The Blog of Wen McNally Photography

2010
SENIORS
8
Special Sessions added in September

The 8 sessions are at various times on Sept 18,
19, 25, 26 & 28. (some have booked even before
I got this email out…)

If you’ve been wanting to have us take your
Senior Portraits, but needed a Monday, or weekend
well, here’s your chance!

Give us a call at 540-286-1111
or better yet, check out our online
scheduler!

Okay, that’s just plain ridiculous… since my last update, we’ve been out of the country, produced a 16 page football program, booked the entire month of August… guess that’s why I haven’t updated this… busy is good. Take a look at the Senior Gallery, which I have updated, then check the dates on our online scheduler to set up your Senior Portrait Session!

-sean

Well, from the way my kids are running all over the place, it must mean that summer is here!

We had great response to our One Day Senior Portrait Session Sale and we’re looking forward to the sessions with all of you who booked. We’ve only got a few dates left on our calendar for July and August, so take a look and schedule online, or give us a call to set up your session appointment. As the summer rolls on, things start to get crazy around here… and if you’re into sports or other school related activities, your schedule will be as busy as ours.

If you missed the One Day Sale, don’t worry. We’re still offering discounted session fees for any sessions booked in June (40% off) and July (25% off). There’s been a little confusion about this, so I’ll try to clear it up a bit. To take advantage of the session fee discount, contact us in June or July to schedule your session for any time during your Senior year. The session could be scheduled for June or July, but it doesn’t have to be. Hope that helps.

And for those of you who follow the blog and our Facebook/Twitter stuff, we’re going to be announcing the availability of a couple of ultra-rare Friday sessions. Keep watching.

Wen’s been doing some killer stuff with our models and some of our 2010 Early Birds. I’ll post some of the images in the next day or two.

Until then

-sean

Okay, I literally picked up our new 2010 Senior Portrait Catalogs from our UPS driver during his route to get them in hand! They were inserted in the newspapers at Mountain View and Forge this week and they come with a special offer… Take a look at what we’re up to for the 2010 Senior season, then give us a call to schedule your session. We’re already booking sessions in July and August (and we still have a few June slots available) and if the early buzz is any indicator, the 2010 season is gonna be a crazy one! Be sure to get your session on the calendar before they start to fill up.

We’ve been doing sports posters for a couple of years and everyone seems to like them. I’ve finally created a space on our site for them and I’ll be adding the individual images soon.

Take a look.

-sean

-sean

We had a chance to do some great Senior sessions even during the “slow” season.

Chris has a great look and is absolutely hysterical. We’ve had a great time getting to know him through the drama department at Mountain View (do yourself a favor, if you ever get a chance to catch hin in any production, DO IT!)

Billy plays Lacrosse at Mountain View and we’ve worked with his mom, who is in charge of the booster club. She wasn’t at the session and so he decided to mess with her and told her that the images came out “alright.” Her tears during the slideshow lead us to believe that she thought they were better than that.

Jeremy thought it would be cool to bring his friends from Connor and Dylan to join him for a few images in his session. They’ve got a lot of history together and we had a great time capturing their friendship.

Jackie brought a couple of beautiful of guitars and her dog with her. She’s a great singer/songwriter and we’re hoping to get an invite to her next show!

Meghan plays softball at Mountain View, and had a great season with an overall record of 17-1-1.

Paige loves reading and her border collie “Annie.”

Kyla plays the cello and has a cool, funky style. We’ve got a lot of history with her family. Wen and I actually met at a band practice in her dad’s basement over 20 years ago.

Amy is in band, journalism, broadcasting and is interested in photography.

Lydia has great red hair and a nose ring (which instantly gives her cool points in my book…)

Hayley is graduating early and booked her session months in advance. Wen ended up doing a bunch of new stuff with doors in her session.

Caitlin has a big blue truck and little white snake with pink eyes.

Zack was one of the first people to use our online booking system (which I had been playing with and pretty much forgotten about!) and is an aspiring writer.

So, that’s what we’re up to during the “slow” Senior season… the pace is already picking up.

-sean

January through March is typically the “slow time” in our industry, so to take full advantage of the free dates on our calendars, many of the photography conventions are scheduled during this time. Wen and I took 2 trips to Vegas (I’m pretty sure that we’re the only people who could go to a desert in January and be cold… they got 5 inches of snow the week before we were there!) and had all kinds of crazy things happen (I know, hard to believe that something crazy would happen to us…) One of the benefits of me not being a photographer is that I don’t know to be intimidated by some of the big names in our industry (I can also do a lot of things that others think are impossible, due to the simple fact that I never took Physics in high school…) The major up side to this ignorance is that we’ve had the opportunity to spend time with some amazing photographers (and really cool people too) We found ourselves having dinner or drinks with some of the big names in the industry, including our buddy Parker J and they all had very encouraging things to say about Wen’s photography.

A chain of events that can only be described as “surreal” at the first convention, made attending the second a no brainer. It turns out that my cousin Jerry is the “mayor” of Zappos. We spent some time at their headquarters and were completely blown away by what we saw. This caused me to drop a quick email to Dr. Joseph Michelli, an author who was the keynote speaker at the first convention. He’s doing some looking into the whole Zappos phenomenon.

The second trip to Vegas found us having dinner and drinks and often looking at each other and saying “is this really happening?” It culminated in a 39 1/2 hour day (okay, I slept for an hour before heading to the airport…) complete with a guest list only party where we were introduced to Clifton, the CEO of Affliction (he’s from Fredericksburg and it was their party… of course, why wouldn’t it be) a flight to Denver, lunch with Dr. Micheli (he lives an hour from Denver… of course, why wouldn’t he?) a seminar with some of our closest friends in our other life, and breakfast (after a much needed nights sleep) with our friend Michelle Miller, the foremost expert on marketing to women.

Wen usually encourages me not to name drop, but I’m only saying all of this to show that a little bit of “what have I got to lose” can get you into some pretty interesting situations. So what is it that do you want to do? Go ahead, give it a try? A lot of times I think it really is a case of “you have not because you ask not,” but then again, I never took physics.

-sean

Okay, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve posted anything (hey, months are made up of days, right?) but fear not, I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff to post in the next few days. No, this time I’m serious.

-sean

Okay, I figured out what I want… Some day we’re gonna be big enough to do this kinda thing for FUN! Reality is REAL…AND it’s Vegas in February These are some of the biggest names in our industry.

-sean

Okay, we started to think everything was going to be alright when there were 30 or more people on site even before the doors opened at 6:30. The show got underway a little after 7 and went until a little after 10. I think last count gave us over 100 people in attendance and we’re pretty sure that they all had a good time. The performers were amazing (and we weren’t surprised) and we raised some money for the Scene Magazine.

You can still help in the effort, because we’re donating $50 from each session booked before the 14th of this month directly to the magazine (we’re also giving you a $100 credit toward a collection upgrade or an add on product!) All you have to do is contact us to book your session, which can be scheduled for any time in the year (that means all you Juniors can get in on this deal right now and SAVE!)

Thanks to the entire staff of the Scene Magazine, for not only doing such a great job with this event, but for consistently producing a great literary magazine. There’s a lot of talent out there!

Here are a couple of images from the evening. The rest of them can be found on our Facebook page

-sean