Austin Event Photographer - Crockett High School Prom

The proms just keep getting more and more exciting! This Saturday we photographed a prom for Crockett High School at La Zona Rosa in Austin. It was fabulous!

With the Austin Cityscape as the students background of choice, we were able to deliver portrait packages to every student who purchased... On The Spot!

Of course the evening was not without its hiccups. As policy, we always arrive to proms an extra hour early to leave room for any challenge that may arise. And this Saturday was no exception. It's a good thing too, because we ran into a big one! Our Virtual Background system has light module assembly inside it that basically makes the whole system work. On the first test shot we took on Saturday, our flash tube blew. I don't know if it was the massive thunderstorm that rolled in, or just that flash tube's time to die, but we didn't have a way to take any pictures. That's not exactly correct. We could take photographs, we just couldn't see the backgrounds. And when you've promised a school an Austin Cityscape background, you had better deliver.

As luck would have it we have just recently purchased a second Virtual Background system. It has been so popular that we simply needed a second system to handle all of the events. Along with the purchase of our second system, we bought a backup for our entire light module assembly. So with the additional time we had and the new assembly sitting back in our office, we were able to be up and running before our scheduled start time of 8 PM.

Whew! That was a close one!

Tune in next week for more prom adventures.

Kate

Austin TX Event Photographer / Prom Photography

Proms are now in full swing for 2008. We completed our second prom of the year last Saturday night for Stony Point High School. Wow! Did we ever have a blast! With our new Virtual Background system, we are able to offer prom portraits like no other photographer can.

Stony Point High School juniors and seniors we able to select from six different background choices for their portraits. They viewed their photographs on the computer monitors, and selected their favorite pose from the photos taken. Then, within 10 or 15 minutes, the students returned to pick up their portraits.

I must tell you that even though I have been delivering prom photographs onsite at proms for nearly nine years now, I have never been so amazed at the results, or as proud of our team as I was on Saturday.

Event photography is a real art when you are dealing with large numbers of people. And 800 high school students is what I call HIGH VOLUME! Most photography companies wouldn't dream of taking the time to show the students their portraits, but to show and deliver portraits.... with six background options? Well, it is nothing short of miraculous that we have figured out how to do it. And do it really well!

The students were ecstatic! I was so fun watching their expressions as we told them that they could pick their backgrounds, pick their favorite pose, and receive their portraits in about 15 minutes.

And for me, it was truly gratifiying to realize that after nine years of perfecting our process, we finally actually have this thing down to a science.

We have more proms to come... and graduations too. So stay tuned!

Kate

Austin Event Photographer - Virtual Background

Little did we know when we starting using the Virtual Background system how much it would impact how we do business. Prior to the VB (Virtual Background), we were using either greenscreen technology or standard muslin backgrounds for our onsite portraits.... and they both worked pretty well. But with the technological shift to VB, Get The Picture has noticed a significant impact on portraits sold.

If you haven't seen the Virtual Background system in action, you really ought to check it out. It is a projection system that allows the photographer to offer an endless number of background selections in their studio.(Even though Get The Picture doesn't really have a "studio" because we are mobile). We set up our "studios" onsite at events. So we do have to limit our selections, or our customers will go mad trying to choose. But we are actually able to offer up to 6 different background choices at one event. Six different background selections that are relevant to that event! It's really very cool!

Anyway... since having brought on our VB, we have noticed that packages are getting larger and more people are buying portraits than normally would have... bucking the industry trend being seen across the globe. With consumers having more and more control over their own photographs, they are tending to use professionals less and less. What is exciting for us is that the Virtual Background system allows us to produce a level of quality and professionalism onsite that no consumer can create themselves. Afterall... we're not doing "snapshots", we're committed to providing studio-quality portraits... ON THE SPOT!

Kate

Austin Event Photographer - Daddy Daughter Dance

If anyone ever tells you that writing blogs is easy, please pop them once for me! Kate asked me to write a blog about a recent event called a Father/ Daughter dance in which we set up two portable studios with matching backgrounds to maintain continuity and allow the line to move quickly. Prior to the event you would have thought we had this in the bag and bring em' on! Little did we know how many they would bring on! Even though we had two lines and were moving our subjects quickly through our process, the line never seemed to get shorter! Kate and I were on one line and Frank and Patricia were on the other and neither set up was empty at any time. Michaela was taking and processing orders with blinding speed but to no avail. There must have been a recent boon of families with daughters in this part of Austin! Now, I realize I am making this sound out of control but it was quite the contrary, even though we were working with over whelming numbers, we kept working to move as many people through our system until everyone was photographed and happy with their portrait! We even had one couple come up after they had turned the lights on and we stayed to photograph them and gave them their portrait to take home. They were very happy. All in all it was a tiring experience but also a fun one to see these little girls proudly posing in their beautiful dresses with their daddys. Even though some of these little ones grew a little grumpy in line while they waited, my hat is off to their dads for keeping them entertained and smiling when their time came.
I can't wait for the Mother/ Son dance to see those little guys in their suits!

Charles

New Web Site

Welcome to our new web site and Get The Picture blog!

Our company has undergone a huge transformation in 2007, and our new web site brands our whole new "look" and "feel". No longer do we offer just portraits printed at events. Get The Picture now offers many photographic services and products to enhance events of all types and budgets. You can check out our new photos on chocolate by going to the Services Page and clicking on The Edible Picture. Our Event Scrapbooks and Coffee Table Books add a new dimension to archiving your special event photographs, and if you would like complete control over your images, we now offer Photo DVDs and Slideshows.

Our new logo, color scheme and tagline are all incorporated into our new web site and we are thrilled with the way everything has really come together this year.

Reflecting on 2007, we have accomplished a great deal. Citysearch customers voted Get The Picture Best Photographer in Austin for 2007, and we hope that everyone who loves us will vote for us again in January 2008. We also won an On Course award from the Business Success Center for business development in 2007. We are looking forward to making 2008 our best year ever.

As always, your comments and suggestions are very valuable to us. Please let us know how we can serve you better.

Happy New Year!

GTP Staff