Get The Picture Inc. Blog

The Austin Chamber of Commerce held their 132nd Annual Meeting on Tuesday Feb. 9th here in Austin, Texas. We had the pleasure of photographing the event for them. It’s always an a pleasure to be the photographer for the Austin Chamber, but this event is even more special than most because it honors the Austinite of the Year. I love taking pictures at awards banquets because you get to hear great people speak, and this award presentation was no different.
While many of us muddle through their lives, dealing with things as they come and/or reacting to the life that is “happening” around us… others, like this year’s Austinite of the Year, Charles Barnett, really dedicate themselves to things that matter. They are committed to something important and to making a difference. And it’s always great to have the chance to watch someone like that be recognized for his important work.

Above is a short video I put together from the photos taken by our photographer at the event.

Kate

By far… Daddy Daughter Dances are one of my favorite types of events to photograph! Saturday night we took photos at a Daddy Daughter Dance here in Austin. Wow! What fun!!! The girls ranged in age from 6 months to 18 years old, and they all looked fabulous! Most were formally dressed for a night on the town with Daddy, and as this event sorta doubles as a Valentine’s event, many were in lovely shades of red or pink. The dads were in nice suits or even tuxedos.

We got some wonderful portraits of the 300-400 “couples” that went through our portrait lines. The video above shows a few of our favorites. Enjoy!

Kate

LA based company Matix contaced us to provide onsite paparazzi type photos at their Distributors Party at the Driskill in Austin on Saturday night. I absolutely loved doing this event! The people were fantastic and fun and they loved getting their photographs instantly!

My event contact Steve was seeking to make his party fun and memorable and decided to utilize our onsite photography studio to do it. Nothing attracts attention like a red carpet photo booth, and ours was busy from the moment the door opened! Happy guests and great pictures!…What a rush!

Here is a video of some of the images taken at the event.

Charles

Last week I attended the Lago Vista Chamber of Commerce Casino Night Gala. I was there taking green screen photos and putting the guests pictures on a casino background. Everybody remembered us from last year and were looking forward to this year’s photography experience.  They had a great time! While the awards were being presented I decided to pick up the D3S and take some candids of our fellow attendees and presentors.

Thank you to Dee Dee’s Tacos for providing a wonderful spread! And thank you to the Lago Vista Chamber for allowing us to be a part of the gala. We love living La Lago Vida!

Charles

Staying at home with a new baby is such a joy! I do end up missing a lot of fun events though. Last week Charles attended the NACE installation dinner held at Marquee Events’ new location in Austin. If you missed the event like I did, you can get a real feel for it by watching our video. The photos speak for themselves.

Enjoy!!!

Kate

I went to the Austin Chamber of Commerce New Member’s Orientation for the first time this week, even though we’ve been members for many years now. I took our new Nikon D3S with me. It turned into a great conversation starter as I first took their picture and then introduced myself, “Hi, my name is Charles… who are you?” Needless to say, it worked pretty well. I met several great people and made many good contacts. Having a camera in my hand and wearing my photographer’s vest made it clear and obvious that I was a photographer. It worked so well that we booked one job, got a hot lead on some business head shots, and made a really good connection with a large venue in town…. just for starters. I highly recommend networking and the Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Thanks to Schlotzskys and Delish for providing awesome sandwiches and desserts!

Charles

But… we are back. Back to preparing for 2010, working with our new D3S camera, and enjoying our new baby… Oh Yes… and blogging in our “spare time”.

I guess it’s about time that we showed everyone a photograph of our new little one. We have taken tons of snapshots ourselves with the new D3S (which is amazing by the way… but I’ll tell you all about that in another post), but for Max’s official first photograph on the blog, we have decided to upload a very special portrait. This photograph was taken by a wonderful collegue and dear friend of ours… Bill Bastas. He’s really more of an artist than a photographer. The portraits he took of Max and Charles together last week are simply gorgeous!

Here is one of my favorites:

If you would like to have an amazing portrait taken of your loved ones, here is a link to Bill’s web site. Of course we would love to take portraits of you too, but if you don’t work with us… Bill is amazing and wonderful to work with…. and he’s also one of our most favorite people!

www.bastas.com

Kate

The award we received for Austin recently has also been given to us for Lago Vista. Here is the press release from the US Commerce Association.

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Get The Picture Inc Receives 2009 Best of Lago Vista Award

U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement

WASHINGTON D.C., June 8, 2009 — Get The Picture Inc has been selected for the 2009 Best of Lago Vista Award in the Portrait Photographic Studios category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

The USCA “Best of Local Business” Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2009 USCA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

About U.S. Commerce Association (USCA)

U.S. Commerce Association (USCA) is a Washington D.C. based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USCA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.

The USCA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.

SOURCE: U.S. Commerce Association

CONTACT:
U.S. Commerce Association
Email: PublicRelations@us-ca.org
URL: http://www.us-ca.org

Kate

This time we took our Virtual Background system to photograph the event. And we tried something new that we had never done before… we created a new Halloween background, but without using a background slide. One of the really cool things about Virtual Background is that it projects an image of whatever you place on the VB system onto the background screen. Normally we would use slides with photographic or graphic images to project, but if you want to get creative, you can try other things too. That’s what we did on Sunday. At first we were going to use a piece of textured glass, along with an orange gel. We figured this would create a really neat effect, but we had difficulty finding a piece of glass cut to the size we needed, and the event was approaching quickly. So we did some thinking about what else might work well, and we came up with a new plan.

I’m not going to tell you what we ended up using. Instead I’m attaching a photo. Let me know what you think we did. We think it turned out really well!

Kate

Halloween Photo