nick [at] haskinsphotography [dot] com

- In a couple of weeks I fly out to DC for Rosallie and Raul's engagement session. I've got sooooo many visions for these guys, and their photos are going to rock! I can't wait to spend the day with you guys! See you soon!

- I just got an email from the coolest wedding videographers in tampa bay! He says my new promotional video is almost done! Woo! David followed me around at our last engagement shoot...the one with the super cool stormy sky, so I am totally siked to see what he came up with!

Getting stale scares me, so I am forever thinking of fun and creative things to do with my clients. My goal is to get them to drop that, "cloak of security" that everyone naturally put's up when a camera comes out. The trick is getting them to just be themselves. With Abbie and Alex, this was a piece of cake...for the most part!

If you could have bottled the Love coming from these kids, one could have made a million dollars from it. I take that back...the Love from these guys is priceless! I had the absolute pleasure of getting to hang out with them last night for their engagement session. I'm shooting their wedding at the Belleview Biltmore Resort in October, with their reception being held at the Belleair Country Club. I'm so super excited because the wedding is going to be so beautiful! I can't wait!

So, anyways...we had a frikking blast last night! Check out my favorite shots, then watch the show by clicking the link at the end of the post!

Lol...I don't think Abbie knew I was taking her picture!

What the?! Dude.....back in my day....we used quarters!

Oh yes I did....and they obliged. These guys are frikking rockstars.

Synchronized motorcycle racin! Saweet!

Abbie with her game face one. Watch out Alex.

Ah hah....the eye......ooohhhhh!!

This is the vision that popped into my head for these guys....came out 90% accurate. Go Speed Go!

Now that Alex whopped Abbie in Go Karts, Abbie takes revenge with Putt-putt Golf!

Alex...your such a sly guy....and smart! This was completley un-coached, and un-scripted, as always. The next hole Alex putted it in on the first try. Eagle!

The storm! Here in Florida, it rains everyday at 5 o'clock like clockwork. Little did we know, the storm would follow.

By this point we're on hole 12, and the edge of the storm is getting closer. It's moving West, which is odd. I decided it was time to leave early, and head to the beach before the storm got there and covered up the Sunset.

We got there just in time. The leading edge of the storm had already passed, and the rain you could actually see coming down just about a mile away. I knew we only had about 15 minutes, so we had to act fast! I spotted this hill, had a vision, and this is what I got!

I LOVE the little red Lifeguard station. It add's flavor.

Exploring every possible angle always proves beneficial.

I could have shot in the this light forever! It was so diffused and pretty!

So what I mean about the Love? These guys are special.

It had already started to rain, but I just wanted a few more shots. It was worth it!

So....here are 131 more of my favorites!

CLICK HERE FOR THE SLIDESHOW!

Check back here on the blog tomorrow for the full post, and a TON of amazing photos!

Finao has covers for all types of brides...

...from simple..

...to sleek and sophisticated...

...to downright freaking cool!

- Happy freaking 4th of July!

- I have a super cool engagement session on Sunday with the cutest couple ever! This one will be quite unique I can assure you! My new videographer friend David is going to follow me around and shoot some video, so be on the lookout for something super cool in the next few weeks!

- To further refine the content on this blog to appeal to brides and grooms, all post directed towards photographers will be posted on the business blog for photographers, The Pea Pod. If your a photographer who's been stalking this blog, then be sure and RSS the other one for some super sweet premium info for free ninety free!

My goal for Tampa Portraits is to become the "Bella" of the portrait world here in Tampa. People must know what there's other options besides blasting their kids with flash in a studio! Our photographers will work on location to provide you with something different, and something unique. Would'nt you want them captured as they would normally be acting with minimal interaction from the photographer? Of course!

To the potential brides and grooms who have landed here on my blog, we're working on making it easier for you guys to actually find our main website. In the near future when you land here the link to our Wedding Portfolio will be VERY obvious!

Link Here

After seeing theirs, and a slew of others, I'm sad that we didn't hire a video guy for our wedding. I'm even more sad that we didn't even hire a good photographer!

What makes us different is our passion for designing, our commitment to perfection, and a high factor of personalization; the "3 PEAS." It takes all 3 PEAS to form a pod, which is your business. This is a just a small part of a business philosophy that I developed, that all my business's run under. We'll cover this in another post sometime because it's really frikking important! Or, you can just come and hear me speak for PPWM next year!

So, with some help from my clone, we launched Album Guys. As of now there are two of us; myself and Matt. I describe Matt as a, "southern redneck stuck in a head-banging rappers body." He's a kool kat, and has more experience in Photoshop that I do. He's also pretty good with the Flash stuff. Matt's mainly responsible for custom brushes, frilly frilly things, and flourish elements for the wedding album designs. He also says he's a hacker. I laugh because I don't know what he means by that; I'm just glad to be a friend and not a foe!

Album Guys is powered by Showit Sites, the coolest frikking website building software ever! This makes us completely different because we are currently the only album design service in the world with site like this. Frikking cool! I am definitely super excited about this, so please spread the word! Woo!

- My agent is still in negotiations with Sandals regarding me training their photographers.

- We *MAY* have a featured spot in a very high end wedding magazine. They seemed to have loved Tanya and Victors Destination wedding in Negril, Jamaica. More info on this as it develops.

- My Tampa wedding photographer friend Chris gave me some lessons on SEO stuff, so we've launched a major SEO campaign for our web presence. This actually should have been done over a year ago!

- Dudes...you have to watch/listen to this song. Listen to the words though...it makes me sad! Such a great story.

- Sea and Cake rocks! They have such great music. Very up-lifting, and very peaceful. We rock out when we're designing albums, and editing photos.

- My son Max is growing fast!

You guys going?

For years photographers have been limited by how they portray themselves online. By "limited" I mean that some of the software that's used to design websites has a very steep learning curve. A lot of photographers simply do not have the time to learn how to code themselves a website, let alone know how to do it. Then, template based flash websites became available. They we're animated and flash back in the day, and some still are. A flash based website is sleek, sexy, and smooth; although with the biggest con being that search engines do not index them very well.

So, basically photographers we're all stuck with the same website templates, and nobody was being found by the seach engines. As far as I know, this problem still exists. Ok ok...cloned html sites to go along with it, but isn't that just more work?

How about a flash website that's heavily indexed by any search engine? How about a flash website in which each page has it's own unique url? How about a flash website that your in complete control of? Anything you imagine can be done with Showit Sites! I know this sounds like an ad or something but I really believe this app will revolutionize the way photographers represent themselves online. You are only limited by your creativity. Always wanted full screen images? Videos? Your own graphics applied anywhere on the page? Your in control!

I clipped a few shots of the app to show you guys how cool it is!

Showit Sites will be launching VERY soon, so be sure to get on board! The screen shots above are of the program still in beta mode, so I can only imagine what the launch version will be like!

Also look out for Showit Sites Designs (formerly known as "Project 2" from 2 posts agao) launching just days after Showit Sites!

Nick Haskins - Lifestyle and Destination wedding photographer St Petersburg/Tampa, FL

So that was this weekend. This evening was bath time, and since the camera has been sitting in the same spot since getting home on Sunday, I figured I'd snap a few.

Litte blurry, but really funny!

Here are some "hints."

Project 1 - A service for photographers. Although there are just a few like it, NONE compare to it! It's internet presence alone will be the only one one in existence.

Project 2 - A place to purchase a thing for the "lazy" photographer, or for the photographer who just doesn't have time to make a cool one of these things. This idear was suggested by one of the most influential photographers in the world. He's my mentor. Those of you who have been following this blog since the beginning know who he is. But is it a "he," and what is "it?" I know for a fact that there is nothing like this in existence. It's so new...it still has the "new car" smell to it.

Stay tuned for more, right here on the blog!

While in Jamaica shooting that amazing destination wedding in April, we rolled some video of Tanya and Victor's Trash the Dress session in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The video was shot with my lil waterproof point-n-shoot camera, so we were able to get some really great stuff. Although it's a bit shaky, it's still kind of cool to see what went down behind-the-scenes of the making of the TTD - 1000 Frames video that I posted a while back.

Enjoy!

Oh yeah...and this video does not do justice to my amazingly ripped body. This video makes me skinnier than in real life. I'm really 6'4 and 200 lbs of steel...;)

Destination weddings are on the rise, now accounting for 15%* of all weddings held. With nearly a 200%** increase just in the last 10 years, photographers are now carving a niche for themselves in the market. Although this a vacation and a time to relax for you and your family, it is by far a vacation for a destination wedding photographer. I decided to put this small article together after reading for the last time, "...I think it's a great idea to just pay for the photographers travel, and not for his services. After all, it's a free vacation for them!" I realize that not all brides feel this way, however I thought it would do some good to have the words on the internet for those who do feel this way. So...this one's for you!

3 days before leaving for a destination wedding in Negril, Jamaica, I discover that one of my strobe's isn't working. I call another photographer friend, and luckily he wasn't shooting that weekend and was able to borrow it. After purchasing a few more memory cards, and some extra batteries, we're set to go. The backpack that holds the photography equipment comes in at just under 50 lbs, so I'm good to take it on board the plane. The last thing I want is my bag with all my equipment being checked...that's just asking for it.

So we have a great flight and land in Jamaica, but theres a problem carrying photography equipment in to, and out of Jamaica. We have to have a "broker" to check the photography equipment to make sure we leave with what we came in with. Make sense? I thought I was set with the customs forms that I filled out 3 weeks before we left, but apparently they needed even more information. We wrastle with customs officials for about 2 hours, and we finally make it out of the airport.

After spending nearly 24 hours documenting the bridal shower, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception, and day after session, we fly home. Of the 3 days that we were there covering this beautiful wedding, we were fortunate to be able to relax for 27 minutes the day after we flew in. Three days of work, with 27 minutes of relaxing time. The night before we left, I spent about 2 hours backing up the precious images onto an external hard drive. This was just incase my laptop was stolen, I would at least still have all the wedding pictures on a external hard drive in a seperate bag.

After arriving back home in the states and getting some much needed rest, the process of going through the 4,000 images that were taken starts. I have to go through and star my favs, then post the blog the next day. I ended up blogging the wedding in a 3 part post with nearly 200 photos. The process took probably 4-5 hours, on top of the 2 hours it took to transfer the files onto the main compuer, and back them up to the main external hard drive. After deleting the out-of-focus and blurry pictures, we're left to edit approximately 2,000 photographs. This process took roughly 1.5 days to complete.

Now it's time to catch up on the 3 days of emails, and phone calls that I have received since being out of the office. After spending a day playing catch up, it's time to design the wedding album. I spend a lot more time on my designs than other photographers do. At the same token, my desings are more complex with more "bells and whistles." After nearly 80 hours desiging each spread from scratch, the wedding album design is finished. At the very end of the process, all 2000 photos get re-sized and uploaded into categories online for your family to view.

So to re-cap, about 125 hours of time was devoted to this destination wedding. That's over (3) 40 hour workweeks. When you see it broken down like this, it's justifiable for photographers charge more for destination weddings, than they do for local weddings. There's a ton more work involved.

The photographer should have the biggest budget of your destination wedding. It's kind of like buying a Lexus...they are expensive...but worth it. Expect to invest between $3000 and $5000 for a good destination wedding photographer (and that's the low end), in addition to paying for travel and misc expenses associated with travel.

Wedding photographers in general do not like to be referred to as, "just another vendor." We spend a lot of time building repore and trust between ourselves and our clients. After the DJ leaves, you never talk nor see him again. The same thing goes for the florist, and the caterer. The relationship you form with a photographer will last a very long time. You'll see him/her again at other friends wedding that you've referred them too. Perhaps you might see him/her again on your one year anniversary. You might also see them again when you have kids.

Wedding photography should be viewed as an investment, because 10 years from now that's all you'll have from your wedding.

Have fun with the rest of your planning, and have a beautiful destination wedding!

(*source - The Wedding Report)

(**source - The Wedding Report)

Nick Haskins - Lifestyle and Destination wedding photographer St Petersburg/Tampa, FL