Bridal Show

Today Isaac and I had the privilege to show our photography at the SyracuseWedding.com Bridal show at Drivers Village. We met so many wonderful brides grooms, moms and dads, bridesmaids, and grandparents. Tomorrow we will be announcing a promotion for everyone that attended the bridal show. Keep an eye out in our blog tomorrow for the good news. Have a great night and thank you all for letting us show our passion with you.

Merry Christmas

I hope all of you that celebrated Christmas this past week had a wonderful holiday. It is so great to celebrate the birth of christ with family and friends. Isaac and I had a great time hosting Christmas Eve at our new place! We made a fancy dinner and even used our china for the first time. We then drove to Saratoga EARLY Christmas morning and have been here since just hanging out with family and visiting with old friends. We just wanted to let you know that we will not be home until Friday morning. We were planning on heading back to Oswego tonight but we have now gotten snowed in. Our car is stuck in a ditch a mile from my parents house. I will keep you updated one when we will be returning.

Nick & Nicole's engagement session

Today we had the chance to shoot Nick & Nicole's engagement/portrait session. It was a great time to get to know them. These two are great together. They have such great chemistry. I cannot wait to shoot their wedding next summer. It will be at one of my favorite places: Fallbrook in Oswego. Here are some of my favorites from their photo session:

New Portraits!

Today Isaac, Catherine (one of our assistants), and I had the privilege to take three portraits. We have 10 days left of our half off portrait sessions, so things are busy around here. It was so great to get to know each and every family as we went along.

The first portrait we took was a Christmas/engagement portrait of Tom & Shantel. We are photographing their wedding in October of 2008. This was a great time to get to know the bride and groom before the big day. We even had a chance to take a family portrait with their two adorable dogs.




Second we photographed Tanner. This portrait was to celebrate his 8th birthday. He was a little shy at first but once we got talking about sports, school, and his dog, he warmed up to us.


Lastly we shot the Benjamin kids. What a joy to be able to shoot this family's portrait. The kids were awesome and a lot of fun. I can tell they had a good time since they were posing and laughing throughout the whole session.

Print Sale Event

Thank you to the many who have participated in our holiday print sale event. If you click on an event and it is not active please let me know and I will extend the event at no charge to you. Also when you order prints the quantity in the shopping cart should be only 1 to receive 2. If I see 2 as the quantity in the shopping cart I will print out 4. Have a great day

Holiday Sale!

I sent out some e-mails this afternoon letting everyone know about our holiday sales we have going on right now.

1) All of our portrait sittings are half off until Dec. 21st. So give us a call and set up a time thats convenient for you.

ALSO

2) Log on to our website at www.KainsPhotography.com and go to the Online Proofs Page. Select the event you attended. When you place your reprint order during the next 24 hours, the photo quantity will be doubled automatically - for every photo ordered, you will receive an additional copy FREE - same photo, same size.

There is no limit to the size or number of free photos you can get!

What a great deal and a great way to share photos with family and friends. This offer absolutely ends at 11:59pm on Saturday Dec 1st.

I look forward to hearing from you!
ENJOY!

Thank you lord!

In the midst of my busy day today I got an email from a professional photographer, Bob Davis, telling me about his workshop. I went on to read his bio. He listed all his accomplishments and things he does, but ended with this. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” -1 Peter 4:10. He went on the explain that everything he has, and everything he does is because of God.

It is so refreshing to hear how God has worked in other photographer's lives, especially famous photographers. I feel that God has given me this unbelievable gift and still, he needs to remind me daily to use my gift to further his kingdom. I should not take advantage of being "talented", I should thank the good lord and continue to use this talent not for my good, but for his. I am so glad I can write this all for the world to see. After all this is what Blog's are for!

This is why I love weddings. God created marriage. The joining of a man and a woman is so sacred. I know that things have changed these days with marriage, but bottom line is that two people love each other so much that they want to join to become one body. How can you not feel the love of God at a wedding.
Okay that is it for my rant! Back to making flush-mount albums! And I swear.... photos of my house will be on here as soon as some of the boxes are unpacked.

Finally some photos: Chetney Children

On Friday, Isaac and I had the priveledge to photograph Julie and Brian's children. Alex, Jake, and Claudia were great little models for us! Each time I do a portrait I get reminded on how much I love photographing children and families. December is our biggest month for family portraits so make sure you call ahead to make an appointment. Here are some highlights of the shoot:







Update on the house:
We have moved in (Kind of). Our office is now completly at our new house, it is just in boxes still. We will be doing a lot of moving and unpacking in the next couple days.

SORRY!

I apologize for not updating this blog at all. We have finished all of our 2007 weddings. It was bittersweet. We have been very busy painting and fixing up last minute stuff to move into our house. Time Warner decided to be awesome and disconnect all of our services this Sunday. So with that being said we are without internet to check our email and post our last wedding as well as we do not have phone. You can call our business number and leave a message. We will be periodically checking our voice mail from our cell phones.
Also if you have been having a hard time getting in touch with us it is because I fell while at our new house last Thursday and got a good concussion. I was pretty sick throughout the weekend and finally am feeling good enough to be making phone calls and doing some work. It has been one thing after another with me recently.
On a brighter note we are scheduled to be at the Dec 30th bridal show SyracuseWedding.com is hosting at Drivers Village. We will also be at the bridal show on Jan 13th in Skaneateles at The Lodge at Welch Allyn. Hope to see you there!

Krysta & Brian's Photos!

Hello everyone. Sorry I haven't posted anything on this blog recently. Isaac and I have been way too busy for our own good. We bought the house last week and immediately started to fix it up. Right now the hard-wood floors are mid-way through the sanding process and then they need to be polyurethaned. I just wanted to let you all know that Krysta and Brian's photos will be online by the beginning of next week. We took almost 1800 photos are their wedding and have had a lot of sorting to do. We will be away all weekend. Tonight we are about to leave for a friend's dance show in Rochester. Then we are packing up and going to Auburn all day for Nic & Hilary's wedding. This is our last wedding of our 2007 season. We are sad, but happy to finally have a weekend to ourselves. We had such a great time working we all of our brides, grooms, and families this year. To top this weekend off we are driving to Syracuse and staying the night on Saturday because we have to get up early for a "Party" planning fair at The Temple of Concord in Syracuse. We will be returning home on Sunday to try to finish the sanding project on our floors at our new house. Can anyone tell me why I make myself so busy???

new house!!!

We closed on our house yesterday! It is so weird being a homeowner. I walked into the house after the closing and thought to myself, "Where next?" With that being said we have a lot of work to do to get the house ready to move into. We have to reroute some plumbing and buy a new hot water heater in addition to refinish the hardwoods downstairs and paint the entire house. It is going to be a work in progress. Isaac and I have taken this week off to try to get things done as soon as possible. So we will not be available for meetings this week. We will be responding to emails and voicemails. I promise I will return all emails and phone calls when I get a chance.
Also once I figure out how to get my videocamera hooked up to my computer I will add a video showing you the house :-) This winter we will be converting the 3 car garage into our studio. It will be a very welcoming place with a fireplace, big TV, and comfy furniture. We are hoping that by next summer we will have a small english garden where we could take outside portraits. Have a great day!

Hello! I hope you are all enjoying this amazing weather. Isaac and I finally have a weekend off. Our first weekend off since May. We decided to go camping in Ithaca with some friends and family. I just wanted to let you all know that our Collages.net website is not working right now. For some reason when we try to upload an event we get an internal error message. So with that being said we have all of Autumn & Brad Lyons and Niki &Mike Vant's photographs all set. We are just waiting to put them online. I will let you all know when they become available. I am sorry for making you wait for this amount of time. Have a great weekend!

Behling's Orchard

Yesterday Isaac and I took the day off. After working for over 2 weeks straight without a day off we needed a day to ourselves. We went to Behlings Orchards in Mexico with my brother & Sister-in-law and my nephew Michael. We picked a lot of apples and played in the corn maze and playground. Then Isaac and I drove down to Dunk&Bright furniture store in Syracuse and bought a brand new living room set for our new house. We are hoping to close on the house by the end of next week although we want to close now! Once we close on the house we are going to take a few days off because we need to get this house ready for us to move into at the beginning of November. Also just a quick update on Autumn and Brad's photos: We are working on them right now and are hoping to have them up by mid-day tomorrow. Here are some photos from yesterday:


They had a variety of apples with my name! I picked alot of them, they were DELICIOUS!


Even though we were not at a vineyard, we were at an orchard, and in my book they are pretty much the same thing!

Isaac's brother Alan with our nephew Michael.


Just a cool shot of Isaac walking back to the car.


Michael ate more than one of these and he is not even 3!


The pumpkins were very cool to photograph.


I was on the ladder picking Jenna apples and Michael squeezed up on the ladder also.


There was a huge playground for the kiddos to play in, Michael didn't want to leave to pick apples.


A cool shot of the ladder.


I bought some small gourds and small pumpkins and then put them in large glass canisters.

Great weekend and week!

It has been a week since I posted anything. We were very busy this weekend with the Fall Jamboree, Mike & Niki's wedding, a baby shower and a couple meetings. First I just wanted to let everyone know that the photos from the Fall Jamboree are online. I will be adding the link to my online proof's page tomorrow, but for now here is the link:
http://www.collages.net/consumersite/GuestLogin.aspx?username=Orchards&password=13791&Login.x=0&Login.y=0&Login=Submit


On another note here are some cool things we've been doing lately:




A photo of Isaac and I that Catherine took


My friend Catherine worked with us at the Fall Jamboree



A photo of a 20x30" & 8x10" family portrait that we framed and hung for the family at their house. Doesn't the large print not look so large in the big room.


This is a new album we offer! This one in particular holds 4x6's, but there are some for wallets, 5x7's and 8x10's. This is a "flushmount" type album for a reasonable cost.

Lauren & Seth's Photos are online!

In the article I linked to below the author Sabrina Beasley comments:
"When I saw moments of my wedding day captured on paper, suddenly I was there again. I could smell the cool September breeze. I remembered how the sun felt warm on my bundled hair, and the softness of the veil hanging down around my ears. I reminisced the tender thoughts I had about David—how happy I was to marry him. I remembered wondering what he was thinking as I looked into those bright blue eyes, not able to imagine that I would be waking up to that face the next morning. It was like living the day all over again."

What she said captures what Isaac and I try to do when we photograph your wedding. We want you to be able to feel the emotions you had on your wedding day even 50 years down the road.




I just wanted to let you all know that Lauren and Seth's photos are available to view online now! I am hoping to get Dustin & April's up by tomorrow evening.

We hope to see you out this weekend at either Nicole & Mike's wedding or at the Fall Jamboree. Stop by and say hi!

I read an article on a website today about family photos albums. It made me realize I have to get out all those boxes of photos from the past couple years and create albums. These photos deserve to be shared with family and friends. This article highlights a good reason to have great wedding photography! It is something you will look back through when you have children and grandchildren.
Read this:

http://www.familylife.com/articles/article_detail.asp?id=901

New house-Crazy week

Hello! This week has been completly hectic. First off I was out shooting all week with Oswego Health. I have posted some photos that I shot this week below. Second Isaac and I bought our first house, well we haven't closed yet, but we're getting there. Although we have to give up our amazing house we currently live in, we are so excited to finally be homeowners. There is a 3 car garage that we are going to turn into a studio. In a few years we hope to have a nice English garden going where we can take portraits. We have the professional inspection today, so hopefully everything is good to go! Here is a photo of the outside of the house:




It is a 4 bedroom 1.5 bath house. It is on the corner of W 5th and Niagara, right across from Kingsford Elementary School. Good thing Isaac is great at landscaping because we need some serious curb appeal. We are going to buy a video camera so once we close we can show everyone around the house. Wish us luck with the inspection!

Photos from the Oswego Health Shoot will be posted shortly.

Dustin & April

Today Isaac and I had the privilege to photograph Dustin & April Geer's wedding. We had a great time getting to know both families. It was nice to see all our old friends there as well.

Dustin & April tied the knot at St. Josephs in Oswego. The bridal party hopped in classic cars and drove over to Breitbeck park where we had a quick but relaxing photo shoot. It was a gorgeous day, the sun was out and there was a little breeze. The party then moved onto the reception which was held at The American Foundry. Isaac and I had our reception at the Foundry. Whenever we get a chance to go back and photograph a wedding there we always think back to our wedding day. It will take 10-14 days to post their photos online, but tomorrow I will post some photos of their wedding on this Blog. Have a great night

Keith & Lisa's Wedding

Wow what an excellent day! We just got back from shooting Keith & Lisa Hibbert's wedding. It was quite a hot day but everyone had great spirits. It was a 10 hour day for us so I will keep this short! We had a wonderful time getting to know all of the family and friends present. The ceremony was at St. Josephs in Oswego and the reception was at The Oasis in Fulton. We shoot photos at Fort Ontario. It was like a dream come true for a photographer. If you want awesome wedding photographs and you don't mind taking a little more time for photos you should definitely consider going INSIDE the Fort. Today there was a reenactment! It was so cool to have that going on while we were shooting our photos. Their photos will be online by the middle of next week. Don't forget to go to our "Online Proofs" page, find and click on Lisa & Keith's name and put your e-mail address down so once the photos are online you will be notified.
Isaac and I will be out of town until late Monday night. We are going into Saratoga to say goodbye to an old friend who is moving to California and to take photos for the Saratoga Racetrack. Here are some photos from the night as well as a poster I made for Lisa & Keith: