She is a ball of cute and when she was born she had her arm wrapped around her head thus making the delivery very difficult. She has her moments but when she is up she is extremely talkative and wants to have your attention. As I write this right now she is in a moby wrap so I have two free hands (for now). If you have been receiving emails from me and you realize that I don’t capitalize or punctuate my typing properly that is because I’m becoming very proficient at writing out emails with only one hand!

This experience has been quite the shift for me, as many people told me time and time again, you just will never know how much work it takes until it happens to you. Which is true, I was expecting that life would go back to normal after the first two weeks. I could sit at my computer uninterrupted while Adalie nap’s quietly in the background. Not so much, yet somehow the work still gets done and all of my self imposed deadlines are more than met. At first I was stressed out about how I was going to manage and then someone gave me some great slap upside the back of your head advice “Normal will never happen again as you know it, get used to the “new” normal and you will be ok”

So this is my quest of the New normal which includes many diaper changes, waking up extremely early while she is sleeping to edit photos, holding her while responding to client emails and helping my wife as much as possible in the in-between times while she is trying to study for her last year of law school.

I’ll leave you with a couple of cute images we took out in our back yard.

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Most people have no clue how to write a best man or maid of honor speech and I can’t blame you its tough. The biggest piece of advice I have to give you is, IF YOU PLAN ON WINGING YOUR SPEECH IT WILL STINK in comparison to the other person who thought about what they are going to say and you don’t want to be that turd who thought they could wing it, drank just a wee bit to much, and then didn’t really have much or anything entertaining to say.

So for the Best man or Maid of honor: Research using google, write your speech, practice your speech

For the Bride or Groom reading this: Encourage your people to actually pour time into writing a speech. Also if you know one person is going to do a great job and the other is going to be a dud, have the dud go first, it will save the dud from waiting and sweating bullets knowing their speech can’t compare.

I guess the long and short point of this message is to save some heart ache and someone feeling bad the day of the wedding. A little preparation goes a long way and with all of the weddings I have been too (tons) very infrequently are there two well put together speeches delivered that draw laughter and even sometimes tears.

I will leave you with another one liner I picked up in Ireland during a best man’s speech “In life there are many up’s and downs, may all of yours be between the sheets”

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So the title is not catchy or witty as some of my other titles as of recent but as I sit here on my stool (a cheap $30 stool from target which makes my butt sore) I wonder how in two years I went from scrapping weddings for next to nothing on Craigslist to having to say I’m sorry were all booked out on that date! (Were all means that all 5 photographers are booked on one day!) The girl who booked me this AM sent my mind into a whirl wind. I did ask her one question, how did you find Capfoto?
Her Reply
“I was talking with my friend and asked her if she would use her photographer again, she said no, but that she had a friend whos wedding photo’s were awesome that she had seen on facebook.”

That was the sale, she trusted her friend. That is what a sale takes, trust. Capital Photography’s services are a great value and our quality is next to none, I could talk to someone about those services forever and that wouldn’t convince them to book with me. Trust is the turning point in a sale and when our clients trust us with their wedding photography services great things happen.

We have built a brand that is trustworthy, as I wrote about two weeks ago, the current generation is different than former generations, but one thing remains the same. Why did people order from sear’s back in the 1950’s, because the products had guarantees and were a good value. Basically they could trust Sears. With the technology we have and our many modes of advertising nothing beats a good referral.

Enjoy your week, next time I could be writing about my brand new baby!

Here is one video I made recently, ask yourself after watching it, can I trust this person? Branding takes work so if your a small business owner work on your brand it pays.

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The number one skill is trust, if you can have your clients trust you they are willing to listen to you, CHECK.

Second is clear direction, I told Dylan to look at the camera after he threw the garter because (as has happened many times before) the bride and groom want to turn around a look, then you end up getting a picture of the back of their head, CHECK.

Three (here is the photographer part) setting up the flashes in order to create dynamic lighting and freeze the action, the room was really dark and if I had shot without flashes the action would have been blurry. I also had to make sure that the whole room was not lit because that just would have looked boring.

Four Love, as it says in the bible, without love you are but a clanging gong or banging cymbal. I get invested in my clients and I truly love them. This may seem a little weird but I get invested in their day and it becomes a part of who I am, in return that part of me is reflected in my work.

When I was leaving the wedding with the amazing Jon Good (an associate photographer for capfoto based out of Milwaukee) we were complemented by the parents and wedding guests on how awesome the photos were. Love the complement but they have not seen any of the photos yet. That is the sign of a job well done, our attitude throughout the day built a relationship of trust that in turn allowed us to take the amazing pictures we took.

this leads me to my last point of the article and the last blade on the swiss army knife. Personality is more imporant than skill. When I got home and shared this experience with my beautiful wife (and almost mother of our first child, due in about a week). We reflected on our wedding day and the wedding day of others and she made the comment that “if your photographer sucks the whole day is going to suck” which is true, we are with your from start to finish. If you trust and enjoy your photographer then taking beautiful pictures of you will be super simple, not a laborious process. Have a great week!

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Think about a raspberry, a big red juicy, ripe raspberry, yum yum. Now what if you had a choice between three different crates of raspberry’s and you can only choose one.
#1- crate is full of good looking raspberry’s no extra info
#2-Crate is full of good looking raspberrys and it says its organic
Now lets stop here, think about what assumptions you have already made about the second choice? Fill in the blank when you toss Organic in there you are going to think something
What if the Third choice was the same good looking raspberry’s but it was organic and locally grown,
if the price is the same which one are you going to choose? #3 maybe?
I know I would pick number three because i have all the info on it, all three could be organic and locally grown but only the third said so.

When I think about this in light of my photography company I want people to not only know the skills of the photographer they are going to work with, but i want them to feel like they know a little bit about them. To feel comfortable calling them on the phone to chat about their shoot/wedding. We are people who happen to be photographers, just like your best friend who could be x,y, or z. So watch this little video and ask yourself, do you feel like you could invest in this person?

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The wedding went off without a hitch, and we even did an after the day shoot which in turn gave us some unique and amazing images.

But what was my take away, I went a quarter of the way around the world to photograph a wedding, they hired me for my photographic abilities/skills and I agreed to go for the experience. As amazing as the location and the accents were, the thing that struck me the most as I was leaving that small country was the people and not just Irish people but the people specifically I was with. I will always remember this adventure not because of; driving on the wrong side of the road, or being given a glass of jameson to drink the morning of the wedding, or  going on a photo shoot with the wedding couple but also having seven other people along just for the ride. It is the people that I will remember and hold onto through all of these memories. It was Justin’s (the grooms) dad who made me drink a Shot of Jameson (a shot = a full glass), and it was Katies Mom who welcomed me in like I was her own.  Why is this significant?

I had this mini revelation that I believe I had many times while I was living in China. As I was getting ready for the Trip I was thinking about how this will be a great adventure to have in my back pocket, not only was I going to travel to Ireland but I was going to shoot a wedding in Ireland. So once the weekend was done and I was able to sit on the air plane and reflect I was struck with this “it is not what you do, but its who you are with.” Life is not about accomplishments it is about relationships. I makes me think about the verse in the bible which basically says “without love you have nothing, without love you are a clanging symbol.” This little revelation has helped me to become a deeper person, especially when it comes to my photographical work. I want to make the effort to love my clients, to get to know them, and have them know me. Its not about just creating, its about capturing who my clients really are in a way that takes care of the relationship with my clients.

For some kicks feel free to watch the videos linked below

Click here to view the embedded video.

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But as my wife Rachel is due in about a month, slowly but surely my mindset has change dramatically. I never thought I could love something I’ve never seen so much. At one point in time if someone contacted me to take pictures of children, newborn’s or infants I quickly diverted the project to someone else. But as I found out I was going to be a dad for the first time I realized it was a fear I had of something I was simply not used to.

What this has translated into for me is a new passion for capturing a moment in life that goes by so fast. Every woman I work with at school always say’s “The time goes by so fast” Heck the last nine months have raced by, I can’t wait to see this little bugger in about a month but I know it will be bitter sweet as the time will go by fast.

That is why photographs are so great, they freeze that moment in time, I’m excited to continue to stretch my photographic and artistic boundaries. I have tons of great ideas and if my little one is a willing subject (I’m pretty sure she will be) You will be seeing many of those ideas come to fruition. It is my way to not only become a better photographer for my clients but it will be a way for me to freeze my own experience being a dad and having something priceless to me to cherish.

Enjoy a couple of pictures

Dave

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(steve rocking the wake surfing!)

Anyways I’m  making a commitment, yes a commitment to make your tuesdays a bit brighter. How will I do this? its quite simple, I’m vowing for the next three months to blog every tuesday.

So put an alarm in your calendar, tuesday stalk the capfoto blog!

What will our topics be?

They will be about life, the life of our photographers, the life of our clients. The details which bring us all together.

They could be about Karl just standing in a field

Or about how my wife (rachel) and I are expecting our first child in a little over a month (talk about life changer)

It could even be about new products we are launching to better meet the needs of our clients (or just to boost our cool factor)

So from now on, every tuesday when you find yourself day dreaming, refocus, recompose and check out what is going on with Capital Photography’s many doings.

Take care all and have a great week! Dave

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