Our Love Story
After pulling an all-nighter at a close friend’s party, it was 5 am when we hugged, changing everything.  Our relationship has been filled with love and laughter ever since, and we’re always excited for tomorrow to be as wonderful as today.

She said: I’m thrilled to be his ball and chain!

He said: She’s rad!

San Francisco City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA
http://www.sfgov.org

Special thanks go to my assistant on this wedding, Bri!

Kate on Scott:
When I first met Scott, I was interviewing him as a potential witness in a case I was litigating. I was in “work mode,” and though he struck me as intelligent and articulate, I was not yet looking at him romantically. When he testified, I was blown away by his honesty, strength, composure, and compassion; he was obviously an amazing person. When he asked me out a few weeks later, I was excited to have the opportunity to get to know him better.

Scott has only continued to impress me. I love that Scott is a strong, forthright person, but also loving and affectionate. He honors his family and parents. I admire how Scott is a dedicated, caring, and hard worker, who knows how to leave work at work. When we travel together, I feel as comfortable as I do at home – because he is with me. I love that Scott is adventurous, yet knows how to relax. He makes me feel safe; protected.

I knew Scott was the person for me when I realized how much I love spending my time with him. I have never been attracted to another person this way. He makes me laugh. He is honest, firm, disciplined, and trustworthy. He has taught me to be a romantic. I can depend on him to tell me what’s what. Scott is a fantastic best friend, partner and husband. I am so grateful we get to share our lives with each other.

Scott on Kate:
My very first interaction with Kate left me impressed with her obvious intelligence, poise, and beauty.  However, we initially met under pretty formal circumstances…I was a witness in a court case, and she was the attorney conducting witness interviews. Not exactly a very romantic environment, but she left a strong impression on me. Kate was fairly official and businesslike during our first meeting, as would be expected in that situation. But on the day of the actual hearing, I got to see more of her personality shine through. Specifically, I got to see her smile and laugh during a pretty stressful part of the day. The instant that I saw her smile I went from being impressed by her to being blown away by her.

To this day, making Kate smile is very possibly my favorite thing in the world. I will always remember her exact expressions during that first smile, our first kiss, my proposal, and our wedding. All of my initial positive impressions of her remained true while we started dating, and many more qualities that I love emerged as well. She is classy but tough, fun-loving but driven. She has high expectations of others, but even higher expectations of herself. I admire her character. Traits like honesty, dependability, and selflessness often take a long time to accurately gauge in people. In Kate I could confidently sense those qualities and others very quickly. Whatever positive initial expectations I had of Kate were all constantly exceeded as we grew to know each other. She continues to impress me and makes me want to be the best partner I can be for her. I feel extremely lucky that we met each other, and very proud to be able to call Kate my wife.

San Francisco City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA
http://www.sfgov.org

Special thanks go to my assistant Ryan!

People often ask me what gear I use. Well, my choice of equipment ultimately depends on what I’m photographing. But, for those of you curious to know, here’s what you can find in my camera bag:

Here are a few tools that I highly recommend purchasing and using to grow your business and create profit faster than your competitors. These are all products that I use and fully endorse.  Check them out!

5 Common Mistakes That Lose You Business

Do you want more clients?

Learn the 5 common mistakes that photographers make that cause them to lose business.

In this eBook, you’ll learn:

• Why crappy photographers get more business than you
• How to attract you ideal clients like crazy
• How talking in terms of benefits will make you more money
• Easy ways to set yourself apart from your competition
• And much more…

Photographer’s Pricing Guide + Workbook

It works great both for people just starting out and for people who have been in business for several years, as YOU determine how much you want to make, then it takes your expenses into account and how much you expect to do during the year and tells you what you need to charge to make that much.

Because you decide how much you want to make, you can choose to make less your first few years while building your business in order to grow your portfolio, allowing you to grow into the higher prices you’ll eventually need to charge to get to full profitability.

Shoot more than just one type of session? This pricing guide also helps you to price all the different types of services you offer, such as both portraits and weddings.

Photography Client Questionnaires

Photography questionnaires do far more than simply giving you basic contact information about your client. They help you get to know your client and their needs so you can give them the best experience possible and help set proper expectations with your clients.

The better their expectations are set, the better experience they have, the more money they will spend, and the more likely they are to tell other people about what an amazing experience they had with you and recommend your business to them.

The questionnaire library comes with questionnaires for Weddings, Family Portraits, Newborn Portraits, and Senior Portraits.

The photography questionnaires come with three different versions:

• Editable Word Document
• PDF that’s ready to send
• Gravity Forms for easy integration of these forms into your website (You must own Gravity Forms in order to use this version)

Creative Pricing and Packaging for Photographers

This e-book talks about the psychology of pricing and creating packages, not how to price your photography, and it is truly fantastic and really works.

After implementing the suggestions he had in his book and changing around my packages, I’d say that 90% of my clients now choose one of the two packages that I’m really wanting them to buy. It’s amazing. Tons of great stuff in here that I’d highly, highly suggest.

He’s got a number of other good resources for photographers as well, such as photo blog templates, album templates, and textures. Head on over to the Tofurious Store now.

Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to do amazing forms and questionnaires right on your website.

The beauty of this tool is that it lets you do conditional logic. That’s a fancy way of saying that it changes the information it asks for based upon earlier information entered into the form.

For example, I use it as my main contact form on my wedding photography business website. One of the first questions I ask is why they are contacting me. If they select the wedding photography field, the rest of the questions are wedding-specific, such as their wedding date and location. If they select newborn photos, they get questions about their due date. It’s pretty slick, and is super-easy to set up.

The Go-To Guide For Client E-mails: 100+ E-mail Templates For Photographers

Sometimes, you get “those” clients. You know, the ones that who ask you to work for less than you charge and want everything for nothing. The ones who are never satisfied. The ones who require hand holding at every turn. These clients can really stress a photographer out and leave you wondering how to respond while still being polite and professional, rather than defensive or emotional.

The fact is, the majority of difficult client situations can be completely avoided.

This e-book will empower you with specific step-by-step instructions to respond with confidence to even the most difficult of situations and show you exactly what you need to do to avoid them in the first place.

There are over 100 email templates for many specific situations and questions, including:

• How to justify your prices to someone who says you’re too high
• How many weddings have you shot? (When you have little to no experience)
• How to explain to a client that digital files have value
• When the client has hired you, but now seems to want a different style of photography
• How to deal with missed payments
• What to say when you made a mistake, and how to make it right
• How to respond to requests for advanced editing beyond your normal edits
• How to respond when someone expresses disappointment in their photos
• What to say to people who ask you to shoot for free or for “good exposure”

In addition to having a ready resource of over 100 professional e-mail templates to consult, you’ll learn:

• How to take the stress out of working with friends & family
• Why some people have more difficult clients than others (and what you can do to get rid of them)
• Specific examples that you can take action on immediately that explain how we prevent clients from becoming difficult from the first time they interact with our business until after our work with them is complete
• Three common mistakes made by photographers that cause additional stress with clients
• The “P.H.O.T.O.” method for diffusing disappointed or angry clients, regardless of the situation
• How to delight your clients so that they can’t stop telling people about you!
• How to book more clients by building relationships with other photographers
• Wedding Photography Success Tips, including
  • How to seriously rock a wedding
  • How to handle requests from guests and still stay on schedule
  • How to respond to difficult vendor situations that arise while shooting a wedding
• The Modern Tog’s entire wedding workflow process from initial contact to final product delivery

Photography Web Marketing Guide

This e-book offers 35 pages of business building recommendations to grow your online presence through search engines, social media, and email newsletters. It shows you how to take that traffic and increase the number of clients who contact you by focusing on simple design updates and conversion tactics. Learn:

• How to get more website visitors to call you
• Ways to find search-friendly keywords and get popular sites to link to yours
• How to optimize your homepage and blog posts for Google
• How to take advantage of your email list, plus connect it to Facebook and Twitter
• Ideas to grow your social media following

Photography Blog Success

This e-book offers 55 pages of blog building ideas. We understand blogging is one of the hardest tasks for photographers keep up with, or even know where to begin. This PDF ebook helps you determine an action plan for blogging with content that gets shared and helps clients call you today. Learn:

• How to make your blog an integral part of a successful photography business
• How to use your personality to attract ideal clients
• Ideas for posts that lead to new business
• Ways to bring in more traffic and turn visitors into leads
• Suggestions from top bloggers in photography with examples and screenshots

Ah, Don Julio. What great cocktails you make! And, I’m so lucky as to photograph them, this time with the mixologists at San Francisco’s Tres Bar & Restaurant. On today’s agenda was something being called the “Luxury Drop”, essentially a cocktails masquerading as a shot. So popular is this trend, that Don Julio actually published a book showcasing mixologists from across the US and their individual creations. According to Matt Fleeger, mixologist at Tres and creator of the “El Ultimo Trago”, and Executive Beverage Director Ashley Miller, customers of Tres love Matt’s tequila creation. Tres is a great place to stop after work or before a Giants game, and offers private dining, margarita-making classes, Tequila tastings and more. If you love Mexican food and Tequila, check them out!

El Ultimo Trago
3/4 oz Don Julio Reposado
1/4 oz creme de mure
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1/2 oz cava.

Combine Don Julio, Creme de mure and Angostura over ice. Shake and double-strain into a DOC glass, then add the cava. Garnish with lime wedge.

Tres
130 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 227-0500

What a great time this last shoot was! I had the pleasure of photographing John Ricklefs, the incredibly friendly Manager of Aurea Restaurant, along with some amazing food and cocktails. The restaurant, located at the Stanford Court Renaissance Hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill, combines the hotel’s historic roots with modern touches — from avant-garde seating arrangements beneath an eye-catching, Tiffany-style dome to contemporary, playful sculptures and chandeliers. With a dramatic, glass-encased, floor-to-ceiling “wall of wine” as a design focal point, Aurea features an illuminated wine-centric bar that operates as a classic coffee-bar café by day and transitions in the evening into a lively restaurant lounge where guests can enjoy Aurea’s menu of small plates celebrating Bay Area and California culinary artisans.

For those of you wanna-be mixologists:

The Cardinal (in the tall glass)
No 209 Gin
Pages Parfait Amour
Pear, Basil

Daisy May (rocks glass)
Absolut Peach
St Germain
Grapefruit
Brandied Cherry
Orange Bitters

I’ve always wanted to check out the popular San Francisco Restaurant, Michael Mina. Thanks to a recent assignment by Tasting Panel Magazine I was able to not only pay them a visit, but also sample their great cocktails.

Celebrity Chef Michael Mina has become internationally renowned for his bold, balanced flavors and small-plate style, and at Michael Mina, San Francisco, the chef’s sensibilities are merged with Japanese and French influences. The dinner menu is à la carte with the option to have the chef cook for your table. The menu also features items designed for the table to share. Michael Mina was named Restaurant of the Year 2011 by Esquire Magazine.

The Tasting Panel Magazine and Purity Vodka recently teamed up to put nine of the nation’s top bartenders to the test in our Red Carpet Cocktail Challenge. Michael Mina bartender, Jennifer Russick, showed off her mixologist skills as she prepared her Pineapple Express, made with Purity Vodka.

Michael Mina
252 California St. (between Front and Battery)
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.397.9222

Located on Geary Street in the affectionately named “TenderNob” neighborhood of San Francisco, Rye is a hip 1,200-square-foot space owned and designed by Greg Lindgren and Jon Gasparini (of Rosewood and 15 Romolo fame). The monthly rotating drink menu includes libations like the Sazerac, laced with a dash of bitters and a rinse of pastis; and the Atomic Applebomb, a concoction of apple brandy, fresh-pressed apple juice, and ginger beer. For today’s visit to Rye for an article that appears in the April issue of The Tasting Panel Magazine, Lindgren made us “The DogPatch”, his well-known variation on a stirred Manhattan.

The “DogPatch”
2 oz Masterson’s Rye Canadian whisky
3/4 oz Noilly Prat Vermouth
3/4 oz Averna
2 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters

Stir and serve up in a chilled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with lemon peel.

Rye
688 Geary
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.474.4448
http://www.ryesf.com/

I recently got to photograph the really cool bar, 83 Proof, in San Francisco for Tasting Panel Magazine’s recent article on Masterson’s whiskey. This is a bar that takes its cocktails very seriously. The bartenders are alchemist savants, thumbing through their comprehensive knowledge of spirits and herbs, veggies, and fruits to design your perfect drink. You tell them what flavors you like and they’ll build a cocktail to match. Throwing some muscle into it, they’ll work the pestle to mash up fresh ingredients such as strawberries for a jalapeño vodka mix. Each bartender has his or her specialty: some favor rum, some whiskey or scotch, but all are friendly, unpretentious, and incredibly attentive. They love what they do, spending time to explain the flavors as well as the bar’s history. The building has a bit of S.F. folklore and notoriety tied to it: it was a Chinese triad bar that got closed down for over 10 years following a violent shootout, and prior to that it was a longshoreman’s bar. The original 1936 flooring remains. To see the full article, eloquently written by Northern California Editor Deborah Parker Wong, check out the April issue of Tasting Panel Magazine.

83 Proof
83 First Street (between Market and Mission)
San Francisco, CA
http://www.83proof.com/