At Last!

Yes! Our big fancypants pro site is up and running!

Thank you so much for your feedback and ideas as we set this bad boy up. You guys are the best! Because you took the time to make suggestions, I want to respond to some of the comments you made and explain why we made some of the choices we did.

First, the main web address is www.milestoneimages.us.

PLEASE NOTE: Our website is NOT, NOT, NOT located at m!lestone!mages.com, for reasons far to complicated and irritating to get into. That is not us. We are not that. We are .us! Dot Yoo Ess! US! Whee! (<---I've consumed a lot of caffeine for this project, can ya tell?)

Ahem. This link right here takes you to a joint splash page where you can choose "Weddings and Portraiture by Angie" or "Nature and Landscapes by Joel."

All your advice about not making people choose a photographer when they first get to the site was right on the money. But speaking of money... we wanted to save some. So we developed the website using a template with a dual portal option, which essentially gave us two fancypants sites for the price of one. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have merged our work at all right now. Either way, I think it's pretty clear what you can expect from each of us, even if you do go to the joint splash page.

Which you don't have to do! Right now I'm advertised by word of mouth only. When someone inquires about a wedding/commitment ceremony/headshot/quinceanera/pet portrait session, I can cut and paste this link directly to my stuff, bypassing the joint splash page and any mention of Joel. Joel can do the same thing and direct you right to his work. (And if I do start to advertise online at theknot or similar, I can embed the link into the ad, so people click directly to me. It's not ideal, but it was worth it to save $600.)

Of course, I am counting on each and everyone of you to pimp me out to your friends and families (though no one beats Shannon in terms of pimping- one more booking and she gets a free toaster!). If you get confused about the whole dotcom vs .us thing (We're .us! That's us!), you can always send people here. They can then follow the shiny new links right there on the right, or you can give them my email address: gypsypeach@aol.com. MMMmm... pimpalicious.

Alright. Enough chatty-chatting. Go! See! Look! Listen! then come back and tell me if you like it. There are many, many photos there to see and enjoy. You may not have time to view them all, but a lot of you, your offspring, or your pets appear somewhere on the site in one or more galleries. Thanks for the feedback and support. You guys rock.

Trendy Bridal Stuff

My mom and dad got married in 1973. They had a very nice wedding. The men all wore white tuxes with tails. The bridesmaids wore empire-waisted purple dresses with a large white floral print with big white picture hats and flowers in matching baskets. It's all very Love Boat, to tell you the truth.



(This isn't from their wedding album, but it is the general idea.)

Several readers- okay, Michelle- have requested a post or two about wedding plans, bridesmaid dresses and the like. :) Wedding plans are movingly along nicely. I've gotten a lot of the hard stuff out of the way, and now we're starting to move toward more of the fun stuff. Wel, fun for me anyway.

My sister sent me a hilarious email when she has at this stage of planning about two and a half years ago. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about cookie cutter weddings, and the pull-out box of details listed trends "everyone" was doing, and the list described everything she was lanning to a T- from her Amsale blue sash dress to the shape of the tables at the reception to the flowers to the honeymoon destination. All I remember about the email was her exclaiming that her wedding! Needed! A! Theme! and her theme was going to be "unoriginality." Amanda had a lovely wedding- traditional but special to her and Tom.

Joel and I are planning a lot- and I mean, a LOT- of nontraditional things. From ceremony traditions we're making up ourselves to our entrance into the reception, it's pretty original stuff if I do say so myself. Heh. But I also find myself feeling very inclined toward details that are quite trendy at the moment. Like, these paper parasols and tea-length dresses with a colored ribbon around the waist and paper lanterns and chocolate + (insert accent color here) decor.



When I look back at my wedding album in 30 years, am I going to look at these things and hate myself for it, the way brides from the70s can't believe their bridesmaids actually wore short colored veils to match their peach dresses, and 80s brides cringe at their wicker thrones and poofy headpieces, and 90s brides despise butt bows?






Is the paper parasol the next generation of tacky? Probably. What do you think?

Work-y Work, Busy Bee

No time to update. Doing many tedious projects. Save-the-date cards more like Save-the-Date Minimedia kits of excruciating complexity. Fun to design, less fun to execute. Cat eats ribbon. Had to pull out four feet of ribbon like horrible gagging feline magic trick. Hate.

Fancypants website almost ready to launch. So pretty! So detailed! So sucking out lifeblood.

Out late last night with police officers and state liquor authority busting illegal dive bars. Received illuminating education re: local prostitution. Girls (not women, GIRLS) being bussed in from the Bronx due to surplus of johns. Right before my eyes. Got footage. Have found next big picture story project.

Covering funeral of murdered mailman in 9 hours.

Sleep. Sleeeep. Sleeeeep.

EDITED TO ADD: The funny commercial Michelle is talking about in the comments (the one that inspired the title of this post) is now up on YouTube. Enjoy!

fill in the (_____)

So... Joel and I have a big announcement.

We just couldn't wait any longer, so this weekend, we decided to go ahead and take take the Next Big Step!

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We're launching a joint photography website! Jeez, what did you think I was talking about? ;)

For my mother, who is probably shoving the defibrilator off her chest and reaching for a second cup of coffee, let me be absolutely clear: We did not elope. We're launching a fancypants photography business website. No eloping ocurred. None. No elope-y.

Har dee har.

It would be exceptionally shocking to Alissa if we HAD, since she drove up yesterday for a sleepover/wedding stationery-related scouting expedition here in the Land of Gracious Entertaining. (Why, yes, that dinner we had tonight where Joel stumbled out of the bedroom in a post-teaching-all-day haze to eat stuff I bought at the deli WAS our reception, didn't you know? :)

Anyway. Alissa and I spotted five nannies, two women whose thighs don't touch, and one woman wearing a sweater knotted over her shoulders on a 75-degree day, but- *DAMN* does Stepford ever rock the high-end paper party goods scene! Heh.

All of this is leading up to a request from all of you for suggestions and feedback. Here's how our new site will work. When you first load our website, you'll have a chance to choose between Joel's half of the site and mine.

His half will take you to galleries of his nature photography and a way to order prints and images online. Depending on how things go, it may also possibly feature text about a program he's dying to launch that will take inner-city high school students out west to see cool geological stuff they can't see around here, like the Grand Canyon and, you know, stars.

My half will take you to galleries for wedding photography, portraiture, pets, etc., as well as a bio page, interactive calendar, password-protected client proofing, and ability to order reprints online. (Sorry, Becky and Michelle, who painstakingly had to walk their parents and in-laws through the old method- mwah!)

At the moment, we're simply calling it OurJointLastNamesPhotography.com (Will give proper URL once it goes live).

But!

Question #1- What do you think of the name "Milestones Photography" instead? My work captures people's major life events. He drives many miles and takes a lot of pictures of stones. Get it? No? Too cheesy? Too obtuse? Just kind of hate it? What?

Question #2- We have a place to put a slogan/tagline type thing that describes our work. Other photographers' examples are like this: "Wedding and portrait photography in the Anywhere, USA area featuring photographers Anita Bath and Holden McGroyne."

I'm kicking around different ideas, but I can't tell if they're any good. One of the ways I describe my work as a photojournalist is "showing people the world they see around them every day in a way they've never seen it before" and taking pictures of ordinary, everyday things and revealing the extraordinary. By extension, this little side business of my mine documents once-in-a-lifetime events like weddings in a photojournalist style, so I'm thinking of taglines like:

"Out-of-the-ordinary images of life's extraordinary moments."

"Life's priceless moments captured in extraordinary photographs."

"Your world, as you've never seen it before." (with accompanying photographs of blissful wedding couples or an adult thumb wrapped in a newborn's fist)

That last line works for Joel's purposes, too, since the rainbow he caught over Yosemite Falls at dawn is not one of *your* life's extraordinary moments, persay. (It definitely wasn't one of mine; I stupidly picked THAT morning to sleep in- !@#$%)

So. Feedback.

MyLastName-HisLastName Photography vs. Milestones Photography. Slogans. Please discuss.