Day 2; life of a Missoula Photographer

In two days I will be back in Philadelphia, where I spent 10 years teaching photography at Penn and writing my second and third book. Not to mention adopting our first and second child. It has been 4 years since I have been back and I am looking forward to seeing my old friends and show our children a " big city". I know I should be talking about photo shoots, weddings, portraits and commercial shoot to draw attention to my work, after all is that one of the strategies about blogging? Well I can now say I have written on my blog for 2 consecutive days. For those who follow this blog I apologize if I mislead you.

I could talk about the architectural shoot I have in September for a new client, or the call for a senior portrait I will be doing in September or the call I got today to see if I was available to shoot a wedding in two weeks ( sorry out of town_) and I will in my next blog....now it is time for sleep..thanks

Blogspot, Blogspot Blogspot

A brief update...what a difference a letter can make. I left out the "s" in blogspot and a friend in NYC and in Sweden (?) sorry Arno...I forgot where you were from...made note the change has been made and thank you for caring and sharing :} :)

New Template and Pin Up

Well I felt it was time for a change and what better way than to mix Buddha and Pin Up Photography. The Buddha is in reference to my new blog layout and my inner self. The Vintage Pin Up photography is about a new genre of photography I am cultivating and exploring.

I plan to journal both inner reflections and outer experience in the following blog. If you are interested in my Photography business in Western Montana than I suggest you subscribe to my monthly newsletter If you want up to date exploits of my Vintage Pin Up photography exploits you may want to become a fan at Vintage Pin Up photography. Two more days and then we take a family trip to my old stomping ground Philadelphia. I am really looking forward to seeing old friends, family and the sites. If you didn't know this already I am a closet Philadelphia Philly fan to the chagrin of my extraordinary wife, Kate. My friend, Michael, manage to score some tickets to a Philly game next week. So I will be taking my two kids to their first professional sports event. This is going to be interesting since my 6 and 8 year will be going to a stadium that could fit half of the population of Missoula in it. Stay posted and no promises but I hope to be more up to date with the blog...Come September I will be more active with my business starting off with a new architectural client and photographing a home in George town lake Montana...

Airstreams & Transitions

The Airstream Staff..they were great
I knew I was in trouble when I e-mailed my friend and great automobile photographer Michael Furman in Philadelphia and asked him for advice on photographing an Airstream. His response: " I am getting a headache just thinking about it. It has to be one of the hardest things to photograph...good luck". When the Mintage company, aka Rory Baumeister, saw my work of " Shiny Objects of Desire" he thought I was the right photographer, at least in Missoula, to photograph his refurbishing business of Airstreams. So naively but with some thought I went ahead and took on the challenge. Two rolls of seamless, 4 helpers and an very enthusiastic client we spent the day in East Missoula photographing the Airstream. What a blast it was and lighting nightmare...But I learned a lot and most importantly the client was " wowed" by he results..all I can say is wow. "Above and beyond Steve. More than I could imagine. I love it. I'll get a check out begining of the week. Can you do a picture with the three guys outside the trailer with a black background. Talk to you next week
thanks
rory" Pretty nice compliment and better yet is that we get to do it again with another Airstream next month...and perhaps a trip to Yellowstone this summer to photograph one on location....what fun.
Another exciting bit of news is I have a subtenant for the front of my studio which will cut my expenses in half and help me hobble out of this recession..I hope. Frances will be moving in May 1st and will open a high end consignment shop...The name " Frankies Mercantile" It will bring in more foot traffic to the studio and will benefit both of us, I think..I will keep you all posted...The last bit of news until the next post..it is April 13th and it is snowing in Missoula...argghhhh...Spring what Spring.... One last item...I will be more aggressively pursuing the Senior Portrait market in Missoula Montana...with a barrage of mailers, e-mailers and special offers...this will be happening in May so be on the watch....if you like...

big news from the Rockies

What can I say, I am just too busy to blog..sort of ...but still I must blog..why? well I have been advised that in order for search engines to identify my web I need to blog about Montana Wedding photography, Montana Architectural Photography, Montana Photography and I also need to blog about being a photographer in Missoula. So here I am almost 5 am on a Saturday morning thinking about about blogging rather than counting sheep. Since I am here let's get started.

Lesson number #1 when creating a domain name it is worth spending the extra money to buy multiple names. Case in point. I bought Begleiter.com about 10 year ago..good move, sort of except now there is another Steve Begleiter who got into the World Series of Poker final or the WSOP and won over a million dollars...so when you google Steven Begleiter he takes up the first page with all about him and his poker experience...arggghhhh...I suppose with a million dollars I could also buy the first page ...Poker???? there is sort of dark side to this but I won't go there...

Lesson #2 Never say No and never say Yes...Maybe..I have learned that no job is too small, only the budget and you never know where the initial job may lead...Remember that baseball card I photographed that is worth over a million dollars ( there is that number again) Well the owners came back to have me photograph more cards...More interesting is how they are going to "unload this baseball card" The owners have contact the the Major League Baseball organization and the state of New York and will be raffling off the Honus Wagner baseball card at $5 a ticket. They estimate they may sell up to $200 million tickets for the luck person to win a million dollar ticket..I will buy one at $5 you never know...anyway 75% of the proceeds will go to charity a very good thing and a win win for all...So keep you eyes and hears open for the Honus Wagner Baseball card raffle..just think the main reason why this card is so valuable is because honus wagner hated cigarettes and stop the printing presses after 100 card were printed... baseball historians do say he was one of the greatest players in baseball..sorry Babe...

On the Missoula photography studio front looks like the studio is becoming a "blended business" due to the recession, lack of income and lack of compassion from my landlord, I will be blending my business and subletting the front space to a Consignment store...which I think is a really good thing. Making lemonade out of lemons....What I did realize with the right business up front it would bring foot traffic into my space..plus it will be nice to have someone else share the large space...no man is an island. So the lucky tenant will be Frances and she will be moving in on May 1...splitting the overhead should help me get through this tough recession and professional photography downturn. I am feeling more optimistic and even started to clean up the studio space. I have even believe I have gotten two new clients...RawWise and Raw vegetable client..more on this later. and a guy who refurbishes AirStreams...more later on this to..but all and all I am feeling lucky again...a feeling I sort of lost ever since I had to look hard at the numbers putting my tax material together for 2009...my goal is to stay a professional photographer to at least 2012 so I can say that my photography business has been around for a 30 years a good run in my opinion.... now it time to me to crawl back into bed and really count sheep...btw become a follower of this blog if you like...and let me know about your blogging...

Ya gotta luv this crazy profession & baseball

I don't usually write mid day but I thought I would add a short story..or least the beginning of one. I got a call last week, " Can you shoot a baseball card?" the man asked...I paused and thought about it for a moment.." sure, what is it you want?" I can't find anyone in this town who can shoot a baseball card and give me a good reproduction" he said frustrated. "Bring it by, I am sure I can help you out." He and his partner arrived on Saturday at my photo studio, in downtown, Missoula. It turned out he had discovered a baseball card from 1909 in shoebox that was given to him as a kid. This baseball card was in pretty good shape and it was of Honus Wagner of Pittsburg. As it turns out Honus had only about 10o cards of himself made before he stopped the print run. There are perhaps 10 in existence, the last one was auctioned off for 1.6 million dollars. So you can imagine how my client felt when he discovered this card in a shoe box that was given to him as a boy. They brought in the card, covered in scratched plexiglass. I had set up my copy light and photographed the front and the back. I brought the card back to my post production room to down load the image. When I brought up the image on my screen and the clients saw how sharp the detail was they got very excited. Their objective was to verify that the card was authentic and with the help of the zoom control in PS4 it was very evident. I did mention to them that I wished I had a high res camera that cost about 30 thousand to get the best resolution and he said when they sell the card they may get me one....I won't hold my breath..but it was an exciting discovery and I wish them the best in its authentication and sale...you never know...strange business...

social networking and the photographer

Social networking seems to be the buzz and has been the buzz for some time now. When I was teaching at RMSP a couple years ago, I taught a class on the " new media" and spoke about SEO's, Keywording and Twitter and stated the importance in being aware of these tools to be competitive in the market. Unfortunately, which happens..it was an apathetic class and seemed more interested in texting their buddies or working on their other assignments, in class. That experienced soured my joy of sharing information but I still came to realize that social networking was a powerful tool for a photographer to get their name out cost effectively. One thing I did learn after teaching photography for over 14 years is that it forced me to research current trends, historical context and articulate the what I learned in a simple format. Sort of like mining for gold and sharing your wealth. Back to social networking..why bother? Well the media is digital, and a good portion of the market you are targeting will be looking at the web for "talent" in quotes to remind all visual artist they are the ones that provide content, concept and " the goods". Like all technology it has the capacity for " good and evil" take radiation for instance....please....in the " sort of "harmless world of the social media...we ( the artist) have an opportunity to reach a broad audience, whether they like or not. In the " old days" artist, if they were not huddled in their closet, smoking cigarettes, trying to come up with the next big thing, where making phone calls to make appointments to meet with actual people to show them what they were working on. Meeting actual people, now there is a concept. Actually meeting face to face, looking into their eyes, getting nervous while they look at your work and ask how your family is doing...ahhh sort of like Cream of Wheat...comfort...Before I ramble too much, I guess my question is "is all this social media, really social?" Do you ( me) really get work through social media? ( yes, sort of , well I think....) Is Facebook really a place to share all your personal info or to boast about your work life, ( which gets annoying if talked about too much) yes..sort of ... I think so... The truth is , It has arrived, just like the smartphone, e-mail, and marshmallows, it is here to stay and change... but does it really help the photographer create??? not really, but it is a vehicle the photographer can use to show the world what they are up to ....oh well a strange post, no pic...next post I will show you my photo of the Roomba..if you care to take a look...lol