Shopping, Reminiscing, and Packaging

The temperatures are dropping and it's becoming really quiet outside. There is something to be said for the calmness that winter brings -- I love the mellowness, the understated atmosphere, and winter clothes. Winter also brings the opportunity to stay in and think and that (along with finals, work, and papers) have kept me very busy for the past two weeks. Now that secondary midterms and papers are all in and finished, I have loads of post-processing and album designs that have to get finished this weekend and considering I'll be in NYC tomorrow morning visiting family, I'm left with today as crunch day.

Anyway, before we get to the main topic of the post, check out the winter shopping list:

So, back to all things "wedding photography"...

Looking back over the past year, I find myself very content with how far this business has come and how it has changed me. Deciding to solely own the business has been one of the best choices I've made and it has lead to a lot of new questions and challenges. One of them being identity. Business, like people, needs to have an identity, a clique, a standard, and a vibe. It's branding 101 - "what two words do I want people to think of when they see my business, logo, or work?".  After a long time of grappling with the subject, the two words that I wish for are "classy" and "personal".

This subject quickly branched off into a lot of sub-topics, one of which became the subject of today's post... 

Packaging. 

It's easy to overlook the significance of packaging in regards to branding, however, it is a cornerstone of identity building. Look at Apple; sure some of their products are amazing in terms of functionality, but owning their products has become more than just a purchase based on the merit of the product. It's developed into a pop-culture. Why? Because from A to Z, their marketing and branding is rock solid. As with other similar companies, their products will come in top notch designer packaging. Why? ... For a vibe.

If you pay $700 for a phone or $2,200 for a computer, you're going to want to receive the product in beautiful packaging -- even if the packaging will wind up being thrown away. It's the principle of the fact -- people like pretty things.

I've been doing lots of research to come up with a variety of product and packaging options. For today, here are some really nice accessories for the final high resolution DVD of images that I offer:

Got to go and start packing... I'll post some stuff up from the NYC trip when I get back. Have a wonderful long weekend!

Maryum + Sajid | Album [Slideshow]

So, this was one of my biggest weddings ever and required me to travel to two different states. At the time, I was working with Sahid Limon of Limon Photography. The wedding, like typical Southeast Asian weddings, consisted of four days - two days would be held in Youngstown, Ohio and the other two days would be held the following weekend in Newark, Delaware.

After developing hundreds of pictures, I designed the couple a 15x10 landscape album - it opens up to a gorgeous 30x10 print. the album design was done solely by me, but it features pictures from both Sahid and I. Since the spreads are a little too wide to post within the blog, I've made a slideshow of it here: VIEW SLIDESHOW

My goal with this design was to use cloth and vintage textures, but not let the background take away from the pictures. The textures themselves were stock images from various different resources - they had to be heavily edited to appear as they do.