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On the weekend of April 22nd Julie and I travelled to Kalamazoo for the PPM convension – Professional Photographers of Michigan.  Although we could not stay for all of it, we wanted to go to the tradeshow and help man the booth that was set up for DPPA – Detroit Professional Photographers Association.  Since I am a board member here it was important to help out.  John Glass came out alo so we took turns sitting at the desk answering questions about our great local affiliate, took in some some of the tradeshow and I even spent some time in the "digital Cafe workshops".  We also enjoyed a great dinner with the Art Leather gals before heading back home.

In mid April,  Julie and Brian attended WPPI – Wedding and Portrait Photographers International in Las Vegas. The convention had 4 days of studying with phenomenal speakers from Australia, California, New York, England – all over the country and all over the world! – So Inspirational – This is how we stay on the edge and up to date with all the latest photography trends and techniques.  The 3 day trade show was also overwhelming with every album company, camera company etc etc – anything you can think about for wedding  and portrait photography.

Some  free time was spent walking – taking lots of photos – Julie especially liked taking some infra red images of the palm trees on the strip.

One of our out of state couple, Patti and Bassam, were in town for the holidays and picked up a large framed portrait and some reprints.  Their album is still at Art leather being printed and bound into the Montage Art Book.

 

This is the slideshow to their entire album  – please use your browsers backbutton to return to this blog.

http://www.wallyspicephotography.com/bridalalbums/PattiBassam.htm/

This last week has also been a time of concentrating on album designs.
WE upload our album designs to a site that our couples can view and make comments on – this is especially helpful to the many couples we photograph who now  live out of state but had their wedding here back home by family and friends.

Go to:  www.wallyspicephotography.weddingherald.com

In the list of active albums you can see the couples first names and a description of the kind of album – some are traditional mounted albums like Zookbinders, and others are the coffee Table style.  Some may be password protected to respect their privacy while we are designing. 

If you are just browsing, please do not comment on the individual spreads – you are welcome to e-mail me instead – or comment here on the blog. 

We have been busy working on taxes and finally got them all done and to our accountant (Greg at Averill Accounting in Novi) He still had an old printout I had done of our favorite image of a breeching Humpback whale ( Aug of 03).  I’m making him a new larger framed version – It was fun to go over my favorite images from my 3 trips to Alsaka so far.
You can view slideshows from our trips on my older personal site – http://www.wallyspicephotography.com/personal/  These do need to be updated, and unfortuantely some of the images in the slideshows seem to distort a little now and then – but are still great to watch.  I’ll be working on a best of Alaska slideshow soon.

Welcome to "Wally's Blog". 

We have been working with this for awhile but just recently added the link to my main website.  It will eventually reside on my own server, – so the URL will be changing in about a month or so.  But I wanted to make it available to all who surf our main site even though it is still in a testing stage.

We really want your input on what you think of the idea of a blog in general – I am thinking of it as a sort of "Newsletter", constantly updated,  to keep you informed on what is going on in our wedding photography business as well as in some of our more personal news so you can get to know us and get a feel of who we really are.  We love photography – it is what  we are – not just what we do!

We would also appreciate what you think of some of the technical aspects.  My neice Dawn has been helping me set this up – from the San Francisco Bay area in California – she has worked in design with Mozilla – so she is a very avid supporter of the Mozilla Firefox browser.  I have always been a Windows gal – I started this blog in Windows Explorer and always had problems with the images distorting – no matter what I did.  Dawn seemed to think it was something inherent in Explorer.  So I just installed Firefox – (It was free, easy to install and works on both the windows and mac systems)- Well – I'm impressed – I have not had a single image distort since  (http://www.downloadfirefox.net/ )  It is being advertised as faster and safer – I'm giving it a test!  

How about you – are the images being distorted to you (elongated unnaturally) ??? Any other problems viewing it? 
Any suggestions on what you'd like to see here?

I was thrilled to notice that one of my orchid plants, bought a few years ago,  acually bloomed again with  striking yellow flowers.  Then outside in my yard – Some yellow daffodils were poking through the leaves aginst the fence – to cheer me up and remind mw that spring is really coming (and that I needed to clean up the rest of the leaves in my yard.) I brought down the  orchid  and cut some daffoldils to brighten up my display area.  The yellow colors just melted together and I had to bring out my camera – creative  images  were waiting…  I took a bunch and then played with them in various filters to experiment with all that could be done.  These are my favorites – I will add a slideshow of all of them soon.

 Be sure to look at the comments on Michele and Dale’s collage – I was so excited to see her and his mom post such great heart felt testimonials – you can see for youself – but I really wanted to make sure everyone saw this.  We put our heart and soul into every wedding – it’s a passion not just a job – this makes it all worthwhile….

Wally, Julie & Brian~
WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!! What eles can we say? We absolutly LOVE the pictures and we love working with you guys. We all has so much fun going around and taking picture for the wedding.(even thought it was a bit cold and rainny) We can’t wait to see what the rest of the pictures look like. We know that whatever you do is going to look amazing!!! Thanks again for everything. You guys are the BEST!!!
All our Love~
Michele and Dale

Hi Wally, Julie and Brian -
Michele just sent us the pictures and they look GREAT! We can’t wait to see them all. I know Dale and Michele have really enjoyed working with you and can’t say enough positive things about your work. From this preview and what we saw in your slide show at the reception, we know the pictures will be amazing!
Bob and Sue (Dale’s Mom and Dad)

Wally, Julie and Brian
You are all so exceptionally talented! The collage is just beautiful. I absolutely can’t wait for the entire package to be displayed on the website. My husband and I are exceedingly grateful for the “family feel” that the team brought to Michele and Dale’s wedding. Thank you so much!
Cindy (Michele’s mom)

 Be sure to look at the comments on Michele and Dale’s collage – I was so excited to see her and his mom post such great heart felt testimonials – you can see for youself – but I really wanted to make sure everyone saw this.  We put our heart and soul into every wedding – it’s a passion not just a job – this makes it all worthwhile….

Wally, Julie & Brian~
WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!! What eles can we say? We absolutly LOVE the pictures and we love working with you guys. We all has so much fun going around and taking picture for the wedding.(even thought it was a bit cold and rainny) We can’t wait to see what the rest of the pictures look like. We know that whatever you do is going to look amazing!!! Thanks again for everything. You guys are the BEST!!!
All our Love~
Michele and Dale

Hi Wally, Julie and Brian -
Michele just sent us the pictures and they look GREAT! We can’t wait to see them all. I know Dale and Michele have really enjoyed working with you and can’t say enough positive things about your work. From this preview and what we saw in your slide show at the reception, we know the pictures will be amazing!
Bob and Sue (Dale’s Mom and Dad)

Wally, Julie and Brian
You are all so exceptionally talented! The collage is just beautiful. I absolutely can’t wait for the entire package to be displayed on the website. My husband and I are exceedingly grateful for the “family feel” that the team brought to Michele and Dale’s wedding. Thank you so much!
Cindy (Michele’s mom)

We just photographed the wedding of Michelle and Dale on March 25th and are now in the process of editing the gazillions (by actual count) of images. They should be on line in about a month after the wedding date.

The couple met at their Hotel and headed for romantics at the Kurk of the Hills Church in W. Bloomfield.  It was cold, and even sprinking on and off but they were all troopers and we got some gorgeous images on the grounds – everone had so much fun.  We even go the more formal alter returns with the families done beforehand.  The beautiful ceremony was in the chapel of the Kurk.  Then on to more fun on the grounds of Glen Oaks with the party and a great, fun reception there.

This wedding was extra special because we had just photographed her best friend and maid of honor last Dec 30, – Kelly and Adam; and the July before that we photographed Adam’s sisters wedding – Kathleen and Matt. It was so great to know everyone and feel like part of family and friends!

This is a collage of their wedding – taken from images from the slideshow shown at their reception.

We have always been fortunate enough to be published in the  local and national bridal magazines.
This favorite image of Wendy and Ed at the bridge at Elizabeth Park will be published in the upcoming issue of Modern Bride Michigan.  The editors asked us for an image we took that would specifically bring back memories for a couple and asked us why we took it – we knew Elizabeth Park was a special place for them in their dating and family history; he looked like he was whispering something private to her.  She will also be quoted as to why this image was special to them – it brought back the emotion of that day and all the fond memories of the location.

The proofing images for Wendy and Ed are now uploaded to the event proofing section of our main site.  If you know them the password is his last name. They really turned out great.  We especially loved the images taken at Elizabeth Park where they had spent a lot of their dating time,  His grandparents even met here so there are a lot of memories. We played  with some special effects – and this is a collage of some of our favorites.
Wendy and Ed also have a post and images earlier on this blog when the black swans graced us with their company at the romantics at The Lakes of Taylor, their reception site.