Morro Bay Engagement: Jonathan & Stacey
Today I was feeling a little homesick. After all, I haven’t visited Russia since I came here and once in a while you get a strong urge to go back to the place where you grew up. Just to entertain you a bit, here is a few interesting differences between Russia and US, according to my past :
1st: you can go to college in Russia after completing 9th grade. However, if you finish 11yrs in school, then you will only need 2 yrs in college to get your BA.
2nd: some students in schools are very creative in ways to cheat in classrooms, I would even consider it to be art
3rd: typical speeding ticket was nearly 90 rubles, which is 3 dollars
And these photos are from a very scenic engagement photo-shoot of Jonathan and Stacey. This place is somewhere near Morro Bay, Ca – and of course we had to drive a bit to get there, but it was totally worth it. In fact this was the very place where this couple got engaged – so, this session must have been very special to them. And to be honest with you, being there and seeing all the beauty around it, I wanted to propose to my wife again – it “sorta” moves you 
Fresno Engagment Session – Shannon & Chris: Engaged
Earlier this year, I have blogged about one of the hobbies of my past – I used to be into collecting coins. If you missed it and interested to read it, you can try to find it on our blog here under “my coins” tag. Well, this time I wanted to tell you about another of the hobbies of my past, which was poetry. I pretty much was in love with (and still am, maybe not as much though) good quality, Russian poetry. To me, a good poem consists of a great idea, rhythm, and rhyme. Its kind of frustrating to me to look at modern poetry and see great topic/theme and rhythm and no rhyme. Most people won’t agree with me on that. And I think it comes from me being used to Russian language. Its a very rich language with nouns that can have seven different endings depending on the sentence structure. That makes it much easier to rhyme, and in fact poems that don’t rhyme are called “white”.
I guess, all of that wouldn’t matter much and most people wouldn’t care, if that wasn’t a big part of our love story. When I proposed to my wife, I wrote a two page poem with a proposal line being the very last one – which of course had the shock effect. Yana was speechless and I had to wait a little while for an answer ) It was “yes” )
And these images are from a beautiful engagement session here, in Fresno, CA. Chris and Shannon have an amazing love story and are both very romantic and loving. We’re honored to be witnesses of their wedding day as their photographer…
feel free to leave your feedback…
Portland/Seattle trip
And these are from our recent trip to OR/WA. We really enjoyed a break from scorching heat of Fresno and dry, yellow look of central California. Its beautiful up there – so green and refreshing! Check these out:
Amy & Inessa,BFF’S
I think I have mentioned before a book by Don Miller “Blue like Jazz”. Absolutely fantastic read! If you’re like me, reading one book per decade, – this one is totally for you. Its really easy to read, it talks about very interesting subjects, and there is plenty of sharp humor included with all that. So, “Blue like Jazz” talks about spiritual growth and formation from completely different perspective. It doesn’t just give you a recipe on how to live out your faith, but walks you through the problems that every person faces. In other words, Donald Miller, on the example of his own life, explains how he was able to understand God better, and brake some bad, and sinful patterns in his life. Pretty fascinating stuff. One of the things that I remembered the most from it was his story about a confession booth they’ve set up at Reed University in Portland. If you haven’t read the book, you probably are thinking – what??? a confession booth at a UNIVERSITY??? yes. But they did it differently.Donald and his friends realized that there are a lot of people who’ve been hurt by religious people. So what they did was, instead of having people confess to them their sins, they confessed the sins of the Christian church to those who came in the booth. They were sorry for not loving them as Christ did, not caring enough, for crusades, hatred, selfishness etc. I thought it was so true. Often times we become so religious about our faith, creating a whole bunch of rules and customs that eventually leaves no place for Christ in the church – it becomes a religion. And following Christ was never meant to be religious – its poisonous, and contagious… That’s why we love The Well – a crowd of honest sinners who follow Christ with all their heart (with minimal judging).
And these girls, best friends, just finished college not long ago and are ready to face the realities of finding a job in this economy! Well, good luck Amy and Innesa – we wish you to stay good friends for years to come!
Album!!!
Its finally here! Well we’ve been wanting to share this beauty for a while, Let us introduce to you our studio sample wedding album. It is a 11×14 flush mount, custom designed and printed album by Renaissance. This thing is a pure joy! And with lifetime warranty guarantees a fantastic product for the rest of your life! Of course, to really appreciate it, you need to hold it in your hands…
Justin turned 1!
Today is August 1st – Justin’s Birthday. It is amazing how quick time flies. So many things happen in such a quick period of time, that it makes you wonder if days became shorter since you were a child. I remember it was an excruciating pain for me, as a kid, to wait till school is over and we could enjoy summer break – days went so slow. It seemed, back in childhood, time passed by so slow, that you will never become a teenager. It is all upside-down now. With every year flying by, it reminds us that we’re getting older and it looks like the 30s are not too far away now.
Of course its a happy day for us! Justin is now 1 year old. We’re very blessed to have such beautiful kids and are extremely excited for the challenges ahead of us, to raise them to become good people. So, if any of you, readers, waned to wish Justin happy birthday – you’re welcome to leave a comment…
And here is a couple of snaps from yesterday’s party:
Dimitrashchuk Family
This time we wanted to get you a little info on how we process our images. We get that question often, and wanted to explain how we do it and what we use to achieve final result. To process our images we use photoshop actions called Totally Rad Actions. We truly love them and believe that they underline our work greatly and are a great part of the look. Typically, we first upload images into the computer, pick the best ones, transfer the files from camera raw to TIFF format, and then begin the process of editing images. Maybe sometime later we will show you before and after samples, but for now look through the set of family images from Misha and Larisa’s photoshoot – great, and very kind people, and an awesome family, we cant wait until we hang out again guys!
Engagement Ceremony
Our blog has never been so colorful before. We love colors! Raj and Upkar’s engagement ceremony was a totally new and different experience for us. It was like for a few hours we were dipped into a completely different world. Everything was very different: the language, traditions, culture, clothing, food, customs…. We really enjoyed experiencing something new, stepping outside the usual and being part of something that you’ve never experienced.
Check out a few of our favorite photos from the day:
The Sever Girls
I’m taking a brake from my study to write a blog post. I’m part of the bible study class at our church called Residency Program. In a few words its a school year study program that was designed to grow leaders at our church. It is a very intense (from 6am to 7am from tue to fri) class through which we’ve covered a large part of old testament and a couple of books in the new testament. And just a moment ago i was studying for the test that is coming up in two weeks. As you can see, running photography biz is the way i choose to relax and take a brake:)
As you’ve probably guessed already, we love when our clients care about their photo shoots. It is cool to show up at the location knowing that all the outfits, styles and colors were carefully picked to create certain mood. We think its awesome and encourage everyone to be creative in that area. And that’s why we had a good feeling about this session. From the past two experiences with Severe family we could expect nothing less than awesome stuff! The whole idea was to have a fun and bright spring photo session with the girls, and as you see their cute little dresses totally underlined all of that. So take a look at some shots from the day….
The BFF’s
Its been crazy around our place. Besides working a full time job and having two adorable kids running, and following us around, we’ve also got to keep up with the client flow and enormous amount of post processing. Its a lot of work, but its rewarding – we love and adore all of our clients. And all this work becomes a pleasure when we deal with people that we get to meet! Lately though, we noticed that we put in a whole bunch of work into a package that doesn’t really look that good. In other words, our website doesn’t reflect on what we do and simply looks ugly. So, we’re sorry for having an ugly face:) We are working on it, and currently are at the stage of picking a web designer to run the project. If any of you (our readers) have any suggestions – feel free to let us know, we’re totally open for it. And even though, the building process hasn’t even started yet, we’re already thrilled to at least have it in our heads:)
And below are some photos from a shoot of two best friends Angelina and Jessica….
WPPI – convention
As I said in the previous post, I had a great opportunity to be at WPPI convention this year. For those who don’t know what it is: WPPI is wedding and portrait photographers international. And it’s held annually at Las Vegas. This year there were 15000 photographers from around U.S. and probably the world. There is two parts to the convention. One is the trade show. There were two huge rooms full of everything and anything that is anyhow connected to the trade. It took us two days to see everything! I was mainly focused on finding more info on different wedding album makers. I was really impressed with a couple of them and will be doing a separate post on that. The second part of the convention was the Classes. I had a pleasure to visit Jesh De Rox, Jim Garner, Jasmine Star, Justin and Mary Marantz, Marcus Bell, Roberto Valenzuela, and Matt Mendelsohn and Greg Gibson’s platform classes. The whole thing totally rocked my world and got me very inspired for the year ahead of us. There is uncountable amount of things and practices that we want to change and add to our business. So, we hope by the end of this year we’ll become a better studio to serve our clients as much as we can. For any photographer who wondered about WPPI – you shouldn’t. Its worth the time and money.
These are some photos of the convention and a few abstract expressions in the infamous town of L. Vegas:
With John Mireles
Our getaway
Couple of weeks ago Emik and I took a trip to Monterrey with our 2 little munchkins. Oh, how we looooved that place!!! One day surely wasn’t enough to browse around the town, especially with 2 kids. So, we decided that we MUST take another trip, but this time WITH OUT our boys. Also, another great motivation to visit Monterrey and Carmel-by-the-Sea was to go crazy and take A LOT of photos. And that’s what we did. We met up with some friends to do a photo shoot, which will be in our next post…
One of the reasons why I absolutely love taking long trips is because I get to spend many hours driving with my husband, and talking alot about random things, such as why is there always so much trash around the carseats in our car, or how to improve our bussines,( wich I think is the subject we talk most about). For those who dont know Emik, he is a very smart guy, and I am a lucky girl to be married to him.
So, while we were driving, listening to iPod and talking, we got really inspired by listening to a podcast by pro photo show on the ideas of how to market your bussiness. It was very refreshing, convincing, and convicting. We understood a few key concepts and realized that there is many things that we still have to learn and that we need to change a few things in order to succeed… we will be working on that
but for now here is some photos from that day
this is Emik showing off in my sunglasses
Disney on Ice
I was waiting for this time for about four years. It was my wish to take the boys to Disney on Ice event. There would be no point in doing it any time earlier, because simply they didn’t care about it. But after watching all these awesome cartoons, and actually caring about them now, we felt like the time finally came. And it really WAS a lot of fun. Nathan and Joseph(our nephew) were thrilled to see their favorite heroes come alive and perform on ice. The boys’ favorite character was the red racing car McQueen, or as Joseph said “Tacqueen” . The coyotes weren’t so much in favor, and of course in the scary parts Nathan felt like he needed to go home, and Joseph said “the coyotes need Jesus, then they won’t be so mean!
here are some precious moments from the experience…
Wedding photography giveaway…
December for us was always a special month. Duh – you would say, for whom it isn’t? Well, besides feeling the Christmas spirit all around you while having a fire-log burning in the fireplace, drinking hot tea while listening to Christmas music, or decorating a Christmas tree with your kids, December for us is a month when we got married. It is during this time of the year we feel even more thankful to God for bringing us together, blessing us with two beautiful kids, and granting us the gifts that we can use and enjoy in our lives. So, after celebrating our 5th anniversary this December, we felt compelled to give back and announce a contest for a wedding photography giveaway! Just send us an email with your inspiring story and your photo by December 31st, 2009 and you can win a FREE wedding coverage by iDropPHOTO.
Here is what the winning couple will receive:
- Up to 8hrs of wedding coverage.
- An engagement session
- High resolution digital negatives on disc
- 11×14 Stretched canvas (gallery wrapped) by Simply Canvas
A few rules and regulations:
- Wedding must take place in 2010.
- If we are booked for your wedding day, and you cannot change it, then you are obligated to forfeit the prize and it will be offered to the next qualifying couple.
- The giveaway has no cash value.
- We must receive your email with your story no later than 11:59pm PST on December 31, 2009
- For a wedding over 150 miles from Fresno, California, travel fees for iDropPHOTO crew (Emik and Yana) will apply (Hotel+Car expenses for 2 days, and depending on distance, round-trip airfare for 2)
- Past clients or currently booked clients do not qualify for this contest.
Nominees:
Brides+Grooms may nominate themselves by submitting their story and a photo or two. Friends and family may also nominate the bride+groom of their choice, however the bride+groom should be aware of the submission (this is just to avoid double booking of a different photographer during the contest period).
