Houston Brides magazine & Buenos Aires

This is so exciting. Our first foray into print advertising came out last week in the Winter/Spring issue of Houston Brides magazine. Look out for it in most boutique gown stores, and other fine wedding retailers. I struggled with selecting one image that was a "WOW" image and after consulting with several trusted sources, I finally decided on Stephanie's image of her looking very angelic under some artwork on the wall. It was taken at the Marriott Medical Center. Also in this issue is Jaclyn and Chas Cahn's wedding picture, featured in the "Hitched in Houston" section. Very exciting!!! I will have to send them a copy of the magazine. I got quite a few at my studio right now!!
I am heading to Buenos Aires tomorrow for a week of rest and of course photography. On top of taking pictures of the beautiful culture and city, I will be doing portrait sessions for one of my clients and good friend Eric. Many of the barrios in that vast city are strewn with vibrant color murals and brightly painted walls and buildings. That should make for a really really cool photo shoot. I'm excited to see the city. It's supposed to be the middle of summer down there. I heard food is really good and inexpensive. Maybe I can learn how to do the Tango down there. Oh yeah, I'll be experiencing New Years Argentian style.. I can't wait!! If I don't come back, I'm sure you will understand....
Everyone, please have a safe New Years and see everyone soon.
Trung

Images of the Year 2008

Hey Everyone,
It's two days before Christmas!! It's an exciting time of the year!! We finally got our December newsletter out to everyone (yes we know, it's a little late in coming this month) We hope you got a chance to see the Images of the Year 2008 Slideshow. These are only some of our favorite images of the past year.
What a year it's been. We've experienced so much growth and we've had the opportunity to work with some really amazing people. We have so much to be thankful for. We're excited to see what happens this next year. We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Holidays

Well the holidays are rapidly approaching and I’m trying to get some shopping done. I do love this time of the year. Good food, everyone's happy and you get to spend time with family. Oh yeah and a lot of time off. We just recently finished our last wedding of the year, Lindsey and Matt Harbin. The reception was at a beautiful country club, whose name escapes me at this moment. Her make up artist was my good friend, Heather, of Hues by Heather (www.huesbyheather.com). She's such a talented make up artist. We had so much fun at the reception.
Our studio got our first iMac computer. It’s such a beautiful machine. I’ve spent the last week just converting everything from my PC machines over to the Mac platform. Not a fun task but Macs are so easy to work with and everything is so integrated that it hasn’t been too painful. I sort of wished I converted to Mac sooner.
I’m trying to finish out the year with album designs and all the marketing material for the upcoming Bridal Extravaganza Show at the George R. Brown convention center, Jan 10-11 ( www.bridalextravaganzashow.com ). We have so many new things to show off this year. I'm excited about this January's show.
The show is such a great event in that we do get to show off our work to a lot of brides. The size of the show is sometimes overwhelming to brides if they don’t have specific things they’re looking for. It will be interesting to see how our business will be affected by this slow down in the economy.

November weddings

Wow, what a crazy busy couple of weeks lately. I've been so incredibly bsuy lately with all the weddings in the last couple of weeks. October and November have been very abuzz with weddings. On October 25th, we had Amber and Craigs beautiful wedding and reception at The Gallery. It was our first time at the venue and we loved the place. It was beautiful place that had a lot of great little areas in which to take pictures. Of course, we all had a great time, good music and lots of fun people dancing!! Their images can be viewed at www.montagephotographers.printroom.com/boutwell.

On November 8th, we had Katie and Brandon's wedding which started and ended at the chic Icon Hotel in downtown Houston. An added bonuse was that their makeup artist, was none other than Heather from Hues by Heather (http://www.huesbyheather.com/). She's a good friend and a really funny person. We captured some beautiful shots of Katie in the elegant hotel room and then more images at St.Paul's Church in the museum district. Later that night, we had opportunities to explore the many unique spaces all over this newly renovated Icon hotel, which used to be a bank years ago. We actually snuck into one of the original rooms in the hotel where there are swanky vintage lamps with blue velvet couches. We came out of room with some very moody and romantic images. I will post some really soon. That wedding was a lot of fun as I got to work with their wedding planner, Samantha Darr, of Soiree Bliss (http://www.soireebliss.com/). She's a doll with so much energy and so amazingly accomodating. I hope to work more with her on future weddings. Katies images will be online next week after they come into the studio to see them first.

This is a picture from that cool Icon Hotel room.

I'm currently in Reston Virginia, at the Sheraton hotel, awaiting my shuttle to the airport. A close college friend, Armand, married his sweetheart, Dandy. They asked me to be their photographer. What an honor to have such a close friend ask you to be a part of their wedding celebration. I'm blessed to be able to share my art with them on their most important day. The reception was at this Sheraton hotel. The artsy interior decor made the romantic pictures I try to do at every wedding a breeze. We had a lot of places with which to get away from guests and capture some intimate moments. I was able to hang out with a lot of old college friends from my alma mater, University of Virginia. I hadn't seen some of them for 6 years. We got up this morning to have lunch together before everyone went home. It was so good to see everyone. It's always interesting to see where people are in their lives after not having seen them in such a long time. Some people are doing the same thing they were doing 6 years ago, others doing something totally different. Okay, I'll post some images soon.

Favorite Bridal shots of the week!!

Hey everyone, I hope you're doing okay. I came back to Houston, post Ike Hurricane, in fine fashion, after a tough week in Norway of eating, drinking and doing the tourist thing. Yeah, that was tough, and then had to return to Houston, where I had another week off b/c of lack of electricity throughout most of the city. Of course, by the end of the week, I might admit that I was getting a little stir crazy, mainly because I wanted to do the bridal sessions I had planned for this weekend. Unfortunately one of them could happen b/c of the dress not being ready. My bridal session on Sunday was so much fun!! One of my favorite brides, Katie, was game for anything and we had perfect weather to play with all afternoon. We started off near some warehouses, one of the thousands that are strewn about in Houston. The more eclectic, the better. I love the portico lighting that loading docks offer. (Okay, that was kinda photography geekish.) Anyhoo, we hopped to a couple more spots and then headed to the Hotel Icon, where her reception will be for her wedding. We found some really cool couches and the decor there is just a photographer's dream. It's beautiful inside. We had a lot of fun there. Here are some of the awesome images that I'm super excited about!! Keep your eye out for more!!

Until next time,

Trung

Greetings from Trondheim Norway

hello, everyone. As most of you know, the Ike hurricane hit houston a couple of days ago and wiped out Galveston and only mildly damaged parts of houston. From what I heard, most people didn't sustain that much damage, other than the occasional tree being uprooted and falling on houses and of course the power outages everywhere. Of course, that is all that I can gather from the news, from the internet because as luck would have it, I'm in Trondheim Norway. I've been in Norway for 5 days now. I traveled to Stavanger for some work and then headed to Trondheim for more work. Of course I was planning to fly back on Friday, but the Houston airports have been shut down since thursday before Ike's arrival on Sat. Therefore all KLM flights to Houston have been cancelled and that is all that is known for right now. As I am writing this, I still don't know when I'll get to make it home. Hopefully they will open the airports soon and I will be able to fly home. I'm actually not minding being here though. I actually have electricity, good food and of course this beautiful country!!! Norway is so beautiful and people here are amazingly friendly. The weather today is about 15 deg celcius, and it's clear blue skies. I picked a really good time of the year to be stuck here!! I've taken a lot of pictures and when I get home, I'll be able to upload them. I've met some locals that have shown me partying Norwegian style....OMG they drink like Vikings and smoke like the Japanese...even the partier in me had to take a day off...and that's saying a lot. LOL Hopefully all my friends and family are safe and are not getting cabin fever. I think I'll go to the pubs again soon and drink with some more locals...Hahahaha..until further notice, this is Trung from Norway...peace out kids.

and remember, behave yourselves..

Facebook and August Happenings!

It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged. The last couple of weeks have been really busy and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write my thoughts down. August has flown by so quickly and it’s almost September!! We’re getting some new materials together for the Bridal Symposium at Reliant Center. It will be our first time at that show. I’ve heard great things about it but have never actually had a booth there.
Our new sample albums are coming out soon!! They are a totally fresh new format to expand our unique product offerings. We will be giving some of these sample albums to our favorite vendors that have worked with us in the past and continue to work with. Some of our favorite venues where we’ve work at in the past have requested samples of our work and of course our favorite wedding consultants who bring us great brides. They will all be getting our Montage Media kits with this album and all our brochures and information. Everyone’s been asking for them and I’m finally getting the final sample albums from the book binder next week. I’m very excited to see the albums!!
Last weekend, I did the engagement session for my good friend Peter and his beautiful fiancé Nikki. We drove down to the Warehouse district where we had fun exploring that always “interesting” neighborhood. As the name would suggest, there are lots of warehouses in that area, but many of them have been converted to small art galleries and sound recording studios. The buildings are really old and have amazing eclectic flair. The urban landscape and textures of all the building and their aged facades are a photographer’s dream. As you know I love going to abandoned areas and rustic places to capture my engagement pictures. I’ll be posting their pictures online here very soon.
Facebook – I’ve recently become a big fan. I’ve been able to connect with so many friends and with past classmates from both college and high school. Many of these people, I have not heard about since I graduated. Talk about a blast from the past. It’s crazy catching up with all these people. When they find out I’m a wedding photographer now, they’re usually in shock. It’s pretty funny!! Let me explain, back in high school and college, I was the math and science nerd that played sports and did engineering type of work. I did take art class one time but that was a train wreck. I cannot draw for the life of me and I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body. I was not even really interested in photography until two years after graduating from college. If someone was to tell me that I would be shooting weddings and knowing all the nuances of the wedding rituals, I would have fallen over laughing. It is funny where life takes you. It’s been so much fun and I’m still excited every time I go to a wedding.
Until next time!! See everyone soon and be safe.

Trung Huynh

Yesterday, I had a photo shoot that was so much fun!! One of my good photog friends, Jen, asked me to do her engagement pictures. She and her fiance Dave are so cute together. As with all my photo shoots, I take them in my car and we go on a photo adventure. We never know where we’ll go or where we’ll end up. The places are never planned out. When we see something cool, we’ll stop and take pictures there. The spontaneity and the creativity in shooting in a totally new environment every time is fun for me and all my couples love it!! It’s so much fun because we go to some really random places, like cargo bays, run down houses, back sides of convenience stores and any other crazy place we happen upon as we’re driving. Well, with Jen and Dave, we started at Sculpture works (the place where they have all the 15 ft tall president heads), inside the warehouse and out on the fire escape. It was a really cool building with lots of really random things inside like a canoe and a huge candle holder, and some plaster molds of president’s faces…very random. To top if off, we took some picture on a toilet that was sitting by itself on a hill behind the building. Too funny. We ended up in downtown at this really cool green abandoned office building along the bayou. Here are some of the great pictures we took yesterday…

We’ve done some of the final preparations to get ready for the upcoming bridal show!! Hope to see everyone at the upcoming Bridal Extravaganza Show (http://www.bridalextravaganzashow.com/) at the George R. Brown Convention Center, on July 19-20th. We’ll be at booth #531. Be sure to come by and say HI!!

Our new assistant

Hey everyone, here is the newest member of the our Montage team, Kristie. We got this shot of her in our studio play session where we fiddled around with the new Larson softbox we bought. It was a fun filled night with experimenting with different light and just shooting for fun. We do that every once in a while to stay fresh and hopefully discover something totally different that we've never done before. It helps to keep expanding your horizons and learning new things all the time. here's a great shot of her.
Trung

Wow, it’s been an extremely busy couple of weeks. There are so many things going on with the business that I’ve been barely finding time to update the blog. I have so much work to do now that I simply couldn’t do it all myself anymore and decided to hire a studio assistant/photographer assistant. After 75 resumes and many phone calls, I decided to hire Kristie Akin. Welcome Kristie!! I’m so excited about having her come on board to help me with everything from image processing to assisting at weddings. Her bubbly personality is contagious. Having graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography, I’m sure she will be an asset to our studio.
Last Saturday, Stephanie and Will exchanged vows at St. Anne’s Church and had their reception at the Marriott in the Medical center. Stephanie’s dress was absolutely gorgeous. We had so much fun at the church before the wedding with Steph and her bridesmaids getting all silly. Of course, the guys had to one up them and perform some aerial acrobatics off the ledge. The reception was at the newly renovated Marriott. The modern, but comfortable interior décor screamed to be photographed. (If I had money, that is how I would decorate my house.) I could have taken pictures for days in there with all the cool décor they had in the lobby and near the ballrooms. Here are some pictures from that wedding. Check out the rest of the pictures when their gallery is up!!
I recently unveiled a really awesome perk for all my Bride and Grooms!!
All my brides and grooms get their own wedding webpage they can personalize to their heart’s content. In addition to having a personalized website address, all of the couple’s images will be in one place, from the engagement, bridal and the wedding. They can use this page to share all their images with their friends and family as well as communicate to all wedding guests wedding day information, registry locations, or anything else they want. The sky is the limit. It’s so cool and all the couples so far have loved it. It’s been a great way for the bride and groom to keep all their guests up to date with any changes.
Here’s one of them http://www.montagephotographer.printroom.com/schweitzerwedding

Trung

My First blog Post!

Good Evening Everyone,
This is so exciting. So many new things are happening in the business. We're getting geared up for the upcoming July Bridal Extravaganza show on July 19-20, at the George R. Brown convention Center (www.bridalextravaganzashow.com). Come visit us at Booth #531/533. There will be bridal show specials!!! We have a totally new booth layout with a lot of new images to show off. (We've had a really busy Spring season. )
We will be unveiling our brand new Couture Bridal Album!! It has a pewter metallic cover with vines etched on it...so cool!!
Trung