Remember… we are NOW booking for Canoe & You! To get you excited for how fun this shoot can be, I’ll be posting some teasers over the next week or so on our blog. So stay tuned!
For today, I am posting this beautiful family. There may be 5 kids here, but they are so incredibly well-behaved and precious that they made our job easy. The little girl standing up in the back kept asking us if we could push the canoe out into the lake– with them in it
As darling as that would be, we kept telling her, “That would be fun, but I don’t know how we would get you back!”
To top off the shoot, their mom handed Kristi & I delicious, home-baked dessert on plates. Of course, the second we pulled away, I had already lifted the foil on my plate and was sampling it. And, it was amazing.
If I could be paid every shoot with a dessert… I would do it. And I’d be 25 pounds larger.
Anyway, it was a lovely evening spent with this family. The next day, their mom e-mailed us and shared a story that absolutely warmed our hearts. The story centers around the little boy sitting in the middle of the boat, with the glasses. When we first read this, Kristi and I both said, “Awwwww!!!” Stories like these remind us of WHY we do what we do:
“If I didn’t tell you, my little ones had been talking all week about the “canoe pix”. Anyway, when we got home last night and I was putting Gavin to bed he thought of you all as he prayed.
He said, “Dear God, thank you for . . . . (long pause) . . .”
“Mom, where did we go again?”
I said, “You mean the canoe?”
He says, “No”.
I respond with, “The farm where the pond was?”
He says, “No”.
I said, “Uhhh, to see Kristi and Taryn?”
He says, “YES! That’s it!”
So, back to his prayer . . .
“Dear God, thank you for Kristi and Taryn and letting us use their canoe and take pictures. Amen.”
So, really at prayer time, he wasn’t as interested about praying or talking about the canoe as he was about thanking GOD for YOU!!!! “
Read below to hear about our Referral Program… and as a fun way to earn even MORE points, for the month of JUNE, any referrals we receive will earn DOUBLE the rewards in gift certificates!
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I don’t know about you, but I love gift certificates. I don’t always know what I want, I just know I want something from a particular place. It’s always my favorite thing to be handed a menu, or walk into a store of endless colorful clothes, or see shelves of amazing product and know that I get to pick anything I want (well, within the boundaries of the gift certificate amount…which is usually the hardest part
So, we have created a way for you to have this, too– ANYTHING you want from Imagine Artists via a gift certificate. It’s simple. If you are a recent client of ours, just tell your friends and family about us. If one of those people books with IA and gives us your name, you receive a gift certificate! The more referrals, the higher the $$ amount.
If you are not a recent client of IA or haven’t been before, keep this in mind if you ever book with us. It’s an easy way to earn IA $$, which means more fun products for you!
Thanks to all of our amazing clients who already talk about and refer us to others– you guys are the GREATEST.
What?!?! I referred debi for Alex’s senior pics and for Alyssa’s kids pictures, does that get me anything???? I hope so :0)
imagine -May 17, 2012 - 3:26 pm
Hey Erin! Thanks so much for your referrals– you rock! Since we JUST put this program into place, those 2 don’t apply BUT keep referring and if the client tells us you referred them, you will get rewards!!
You may think that Kristi and I sit at a desk all day and edit pictures.
Or that we sit in our studio and dream up new props, backgrounds, and poses.
I’m not saying we don’t do those things.
But.
There is also a lot of exercise involved. Don’t believe me?
Just follow us on a shoot, or better yet– a wedding day.
OR, just stop by at the right time, and we’ll probably be rearranging our studio.
A lot of times, Kristi and I rearrange a room to be more functional and spacious, and I hear Kristi say, “I love this. It’s the best this room has ever looked.”
Three weeks later, she tells me: “I hate this room. I hate it. It doesn’t make sense.”
So then we move it again.
It really is a love-hate relationship with our space.
However, we are all about “change” as long as it betters our functionality and environment, so we can be found moving a desk, a couch, a plant, or sometimes all 3… a lot.
Check out the video to see how we keep active in our studio.
I opened the doors of Tender Care Animal Hospital and stepped inside, smiling at the “Do Not Let the Cats Outside” sign.
It was a busy afternoon. There was someone in the waiting room, and both receptionists up front were bustling around. In the distance, I could hear and smell other animals and the sound of a child’s whimper.
As I waited, I became more and more nervous about what I was going to do.
Finally, a dark-haired lady with glasses looked at me and asked, “Have you been helped?”
“No,” I said, smiling, and cleared my throat. I stepped forward, still hiding what was in my hands. “I came in here a couple weeks ago,” I told her. “This isn’t normally where I come for my pets, but I had to put my cat down and you were the only clinic available,” I explained.
Then I showed her what was in my hand.
“You were all so nice and helpful to me,” I told her, displaying my treasure, “So I wanted to give you this. It was a hard decision for me to make, because she was so young, but it was helpful to come here.”
“Oh, wow,” the lady said, taking what was in my hands.
It was a beautiful picture of Kitty, my black & white long-hair, 8-month-old kitten. Many of you may have already heard her story, but I adopted her as a tiny kitten right before I moved into my new home. Just 8 months later, she came down with FIP, a fatal virus to cats. As her condition worsened, I had to make the decision to put her down, and since my regular vet wasn’t available, I came to Tender Care.
“This is a beautiful picture,” she told me, and then looked up. “Do you know what? I remember her. She is the one who had FIP, right?”
“Yes, that’s her,” I said, and my heart smiled. It smiled because it confirmed what I knew: Kitty was unforgettable. If you met her, you remembered her. “So I thought maybe you could set it out somewhere. I wanted to give it to your clinic as a gift.”
She was so grateful and assured me they would hang it somewhere. I told her that we LOVE to take pictures of pets, and I meant it. Especially now that I have had one of my own and loved her… and lost her, I understand the bonds to a pet so much more clearly. And any bond that strong should be captured.
As I walked out into the beautiful sunny afternoon, a tear slipped down my cheek. For once, I was thankful for my hair that desperately needed a haircut that hung in my face. It hid my teary eyes.
I drove away, glad for the opportunity to have provided this Animal Hospital with art that was personal to me. Kitty may be gone from this life, but her pretty picture will now hang in a place that is filled with people who have a passion for pets, like me. And maybe her picture can provide comfort to someone else who has to put their beloved pet to rest… when they look at it and see her bright eyes, her inquisitive face, and her soft fur, they will remember the quirky characteristics in their own pet that will live on forever in their heart.
To the contrary, I am incredibly uncoordinated and klutzy.
ANYONE can learn, though, and with practice comes a small bit of mastery. A couple months ago, my friend introduced me to a class at Gold’s called Sh’Bam. Despite my inability to leap through the air gracefully or jam out to the latest rap song, I love this class.
Major loved.
Loved so much that since it’s mostly only offered at an afternoon slot, I get up WAY early on one of these mornings so I can still put in an 8-hour work day and make it to Sh’Bam in time. That’s what I call true love.
I seriously look forward to this class. It’s 45 minutes long, but it flies by. Most of the time, by the last song, I can hardly believe it’s over.The best part is, the instructors are amazing and have fun with it, so it really doesn’t matter if you mess up or don’t do the moves perfectly– the goal is to keep moving and keep your heart rate up.
And trust me, mine stays up. I’m usually drenched in sweat by the 2nd song, but the upbeat music and catchy moves keep me oblivious to the fact that it looks like I just took a shower with my clothes on.
Another plus is that they keep the lights dim… and I can only pray, every time, that no one is peeking in and watching from the glass doors or windows that surround our room.
Anyway, at last weekend’s wedding, we met this little guy… a 7-year-old after my own heart. The difference between us, though, is that at a young age, this boy CAN dance! I’m not quite sure how he knows how to move the way he does, but he has some definite talent going on. He stole the hearts of the others on the dance floor and I was mesmerized watching him bust out his moves.
Give him a few more years and he will be an incredible dancer. I always love seeing young talent… and I especially love being entertained at wedding receptions. Thanks to this 7-year-old for giving us a smile!
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