Matt's Great Idea

Click here:) to see the funny video from the We Click retreat.

We Click 2009!

For the past 3 years Enna and I have hosted a winter retreat for married wedding photographers. It started with us just wanting to get to know two other couples better, then five couples, now six. It went from a 3 bedroom condo to a 7 bedroom room house. Next year we are thinking of getting a 10 bedroom house:) We call it the "unworkshop" because it is not a workshop. Enna and I organize the retreat, but there is no real agenda. We invite them to come, unwind, cook, eat, drink wine (and John's home brew), talk shop, and find inspiration in each other. We may have never met the couple in person before (some were e-friends until the retreat) and are instant best friends the second they walk in the house. We pick one night in which each couple shows a short slide show of their work, and that is really about the only planned activity for all. Some of us go snow shoeing, skiing, or just spend every day in the hot tub:) In the end, we all become incredibly great friends and help each other find new inspiration as artists, business owners, and married couples.

This years attendees were: Christine and Andy from Bello Photography, John and Kim from Sanderson Images, Justin and Mary from Justin Marantz Photography, Laura and Paul from Laura Eaton Photography, and Paul and Krystal from Studio Foto.

Enna and I want to say how honored we are to have such great friends, and how fortunate we feel to be able to get away with you all for those 4 nights that go by way way too fast. ~ Thank you all for coming.

The above image is the entire gang hot tubing it on our second night. Larry and Tabitha Sherrell came to spend the day but had to get home to be with their beautiful baby girl.

Here is Jackson and I at the top of an overlook we hiked to in snow shoes with a small group.

There were many things that happened in those 4 days:) Too many to talk about here. There is a video floating around somewhere of the guys racing out of the hot tub up the hill of snow and tumbling back down the hill into the tub only to discover we had cut up our legs running through the ice crusted snow! OUCH!!!! The big joke from that point on was not to listen to any of my ideas:) Our favorite part of the trip is always the last night, when after enjoying some great wine and a great meal - the tunes get cranking, a little dance party erupts and the cameras finally come out for some crazy fun portraits.

These are all images I shot at our "Last Night Soirée"

John and Kim Sanderson

Laura and Kim

Laura and Paul Eaton

Justin and Mary Marantz

Paul and Krystal McNerney

Christine Ferullo and Andy Beet

Sorry mate - had to post this great shot:)

My beautiful wife:)

Paul Eaton made sure to get me in front of the camera for a few

My toughest model of the night was my best friend Jackson. Sit Jackson! Sit! :)

We may post more later as other images emerge:) I know John has some fun portraits from the last night that he did with unique lighting style that are going to be awesome:) Here is a cool shot by Laura of the coffee mugs Enna and I made for everyone:

Mentoring Sessions for Wedding Photographers

We are pleased to donate our time once again for the Thirst Relief Auction! This year, Enna will be available for a 1.5 hour mentoring session at the WPPI convention in Las Vegas. Alternatively your mentoring session can take place via phone and email, or in Boston any time this spring or summer. Included in the session are a complete set of Grazier Photography's promotional materials, outline of our pricing analysis methods, and a copy of at least one of Enna's favorite business-related books.

Goal-setting, pricing, long-term business planning, marketing & branding, personal values, and artistic vision are all topics that we find especially exciting to discuss, and the mentoring session will be tailored to address the topics that you wish to explore. If you are the winning bidder, we will send you a pre-mentoring session worksheet, so that we can prepare for your session and better address your needs.

Thirst Relief International collaborates with grassroots organizations and programs to provide safe, clean drinking water to those in need around the world.

BONUS: If you're NOT a wedding photographer but still want to participate, we encourage you to make a donation directly to Thirst Relief. Clean water is a necessary commodity for everyone on this planet, and each dollar has a great and tangible impact.

Click here to start bidding on a mentoring session!

August PUG

As PUG leaders (Pictage User Group) Enna and I like to mix it up and have fun social events (like the cruise we hosted last month) and educational events that will help photographers grow their studio. This month we were fortunate to have good friend and fellow wedding photographer Richard Esposito (if you read our blog regularly you'll remember his wedding) came to talk about using video on the internet. Richard used to work for channel 7 in Boston as a video editor, and has won Emmy's for his work. Now as a photographer he uses his video background to make fun short online video's of himself working. So watch out folk's, video clips of Enna and I will soon be on the site! :)

Here's Richard stretching to make a point during his presentation

Showing off his sweet little video cam

Enna and I with Richard

Paul and Krystal from Studio Foto also came to show albums and talk about their design service

Richard will be giving this one day workshop. Hopefully I'll see you there!

Thank you Richard!! The photographers and students that attended the PUG meeting loved your talk and left inspired:)

~Matt

More Ski House Fun!

Enna and I are crazy busy catching up from a week away, getting ready for Tuesday's PUG meeting, a wedding in Seattle this Saturday, and the WPPI convention in Vegas next week. So here I am at 1am blogging:)

This is Andy Beet, myself, and John and Kim Sanderson at the top of Mount Attitash. Someone has a shot of this group later in the day with Justin Marantz, but I don't have it.

Here are some shots Kim took of us hitting a little bump on the trail. In order... John get's a nice cross n' grab, I get a piece of my board, and Andy fell victim to the notorious shutter delay of the digital point and shoot camera:) Sorry mate, all who were there know you got some serious air!

I still have a whole CF card of images to download from this trip!!

Boston PUG... Cool Prizes!

Enna and I are the leaders of the Boston PUG (Pictage Users Group) and we are very excited about our next PUG meeting! The Center for Digital Imaging Arts in Waltham is generously sharing their space for the PUG on March 11th. This will give our photographer friends who have yet to visit the school a chance to see its facilities, and for the students of the school to meet local photographers. Eric Laurits will be presenting his ShootQ online studio management workflow. ShootQ has also given us 50 codes to give to those who wish to use the program. With the code you can sign up online with ShootQ. ShootQ only releases about 100 codes per month and they sell out within hours every time. So if you are interested in ShootQ you shouldn't miss this PUG. Here's a shot of me in front of my computer after opening the mail with the 50 ShootQ codes to hand out at the PUG.

We will also have some amazing give aways that will be raffled off as door prizes. We have mentoring sessions, free workshop passes, books, software programs and awesome DVD's donated by photographers such as David Greene, David Jay, David H. Wells, Mike Larson, Liana Lehman, Christopher James, Enna and I, and hopefully more to come. Stay tuned for more details as the date approaches, you wont want to miss this love cat PUG meeting!

Enna and I would personally like to extend a HUGE thank you to all of the photographers who have donated prizes as well as Mark & Erin and Andrew & Rachel of Lacour Photography for giving us so many ShootQ codes to hand out!

Be sure to RSVP for the PUG here:
http://www.pro.pictage.com/pug/index.html

Business Boot Camp

We are finally ready to catch up on some blogging! Here are two shots from Business Boot Camp. We hosted this workshop taught by Liana Lehman in early December. The best part of the workshop for Matt and I was that we were forced to sit down for 2.5 days and really talk through a lot of our business goals and long term vision.

Liana covers a TON of material in this class, and it was presented with a perfect balance between heavy number crunching and deep soul-searching. Liana was really good at helping everyone get to the heart of the issues they face in their own businesses. One of her exercises was designed to help people clarify their personal values... this was a very interesting exercise for Matt and I! It was so cool to see how our values are different yet complimentary, and to see these values reflected in our business and personal goals.... Matt loves risk-taking, Enna loves adventure. Enna craves relationship-building, Matt craves romance. We both love travel, creativity, and our family.

Here are a couple of pictures of Liana and Eric horsing around. I cannot wait to share our new headshots that Liana took of Matt and I!

Business Boot Camp

Are you a professional photographer? Are you ready to take your business to the next level? I got the chance to meet Liana Lehman while in Las Vegas last week, and asked her if she would consider bringing her Business Boot Camp to Boston... she said heck yeah! Just sign up some photographers! If you are interested in this opportunity please email us and we'll provide you with a bit more information. dates tba, ~ stay tuned...

~ Enna

One Light

We are excited to be hosting a One Light Workshop, with Zack Arias. The workshop dates are July 10-11, 2007. You may learn more about the workshop and register by visiting the One Light website, above. Register early - seats are extremely limited!

Lodging options:
Taylor House Bed & Breakfast (walking distance)
Holiday Inn Brookline, Massachusetts (car or public transportation)

Please email us if you have any questions!

1st Annual Ski Retreat!

3 husband + wife wedding photographer teams, 3 cute little boys, 3 days.... lots of good food, wine, and new friendships!

We had a fabulous retreat last week with our friends Christine and Andy from Bello Photo, and Tabitha and Larry and their son Eldon from Sherrell Portrait Design. These photographers do great work, and we suspected that we have a lot in common, so we invited them to join us at the Jackson NH ski condo for a few days of eating, playing, business/photo talk, and getting to know each other. We ate tons of good food, got a bit of snowboarding in, shared pictures from some recent weddings, and talked about ways we can help each other grow our businesses. It was an inspiring and restful week!

We all came away relaxed, rejuvenated, and inspired with new vision and energy for our work. Matt and I already have some cool ideas up our sleeves for next year's ski retreat!

We'll post the video up soon, but in the meantime here are some fun pics!