Blogging and Tweeting and Shooting - Oh My!

There are so many hats to wear as a photographer - sales and marketing, the business of photography, pricing things, shooting things, finishing things. Albums to make, prints to finish and order. Prepping for shooting, finding locations and visiting venues. Of course in all this - the customer comes first. Without being organized it would be easy to drop the ball!

So which ball is dropped first? Well for me it's usually my blog so I am not going to drop the ball today. I have a lot of exciting stuff going on.

A couple weeks ago, I shot Jennifer and Tommy's wedding at the beautiful Santa Anita Church. It was so sweet. He proposed and they wanted to get married the same week. Her parents put together a beautiful wedding in a month's time, and you'd never guess that! The reason for the rush was that her grandfather has been sick and Jenn did not dream of having a wedding if he couldn't be there. I had so much fun and I have fallen in love with her little nephew, Errico. All the kids wee so cute. But Errico wanted to add some of his own flowers to the cake. Congratulations, Jenn and Tommy!

I also did a shoot of a very special young lady, Jasmine. Jasmine is my husband's granddaughter and she's 7. We love spending time with her and there are usually a lot of other people around. No time for portraits. But, she came to spend the 4th with us and aside from going to the Hollywood Bowl, I planned to have a good time creating some portraits we could cherish. We took photos at the Hollywood Bowl, some in our home and some at one of my favorite shooting spots. This is one of my favorite from the Hollywood Bowl series. Besides being sweet and smart...those blue eyes are captivating!

And to top it all off, I have been invited to speak a few times for several photographer's groups. As a Certified QuickBooks advisor and business consultant (something I have done for 20 years) I am going to teach some workshops on the business and finances of being a photographer and running a business.

All my passions in one blog (well, not quite but a few). But stay tuned...there's more. But not today. I will have to be more chatty here. I better get some beauty rest. I have a wedding on Saturday - another Jennifer and her groom Jason. Stay tuned...I will be back to tell you more!

Give me some Love!

I love visitors to my studio. I am so proud of how beautiful it is.

Tomorrow I am hosting a Launch Party for a networking and referral group that will meet here twice a month for resource sharing. The attendees will be mostly women who will be coming from Thousand Oaks to Simi Valley to Woodland Hills and Beyond. I am so excited that they will see my photography!

I did have a few visitors today who came to see my work and meet me and a client who picked up her engagement photos and who looked at the assorted albums I offer. She loved them and the studio's decor and ambience.

I love visitors to my website and blog. Yesterday I had a visitor to my website looking for a certain type of event photography - which I have done but not made prominent. Some photographers think you must have your website show only specific kinds of photography - for example if you do weddings then your website should be all about weddings and that is all you should do and display.

For me that would be like only eating Chicken every day. It's good. I like eating chicken in a variety of ways, but I love to eat all kinds of cuisine. The same thing goes with my photography. I love to make images of people, place and things. I think you can tell a story about all of the above. I don't think that if you are a really good photographer that shoots weddings and bar mitzvahs and portraits that you also cannot be creative shooting babies, maternity, boudoir photography and even products.

If you were to meet me and get to see my enthusiam and know that I have spent my adult life breathing all the facets of photography from Flash to Location Lighting to posing and creativity you would know that I work hard and happily making a banquet of images for peoples viewing pleasure! What I do is capture a time and a moment and emotions in people - be it at an event, a wedding, an engagement or in my studio - from birth to old age.

Show me the love....let me capture the expression and the moment for generations.

Flash Frozen Photography
Professional Portrait and Wedding Photography in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywoood, Woodland Hills, and Thousand Oaks, California

interesting

I have been tweeting on Twitter and friending on Facebook; I chat here and there and have my Internet connected friends texting me. I get way more emails than I do phone calls these days. Because of the Internet my circle of friends has really expanded. Not just on the social sites, but, I have met many new people in person.

The most important of course is my husband that met me via the internet way before there was a match.com or jdate. I've spent time with my friend who lives in Holland but is Turkish both in Los Angeles and in Belgium and Amsterdam. I've run into people I know in Dover, England and in France and Italy..not to mention Hawaii. It's funny to have someone calling your name while you don't expect to know a soul.

So in the social scheme, I wondered how many people find me. It's always good to know who is reading your musings about photography from the photographer in Woodland Hills. So if you're reading this please take a moment and comment and say hi or follow me or friend me! I'd like that. Maybe we'd even get to meet in person sometime.

Until next time,

Kathy

Flash Frozen Photography
Professional Portrait and Wedding Photography in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywoood, Woodland Hills, and Thousand Oaks, California

Random Thoughts....

I had such a good day today. First, the good news! I have had braces since December 2007 and they came off today! I was thinking about all the cute little children (I went on location to shoot at a preschool - 14 children from 6 months to age 5) I got to photograph last week. You can't tell a child from age 3 to 7 to smile because you get that fake kids smile. So if you see an adult walking around Woodland Hills this week like that - it's me and please say hi! Yes, I am smiling just like the grill of a 1950 something model Buick Grill!.

Something else that I thought fun was that I ordered a beautiful leather photo album of Ellie - she's on my website and I have been following it's shipping progress. It left Italy on Monday and it will be in Woodland Hills on Friday via Germany, France, and Philadelphia. Not going first class in the hold of a cargo plane, but fun to follow I think. I will have to take some photos of the album and post them here on my blog.

Second, if you are following me on Twitter(chatkat) Facebook(kathyrappaport), you will know that I was one of the official photographers for Big Sunday (www.bigSunday.org) I got to photograph over 400 people volunteering while they worked really hard to make the community a better place. Homebound Senior Citizens were gifted with flowers hand made in paper flower pots, letters were written for soldiers in Iraq delivered by Operation Gratitude, Brownies (as in Girl Scouts) and Rotarians (www.woodlandhillsRotary.org)sorted food to go to Rescate and dogs benefited by food/toy and blanket donations at the Agoura Animal Shelter. That was the really big feel good this week.

I hope you will feel good in the sea of all things happening. If you aren't call me and I will try to make you smile!

Gaffer's Tape

Today I worked on framing some images. They say to measure twice and cut once. I had placed the photo in the mat but planned to affix the photo to the mat when I finished the frame. Yikes! I forgot to do that, finished the frame, put the wire and paper backing on it and when I turned it over, remembered that I had to take it apart to start over.

I am one of those anal people who checks and double checks but I wasn't mad at myself. I used it as a lesson for myself. I got to rearrange my workroom a bit; And I was really happy with the revision to the frame. I tried a new technique. It worked.

Not often we get to start a job all over. Some things you can't do over and other things you would not want to do over if you could. So just as with woodworking, we need to measure our words twice and say them just once. It's not like gaffer's tape. You can't do all things without leaving some residue behind.

Visitors at the window with lots of kisses

Today I was working late at my desk doing some paperwork in the studio when I noticed more people looking in at the images in the window. How much fun it is to hear people comment when I am there and they don't see me.

I constantly rotate the images but the dog images seem to get a lot of attention. And the Bride in her pink dress. And a few Boudior images. One couple was looking at the bride in the window and I heard them say "Flash Frozen Photography - wonder what else they do?" - I opened the door, invited them in for a look and a chat. We changed business cards and I bet they'd be a lot of fun to work with.

Then 20 mintues go by and the image of Max the Shih-tsu got the attention of a 15 month old. When I saw that cute little happy face (his name was Bryce) I went to say "Hi" - He was so cute, newly walking and wobbly at that so I invited him and his Dad in to see other Doggies in the studio. He was throwing kisses at me. That tugged at my heart strings! How much fun to capture the backward bye-bye of a toddler and then kisses to boot.

An hour of that makes me feel so lucky to be sharing what I love and the rewards of a baby kiss are priceless. I hope we connect again. So much fun

How Small the World is Now

Growing up in West Los Angeles, it seemed to me that everyone knew everyone. You walked down the street and we all knew one another. I lived in a neighborhood where there were houses and apartments and we all moved every few years within the neighborhood. Many of the kids I started school with in Kindergarten graduated high school with me. Then we grew up most of us moved. Lots of us are still in touch with each other which is really fun. Other than Family, there is a core group of women that I am in touch with who've known me since I am 4 or 5. We move in and out of periods of friendship and when we get together it's as if we never left. Some of us were Girl Scouts or Campfire Girls/Bluebirds together. A few of us are connected at facebook now and it's like we never moved away from the neighborhood. We chat - even in those one liners. Today, my friend from Junior High posted some photos of Junior High Graduation ...just like we never skipped all those years. All those smiling 14 year olds moving on to the next era of life.

How warm and fuzzy that feels. I love those old connections we have in life that make us feel like we never left the neighborhood. Just today, we lock the doors all the time and we have to go online to peer into the lives of people who are interwoven with common threads. In today's world we connect, not so much as yelling down the sidewalk, but by telephone - some and internet - a lot. I have newer friends that are like family I met in the neighborhood too. The new neighborhood is the internet. I've met a bunch of them in person. In my travels, and just like the kids that walked to school, we visit every day. I have photos of these people too. They are just as close as my keyboard or cellphone.

The world has become so so small. I chatted with my friend Cem yesterday from London. He was working there for the day and on his way home to Holland. Yes. We have one big neighborhood now. Oh - This is my Jr High Clique - I am the 2nd one from the left! Look at all of us with our cameras!