Carissa

I've been looking forward to this day for quite some time. Carissa asked Scott Jarvie and myself to handle her wedding photography. We both eagerly jumped at the chance. Carissa is not only beautiful, but she's a talented photographer herself and a good friend as well. And when she said she wanted her bridals at La Caille, we became even more excited. It's a beautiful location.

Normally I don't get to share bridals ahead of the wedding, but Carissa indicated that her fiancé rarely gets on the internet and allowed me to post these ahead of time.

Bridals & Formals

Bridals and Formal Sessions

I LOVE doing a bridal session (bride alone) or formal session (bride & groom together) with a couple prior to their wedding day. Some of the many reasons I love to do bridals and formals are:

Wedding Day is Always a Rush.
It is stressful. There is never enough time to do everything, so there are trade-offs that must be made. By doing a bridal session ahead of the wedding day, we can relax and take our time and even have a good time taking pictures. With the extra time to go on location, to set up and pose, the images captured can be much higher quality and you can look much more relaxed and in control.

Details
Your dress, your style, your look, is important. On wedding day sometimes there is not enough time to capture all the little details. The hair, the necklace, the earrings, the designs in the dress. A bridal session lets us slow down and concentrate on those areas to a much greater degree.

Practice Makes Perfect
I have had so many brides tell me that they were thankful for the opportunity to do bridals. Trying on a dress in the store is one thing, but actually wearing it out in public, doing the things you will need to do (bend over, raise your arms, wear the dress for more than a few minutes) helps raise awareness of adjustments that may be necessary. Without the bridal session you may be in for a surprise on wedding day.

What the brides have to say:

I always wanted to have bridal pictures done. It's a day that you, as the bride, get to get all dolled up and feel like a model. It gets you so excited to put on your wedding dress and marry that man of your dreams. When I had my bridals done, my mom and sisters were able to come with me which made for a fun experience for all of us.

I'm very happy now that I am married that I did do bridals. I now can look at the pictures and remember how beautiful my dress was! Having bridals done just accentuated the wedding and made it that much more memorable. I'd definitely recommend it!

- Rebekah Pinegar

Why do bridals? Why not?

I absolutely love my bridal pictures. They are my favorites and I had the hardest time choosing the ones I wanted to print for the wedding. Before I got engaged I never really thought if I wanted bridals or not, but when the time came I automatically decided that I wanted bridals.

Growing up, every girl wants to be a princess and doing bridals gave me a chance to wear a big dress and be a princess for a day. A wedding dress can be so expensive and is only worn for a day, I think that doing bridals gave me a chance to wear the dress more than once and really show how pretty it was. It also gave me an opportunity to express my personality and it made me feel pretty and special.

Looking back now, I would do bridals again. There are some many things that go into planning a wedding, but pictures are one of the things that stays. I can look at them when I'm older and I can share them with my grandchildren and they can see what I used to look like. My bridal pictures are something that I will always treasure. I plan on always keeping a picture from my bridals up on my house.

- Paulina Crossley

I always wanted to do bridals. I wanted to get to wear my dress for one extra day and get to do my hair and makeup and feel like the bride for more than the reception. I'm still glad today that I did my bridals. I had a great photographer who knew how to position me and get just the right shots so that during the shoot and now looking at the pictures I feel like I was special and that I looked beautiful. Getting married and planning the wedding is hard and stressful and for me my bridals were fun, about me and I felt like a real bride, beautiful and it was fun.

- Sarah Devereaux

I think that my decision to do bridals started way back when I was 16 when I started actually thinking about my future. I would dream about how my wedding would be like and what pictures would look like, of course back then I didn't know what my future husband was going to look like and my wedding wasn't exactly my "dream wedding" because in reality for a wedding like that, you'd have to be a millionaire :) but it was pretty close. There were 2 things that I wanted more money to go into and those were; my dress, and pictures/wedding video. Mainly because I wanted to look amazing and second because I wanted the memories captured in pictures that would last after that wonderful day. Pictures that I could look at and remember everything. My bridals remind me of how beautiful my dress was and how it made me feel like a princess when I was in it. I loved the attention I got from on-lookers around me as we were taking the bridal pictures! I love having pictures of me in my wedding dress and being able to see how I looked at that time in my life. Now that i'm married there are a few things that I wish we probably wouldn't have done just because I would have more money now but bridals isn't one of them. That's one thing that was definately worth it to do for the wedding. It was just a fun experience and it's one thing that you never get to do again in your life. It's totally worth it.

- Amy Healy

I had never heard of doing bridal photos or even engagement photos prior to the wedding until moving to Utah. I had to be informed by those in the know that that was the norm, and David Terry definitely helped encourage me to do that. The pictures were awesome and if the groom had been around photos most definitely would have been rushed. It's for sure a good idea.

- Marissa Macias

I have always loved the idea of doing bridals. Mainly because It gives the bride a chance to spotlight her beauty, without having to stress about getting them done on the wedding day. I have seen many of my girlfriends do their "bridal" pictures on the actual wedding day. So instead of relaxing before the wedding, they were rushing around trying to get pictures done before the ceremony. Or missing out on visiting time with guests during the reception; because they are not only doing family pictures, newlywed pictures but also pictures of just the bride. It is also a great test run with hair, makeup, shoes and dress all together.

- Lisa Ford

Baby's First Year

Last year I wrote about a new program I had started call Baby's First Year and in it I included a few of the, then current, pictures of Leticia. Well, she is now one year old and I wanted to update my blog. So here again is the Baby's First Year info followed by some new pictures:

Baby's first year comes in two flavors:

Package #1 - Monthly
Monthly photos, from newborn to 1 year old. Each month a new photo session. Each month a new 8x10" photo. And each month a CD with that month's photos (4x6 size - 1200x1800 pixels). All of this comes at a cost of $594 for the year (equating to $49.50 per month), with half down at the beginning. The rest can be paid in installments.

Package #2 - Bi-monthly
Same as Package #1, but every other month instead. The cost is $396 for the year (equating to $66 per month), again half down at the beginning and the rest can be paid in installments.

Also, don't forget the possibility of Maternity Pictures.

Newborn




Three Months


Four Months


Five Months


Eight Months


Ten Months


One Year

Jess Curren - Pregnant and Beautiful

Jess has gone in to the hospital to have her baby today.  So I guess I had better catch up and get her maternity pictures on the blog before it's too late.  :)

Jess is one of my many wonderful photographer friends.  We simply have an amazing photographic community here in Utah with so many people willing to help each other out.  Jess is one of those and she has helped me with   a bridal session and a wedding.  I very much appreciate her and knowing that she was pregnant offered to do maternity pictures for her.

Why I love Smugmug

I realize my customers may never know or even care what or who Smugmug is.  But Smugmug has been a very important part of my life for the past 5 years now and I believe every photographer could benefit in similar fashion.

So what is Smugmug?  Smugmug is the secret behind my beautiful website: http://www.dterryphotography.com

It's the company that hosts my website.  It's the company that creates and maintains the software that runs my website.  It's the company behind the presentation of my images to my customers.  It's the company that facilitates the delivery of my prints to my clients.

What do I love about Smugmug?

• I LOVE that it saves me TIME!  The thing is, I am both a software engineer and a photographer.  I love both professions and don't want to give up either one.  The #1 thing I generally sacrifice is sleep.  So you can imagine that I spend a lot of effort looking for ways to make what I do more efficient.  Smugmug is the secret sauce of my online efficiency. YES! I could write my own software, create and maintain my own website, but then ... when would I sleep?  And how can I, alone, ever produce the quality and quantity of software updates that the entire Smugmug team is constantly producing?  When I want to work on photography, I don't want to think about coding, and vice versa. And that's the way I like it.
• I love that creating beautiful looking portfolios for my customers is as simple as creating a new folder and uploading the images.   Drag and drop - that's all it takes!
• I love that Smugmug is customizable.  That, while my website is simple (remember that "time" issue?) others have Smugmug based websites that look completely different from mine. 
• I love that Smugmug takes care of the Presentation, Sales, Credit Card Processing, Printing and Delivery of my images.  And their awesome customer support has even gone to the extent of replacing prints that a customer didn't want even when the problem was clearly the customer's fault.
• I love that Smugmug, with it's unlimited uploads, unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, has effectively become my off-site backup. I do, of course, have local backups that I maintain. But should my studio ever burn down or my computer be stolen, all of my images are within reach of the Internet.  My customer's precious moments are guarded for a lifetime.
• I LOVE the updates.  As I mentioned above, I simply would never have time to produce the quantity and quality of updates that the team of Smugmug programmers are producing.  From stream lining the ordering process of pictures, to the coupon codes, gallery presentations, favorites, packages, it's a constant stream of upgrades.  All ... at NO extra cost.
• I LOVE the quality of the prints I get through Smugmug.  I have used Bay Photo for my prints for a long time, and Smugmug now uses Bay Photo to print my images for me.  It's an awesome combination!
• I love that I can use my own domain name.  That customers don't see http://dwterry.smugmug.com ... instead they see http://www.dterryphotography.com which helps them identify with me and my products.
• I love that I can set my own prices.  
• I love that I can offer the products I want to deliver.
• I love their technical support.  The times that I have had a question or needed help, I have emailed their tech support.  I swear, I have never waited more than 15 minutes for an answer ... and that has been true whether I wrote the question in the middle of the day or the middle of the night.  I have no idea when those folks sleep!
• Speaking of cost... the cost of a Smugmug Pro account is a mere $150/year.  That may seem like a lot if you're just starting out. But if you're generating any revenue at all, $150 is cheap service for all that Smugmug delivers (including being my online backup service!).  Plus, if you look below, you'll find my coupon code for signing up to save $5 off a membership.  And when you use it, it saves me some money on my renewal. To be honest, the one and only time that I ever paid full membership costs was the very first year.  I have even had a year that was completely paid for by referrals.

So if you're looking to create your very own Photography Website, I can wholeheartedly recommend Smugmug.  As I said, I've been with them for 5 years.  I've never been disappointed yet.

And now here's the promised $5 off coupon code to get you started:  Yi9EsaJKWupHM

So hop on over to http://www.smugmug.com and sign up.   I promise, it'll be worth your "time".

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