Just so you know - I’ve been working 7 days, 16-20 hrs per day almost everyday since we returned from Maine.  And we’re still not caught up.  So if you have “stuff” with us waiting to get done, it’s on the list.

That being said, we ARE in the process of getting ready for bridal show season and 2009 booking season as well.  That means new “stuff” is happening at Picture Infinity.  So here’s a partial list of “new stuff”

- New site and blog.  We want to show off much larger images on our website since we think we compete very well on image quality.  We want everyone to see our images as large as possible so that future clients can see the work we do and current clients can show off their beautiful images to family & friends.

- New pricing.  We didn’t change from 2007 (end) to 2008.  We ARE changing from 2008 to 2009.  With Mabyn & Tim doing beautiful work and our studio really coming together, it’s time for us to evaluate everything from the ground up and offer only the best stuff to our clients.  I guarantee 2009 pricing is the SIMPLEST to understand pricing that we’ve ever offered.

- New Infinity & Renaissance album covers!  Yes!  We’re offering the most AMAZING covers  now in Canvas, Brushed Metal, Armour (colored Metal), Vegan Leather for the environmentally friendly, and we’re bringing back our most popular cover - the Designer Custom Cover!

- New, improved Amore albums.  Our already awesome Amore’s just got even better.  Thicker pages, lay-flat design and the same full wrap cover.   These are going to be HOT in 2009.

There will be more!  And there will be MANY more blogs coming as I update our 2008!  We’ve shot a ton this year so expect a LOT of images very rapidly!

Hi!  We’re still here & alive!  Most of our slower season has been spent working on the house & new projects but we’re still here doing portraits, models, family stuff, babies - you name it, we’re still taking it’s photograph.

We get to kick our 2008 season off with Jacqui & John, a great couple we finally got to meet this past week. Here are some images from their session AND your first brand spankin new 2008 images to view!!!

We’re still alive!  We’re just digging ourselves out from the new snow and we keep plugging away at the studio and home.  We were excited about all the stuff to do and sometimes it’s just plain overwhelming! 

Lots of news, excitement & notes coming soon - we’re still in the process of putting together our first every newsletter.  I’ll make sure you hear about that here as well.  Then we’re going to TRY to catch you up on this incredible offseason of work, play, fun and craziness!

Rather than do that - how are YOU?  Yes, you the blog readers.  The Careys and Caseys and Staceys & Vickis and Heidis and Kristin/Kristens… how are all of you out in blog land?  Ronice & Kristina & Mabyn & Tim & my family & the photographers reading this right now - how are YOU?  That’s what I want to know about right now.

It is with great pleasure that we announce today that we’ve recently hired TWO new associate photographers! Mabyn & Tim will be joining Picture Infinity for the 2008 season. Both are fantastic photographers with a great sense of style & capturing the right moments.

Mabyn will be offering packages very similar to ours in our best attempt to give prospective clients more choice in both photographer’s personality and budget. Mabyn brings more style, class and a bit of fashion flair to us. Her work can be seen at http://www.mabyn.com Mabyn is extremely sweet, fun & easy to get along with.

Tim is going to take care of a totally different type of Picture Infinity client. Unlike Mabyn’s packages that mirror ours, Tim will have several different options when his site debuts soon! Tim’s sense of humor, artistic eye and outgoing personality will definitely endear him to the clients who’ve been coming to us for years.

Both of our new associates are available immediately so please contact us if you like what Picture Infinity does and want to know who’s available for your wedding date!

There will be several updates & changes to the website soon. Our new main site is changing as well as the addition of 2 new websites for Mabyn & Tim! We also have a LOT of change in store for 2008 including more announcements, new products and …. FINALLY …. our new studio should be ready VERY SOON to visit!

We are excited for 2008! LOTS of changes will be made to Picture Infinity (as always) and all of them will be designed to bring you MORE of the best photography we can give you! Here’s a *partial* list of things to come:

* The Grand Opening of our studio location - in-studio portraits, consults, interviews, post-shoot image reviews and more! We’re going to be able to do anything we want right here in the studio!

* New products - you know we always bring the best products we can find and 2008 will be much more of the same. We’re always investigating new products and we’re going to have some fun announcements throughout the year on new “stuff.”

* New Picture Infinity family members - we’re hiring! We have one new employee already lined up to start in March and we’re adding 1-2 associate photographers as well. We want to serve ALL of the clients who want Picture Infinity and to do so, we need help. Expect only the best to join us - you know we wouldn’t settle for anything less.

* More of what you love seeing from us! More images on the blog, more great clients and their stories, more of everything we do and more ways for you to help us do it!

Stay tuned - 2008 is going to be a GREAT year but we can’t do it without all of you!

We are gone to Maine for vacation until December 27th - we will restart business on the 28th and hope to talk to you then! 

If you have an URGENT matter, call our 888-PI-Studios number.  I don’t promise to reply right away as I have a habit of turning off my cell phone for a week around Christmas.  Email is also fairly regularly checked.

If you have something you need before Christmas, too late.  Sorry but we put our deadlines for everything on the website & blog months ago.  We’re done for this year - hope everyone got everything they need! 

Happy 2007 and thanks for making it a GREAT year!

We are raising portrait prices after the start of the new year to offset some of the cost of having a dedicated studio now.  We dislike raising prices on current clients but it’s a necessity to keep growing our business at this time.  Because we love our clients & hate raising price, we are offering a one-time only pre-paid portrait hour buy.  You may purchase as many portrait hours for 2008 as you wish at the current rate ($40 per hour for standard portraits) and you may use them at anytime during 2008.  This price is only good through December 31st and will not be available after 01/01/08.  If you wish to pre-buy portrait hours for you, gift, etc. please email or call us now to get this offer!

Well, we’re in. There’s an absolute TON to do but we’re excited about it. First I wanted to show you all some photos now that we’ve got net back. I was smart & took some pics before we started moving in - which is good because otherwise it would be about a year before I could show you anything at all. lol

Then we moved our stuff in. What A MESS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our first major change/reno was the office.If you remember, it looks like this:

Yes, our story is long. It involves 2 purchases, 3 mortgage companies, a dream house or maybe even two, and yes, photos at the end.

The story of how we got our studio began with the words “I’m selling this house” uttered by our landlord about 10 weeks ago. We were due for lease renewal and he just didn’t want to do this anymore. Our landlord is a great guy and doesn’t want to run a “business” by being a landlord. Too stressful & money sucking sometimes. With his fateful words began the question – so do we continue to rent or do we start looking for a house now? Is it the right time? Is any time the right time?

Right away we decided that it was time to find a studio – we need a place to shoot, renting is throwing our money away, and we need a VERY nice place to meet with our clients & potential clients. So, the search began. Sarah and I are the type of people to move very quickly on a project. We secured a “pre-approval” (which is supposed to be better than a “pre-qualification”) from Syracuse Securities. They said we were qualified for $75-110,000 for our first home. Not bad we thought. As soon as the pre-approval came in, we were on the phone with real estate agents within an hour. We called our favorite Syracuse agent, Linda Pelland, and a few agents in Auburn, where we know that you can buy a great house for WAY less money than in Syracuse.

Linda scheduled an appointment with us to view homes and Marilyn Barth from Murphy Real Estate in Auburn setup a few viewings for us as well. Marilyn worked VERY quickly for us, showing us the first houses the SAME DAY we called her. We also met with another woman whose name unfortunately escapes me. She was also very nice but the home she had listed was not what we wanted.

By five days later, we had looked at 17 potential homes. 5-6 through each agent and a few via other avenues. We re-visited a FANTASTIC home on Lake Ave. in Auburn and decided to put a purchase offer in on that house. We ended up with an offer of around $83,500. This is the house I posted to the blog first. We LOVE Lake Ave. It had two staircases, old woodwork, hardwood floors, great shooting space. It was also well within the 75-110k limit we’d been given. Low end actually! Felt nice!

What happened next is the subject of many-a-speculation. Syracuse Securities took our paperwork to do the actual approval. About 10 days later they said we were approved & we were getting our commitment letter within a few days. We celebrated – we called everyone & told them we were APPROVED for our mortgage at Lake Ave. and we were ECSTATIC!!! The home of our dreams – ALL OURS!!!

After three more days, Sarah did not receive her commitment letter. She called Syr Sec and was told “oh that went out – it’s probably on the way.” 2 more days. “I’m sure it got misplaced.” 2 more days “we don’t have you a commitment letter – we’re trying to get one and the underwriting company needs X & Z & Y documents. WHA?

At that point we thought we could meet their requirements. Fax a few forms, print a few documents, send a missing page of a tax return – whatever. We’re pre-approved, that’s good. We were approved!! Nope. Not approved. Because of our self employment and tax issues, we were not. We spent weeks going back & forth with our rep at Syr Sec and in the end we went from “5000 at closing, 6.75%” to “12,000 at closing, 10.25%” which of course is ridiculous so we said no thanks & moved on.

During this period, our landlord told us he hadn’t sold the home and he was looking to rent it over the winter. He wanted our “final answer” on what we were doing – renting, moving on, buying? We had NO idea. We didn’t have an answer let alone a “final, end answer.”

Our contract for Lake Ave. expired Nov 24th – a Saturday after a holiday. We knew if financing wasn’t arranged by Wednesday that there would be no 8 Lake Ave. As hard as it was to do, we just said “it’s gone” and moved on. We began looking at other avenues while we worked with a new mortgage company (Mark at Territory Mortgage is fantastic to work with and our great client Pete B. also works there!) Mark knew it was going to be a longshot to finance us in less than a week but he did his absolute best. In the end, a “best” wasn’t good enough as the new underwriters had different requirements, needed different docs and basically needed stuff we couldn’t get in less than a week.

It was over – Lake Ave. died Saturday November 24th.

We’re nothing if not persistent. However – around Nov 23rd here was our situation – banks are closed, no financing, Lake is dead. We had seven days to find an apartment and move out of our current apartment. This place has been rented and we had nowhere to live. Our landlord gave us as much time as possible but in the end, he needed to know he was leasing the apartment and we needed a final decision. We gave up on keeping this place and decided to look for a new apartment or something.

During the week, I had been unable to give up the “American Dream” of owning a home – I looked everywhere. Craigslist, Syracuse.com, Ebay!!! Anywhere to see if our home existed. I found an absolutely AMAZING property and contacted the owners. We told them our ENTIRE situation and asked if it was even remotely possible to make it work in less than 7 days. They said “we’ll setup a viewing Friday.”

We left Thanksgiving dinner (after dinner) for about 30 minutes – viewed the house, came back & couldn’t wait until Friday. We saw the property Friday and decided to meet with the owners Saturday to discuss financing.

Unbelievably we closed on the property Saturday. We bought a home IN Syracuse – statistically a 4 BR, 2 BA, 3000 sq. ft property with a 2 car garage, full basement & attic. Those same hardwood floors and wood décor as Lake Ave. We have a bit more land (still not a ton) and we have some work to do before it’s presentable to clients. BUT – we DID it. We closed, it’s ours, we OWN a house/studio!!!!

We do not have interior photos as we looked at the property Friday AFTER doing a Black Friday shopping trip – our brains were fried, we didn’t bring cameras. Out of the 25+ homes we ended up looking at, we have photos of something like 3 of them. Crazy.

We move in Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. There *will* be photos by Monday. Once we have our Internet back up (12/4 after noon) we will post those photos. For now we do have some exterior photos.

I’m sure we’ll be talking about the new place more in the VERY near future as well as explaining everything that’s going to be going on in the next year for Picture Infinity but for now enjoy the photos and hopefully you made it this far!! Thanks for listening!!!