Christmas Special & Fine Art Gallery!

Well, it's almost that time again and I'd like to kick off the holiday season early with a special gift to all of my valued customers from the last couple of years.

I’ve reactivated all of your proofing galleries until December 31st, 2009 and if you enter the code “christmasbonus” when checking out, you’ll receive 35% off your entire print order.

The 35% discount will be available for all print orders placed before December 31st, 2009 but if you'd like your prints delivered before Christmas, please be sure to place your order by November 16th. This promotion is available to my past clients as well as their friends and family.

If you need your access information again, just let me know and I'll email it to you.



I’m also excited to announce the debut of my personal Fine Art Gallery which you’ll find at www.michaelmoore.ca/photocart/ It’s a collection of some of my favourite photos taken around the world from Europe, New Zealand and across North America. All Fine Art prints are professionally printed on archival paper and mounted to gatorboard for added durability and to prevent warping over time. They're a great way to liven up your home with some vibrant colour and also make great gifts. The Christmas Special also applies to these Fine Art Prints until December 31st!

Stay tuned for more info on my new Canvas Gallery Wraps which are now available for wedding/portrait prints as well as the new Fine Art prints!

Michael

We've moved!

This news is a bit overdue, but for those of you don't already know, we've recently moved from the Peterborough area to Milton, ON. Luckily we still have an alternate base of operations near Peterborough so we're still able to offer the same service to our Peterborough and Kawartha wedding clients and we're now much closer and more accessible to our GTA clients.

I'm excited about setting up our new showroom and meeting area and look forward to having existing and prospective clients over to check out our awesome new presentation once everything is ready!

Michael

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a wonderful holiday.

I hope your holiday season is filled with joy and laughter with family and friends and a special wish goes out to all of my clients who will be spending their first Christmas together as a married couple!

I've also been keeping track of our enlargement print sales, and as promised, I've just sent our donation to Oxfam for the year (click here for more details). The total (including my usual monthly contributions) has come to $384. With your help, we're working to help end poverty and injustice across the globe and here's to hoping we can do even better next year!

Peace, love and best wishes to you and yours,

Michael

Published in WedLuxe Magazine!

How exciting! WedLuxe is one of the leading high-end wedding publications in Canada. I'm so honoured that they've chosen to publish an editorial on a wedding I photographed last year - Kerri & Ben's wedding in Niagara-on-the-Lake!

You can see the editorial here: www.wedluxe.com/index.cfm?id=7145 ...or have a look at your local newsstand.

The editorial is featured in WedLuxe's "Real-life Weddings" gallery on page 64 of the Summer/Fall 2008 issue. This section highlights the unique and/or high-end details of the featured weddings, so the focus is more on the details than the portraits, but if you're interested in seeing more from that wedding, be sure to check out Kerri & Ben's blog entry or their engagement session entry.

Michael

Helping to end poverty and injustice...through print sales!

Hey everyone,

It may sound silly, but I've always dreamed of being a millionaire philanthropist. Well, I'm a long way from the millionaire part but I'd like to get a head start by donating partial print proceeds to one of my favourite charities: Oxfam. Starting today, for every 8x10 or larger print ordered, I'll donate $2 to Oxfam Canada. I'll hold onto the donation until the end of the year and will report back here with the total amount we've raised!

For those of you not familiar with Oxfam, here's a brief description of what they do: "Oxfam Canada works with people to secure their basic human rights, combining support to long-term development and humanitarian responses with research, advocacy and campaigning against the root causes of poverty and injustice." For more information about this great organization, please take a look at their website at www.oxfam.ca



On a related note, some friends of ours who got married back in 2006 (Sherri & Lee) had a really cool idea for one of their gift registries. Oxfam Unwrapped has a wedding gift registry option, so instead of just buying the happy couple more household items, you can - in their name - buy safe drinking water for 50 people, food growing packs, text books for impoverished children, care for an orphan or vulnerable child, and lots more. It looks like Oxfam Unwrapped Canada doesn't have the wedding registry option, but the New Zealand one linked above and the U.K. sites do, so if this sounds like something you or your soon-to-be-married friends would be interested, I hope you'll take a look.

I look forward to providing you all with beautiful images of your wedding day and at the same time working together to help make the world a better place!

Michael

Photographer Registry

I'm happy to announce a new service that can help me provide you with the photography package you've always dreamed of. Do you want to add a custom-designed Fine Art Book album to your package but your budget won't allow for it? Or perhaps you'd like an engagement session or DVD slideshow? If so, then signing up for my photographer registry may be for you.

This is how it works:

We set up a registry on my website where friends and family can log in and securely add credit to your package using their credit card. Then we can put that credit towards any options you'd like such as extra prints, albums, engagement session, etc. This is especially good for those of you who don't need any extra household items at your bridal shower or as wedding gifts and would prefer to put some money towards a beautiful keepsake from your wedding that will last a lifetime.

If this is something that you'd be interested in, please email me and we'll figure out the details from there.

Cheers,

Michael

I'm back!

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know that I'm back safe and sound in Canada. I'll be posting some photos from the trip soon, but for now, here's one of my favourites from our 20 km Routeburn Trail hike in the South Island (probably the most beautiful scene I've ever witnessed!)...

Click here to view larger version:


Cheers,

Michael

Off to New Zealand!!

Hey everyone,

Well we're off to the airport in a couple of hours and I wanted to let you all know that I'll be away from Jan. 31st to February 20th. I'm not sure if we'll have access to email while we're away, but if you need to get in touch, please drop me a line and I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for checking out my blog and I'll be sure to post some pictures from New Zealand when I get back!

Cheers,

Michael

New Toll-Free number

I know, I know, it's been months since I've updated the blog and all I have to show is a phone number? Don't worry, I've got some good stuff to come...I just haven't had the time to keep this up to date. I'll do better in the coming months.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to let you all know that I now have a toll-free number where you can reach me anytime. I have it ring me at the home office first and if that doesn't get answered, it automagically sends you to my cell phone. The number is pretty easy to remember too: 1-866-700-7474.

Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for some of the stuff I've been working on lately.

Cheers,

Michael

Album Special - 10% Off

I'm a big fan of albums. I really believe that they're the most important part of a wedding photography package since they embody the entire purpose of what I desire to offer - a complete record of your wedding story. Framed prints and DVD slideshows are great, but nothing lasts through generations and offers the same sort of encapsulating narrative of your special day than a beautiful custom-designed wedding story book. I like to think that my couples will cherish these family heirlooms for decades to come and will look back on them to recapture those fleeting memories of one of the best days of their lives...a reminder of their young love and youthful vitality to inspire and rekindle their passion and love for one another..."for as long as they both shall live".

In an effort to make these albums more attainable and attractive to my prospective clients, I'm pleased to announce a limited-time-offer of 10% off your first album if ordered along with your package (i.e. before the wedding day). I hope some of you will take advantage of it.

2 New Things I'm Excited About

I've recently had one of my backup camera bodies "converted to infra red", which means that it only captures the near infra red spectrum of light rather than the visible spectrum. The resultant image is a funky mix of sepia and cyan tones but I will usually convert these IR images into high contrast black & white. This gives me a very different impression of the world around us as the sky turns inky black, grass and foliage glow brightly in the sun and it all makes for amazingly surreal images that are sure to make a unique addition to your outdoor coverage. I'll post some more examples from the newly converted camera once the foliage starts to emerge but here's an example of the effect:



Which leads me to the other thing I'm excited about! I just picked up my new 2006 Honda Civic EX and I'm just loving it. Not only is it super fun to drive with all sorts of fun toys, but it's incredibly good on gas which is going to be very valuable this year from the sound of things!

Hire me...I'm a "published" photographer...LOL

In the off-season I'll sometimes do a bit of commercial work - most often architectural photography. I love architecture and I love trying to capture the essence of a buidling, esp. when it's lit up at night as the camera can capture more than our eyes can see in these situations.

I did some work for Grail Springs Spa in Bancroft this winter. The place is pretty amazing and although I had my reservations about spending the weekend at a spa (I'm in touch with my feminine side enough as it is without doing something so "girly"), we both had a great time nonetheless...partially due to the fact that I could take pictures but also because it was a real high class place situated on the shores of a beautiful lake in Cottage Country. They have a gourmet chef who put together some delicious meals and the entire atmosphere is geared towards total relaxation and wellness. I think we'll have to go back after this busy wedding season!

Anyway, the point of this post was to announce that one of the photos I captured there is soon going to be published in the Ontario's Finest Inns & Spas annual booklet. Ok, so it's not Time or National Geographic, but you'll probably see them displayed at most local inns and spas (100,000 production run). Look for this image inside:



I also do quite a bit of work for a local log home company by the name of Colonial Concepts Log Homes. Some of my work for them have ended up on magazine covers and feature articals for magazines around the world (which was pretty exciting, esp. the first cover!). Here are a couple of covers from "Gerendahazak" Magazine in Hungary (don't ask me what anything on the cover says, I don't know any Hungarian):



And another:


And one from a more local magazine (USA):

New camera...ok, well at least I'M excited!

The man in the Brown uniform just delivered my new baby. Hmmm, that sounds weird...anyway, it's my new Canon EOS 5D digital SLR! I know, I know..."boys and their toys"...but this thing is going to allow me to do things I never could have done before, and that's hopefully going to show in my images for 2006.

For those interested, it has a full-frame 12.8MP sensor which - among many things - will deliver beautiful blurred backgrounds, incredible wide-angle ability, and amazing resolution...just in time to be used in those huge 12"x18" panoramic page spreads in the new Fine Art Book albums!

Another great advantage is it's incredible low-light performance which means I'll be able work a lot more with available light rather that having to resort to flash...and if I can do without that huge flash bracket more often I'll be a happy camper (those of you who've seen me in action, know the thing I'm talking about).

So expect to see even greater images to come for the 2006 season with this new addition to my photographic kit!

Order your albums before March and get 2005 prices!

Ok, the new sample photos and info for the new albums are now online. Take a look in newly renovated Options section to see what's new.

All of my album prices will be increasing for 2006 but I want to give everyone the opportunity to order before the price change takes effect. If you order your album(s) before the end of Feb. 2006, I'll hold the 2005 album pricing, which will save you an average of $200! If you've already ordered your album as part of your package, this doesn't apply...but you may want to think about whether or not you or your family would want duplicates or mini "parent albums".

If you'd like to see the new albums in person, please get in touch with me soon and we can set up a consultation.

New Fine Art Book Albums!!

We've recently started offering a 3rd type of album style which I've called my Fine Art Books. I'm very excited about this new option. It still uses the "flushmount" style of custom designed pages but the book has a very unique fine art feel with softer, more organic matte finish pages which lay perfectly flat when the book is opened. The cover is also a durable textured matte photo cover which would look great on any coffee table or in any bookshelf.

Here are some photos of what the books look like. I'll be including some more photos and info in the Options section of the website soon (I'll post a note here when the final website update is finished)...

Standard 9"x12" Fine Art Book and 6"x8" Duplicate (great for parent albums):


Photo cover that wraps around to the spine and back. All custom-designed!


One thing I just love about these books is that the gutter/seam between the two facing pages is almost invisible! Makes those 12"x18" spreads and panoramic images look amazing!

Major website update

I'm in the process of doing a major overhaul on my website. I've put up all new menu images and 3 new galleries so there are many more photo samples to browse through. The next step is to update the options section with more info and photos of the various package options available such as new album types. Hope you like the changes...

My first BLOG!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to say hello and welcome to my new Blog. Stay tuned here for important announcements, special offers and best of all...new pictures!