I have been a complete slacker at reviewing the photographs from my second visit to see Sarah at Children’s Hospital but I finally managed to this weekend.   Sarah has been diagnosed with Acute Meyloid Leukemia and is on her second month stay at the wonderful Children’s Hospital here in Seattle and I got to spend a bunch of time with her during my last visit a couple of weeks ago.  Her energy was super high when I got there and she wasn’t attached to her feeding station so she could be much more mobile.  This time she taught me how to color in her fancy new coloring book and of course we had to go for a bike ride around the ward.  Just like my last visit I had a lot of fun and she is a complete inspiration for us older folks when life seems to be getting us down. 

I’m hoping I get to go back soon and see her.  A few of the many photographs taken that day are posted below and you can read more of her story by clicking here.  

This week the absolute highlight for me was spending time with a very brave and fun young lady called Sarah.  I know Sarah’s Dad, Timothy from many years ago and I recently connected with him via Facebook.  My heart went out to him and his family when I learnt that their beautiful three year old daughter has recently been diagnosed with Acute Meyloid Leukemia (AML).  At these times its often hard to know how to help someone, but one thing I could do was volunteer to photograph Sarah’s journey and I was excited that Sarah said she was ok with that. 

These photographs in this post are from my first trip to Children’s Hospital in Seattle this week where she is a guest.  Sarah is starting a five month journey where she will receive Chemo once a month for the next five months.  She just had her first session recently and I got to hang out with her and her Dad and we had a lot of fun.  This week Sarah also had her feeding tube fitted and as with just about everything else she was a trooper and now has gotten used to it. 

Each week Mum - Katherine, Timothy and Sarah selected a theme and this week its all about the hats and she was mostly wearing a very fetching straw number, along with her helmet when she was peddling around the ward much to the amusement of Dad.  I also got to meet some of the amazing staff at Children’s as they took time to play and look after her, the compassion and skill from these professionals is very comforting.   Here are a few of the many photographs from that day.

I’m excited to go back and capture some more of this very special young lady.  You can read more about Sarah and her story here.

Just a quick note to wish everyone a happy New Year as we see the last of 2008 and 2009 enters.  I do hope that 2009 brings everything that you wish for, that it is happy and wonderful for you and your loved ones. 

What photographs are more appropriate on New Years Eve than the wonderful fireworks display over Seattle’s Space Needle. Good night all!  

Two weeks before before Nicole had their lovely son JJ we got the four of us together to create a photograph for our own holiday card for the studio.  After much discussion we settled on Nicole laying, with us writing ‘Happy Holidays’ on her belly with color blocks and then have Anne, Hillary and myself behind her.   Of course after it wasn’t long before Jester decides to join us, much to the annoyance of Anne.   Unfortunately my remote trigger is broken so I had to put the camera on timer and run back to get into frame. 

Anyway, happy holiday’s to everyone.  Wishing you the simply best time with whatever you are doing.   

Last week was Anne’s birthday and to celebrate it she decided that we should take her photograph while she was in our photography studio here in Seattle.  Taking photographs might seem a normal thing for us to do, but in the few weeks that Anne has been with us she has refused to have her photograph taken.  It’s something that Nicole and I often tease her about. 

So, you can imagine how surprised Nicole and I were when Anne walked in on her birthday saying that she wanted her photograph taken.  Not surprisingly we were busy working on various holiday photograph projects and the day was close to an end and we still hadn’t taken her photograph, so she pulls on her cool Pea Coat and insisted we take her photograph before she left that day!  I used two single lights on one side to give her a more moody look and let the shadow work its magic on the other side. 

When I was looking at these there was something that reminded me of the iconic James Dean photographs taken by Dennis Stock many years ago.  Yeah, I realize its a bit of a stretch but the cool Pea Coat got me thinking. I ended up processing these with some heavy toning to create an older look for these.  All in all I quite like these, I hope Anne will.  

We just sent out our quarterly newsletter that contained the latest updates from our photography studio here in Seattle.   I worked with Heather Musil from Little Bird Web Design & Development to create a new design that I felt reflected our studio and the work we do here.  We wanted a simple and classic design, yet something that stands out amongst the huge amount of emails that we get and something that obviously highlights the photography. 

Since I sent it out a couple of weeks ago I’ve received heaps of compliments from folks that really like the design.  I just found out that it was selected to be highlighted by the company we use to send the emails for its simple and effective design, especially the left hand column with its row of smaller photographs.  If you are a business and want to create a unique design for your marketing I can highly recommend Heather, she does great designs and really easy to work with.     

To check out the design click here

If you want to sign up for our newsletters please complete your details here. 

This coming Saturday from 1pm to 3pm we will be taking part in the second ‘Shop Local Seattle’ event that is happening in Ravenna.  Shop Local is an event put on by the lovely Shannon Evans and she gathers a large number of small business’s together allowing potential customers to talk to the business owners about their services and offerings.  The event is free to people wanting to check it out and there is even free Vitamin Water as well.  

We will be there displaying some new products and talking about our upcoming holiday package.  I’m excited to be part of this and in a world where so many companies are these huge chain stores it’s great that Shannon is gathering a bunch of local small business’s in one place so that potential customers can check out what makes small business different and in many cases better.      

The event takes place at Ravenna Eckstein Community Center Gym from 12-3. 6535 Ravenna Ave NE Seattle WA 98115. 

To find more details of the other vendors check out this Shop Local Seattle  I hope to see you there.

I’ve been away from the blog for way too long so I wanted to provide a quick update. 

Over the last month or so we have been doing a minor remodel of studio that took longer than I would have hoped.  Construction wise it wasn’t huge although there were days when the place was a complete mess.   It’s almost finished and I’m going to post some photo’s soon but we are really happy with it.  Amongst some of the changes that you will notice is that we now much more space to hang some of our favorite photographs of our clients, we setup a new workstation in the center of the studio with a large screen which often has a cool slide show running on it and the bathroom has been re-modeled. 

The other big change is that we have been interviewing and hiring.  Over the last six months we have gradually been growing with returning and new clients which has been really exciting.  I ended up finding myself just too busy to keep up and so needed more help.  Depending on when you next visit the studio you might get to meet Anne, Hillary and Nicole.

Lastly we have been getting ready for the holiday season which isn’t far away and that has kept us busy.  More to follow on that soon.  

I finally got around to creating a new page on the ever so popular Facebook site for our photography studio here in Seattle.  We have been experimenting with Facebook advertising for a while now with some interesting results. 

If you use Facebook go ahead and add yourself as a fan for our new page.  I’m going to start to rollout some promotions and other news and events via this new page.  Click on the ‘Find us on Facebook’ graphic below to check out our new page.  

Last week I was working a fun evening event, but boy was it warm.  Towards the end of the evening I managed to sit down and rest and have a glass of wine.  This shot was taken by either Amy or Heather who I was chatting to at the time (sorry, can’t remember who) but one of them grabbed the camera and fired off a couple of shots.   Its funny to see me on the other end of the camera for a change!

On a day when most folks in the USA get the day off, making a nice long weekend this year I wanted to write a quick note to wish everyone a happy July 4th!    I’m planning a small gathering this evening with friends where we are going to hang on the deck and watch the fireworks over Seattle.  Well that’s assuming that someone bought their fireworks a long time ago! 

Hope everyone has a fun & safe day.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been working to put together another video to introduce new clients to our services and our approach to photography.  This short video starts out with yours truly in one of our main shooting spaces here in our photography studio here in Seattle. After a quick slide show of photographs it then moves into our presentation room with me talking about our approach to printing and how we create original pieces of art which is one of our main areas of focus.  The up-beat music is by Seth Hartman.  Click on the thumbnail below to play the video.

A fun little project.  This video is currently running as one of the Videoad’s on crosscut.com  I’m hoping to include more video’s over the coming months as its such a good way to give folks a feel for what we do here in our photography studio. 

I have been working with my friend Melvin Powel who is an excellent film and video maker to create some video’s for my photography business.  I already have lots of text on both my main web site and this blog about my approach to photography and what makes our studio unique, but as a visual artist I very much believe that video is a good way to convey my message in a compelling way. 

This is the first of hopefully many video’s that we will be producing together.  We are working with the wonderful folks from Mixpo that provide an excellent platform for small business’s wanting to create their own videoad and its their solution that is hosting this. Just click on the image below to start the video.  

This VideoAd requires that you have the Flash Player plugin installed and that your JavaScript is enabled in your browser.

VideoAd by Mixpo

Technorati Tags: Photography, Phil Holden, Photography Studios Seattle, Childrens Photography, Maternity photographs, Pregnancy Photography, Seattle, Newborn Photography, Photography Videos, Videoad

I decided to create a new blog that’s primary focus is the new studio that I’m going to open.  Over the last couple of years I have spent much more of my time photographing people and it occurred to me that I really enjoy it.  To me there is something very special about being able to capture that instant of time, that fleeting moment, a facial expression, a certain glint in the eyes.  And its not just about a person, its about relationships and the people they love.  Broadly speaking I call this my ‘life’ photography.  And then what I really love, is the expression that I get when I delivery a big print to a client with one of their kids on it.  That moment, watching their reactions has to be priceless. 

So to this end I decided to open up a studio to extend the current services that I offer.  There is still much work to be done to get it ready and I’m sure its going to take me longer than I hope, but the goal is to get it complete, along with launching my new web site by late summer 2007.  Time will tell if that happens on time.   Until I get things setup I’m not sure how much time I will spend here and of course I still need to keep my current blog, Image and Word active.  I think I will involve that to focus on my travel and just live in Seattle.  Time will see.

More on the studio and why I decided to open it at some other time.  Cheers,

Phil Holden