First off, I’ve switched companies that I use for my online client galleries and moved to a company who I feel looks much nicer and allows me a bit more control. The coolest part is it’s not a completely different website now and I have completely integrated it into my own website – see that “client photos” link up there. New clients will be able to view their images by going to clients.crushedboxphoto.com, then clicking on their gallery thumbnail to view and order prints. It has a very similar feel and look to my existing website which I really love. The new system also allows people to purchase downloadable images so you can have them to email or put on your computer desktop. You can view a sample wedding or a gallery of some random photos of mine that can be ordered, check it out if you have a minute maybe you’ll find something you’d like for your house.

Next up have been wedding albums. I have had the same sample album I’ve been showing for over a year now and believe it or not it’s from the first wedding I photographed. I’m still really proud of it and the images certainly aren’t bad, but I’ve learned a lot in the past year and I feel I have a lot more great images to show so I’ve got some new sample albums. The first is a traditional album that I just received a few days ago and I absolutely love it. It’s a 38 page 11×14 fully printed front and back cover album and looks really nice, I can’t wait to show it to upcoming couples. The next product sample I’ve been working on is actually going to be a book from a new company Couture Book. They create beautiful hand-made books with an amazing variety of cover choices and textured papers for the actual pages. These books are going to be for the client looking for something very different and personalized. I am currently working on a sample right now and should have that to show very soon. There may also be something really cool coming in the future for the traditional magazine style (thin page) books, I’ll keep you updated.

If you’ve been looking carefully at my website you may have also noticed the “View Albums” link at the top. With all these great new albums and books I have been trying to think of another way for clients to share their album layout with friends and family. Albums are a great way to showcase your wedding day, we’ve taken time to select just the right images and lay them out in just the right sequence to really show what the wedding day was like. This is something that would be great to share with family and friends that aren’t local to the couple and can’t see the album in person. Starting today, every album that is ordered will include the layout posted online. Each album will have a dedicated web page with a layout customized for each event. The couple can send a link to this page to anybody they would like to share their album with and they can view it directly online. As I mentioned this will be included with every album or book ordered and will not cost anything additional. I think this will be a great way to share the album that a client had designed just the way they wanted with as many people as possible.

That’s all for now, lots of great things coming for new clients and existing as well. I’m always trying to keep new and great products and services coming to Crushed Box Photography and I can’t wait to see what this year brings.

Ray

Crushed Box Photography was also just given a “Bride’s Choice” award from Wedding Wire which apparently means I was in the top %5 over on their site. That’s really exciting and they should be promoting all the winners on their website soon. That’s pretty much it for the winter update, be back soon.

Thanks,

Ray

For the people that have followed my blog and website I’m sure you’ve noticed that I also tend to post quite a few nature photos that I’ve taken on my own for fun. I’ve decided to split that off to another website that I have going and I’ll be posting most of my nature pictures at www.naturesdomain.us/blog. I’ll still occasionally post some here but if you like to see that type of photography you can see much more of it at Natures Domain as well as some other photographers that will be joining that soon.

Since it’s been a while since I’ve updated the galleries on my site today is the day for that. You can view all the updated galleries in my portfolio section.

I’m really looking forward to another year of meeting more new great people and hopefully getting to photograph some again. Thanks to each one of you.

Ray

And just another piece of news, my father and I recently entered a local southern New Jersey photo contest and he was just announced as a winner in the “animals” category today. You can see his photo at www.pressofatlanticcity.com, just watch the short video below to see all the winners and keep an eye out for the great cardinal photo with “Larry Hennessy’s” name on it.

I’ve gotta say this has been an incredible ride so far, this whole photography business thing. I created my business at the same time as Kim this past January, which coincidentally probably wouldn’t have happened without her. She has been so supportive, helpful, and just all around perfect for having as a business partner and soon to be MY partner (we’re engaged, wedding is in May) – to which I can’t wait. Business has been incredible. Every one of my clients has told me they were happy and I couldn’t have been happier with each and every one of them either. I wanted to start this business to have fun with photography and I feel like I’ve completely surpassed my goal of making it fun and I can’t wait for it to continue. Thank you to every person that I’ve been lucky enough to work with and I look forward to meeting more people just like you.

I may have mentioned before on my site that I actually work a 9-5 (well actually an 8-4) job, in which I’m a digital retoucher for an amazing architect photographer in Philadelphia, Barry Halkin. It’s been a great learning experience, I actually get to work with images from a 39 megapixel camera – that’s right 39!, and he is such a great boss. The other great part about working there is that it’s in the photography business but it allows me to work at my wedding and portrait photography because it’s not competition. So I’ve been incredibly busy, which is great and tiring at the same time, I’m just starting to figure out how to schedule and manage it all, but thankfully I enjoy every bit of it.

Kim and I are also house hunting right now (actually condo hunting) which is another incredibly time consuming task that can get very frustrating at times, but I’m sure it will be all worth it and I honestly CAN NOT WAIT to wake up next to Kim every morning, that always makes my day better when I do. Kim is such a perfect fit to me and I know I’m going to enjoy the rest of my life with her beautiful smile and beautiful attitude, she truly is special to me.

As I’m sure most of you who follow my blog know, I also really enjoy nature photography. That is kind of what got me into the whole thing, and I try to post some of that here once in a while. Well another project that I’ve been working on with my dad is a stock photography website in which we can post some of our images and sell them to anybody who would like them. The website is www.naturesdomain.us and people can buy prints, digital files, or a few other products of some the the nature images my father and I have taken over the past few years. We are hoping to add some other photographers so that we can have a large collection of excellent nature photography in one place for people to search through and purchase. Check it out if you have some time and let me know what you think.

I guess that will about do it for now, I’ve got to get back to edit more photos. Thanks again to all my amazing clients and stop back soon to see some more photography.

Ray

Fall will be here before we know it - goodbye summer

It’s been really amazing how fast this photography thing has taken off. I really didn’t expect to be shooting so much so soon, and with such cool clients. Everybody has been great and I can’t wait to keep meeting new great clients and hopefully photographing existing clients again. Thanks to everybody who I’ve been lucky enough to work with so far and I look forward to meeting those of you I haven’t worked with yet. As I have written directly on the home page “Crushed Box Photography is about you and I having fun creating great pictures.” and that’s been exactly my experience so far. I’ve been having a blast and I only hope it grows from here.

Ray

It’s also taking me quite some time to migrate all my old blog posts into the new system, it’s such a big change, that I’m basically re-posting everything again, so for anybody that is subscribed to the RSS feed, I apologize for the re-posting of everything, but that should end shortly, and if your not subscribed, you may want to give it a shot, I suggest starting out with google reader and you can subscribe to my feed of blog posts by clicking the following

I hope everybody enjoys the new experience, it’s a big change, but I’m really digging it so far, and I’ll be trying to keep lots of new blog post coming, I’ve got a lot of weddings coming of over the summer especially with Kim.

Thanks,

Ray

Thanks,

Ray