Things have been a little quiet around the website lately, but that’s not to say the Consortium’s been quiet. Quite the contrary: we’ve all been way too busy to talk about it.

That goes double for me. Last time you heard from me, it was just a little press release announcing the release of Gods Tomorrow — forgivably, I figure, because most of you understand how much work that was.

It was also something of a last-minute accomplishment before the monster that is National Novel Writing Month moved into my life. I had a mighty successful one — featuring the conclusion of the third sequel to Gods Tomorrow, which I look forward to publishing early in 2012 — but it was everything I could do to keep up with absolutely critical responsibilities. Pleasant diversions like blogging, watching TV, hanging out with friends and family, and even talking with friends and family all got pushed to the back burner.

Which is to say, Dec. 1. [Read more →]

(Baby) Julie is very serious about her chocolate milk

Family Photos

Shooting photos of kids is such a fun experience. This weekend family from Oklahoma came to visit and we got to take photos of our beautiful nieces. They absolutely love having photos taken, so it was no difficult task!

Website Development

Other than that, it has been another week filled primarily with website development. There is so much work to be done with it! We could easily have had a functioning site up complete with all the standard pages one usually sees, but we are making a concentrated effort to create a site that stands out from the competition, not because it’s flashy and cool (those are a dime a dozen), but because it draws the potential client in. It tells them that we understand how they feel, the anxieties they might have about hiring a photographer and doing a photo session. It gives them a very good feel for who we are and how we run our business…and how we’re different. It convinces them that a portrait session by Julie V. Photography is a wonderful experience that they want to have.

Our site is the third partner in the business. It advertises for us, it sells, it communicates with customers, it solves problems, it provides customer service, it builds a brand and a reputation. Few photographers realize how powerful a site can be, and put minimal effort into it.

We are carefully creating, writing, scrapping, revising, rewriting, redesigning, publishing and republishing to perfect each page. To make each page motivate the visitor to take some kind of action, whether that’s clicking through to another page, signing up for our email list, friending us on Facebook, or signing up for a portrait session with their new favorite Topeka photographer.

So we’ve put the nose to the grindstone this week in developing our site. We have established a template for our session information pages that should work very well for us and we will have the first of these up and published this week.

Further behind the scenes we are working on developing the foundation of our permanent, fully designed site. Details will come in the future as this develops, but for now we’re focusing first on writing permanent content that will carry over to the future, spiffy design and work hard for us all day every day.

One submission to the Topeka Photowalk contest

This week I have felt the need for the Consortium to be a fully-operating organization quite heavily.

Julie and I, against considerable odds have accomplished some significant, gritty work in establishing our photography business, but through all of it we strained against limitations imposed against us by my demanding full-time job and unpredictable life circumstances like a baby nephew going to the emergency room and staying up all night to help his mother, and Julie having some sick days afterward.

Practicing and improving our photography received only a sliver of Julie’s time and none of mine. Instead we spent our time communicating with potential clients, building web pages during lunch breaks, and trying our inexperienced hands at graphic design. It’s been quite a full week! [Read more →]

Paige’s Senior Photo Style Session

On Tuesday and Wednesday we did a two-part photo shoot for a high school senior. It was an amazing time with a wonderful client. She favors a 60′s/70′s psychedelic style that gave us a lot of artistic freedom to create unique portraits.

Drawing on inspiration from sources such as classic rock album covers and Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe, Julie V. used some extreme photo-editing to create portraits that are surreal and beautiful. It was a pleasure to watch her use methods so contrary to her typical approach, but create a perfect, natural fit to our client’s personality. [Read more →]