Spring Family Portraits - special offer

It's time to plan family portraits for Spring!
April and May are beginning to fill up on our calendar. People are calling and scheduling family portraits for outdoors in the Spring. It may be a little early this year, as warm as it is right now, but typically in Oklahoma, the outdoors is not really ready (grass green, trees all leafy, flowers blooming) until mid-to-late April.
But don't wait until then to schedule.

• The schedule may be full and you won't be able to do your portrait until hot weather arrives.
• Now is the time to sit down together and plan your portrait so that it will be truly beautiful and meaningful to your family - not just another glorified snapshot - something that reflects who you are.
• The creation fees for family portraits begin at $125. If you call before April 15, I'll apply 1/2 your creation fee to your portrait order! This is a special offer. We don't usually do this, but I will this spring if you call before April 15, 2012 to schedule your family portrait session.

There is no obligation to come in and chat about your family portrait. Call and schedule a planning consultation now. If you decide to book with me at that time, you can pay your creation fee to lock in your date on my calendar. Session must be photographed in April or May 2012 to qualify for the special offer.

The Faith of a Child (& a few others)

On the way to mother's day out class -  3 yr old Anna: "What's Daddy doing today?"
Elise: "He's at work."
Anna: "What's Nana doing today?"
Elise: "Well, she's at her work, too."
Anna: "What's Papa doing today?
Elise: "Papa's talking to some people at a radio station about a very important project he's working on."
Anna: "We should pray for him."
Elise: "Okay." and she prays aloud that the meeting would go well and the radio people would catch the vision for the project and agree to help promote it.
Anna: "Amen!"

I know others were praying as well, but how can you lose with the faith of a child on your side? We've seen it before. Children just don't know any better than to believe their prayers will be answered. As we get older we tend to over think things or let our senses convince that faith just isn't reasonable. Children don't have that problem, and I've been amazed sometimes to watch adults pray about something, and nothing happened until their children prayed, too.

Anyway, the meeting went well. I didn't want to name the station until after I knew for sure they were on board with the project. The local Renda Broadcasting affiliate, KOMA, did catch the vision for the Portraits of Hope project and agreed to help promote it. I'm not sure at this point if the promos will run on their sister stations, KOKC, KMGL, and KRXO. But they will promote the premiere of the display. We're working on the timing and location for the premiere.

So, for the next few weeks, I will continue to photograph cancer survivors, and I'll be contacting area businesses and asking them to contribute.

With the radio station on board, the promotion for the project is significantly increased, as well as the doors to get the display into some key area businesses and malls, increasing the value of sponsoring the project. In other words, the businesses that sponsor the project will get significantly more recognition. Some on the promos on radio. They'll get even more recognition by the number of people who will see the display (where there will be a list of the sponsoring businesses) at the premiere and at the other locations where it will be displayed.

 There will be different levels of sponsorship. The goal is to raise enough support to more than cover the cost of the project. Any money received over the cost will be donated to Stephenson Cancer Research Center. (Costs include creating the display and the finished, framed images, and providing each survivor with a print of their portrait.)

Imagine

I was blown away by this video - "A Day Made of Glass" from Corning on the SchoolTube.com website. The imagination and creativity that went into this is amazing and inspiring.  I don't know how far away this technology is, but sci-fi future is becoming closer to reality. (Makes me think of the Star Trek IV movie where Scotty picks up the computer mouse and says, "Hello. Computer?".)

Can you imagine the applications of this in the photography industry for presentation and distribution of images?
http://bit.ly/oO7Xkq

Portraits of Hope

I have an appointment with a radio station tomorrow. The program director seems genuinely enthused about the Portraits of Hope project. He even said there may be an event coming up in late Spring that they could tie it to and kick it off. That's what I'm praying for. Please join me in this. Pray that they really will catch the vision for it and get on board to help launch it.

With radio backing it, it will increase the value of supporting it. Local businesses who contribute will not only get recognition in the display and promotions that I do on Facebook, blog, and Twitter, but also in the radio promotions. They will be able to view it as a more effective advertising expense, and write it off on their taxes that way as well. This should help them feel more free to contribute, which will make the project a more effective fund-raiser.

In addition, if it can be tied to a specific event, and the launch of the project be highly promoted through a medium such as radio, it will make it even more appealing to area business and maybe even malls, to set up the display in their business and promote the fact that the display is now at their location. It should draw traffic into and benefit their business. And, since I will donate a portion of the proceeds from any portrait sessions booked from the public display of the photos, that will make it an on-going fund-raiser. I really want to give cancer as big of a kick in the teeth as I possibly can. So, I'm really praying the pieces of this project all come together to make it as big and successful as it possibly can be.