First family portrait in over 18 years! and it's up to me to capture it!

Yesterday I was hired to take a family portrait, nothing new or was it? This was the first family get together in over 18 years. Pressure is right. If this was the first time in 18 years then the chances are my portrait is going to be the last photo that they are going to have done in a very long time...well I hope not! This family was great. I can always tell when people love one another and let me tell you, this family has a lot of love.

BRIDE GUIDE OTTAWA

The other day I met with the owners of a new company called Bride Guide Ottawa. These guys have got it going on! They are producing a new bridal guide handbook for everyone who is thinking of or is getting married. This book is great it has everything that you need to know and how to go about getting it. The meeting didn't start off like most business meetings that I attend..."why I should pay them...bla bla bla" these guys started off with "how can we work together to provide the best for our clients? I think that is such a great approach! Over breakfast we were able to agree that working together was something that non of us could afford not to do. They had this great Idea to have a great give a way, a whole wedding, using nothing but the best in the business. How huge is that? Like I said before, these guys have got it going on! The launch of there handbook is going to be this September at the Ottawa Bridal Show. I'm going to be the photographer they use for the give a way, for me that means giving a way a free wedding but in return I get to be a part of all the advertising that they do for this big event...sounds good to me! On top of that It's the start of a partnership I'm sure will last a long time. I like working with professionals like these three. There website will be up and running soon so check it out www.brideguideottawa.com or if your in the business give them a call to inquire about this great book. Scott Endicott - 613-291-8003.

Learning From The Best - vol.1

One thing that I'm learning in the photography world is that things change quickly and in order to keep up you must do some very simple let time consuming things:
1)networking
2)study others and learn from them
3)pass on what you have learn t from #2 (above)
4)no matter how successful you become, always stay grounded
5)always put family and friends first - they were their before your camera was!
6)enjoy every minute of it because you never know when it may get taken away from you.

With all this being said over the next few weeks I want to share with you some of the people in the industry that I have much respect for. My respect is not just due to the face that each of these people have great talent and skills when they have a camera in hand but they are also very kind people. Each one of them shares there knowledge and encourages people like myself to always better myself.

The first person I'd like to share with you is Becker or better known in the industry as [b]. Tonight I was reading his blog (which I'm sharing with you on the right of the page). I was amazed at some of the simple yet effective "trade secrets" that he shared. Now I wasn't amazed that he was sharing them but that they were so simple yet something not many of of do in our everyday working life. They are listed below. I encourage each of you to check out his website and blog they are both great sites and full of information. Enjoy!

START of Becker:

10 Things to do in '07 to help your business

These aren't "resolutions" but merely suggestions to help you grow your business in 2007:

10. Blog more often. Include links to all of the other vendors you work with and also try to add a few personal entries in there. In this business, being personable is more important than being professional.

9. Check this blog every Tuesday for fresh nuggests of info.

8. Return calls and emails to your clients within 24 hours (if not faster).

7. Be your own biggest fan and take pride in what you do. [ b ] passionate!

6. Quit wasting money on advertising in magazines and instead invest it in education and personal promotions. Go to at least 1 workshop or seminar per quarter (pixelicious is a growing list of workshops and events for photographers). Invest those ad dollars into better branding, a better website and/or new sample albums.

5. Pay yourself first (Read the Richest Man in Babylon). Also remember it's not how much you make, but how much you keep that counts.

4. Set aside one hour per week to just call a few of your future brides and check in with them. Ask them how the planning is coming along and see if there is anything you can do to help.

3. Get more involved in networking with other photographers. Places like OSP, SimplePhoto.tv and DWF are good places to start. Do you best to turn "the competition" into a referral source. Make sure to return the favor and hook a brutha up when your booked.

2. Tighten up your workflow. The more efficient you are, the more profitable you become.

1. Give back. Pay it forward. If someone has helped you along the way, do your best to try to help out someone else who is starting out.

I hope 2007 is the best year ever for you!

END of Becker

Thank you Becker for all the great information!

My Website Is Now Up!

About a year and a half ago I was asked by a friend if i wouldn't mind taking one of his friends on some ride-a-longs....I said "sure". Who would have thought that a year later when I was looking to get a new website up and running for my photography company that I'd be asking my new ride-a-long for help...well he actual offered his services. Over the course of many slow shifts and great talks I made a friend. As time went on I designed my site on photoshop cs2 and then asked about a million questions about what he thought of it. Fast forward to tonight and I had this funny feeling to check my domain, sure enough my site was live. It was only two nights ago that I'd given him the disk with all the information on it...man he works fast! Anyways I just wanted to us this space to say thank you to Simon for all his hard work on this very special project of mine. I truly can't thank him enough for all the time, ideas and now friendship he has given to me. Thanks again so much Simon for everything! Heather & I can't thank you enough.

I'd love for everyone to visit my new site and give me some feed back on what they think of it.

www.michaelandersonphotography.ca

Cheers;

Mike

What's going on in the world today?

Well like most North Americans yesterday, I watched in shock (well I don't know if it was shock or just frustration) as the events at Virgina Tech unfolded. End state...33 lives lost, thousands changed forever. It's sad to think that all those bright futures were taken, well now all the families have are memories. What a waste! I was reading the newspaper today and it was the same old thing...people blaming the police for not acting accordingly. If I'm not mistaken it was the police running the opposite direction from everyone else, towards the shooter. Do the people that write these stories really think for one second that the police wanted this to happen? I don't. The people that write these articles are some of the counties brightest writers, so why don't they write something intelligent? Write about how some mental health issues are the leading cause of violence in society today. Write about how our health system that is in place for dealing with persons with mental health issues is failing them and us. Maybe write about the person that was behind the gun(s) and caused this to take place. I remember a few years ago well working a zero tolerance initiative in the downtown core of the city my partner and I heard a distress call come over the air...officer has been shot at! Without even blinking every officer in the area raced towards that location....knowing the person they were after didn't care for anyones life. The scariest person you can deal with! No remorse for anything. Anyways one of the officers had a gun pulled on him and placed to his head...then the trigger was pulled. All because he was trying to escort this individual out of the establishment. Worth a life? I don't think so, but that's the kind of person he was dealing with. Long story short, the following day the local papers pointed some blame on the two officers that went inside the establishment to remove this individual. They stated they knew the kind of person they were dealing with so they should have been more prepared. Can you imagine what the papers would have said if he went in with his gun pulled and "ask the individual to leave". This blog is meant to shine light on the fact that a tragedy occurred yesterday that will forever change thousands of lives but let's not jump the gun (maybe a bad choose of words) and point blame on those individuals that were there to help. After everyones had time to digest this situation and only then if there is something that could have been done differently it should be addressed. I think it's important to remember that with a campus of that size even if a mass email was sent warning everyone this tragedy still would have occurred. Many students may not have read there email, many people on campus don't have email and lastly, when you have a person who is deranged you can have all the precautions you want in place to prevent this sort of situation but at the end of the day no precaution is perfect and for that very reason situations like this continue to occur. There are a lot of what ifs...what if this person was on their medications...what if his girlfriend didn't break up with him...what if our health system didn't fail him? My heart cries for those who were lost in this tragic event and those who are now left to suffer the rest of their lives. God bless each and everyone of them. I can only hope that the ones lost yesterday didn't suffer, and now the ones left to morn them can find strength from within to not suffer to much themselves.

Heros are human to...

Well like I said in my last blog, I'm going to talk about March 4th, 2007. The day that will ever change my life...the day my father stopped breathing! That evening I put the kids to bed and was laying down relaxing when the phone rang. I could hardly make out what the person was saying...but I did hear "your father stopped breathing and the ambulance just took him away!". Well let me tell you, that was the first time my hearts ever stop! It was like slow motion hit me and my mind was racing to get answers. I called Heather and told her to get home asap. I think by the time I got off the phone with her she was in the driveway. I raced out the door and drove 80 km to my parents hospital. I was told that my father was being taken to another hospital one and a half hours away. My mother and I drove together well my aunt and uncle drove my parents good friends. At the hospital we were told that they didn't expect my father to make it. All that night my father fought for this life! We all prayed. My father made it though the night but it wasn't over....so the prayers continued. Finally after two days on life support he was taken off it and able to talk. I was standing at this bed side holding his hand with my mother talking to the doctors when I watched his eyes roll back in his head and then I saw the monitor draw a flat line across it. Over two minutes passed and the ICU staff at the Kingston General Hospital were able to bring him back....thank you! As the days turned into weeks he got stronger and stronger. Then one night as we were staying in a room at the hospital we got a call asking for us to return to his room. Dad was having problems breathing. All night we talked to him reminding him to take a breath. By this time after weeks of limited sleep and trying to be the pillar of strength for my mother it came to me that dad was far from healthy. It was like being hit in the face with the bat. All of a sudden it came to me that my best friend was laying in a hospital bed fighting for his life. I continued to pray that night and I swore that if god spared my fathers life that I would do everything in my life to not only better myself as an individual but I'd do the same for other. By this I mean, I've always helped other and have always been an active community member but this was going to be different. It was on that night that I made a life choose...I was going to use my god given gift of photography to change peoples lives. I already had a photography company, so I decided to take a percent of all money earned to a charity. I think I'm going to give it to two different ones....cancer and heart. Two deadly killers. I've also come up with the idea to get help from some of the best photographers in the world and sell pictures on line with all the profit going directly to these charities. I know it's not much and it shore isn't a gimmick to generate more sales but at least I'm making the effort to help. All in all I'm just truly blessed to have my father back. It's not often that a person can say that they have met their hero, let alone have them as a best friend! After reading this blog I just hope that each and everyone of you stops to appreciate life for it's true beauty because it can be taken away in a blink of an eye....trust me I've seen it first hand!

All the best and god bless;

Mike

Happy Easter

Well what an Easter it was. Heather and I made the mistake of placing Easter eggs outside of the kids room this year. At 5 am, yes 5 am we were woken up by the crying of our son...but this time it was coming from downstairs. We got out of bed and Heather raced out to the hallway and found him crying about half way down the stairs. She picked him up and asked what was wrong. He screamed out "I just want to eat the eggs!". Here he had a handful of eggs in his little hands. So we put him back to bed and about 15 minutes later we hear another loud scream. I go into his room and ask him what's wrong this time and he tells me "daddy the eggs are waking me up you better take them". Heather and I laughed so hard that by the time we fell asleep again the kids were getting up. Later that morning our son got sick of asking if he could eat some more eggs and us telling him that he had enough so the next time we found him in his closet eating more eggs. Yes he is character! I've added some pictures from the day...not the best family pictures but they had to do as I only had one lens and my father just got out of the hospital and needed to stand against a wall to hold him up (I'll write about that in another blog). To me they may not be "by the book family portraits" but seeing as I almost lost my father last month they are priceless!

Proud Daddy!

Well like any father my pride and joy are my kids. They are great! They even let me take millions of pictures of them. I just want to share a few picture I took of them....enjoy!

A day out to play

Yesterday I was at home and my two little one wanted to play in the front yard. Well soon we had a whole crew of little ones playing...it was great! Nothing beats watching your kids playing with their friends and having a great time. One of their friends Mya wanted me to take a picture of her so she could give her "mommy and daddy a little gift". I thought that was so cute that she was thing of giving her mom and dad a gift well outside playing with friends.

Well I Guess I'm Live...

wow...I guess I've got myself a blog. I've heard that as a photographer this is a great way to update clients and also a great way for possible clients to get to know me. I hope this is true. I plain on using this blog to post recent work and also to inform everyone of up coming sales and promotions. I hope that as this blog grows so does my relationship with each and every person who reads it. I'd love to get feed back on my work so feel free to email me and let me know what you think.

Cheers;

Mike