Ask questions like where they got their training? How many wedding have you done? What experience do you have? And most importantly what is the process for settling a dispute?

Rest assured that McKenna Video and Photo is completely trained and have earned our PPC certificate at an accredited school and we are constantly under the tutelage of some world renowned photographers. We are the veterans of numerous weddings but are very selective as to who we choose to work with. By doing so, we know that we can give you our undivided attention and professionalism.

For those couples that got screwed by this individual-we are so sorry for your lost photographs. If there is anything that we can do to help mitigate the situation, please give us a call.

Blessings,

Chris

I am happy to announce that our online order system for videotape to DVD and 8mm film to DVD transfer services is now online and ready for your use.

At this point, the system will only accept orders for straight video and film transfers. It offers our customers the ability to send the film to us at their convenience and be free from the restrictions of our in-studio hours. And because it is online and simplifies the process, it allows us to drop the price a little.

While the ordering pages are 100% secure (payment is accepted through PayPal), keeping our costs down means that we don’t have a programmer on-staff to complete a nice custom ordering page/shopping cart. But rest assured, our top quality film and tape transfer work will still be put into all of your projects.

The page is organized into 3 sections: one for silent film, one for sound film, and the last for videotapes. Be sure if you use this system that you place your order in the appropriate section. If you have a custom order, please call us or send us an email and we will either schedule a time in-studio or send you a custom invoice.

Let us know how you like our online ordering system. And please give us feedback if there is anything difficult or confusing that you find.

Visit the page at www.mckennavideo.com/orders.html .

Blessings,

Chris.

While these events were beautiful to behold, it was dangerous to travel outside. While I would have liked to travel around and get some interesting pictures, I thought that I would share a few that we took around the house.

Enjoy.

Chris.

One of the positive aspects of digital photography is obviously the ability to quickly see the results of pressing the shutter release button and thus the ability learn from our mistakes and to make corrections on the fly. But with that ability comes the downside that is not often discussed. Let me outline a few.

STORAGE

This is the first issue. Remember those 1000 shots of the sun setting into the horizon off the coast while you were driving down the coast last summer? Well, they are still sitting on your hard-drive, aren’t they? And chances are as those drives continue to fill up you’ll be buying more and more drives for such the occasion as going through them “when I get home.”

Contributing to this problem is the fact that storage is cheap. Last time I checked you could get a 1 terabyte drive for less than $100. So the tendency is to just get a new drive when the need arises. But, to be safe, you’ll also want backup those drives, preferably to an off-site spot, and you’ll probably want a cloned copy for extra insurance.

Storage also become an issue as the drives you are using become more and more fragmented (although this can be avoided by ‘defraging’ from time-to-time) and file access times become slow. You may also need to consider storage needs while traveling (I always carry an external drive). All these costs (i.e., primary drive, backup drive, extra memory cards) start to add up but because they are small and incremental while they occur they seem inconsequential.

TIME

Most people complain about not having enough time in our day, I know that I do, but yet we go out and spend more and more of it by shooting more than we need to. Time is spent, er wasted, in a couple of different ways.

First, there is the time it take to review all those photographs. Lynette and I took almost 1300 images at our last wedding, and guess what, someone needs to go through each and every time. With a little more diligence on our part before hitting the shutter release, and in some cases anticipating the action better,  we could probably cut that number by at least 1/3. If it takes us 5 seconds to review a shot and decide if it stays or goes, 1300 images will be 6500 seconds or almost 2 hours to review. We could easily knock 45 minutes of that by just being a little more discerning in our shooting.

Time also comes into play while transferring images to our computer. Most people can think of other thing to do while these transfers are happening, but for a lot of people, they slow down computer speed as the hard-drives is constantly being accessed and written to.

Finally, there is the backup issues again. Extra photographs mean extra time backing up. Multiply our wedding shoots, or any shoot for that matter, by the number of shoots over the course of a year and we’ve added hours to our backup schedule (not to mention the additional costs if those backups are send to a remote service).

LACK OF LEARNING

The final issue is a bit harder to quantify. Many years ago (too many to mention a specific date) I started learning photography on film. Film did have one big advantage over digital- either I started learning to take better photos or I stopped shooting because of the cost of film and developing. That is not the case today. Most people can now take thousands of really bad photos because there is no cost barrier once the camera and cards are purchased. If a consumer doesn’t have a desire to learn to improve, they are more likely to continue shooting bad photographs.

I hope that I didn’t completely rain on your parade. On the whole there are more positive benefits to nearly limitless shooting in digital photography than there are negative, just a few things to be aware of (if you can you think of any other issues photographers should be aware add them to the comments below).

Happy shooting,

Chris.

You know what I mean. Every time you turn around something needs your attention. The kids, the house, the dogs, the customers, your website. It has been that way for me so far this year. Moving from one crisis to another, hoping along the way that nothing else happens. Well it did for me and the latest casualty was this website.

While  moving from one thing to another (including going without electricity due to ‘snowmageddon’), the hosting on this website expired and poof, there it went into the proverbial “cyber black hole.” It was down for 13 days before I even noticed it was gone. YIKES! Well, long story short, it is finally back up!

Thank you to our friends, fans, and visitors for your patience while we worked out our issues. We are now good for another year.

Blessings,

Chris.

Merry Christmas!

Chris & Lynette

Well, its been a while since we posted anything. And once again for that I am sorry. Its not because we’re trying to neglect, just so much to do and so little time to do it as they say.

Anyway, we wanted to take a few minutes this morning and post a few photographs (and a video) from one of our favorite weddings this year. This is Kari and Michael, an absolutely wonderful couple who were married last on September10. That is 9/10/11. The bride and groom are both amazing people and we thank them for the privilege of being their photographers. It was an honor.

Their ceremony took place at Sumner Presbyterian Church and their reception at the McMillian Grange. Occasions Catering provided the reception dinner and as always did a fabulous job. This time video was captured by Johnson Video and not McKenna Video.

We wish Kari & Michael all our best for many happy years together.

Blessings,

Chris

Call our studio today to reserve your spot. Time slots are going quick.

Packages starting at $300.

Mention this ad and receive an additional 10% off any package or add-on.

*(with a minimum package purchase).

See our portfolio at http://www.chrismckennaphoto.com/portfolio/seniors/

First, prints are a great way to just plain tell the story of your life. You can’t do that and share with your friends and family if they are sitting on a hard-drive somewhere. Printing photographs and sharing them in albums and in frames is a great way to tell others what is going on in your life. An example, my mother-in-law has every photograph ever taken cataloged and stored in an album. It makes it easy for us to look up a particular family event or to see what the family was doing in any particular year. As a side-note: make sure your albums are high quality, acid-free albums and not cheap knockoffs that will damage and destroy your prints.

With Facebook and email, sending digital photographs around the world is easy. Personally, I think that printing and physically sending photographs is a nice touch and is a much nicer way to say “I think and care about you enough to send you a photograph.” Once again, printed photographs are a good way to share your life, whether it is a wedding or other event, a family vacation, or just a random photograph of the kids; printed photographs allow you to pass memories on to family and friends. And as we grow older, those memories will last forever (if printed on quality paper using quality ink).

Printed photos are also a great way to back up your digital collection. We all have stories of computers and hard-drives failing and losing photographs. Don’t let this happen! By printing, at least you have a some sort of backup that can be stored away and pulled out for scanning should the need arise. Of course, always back-up your digital photo collection on high-quality discs and external hard-drives.

Do you have a photograph hanging on a wall or in frame on your desk? Of course you do and if you don’t you probably know someone who does. The point is that photographs make great decorations for your home or office. Printed enlargements of cool, artistic photographs you’ve taken or a custom canvas print (not the cheap “Costco-like” canvas) make for a more impressive display.

Finally, I have to say that sometimes we just plain miss prints. Photographs can take us all the way back to our childhood and return us to a simpler day of sharing memories, before we had social media and email. Printed photographs can invoke much more emotion than staring at a computer screen can and by holding a photograph in your hand it makes the memory that much more real and tangible.

Having said all that, in today’s depressing economy spending money on anything is an issue. So it would not be surprising that the cost can play a significant factor in this decision. Not that long ago, prints were relatively expensive (usually coupled with the cost of film development) but in today’s technologically advanced times, 4×6 prints often cost less than 20 cents  (I know of a printer in my area that sells them for 13 cents). Given the fact that the significance of a photograph can last forever and that photos make excellent gifts for just about everyone in your life, spending what amounts to pocket change minimizes cost as an issue.

I hope that this provides a little insight into the question of printing photographs. As always, my hope is that these posts answers or inspires you somewhat. Please don’t hesitate to provide me with feedback or with a comment, funny story, or whatever (except links to third-party websites).

Blessings and happy shooting!

Chris.

So, we loaded up the car and decided to take a long loop from Washington through Idaho and down into Eastern Nevada, ending up in Las Vegas for a few days before we head back up through Reno and Medford, Or. and back up to Washington.

One of the stops that I always wanted to make was in Rachel, NV., a small city right outside the infamous and non-existant Area 51. Don’t ask me why, but I do. So, anyway, on the way down from Twin Falls, we didn’t get an opportunity to stop in Rachel, but we did manage to stop at the “Extraterrestrial Highway” cutoff from Route 93 and get a couple of pictures.

Maybe next time I’m in Las Vegas I’ll finally get the opportunity to stop there, but in the mean time I have these pictures to enjoy my “close encounter.”

Enjoy.

Blessings,

Chris.

P.S. I’ll be posting a portfolio of my “hotel portraits” someone after I get back to the studio and have had an opportunity to finish them.