Think for a moment about what it is you want to remember about your wedding day. Is it the way the hors d’oeuvres look on the tray as the service staff brings them to your guests? Is it the way the table dressings look as your guests see them for the first time? Is it the way the boutonnières hang on lapels of the men in your wedding? The way the dressing room looked while the girls were getting ready? My guess is that, yes, if you thought about it, you’d like to remember these things. That’s why we always make efforts to capture these little nuggets of wedding memories. But I’d also guess this isn’t exactly what you would have in mind when you hire a wedding photographer.

I suspect the things you really want to remember are are a lot more personal. The the way your guests will laugh and smile, reminiscing over old friendships and experiences as they enjoy those hors d’oeuvres. Your mom sitting and smiling, watching you take your first dance as a newly married couple, while she rests her cup of hot coffee on the table dressing she worked so hard to design. The men, jesting and smoking fine cigars, poignantly designated as the inner circle by those gracefully placed boutonnières. The way you laughed, and cried and waited patiently with your wedding party in the dressing room. These are the personal, special parts of a wedding whose value doesn’t fade. These moments are fleeting. When they’re gone, they’re gone. This is where a second photographer can make all the difference.

Unlike the details of your wedding, which for the most part, are unchanging throughout your wedding, the personal interactions happen only once. A second photographer makes it possible to capture them, even when one photographer is already occupied.

Capture images of your fiancé as you take your first steps down the isle. Capture images of your mother smiling during your first dance. Images of your father as you take your wedding vows. Images of clinking glasses following your best friend’s heartfelt toast—A second photographer makes this a very real possibility, without forfeiting images of the main event.

And now, here’s the really good news:

Two Photographers are now included in every wedding package!

We don’t have low end packages. We have different packages to meet different needs. But the quality should always be top notch. For this reason, we’ve decided that there’s no reason any wedding we shoot should only feature only one photographer.

There’s no fine print. No hidden fees. No bait and switch. Every wedding package, by default, will now include dual photographers to capture every special moment we can.

Take a moment and check out our new wedding packages for 2012. We still have availability this year, so don’t lose your date; give us a call!

We do not recommend setting up your session within Washington, DC city limits. However, if there is a location in Washington, DC that is very important to you and you would like to attempt to schedule anyway, there are some things you’ll want to keep in mind.

Traffic

Traffic in Washington, DC can be very challenging to predict. Unforeseen circumstances usually complicate the schedule. Due to traffic concerns we only shoot midday in the city. We cannot schedule an early morning or late afternoon session. Sessions in Washington DC must take place between 11:00am and 2:00pm in order to avoid the predictable rush hour traffic in the city.

Construction, accidents and events can, and do, create traffic at other times of the day and this may represent an unreasonable challenge in conducting your session. If you are advised against a shoot in DC, because we deem the risks of these problems too high, your session cannot be rescheduled and no refunds will be provided.

Parking

Some areas of Washington, DC have ample street parking in close proximity to the location you’ve requested. Others, particularly those near the Capitol and Monuments, virtually never offer parking within a reasonable distance. Where paid and commercial parking is available for a fee, you will be responsible for these charges.

These locations will also require an $80 fee which covers these and other potential complications. When discussing your location, we will determine whether the location will require this charge.

Laws & Regulations

Washington, DC also has a slew of laws and regulations which can make portrait and wedding photography especially complicated. If you wish to shoot in Washington, DC, you are responsible for obtaining and paying for any permits that are necessary.

Tips For Choosing a Washington, DC Location

We strongly recommend against choosing locations near the Capitol and Monuments. In order to avoid additional charges associated with the city, we suggest choosing a residential area, or a lesser known park—of which there are many.

Here are a selection of locations which are generally safe for booking, and under most circumstances are not affected by our 11am to 2pm booking restriction:

Georgetown – Georgetown offers a unique and interesting old-world city experience. Because much of Georgetown is residential, this is generally an easy location to get to and from and in most cases offers ample free parking. Some parts of Georgetown are outside of our service area and will require a $24 travel fee. If this is the case, we will discuss this with you beforehand.

The National Arboretum – A gigantic, and beautifully landscaped garden. Photography, under most circumstances, is permitted. Free parking is plentiful and this location is never subject to our 11am to 2pm booking restriction.

Our engagement session with Beth & Vinnie was featured yesterday on A Lowcountry Wedding’s blog! We will be capturing Beth & Vinnie’s wedding on June 23rd, 2012. Check out our Facebook page the following day for some previews and highlights!

We’re always looking for ways that we can fit more conveniently into your lifestyle, real-life as well as digital. That’s why we’ve scrapped the classic DVD for the more convenient USB thumb drive to deliver digital files after your wedding. Unlike a DVD, which can be scratched and easily lost amongst a pile of other impromptu table coaster, our USB thumb drives come will come in a custom designed box, making it a little harder to lose.

However, neither a DVD nor a USB thumb drive is sufficient for protecting your images in the long run. Here are a few things you can do to backup and protect your images from future mistakes and forgetfulness.

1. Always backup your images. When you plug your USB flash drive in, immediately copy your files to your local hard drive.

2. Set up a System Backup for your computer. On an Apple computer, backup utilities, such as Time Machine, are included. On a PC, third party utilities are available for a nominal fee.

3. Upload your images to off-site backup. Cloud backup services are available from Google, Apple and Amazon.

4. Put your USB thumb drive in your safe-deposit box. Once you have transferred your images to your local hard drive for immediate viewing you don’t need your USB Flash drive, except in the case that your local hard drive is damaged. So store your flash drive in a safe deposit box, or some other safe location and only retrieve it in the event of data loss from your local drive.

Portrait sessions themselves can be given as gifts

Maybe mom has been wanting to get the family together for portraits. Or maybe your sister is pregnant and you know she wants maternity pictures, or pictures of the new baby. Or it could be that your father has a small business and he needs some headshots of himself. Portrait sessions make great gifts for almost anyone. They’re fun and the results last forever.

How it works

When you want to give someone a portrait session as a gift, it’s almost the same a scheduling a portrait session for yourself, except for the scheduling. The process goes like this:

1. Call us and say emphatically, “I want to give ______ a portrait session for ______!”

2. Pay for the session you’ve selected with a Visa or Mastercard, or by check. (Weekday Session or Weekend Session—For gifts, we recommend purchasing a weekend session so that the person you give it to can use it at their leisure).

3. Receive the receipt for your purchase, as well as a voucher which you can wrap up in a deceivingly gigantic box.

4. You’re done!

When the recipient of the portrait session is ready to book their session, they simply call us and schedule their appointment like ordinary, but instead of using money, they use the voucher you gave them!

Book for Christmas and Save!

There’s plenty of time to buy a portrait session as a gift for a family member or friend. But if you do it before Christmas, you’ll also get a second portrait session at half-off! You can use the second session yourself, or you can give that one as a gift too! Click here for details.

Don’t wait in lines at the store, call us up and give a seriously meaningful gift.

After quite a lot of research and review, I’m proud to introduce wedding albums for 2010! These albums are hand assembled and custom designed to last a very, very long time. Albums are currently available in premium black leather and standard black leather. But best of all, every package comes with one of these babies!

Premium Leather Albums

Premium leather albums are durable and heavy, with thick pages. These are perfect for your main wedding album. Each page is custom designed with the images you choose, and the book is constructed so that the pages lay flat, making it easy to look at with friends and family. Premium leather albums are available in the The Works, Extended and Basic packages and come in 8×10” and 10×15” sizes, depending on which package you choose.

Basic Leather Albums

Basic leather albums are constructed with the same care and precision as the Premium leather album, but are lighter weight making them a beautiful, yet economic option. Each page is designed to display one or two photographs that you choose. Basic leather albums can also be ordered as page-for-page duplicates of a Premium leather album—perfect for parents! Basic leather albums are offered in all packages as either the main album, or albums for parents. They are offered in 6×9” and 4×6” sizes.

Have a question about the new wedding albums? Don’t hesitate to make contact today!

It seems like it took no time at all for my iPhone to become my best friend in the photography business. With about a gazillion productivity, lifestyle and travel applications, it seems like its usefulness is just about never-ending.

Considering today what a boon the iPhone is to a professional photographer, I thought I would take the time to share the applications that help keep Petruzzo Photography running smooth.

Appearing in no particular order, iPhone apps for photography business.

Handi 5D
Everyone is bound to forget some little function of their camera at some time. The Handi series of apps are simple reference guides for different camera models. It’s more convenient than a paperback guide since it can stay in your pocket all the time.

CheapGas
Takes your current location and finds the cheapest gas around. When we’re close to home, we usually know where to go to find the best price. But when we’re out in the field, CheapGas can help save the pocket change for more important things.

WifiTrak
When you’re out in the field and need to hop online for on reason or another, WifiTrak can help. WifiTrak extends the range of the wifi scanner in the iPhone to find open networks on the fly. Of course, it’s always preferable to drop into a Panera, but in a pinch, WifiTrak has the answer.

ProCamera
No one is shooting weddings with an iPhone. At least, I hope not. But when I’m out in the field, I love to keep Facebook fans and friends updated with pictures and text about what’s going on. The ProCamera app adds some much needed features to the iPhone, such as anti-shake and built-in level, so that it can be used even in low-light.

Things
Things is a task management app that runs in conjunction with the Mac desktop application by the same name. Things syncs over Wifi and keeps track of everything that needs to be done. With the iPhone app, all your daily tasks stay in your pocket and can be updated as needed. Things comes complete with tagging features, searching, project management and more.

PhotoCalc
Helps calculate various things such as flash compensation, depth of field, and when exactly the sun will be setting or rising. Clean and simple—you may not use it often, but when you do you’ll be glad you had it!

Helios
Helios uses your location, or a location you choose, and calculates where the sun will be in the sky at a given time. This is excellent for deciphering where precisely shadows will fall during a shoot that’s still a month out. It removes much of the guesswork out of sunlight.

Credit Card Terminal
Does exactly what the name suggests. With the help of Authorize.net, the iPhone becomes a credit card terminal running with the best of them. Using the iPhone’s touch screen, customers can sign their name directly on the terminal. And, receipts can be automatically emailed.

In this digital age where everyone has cameras, scanners, and home "photo printers," we hear this all the time: How do professional (or personal) photographers charge $X for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drugstore? Simply put, the customer is not just paying for the actual photograph; they’re paying for time and expertise.

The average one-hour portrait session

First, let’s look at the actual work involved:

• Travel to the session
• Setup, preparation, talking to the client, etc.
• Shoot the photos
• Travel from the session
• Load images onto a computer
• Back up the files on an external drive
• 2 – 4 hours of Adobe® Photoshop® time, including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, and backing up edited photographs. Proof photos are also ordered.
• 2 – 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment, and ship.
• Possibly meet clients at the studio to review photos and place order. Meeting and travel time average 2 hours.

You can see how a one-hour session easily turns into an eight-hour day or more from start to finish. So when you see a personal photographer charging a $200 session fee for a one-hour photo shoot, the client is NOT paying them $200 per hour.

The eight-hour wedding

A wedding photographer typically meets with the bride and groom several times before and after the wedding. And it’s not uncommon to end up with 1,000 – 2,000 photos, much more than a portrait session. Many photographers spend 40-60 hours working on one eight-hour wedding if you look at the time that is truly involved. Again, when a wedding photographer charges $4,000 for eight hours of coverage, clients are NOT paying them $500 an hour!

(Don’t forget that the photographer runs the wedding day to some extent. A comfortable, confident wedding photographer can make a wedding day go more smoothly.)

The expertise and cost of doing business

Shooting professional photography is a skill acquired through years of experience. Even though a DSLR now costs under $1,000, taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most personal photographers take years to go from buying their first camera to making money with photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera, there is a mountain of other equipment and software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website, etc. And don’t forget backdrops, props, rent, utilities, insurance, etc!

In addition to the financial investment, photographers actually have to have people skills to make subjects comfortable in front of the camera. Posing people to look their best is a skill by itself. You could argue that posing is a more important skill than actually knowing how to use the camera. A poorly exposed photo can be saved, but a badly posed photo cannot.

The chain store photo studio

Chain stores do have their place. For a very cheap price you can run in, shoot some quick photos, and be done with it. But you get what you pay for.

Consider the time and effort that a personal photographer puts into photographs, compared to a chain store. Store sessions last just a few minutes, while a personal photographer takes the time to get to know the people, makes them comfortable, makes them laugh. If a baby is crying at a chain store, they often don’t have the time (or the patience) to wait because everyone is in a hurry.

The truth is that many chain store studios lose money. In fact, Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios in 2007 because of the financial drain. What the chain stores bank on is a client coming in for quick, cheap photos…and while there, spending $200 on other items. They are there to get you in the door.

The real deal

Professional, personal photographers are just that—professionals. No different than a mechanic, dentist, doctor, or electrician. But a personal photographer often becomes a friend, someone who documents a family for generations with professional, personal photographs of cherished memories.

Maybe we need to help clients look at it this way: A pair of scissors costs $1.50 at the drugstore. Still, most people will gladly pay a lot more to hire a professional hair dresser to cut their hair.

The added attention and quality that a personal photographer gives is worth every penny.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs, created by a Personal Photographer are so expensive.

We are proud to announce that Petruzzo Photography now accepts VISA and MasterCard payments through Authorize.net on all photographic services. This includes wedding deposits and final payments, as well as portrait session fees. Payments may be made on location, or over the phone. Receipts will be emailed directly to you as soon as the transaction is processed.

We hope this will help make your experience even easier and more convenient.

Since most people are already familiar with ordering images in print, lets take a quick look at digital files.

Digital negatives, what are they?

Back in the days of film cameras, the ‘negatives’ were what the camera’s film turned into when it was developed. It was what was used to easily make copies of images. Today, the term doesn’t make a whole lot of rational sense—it simply refers to the full sized image files that came out of the camera—the image files you would need if you wanted to go and make duplicates of pictures you had taken.

Because of the huge cost to the customer, It is not typical for truly professional photographers to hand these files over to the customer as a standard part of wedding or portrait packages. Buyers should be cautious when hiring a photographer who’s promising to hand over a CD with full resolution images on it. This is sometimes a sign that a photographer is not truly a professional.

Web-Resolution Images?

When you upload a picture to Facebook or MySpace, the picture is resized so that it doesn’t take up too much space on the server. You can save yourself time by uploading a picture that’s already been resized and optimized for the web. So, if you plan to share your photos with lots of people on Facebook or MySpace, or some other website, you don’t need to spend the extra money on the ‘digital negatives’. All you’ll need are the web-resolution images.

So which should I choose, digital files or print?

You want to get the most for your money and effort, so to help answer to this question, take a look at the suggestions below.

Prints

Ordering your images in print is probably the most cost effective option for you if you’d like single or double copies of lots of different images. If you’re assembling an album or scrapbook, ordering your prints directly from me will be the most cost effective solution.

Web-Resolution Image Files

If you’re mostly excited about sending your images to friends and family through the email, or sharing them on social networks like Facebook or MySpace, then ordering a CD of web-resolution images will be the most cost effective. The images will come pre-sized and web optimized to make the process of sharing them as quick and easy as possible. And remember, if you’re ordering prints, you can still order the web-resolution files, too!

Digital Negatives

Digital negatives always cost the most on the front end—which is why they are not offered as a standard part of any packages. Because digital negatives come with the rights to privately reproduce the images as many times as you like, it’s the most cost effective solution for do-it-yourselfers and anyone who plans to reproduce a few select images many times, for whatever reason.

In conclusion…

Selecting the most cost effective option for you is easy, as long as you know what you’d like to do with your images. Take a few minutes to think about this and your photography experience can be more enjoyable and more affordable.