. I brought them more promotional fliers that I make to help them with their marketing – I l love supporting them – it’s a great place for a wedding and lots of other programs they do – “Say I do at the Zoo!”

My daughter Julie Proudfoot and our friend Dawn Havrelock  attended the SYNC convention for Senior Photography in Florida.
Afterwards they were fortunate enough to  photograph Sarah and Chris in Ybor City for some romantic fun engagement images – in and around the city of Ybor.

What an opportunity – they did a great job and had a lot of fun.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/9893414 w=500&h=400]

I just got back from PPA – Professional Photographers of America convention in Nashville and really enjoyed it, Julie is excited to go to SYNC – for high school senior photography in Florida real soon and will also be at WPPI – (Wedding Portrait Photographers International) in Vegas in March. We are both active in DPPA (Detroit) – I’m a Past President and Julie is in line to be. We’ll be at PPM (Michigan) in Troy in Feb ….

It is so important to stay current & keep up with all the latest cutting edge changes in our industry – It does make a difference and sets us apart. In this day, experience and willingness to push ourselves to be current should count more. This is all we do for a living. It is a labor of passion and we love it!

This is a time for looking ahead to what this new year can have in store for us. We are looking forward to continuing our contemporary weddings – this has always been our main passion and nitche for almost 20 years. We would also love to venture more actively into the contemporary high school senior portrait market -… if you know of any juniors or seniors who would love to be among our “Models” – give us a call.

Be sure to keep up with us on our Facebook Fan Page

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=lf#/album.php?profile=1&id=109141840457
or just search for Wally Spice Photography

We just got back from PPM – Professional Photographers of Michigan Fall Training Camp at Chrystal Mountain resort in Northern Michigan. Had a great time and learned so much. We had 5 girls sharing a great house on the grounds.
LOVED Scott and Adina and all the speakers and vendors who made it so
special. Wally won the folio competition in the open category for the Glacier photo and Julie won in the wedding and Children’s. We received beautiful plaques in the shape of the state of Michigan.
You should have seen Julie in the TOGA we made out of a sheet
from our bed! Priceless! More Pics to come!
This is the group shot of all of us. I’m going to try to get a larger version of this and also add some of our photos taken.

We enjoyed a great wedding weekend in Louisville Kentucky for our friends Chris and Selam. The rehearsal dinner was at Churchill Downs, with a tour and the wedding and fun reception at their local Orthodox Church.
It was also great to see Kelly and… Mike, we photographed their wedding last month.
I worked with Jim VL and his daughter Taylor and we had a lot of fun also. Taylor loves horses and follows the Kentucky Derby every year – she really loved to tour of Churchill Dpwns. It really was interesting. The images in this album were only taken by Wally Spice.
Jim took a lot also, setting up his studio lights for the formal alter returns and his Photo booth that Taylor ran all evening, etc.

The album on my facebook profile, that anyone can see is at:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=630682&l=06b1778a75&id=1417072807

This is the video from some of my favorite images.

Julie is so is excited and proud to have been slotted to be Vice President next year to the Detroit Professional Photographers Association!! That means she will be President in 2012-2013. “I look forward to helping DPPA grow! It is such a great association to be a part of!! ”

This is already her 3rd year on the board of directors. Her term as vice president officially starts in June of 2010, but this gives her the opportunity to start lining up some great speakers now, since that will be her main duty. She already has some great ideas. Then she will be President elect to work with the speakers she brought in the following year, and then she will be our president in June 2012 – June 2013.

She will do a fantastic job and I am so proud of her. She was such a great support to me when I was the president 2007-2008 and I will be so proud to support her through this amazing journey. 2 generations of DPPA presidents! What an honor!!
I am SO proud of her!!!

Along with her official duties as a board member every year, Julie has been our smiling friendly “raffle Girl” at DPPA for many years, she has perfected this position – this is her in charge of choosing the winners for the 50-50 and winners of the many donations we received from our vendors at the last meeting in August with David Humphry on senior high school photography.
It is going to be a fun adventure that she and all the members of the DPPA will enjoy.

Our kick off meeting for the Detroit Professional Photographers meeting Tuesday evening was fantastic. David Humphrey did such a great job presenting his style of fabulous seniors and had us all inspired. The room was packed – we had over 100 in att…endance. A great way to start out the season! David is a renowned master & expert on cutting edge senior photography – speaking all over the country. He is one of our own from right here in the Flint area, he is also a friend. THANK YOU for sharing your talent!

This is a link to the album of photos I have on my Facebook page that anyone can see, even if you are not on Facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32373&id=1417072807&l=0ce96fbcd9

As of Aug 4th – I’m happy to announce that we figured out what the problem was, and the Animoto slideshows are now showing up for all of us – even if you use Internet Explorer. I still prefer Firefox, but I do realize a lot of internet users are still using Internet Explorer.
THANK YOU to to Brian, for figuring this out.
It needed a little extra code, and once it was explained to me – I can even add it! Can’t believe how techie we’ve all become!

I may even let Animoto know – they never got back with me on the solution!

I apologize for not keeping this up to date during this time – I didn’t want to add videos that a lot of people couldn’t even see!

July was a great and busy month for us this year with 5 weddings: I just updated the blog with the great slideshows we love so much on all of these, as well as links to the Facebook “Albums” of images that anyone can see.

If you are a FB user – take a look at our Fan Page:
www.facebook.com/pages/Wally-Spice-Photography/109141840457
Take a look – become a FAN!

Follow us on Facebook – we have a new Wally Spice Photography Fan page

Become our Fan!

If you are a FB user – take a look at our Fan Page:
www.facebook.com/pages/Wally-Spice-Photography/109141840457

I also have a personal page under Wally Spice, feel free to look me up and ask to be a friend.

We have been adding the Animoto videos and albums from the recent weddings here – all the July weddings are there.  Take a look!

We are still trying to solve the problems we have had with the blog not showing the Animoto slideshows when viewing in Internet Explorer.  Firefox is always much better, but I realize that many users  are still using Explorer.  We are working hard to try to figure this out.

PS as of Aug 4th – I’m happy to announce that we figured out what the problem was and the Animoto slideshows are now showing up for all of us – even if you use Internet Explorer.
Thank to to Brian, for figuring this out.

Julie and I came home from Florida just in time to photograph for the Sunset at the Zoo Charity Event – as we did last year. Our friend and awesome Senior photographer David Humphrey  Joined us this year.   We all offered our photographic services and enjoyed the evening. This year they were very organized and had us at specific areas with a suggested shot list. We even had our own “volunteer’ working with us that got photo releases signed anytime we had a group of people smiling for the cameras.

We also donated a session and some items for the blind auction on behalf of Wally Spice Photography and David also donated 2 session for his company “Masters Photography” in Flint.

The big main auction had to switched to the big tent with weather threatening and still did terrific. I believe they raised at least 100,000 just for that.

As the auction finished the rain really did start and we were all warned to leave because of a huge very severe  storm coming – and it did – rained so hard and so much lightning and thunder.  We were all very much the drowned rats when we finally got to the cars.

It was still a great evening, the rain held off until the end, lots of people still came, the Zoo still raised a lot of money and we had fun. It is great to help such a deserving charity as the Zoo. We love it!

Some photos soon to come!

I just got back from 2 weeks in Alaska visiting my daughter Tracy, her husband Rick and my grandson Gunther who is now 2years 4 months.

I had a great time – spending a lot of time watching Gunther while they spent some time out together.  Tracy still had to work some of the days (she works nights as a nurse in Anchorage) – and even then Rick got to spend some time on the snow machine.  It was so great to really got to know that darling little man.

There was quite a bit of extra excitement.  While I was there, Redoubt volcano, which is about 103 miles south west of Anchorage as the crow flies erupted – about 5 times the first day – March 23rd and a good 18 major times in total.  We are in the Mat Su Valley – in the Palmer area and were not really affected too much.  It was not a lava flow – but an ash and gas emission that sent plumes int o the air as high as 65,000 ft.  In most cases – the winds drifted them away for m us – but on the Sunday/Monday before I left the did hit Anchorage and our area nd we got a light dusting.  This caused havoc with the airport – causing it to shut down. Even when I left Thursday night, Alaska Air was canceling many in state flights – but my NWA flight did fly out on time.  Rick collected a little baggie of ash for me from our front porch and we saw a lot of ash  on the snow – especially in Palmer itself – which seemed to have gotten more that us.

These collages are made with images form the Alaska Volcano Observatory which was monitoring the situation carefully and had updates every hour.  They have awesome images on the site of every stage of the eruptions, even live webcams that were sometimes clear enough to see.

Happy 2009!

We wish you all the best for the New Year.  I am optomistic that it will be a huge improvement over 2008 – how can it not be!  With a new popular president about to take office – with an optomistic energetic plan – maybe we can get back on track.

For us, we already have  many bookings for 2009 and are excited to work with all of them and look forward to even many more. We are embarking on some new oportunities that are also very exciting and promising.

Here’s to a great new year – PROST!

This is one of my favorite winter views of Tracy’s view of the mountains in Alaska.  That’s not too hard to take – even in the depth of winter – she is experiencing lows as low as -20 and more.

We have been working on moving my blog to our own site.  After a security scare basically shut us down for a while on the old one – that is resolved thankfully,  we are all set to go again.

I do intend on updating this blog with posts and collages on the many weddings we have done since the last post on the Tafoni blog (8-8-8) – we have photographed at least 10 since then – October has been a very busy month for us.

So this is a test to see if everything can be uploaded without a problem to my own server site.

I just uploaded a slideshow from the wedding we just photographed November 22nd for Kelly and Brad- we did an urban shoot that included not only our normal Comerica Park Tiger and The Fox – but also the Campus martius area – included being ON the ice rink, by the huge Christmas Tree and inside  the  Compuware building with the highest waterfall in our area.

Take a look at:  http://www.wallyspicephotography.com/KateBrad/Slideshow_HD.html

We apologize that the blog has been down for a few weeks while we investigated and worked on some potential security risks.  Everything seems to be back to normal- sorry for the inconvenience – I missed it also and will try to do some backtracking.

Thanks
Wally

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We just love the new Canvas wrap around frames we just ordered. The are huge – up to 24×30 and they can go even much larger. These are real art canvases, fully sprayed and protected and then wrapped around a wooden frame – there is no other frame needed – Take a look – everyone just loves them.

We have been very excited and proud to add the great FINAO albums to our line of digital coffee table albums. They are based locally out of Saline and the albums are made in the USA. We have known Christine Perry Burke, one of the owners, for many years as a trusted friend and mentor as she headed other similar companies and is now doing phenomenally following her own passion. She knows the market and has a great pulse on what is in demand and popular.  They pride themselves with being cutting edge – great leather cover combinations, lots of very contemporary cover options.  They are also so easy to work with. The pages themselves are a little thicker, coming in the regular thickness (very substantial) and the magazine style pages – even these are sturdier than what I have been used to.  They are also very proud of the fact that they are all “Green” They even come with a “Green Card”. Take a look at their site www.finaoonline.com.  We are using the “One’ series – as One can make a difference.  We have also used their “Elements”.

OK, it’s been a long time since I posted anything about what is going on with my youngest daughter Tracy, her husband Rick and baby Gunther in Alaska.  She has been posting such precious images that I just couldn’t resist any longer! Gunther is almost 20 months now and just as cute as ever – not that I’m prejudice – as his “Oma”  or Grandma.

This is cutest or strangest story – He is in a Junior bed now since they had to cut the spindles on his crib to get his little legs out from being stuck. So, now it is so hard to go to sleep when you have the whole room to play in at bedtime.  One night – after everything was quiet in his room, Rick went to check on him and couldn’t find him – then found him sound asleep in the upright hamper – How on earth did he get in here!
They also have many visits from “Bullwinkle” – the neighborhood moose that comes around a lot. They sure were close.  I think I might have met him when I was there this last April. There are a LOT of moose in the area – especially in the mountain area behind their property.
Tracy posts all her images on her Flickr account -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/spicegirl
I have images from my spring trip on my Flickr account also  http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyspice/ 
We like this site because we can download any size of any image any time – love it – for personal photos.I have more on the Tracy in Alaska category here in this blog also.

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