Key Largo Wedding Day!

getting ready for tomorrow!

Belly shots

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room, BBC correspondent Jonathan Head has reported.

The 72-year-old was in Thailand filming his latest film Stretch, according to his personal manager Chuck Binder.

Mr Binder said the news was "shocking", adding: "He was full of life, always wanting to work... a great person."

I still love him.

RIP David!

Thank you S & G!

Today i had great family session followed after short, sweet ceremony.
S& G i really enjoyed all your family members and this was a great session.
Thank you! Looking forward to Sunday!

Last seasons sample slide show

Chicago Skyline

One of my favorite views right after Seattle's skyline...Chicago Skyline at night.
Please pay attention to the sign on one of Buildings.
Go Hawks!

she

She

Another great session...thank you girls!

Happy Mothers Day!

bye bye Florida....just for couple weeks :)

going Home!
i'm leaving sunny state Florida for couple weeks, but i will be back soon.
I love you all and miss you a lot.
Looking forwaerd to scheduled boudoir sessions... i have great ideas for it. Check out later for pics

little teaser from saturday's wedding

Ft. Lauderdale. Engagement session

I had engagement session at Ft. Lauderdale followed with bridal dress hunting later at Sawgrass Mall. What a day!

My mondays SEO test worked. Sory about confusion!

I could not understand what is going on. Why my friends are calling me and asking how i'm doing and is everithing ok with me. Then finaly i found out why:) Couple days ago, after listening some of the SEO audio books, i did test post here - 3 years old excerpt from my diary updated with a hidden key words to test how the google search and tweeter links works. I mixed in it popular Alice Coopers song title and some Qutation about love, to see what keywords will be picked up bu google search. It worked.

Visitor rate went up 300%. Now i know what to do to get more trafic to my site.

Sory to the ones who got confused with post and thank you my friends who called me and asked are i'm ok.

I love you all. :)

For everybody - I'm ok.

I'm exited about tomorrows engagement session will post some shoots on friday.

More info about falied State Latvia.

One of my friends journalist still living in Latvia article about Latvia EU un real situation today.

I admire his stright forward style without any sugar coating.

I promised my American friends time by time inform them about my country and there we go - lets start with Juris Kazha article from his blog.

Please tonight do not forget to wach movie filmed in Riga, mentioned in my prevoiuis blog post.

There was a theme in my earlier post that should be expanded upon. It will soon be five years since Latvia joined the European Union (EU) and there will be various assessments of the impact of EU membership.

I believe the most dramatic and, perhaps, underrated impact of EU membership is an aspect of free movement of people that is little discussed. We often view this freedom as one to study or temporarily work (for experience or better pay) in another EU country, or, for some, to set up a business in another country. But, in fact, free movement allows EU citizens not only to move for economic or academic reasons, but also to make a real choice of governance and of social environment.

It is clear that in many countries, the level of government efficiency, responsiveness to its citizens, general transparency and lack of corruption differs significantly from Latvia. In many countries, governments may not be very pleased with criticism directed against them, but they don’t label their citizens “yappers” (vaukšķi). They try to respond to criticism because they realize that, ultimately, the critics are the people who “hire” them to run the country with their tax money. They are public servants, like it or not. In Latvia, the ruling elite has been a class unto itself, convinced beyond argument of endless “fat years” or of their own abilities as bulldozers or space shuttles.

I won’t mention the government of Valdis Dombrovskis here, because I think he was put iin as a fall guy or is the first officer of the Titantic, kindly asked by the captain to “take over the bridge” just as the floor starts to tilt a little. His role is to go down with a ship that can’t be rescued any more.

Beside the arrogance and state-capture corruption (dozens of seats on state-company boards for “our own people”/savējiem, though now some are being liquidated), Latvia also shows a high degree of societal degeneration. It can be seen on the streets -- staggering drunks, rude, brutal public transport wardens, nervous, morose, despondent or anger-ravaged faces everywhere. A sight seldom seen in other European countries, even Scandinavia, where public displays of moods or emotions are muted.

For many ethnic Latvians, there is also a certain discomfort from the cruder aspects of the Russian population -- the swaggering, shave-headed, running-outfit clad lumpenproletarians/urlas that one sees, especially in the Soviet-era housing areas of Riga. Behaviorally, these people are like the inhabitants of an American ghetto -- diminished work ethic, substance abuse, aggressive and crude behavior.

Given the choice of going somewhere where these problems are not present, and paying only the price of having to use another language at work and daily life outside the home (most likely English), it is perfectly logical that increasing numbers of Latvians are “giving up” on their own country and choosing places with a better (though far from perfect) system of governance and social environment.

Another facilitator of what I call governance/social environment choice may actually have been brought to Latvia by the “Bulldozer”, former Minister of Transport Ainārs Šlesers -- namely, the low-cost airlines led by Ryanair. These make “virtual emigration” possible and relatively painless. In other words, Latvians can live under better governance and in better social environments without losing contact with the essentials of what was important or good for them in Latvia. Within a couple of hours, anyone can fly in from Ireland, Britain or elsewhere in Europe to visit family, friends, favorite places. With fast internet connections, video links and Skype, “real virtual” presence is possible as well.

So we have a phenomenon of as yet not consciously self-contained Latvian communities growing across Europe (in Ireland, Great Britain, eventually elsewhere), communities, which like the one in Ireland, where only a few hundred of some 20 000 Latvians voted in the 2006 Latvian elections. This is a definite sign of political alienation, whatever other ties they may maintain with Latvia. Moreover, these communities are self-selected (people decided to emigrate, they didn’t flee like the post-war Latvian emigres) and consist largely of people with the ambition, skills and self-confidence to start a new life in a new country. In one sense, a bleed-off of Latvia’s potential, on the other hand, an inevitable result of state/societal failure combined with unprecedented opportunities for choice of governance and ease of transport and communication.

Movie filmed in my hometown

Movie about brave female Shindler
filmed in my home town Riga
more info and Schedule here

paper dress 5

kids photos

paper dress 3

cost of photography

One of my fellow photographers wrote great article and would love to repost it here

Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?


In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home "photo printers", when people upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time - How in the world do Professional Photographers charge $55 (actually more then what I charge) for an 8x10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drug store?

Here's why.

Simply put, you're not just paying for the actual photograph, you're paying for time and expertise. First, let's look at the actual time involved. If you don't read this entire page, at least read this first part.

For a two hour portrait session:

- one hour of travel to and from the session
- two hours of shooting
- 30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc.
- 30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2 - 4 Gb of data)
- 30 minutes to back up the files on an external drive
- 3 - 4 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs
- 2 - 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive their order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment and drop package off at Fed Ex.
- For local customers, we also print a set of all of their photos, and meet them at our studio to review the photos and place their order. Meeting and travel time averages 2 hours.

You can see how one two hour session easily turns into more than ten hours of work from start to finish. So when you see a Photographer charging a $200 session fee for a two hour photo shoot, you are not paying them $100 / hour.

For an eight hour wedding:

- I won't bore you with the details, but an eight hour wedding typically amounts to at least two to three full 40 hour work weeks worth of time. Again, if they are charging you $4,000 for an eight hour wedding, you are not paying them $500 / hour.

Now for the expertise.

Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though a quality camera now costs under $2,000 taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website etc.

And let's not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera - and posing people to make them look their best in a photograph is a skill all by itself.

Think of it this way - the next time you pay $X to get your hair done, a pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional.

What about the cheap studios at the mall?

Please don't compare us to the chain store studios. But if you must, consider all of the time and work that we put into our photographs, compared to what they do. Good luck getting a two hour photo shoot at a chain store. Not to mention they won't come to the beach! And of course, look at our work compared to theirs. You get what you pay for.

The truth is, most of the mall and chain store studios lose money. In fact, in 2007 Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios because of the financial drain they were putting on the company. What the chain stores bet on is that you'll come in for some quick and cheap photos, and while you're there, you'll also spend $200 on other things. They don't have to make money, they are just there to get you in the door.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs cost so much more than the ones that you get from your local drug store.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Original post