There are a lot of Sandy’s whom I love and respect.  We can start with: Aunt Sandy, Angie’s mom Sandy, three awesome former bridal clients named Sandy, SpongeBob SquarePants’ uber-cowgirl squirrel friend Sandy Cheeks, Little Orphan Annie’s dog….  Heck, let’s even add Olivia Newton-John AS Sandy in Grease.   I can’t really think of a Sandy that I didn’t like. 

 Until now….

 I do not like THIS Sandy, Hurricane Sandy.  CT Gov Dannel Malloy, (indeed, for you non-CTers, his name really is Dannel – NOT a typo), referred to THIS Sandy as, “The largest threat to human life anyone has seen in our lifetime.”  OK, maybe growing up in Colorado has put me at a disadvantage in thinking I should take hurricanes seriously if I do not live right on the shore.  But, apparently, we should.  And, we shall.

 Even though we have battled some technology issues and sick kiddos that have delayed our production a bit, and we finally have multiple weddings finished and in our upload queue, we are proactively shutting down our operations in light of the storm’s projected damage.  Effective at noon on Monday the 30^th (unless weather dictates that it should be earlier), we will be taking our server offline to prevent data and/or hardware damages and/or losses. 

 If you are a client of CDP and are waiting for your images and have not received notification that they are online before noon today, they will not be available until services (specifically power and network connectivity) are restored and deemed consistent and reliable here in South Glastonbury.  We dealt with power surges, data corruption and upload errors this time last year (during another weather event).  So, having learned from that experience, we have decided to proactively take our network offline.

 We have also spent the last few days preparing for the storm.   We have verified that all of our “backups” have been successful and are up to date.  And, then we created back ups of the backups.  Rest assured, your memories are safe and protected.

 So, I DO NOT like you Hurricane Sandy.  I do not like that, once again; we are dealing with another major October store.  THIS Sandy, I would really like to punch your lights out….. but, looks as if you’ll be doing that to me, first!

See you when we are back online and thank you for your patience.

Stay safe!

 Carrie, Colleen and the CDP Team 

Keep an eye out for our holiday mini session dates we should be announcing this week…  We are thinking beach day, park day and farm day….  

Here is a quick shot I love from a session we just did at our favorite farm…. I love the palette of fall colors they chose to wear.  In fact, choosing a palette of colors is typically what we recommend when deciding what to wear for a family photograph.   As an idea, choose an item of clothing with a combination of colors (could be something as simple as a tie or scarf with colors that you love) and dress your family using the combination of colors from that item.  Or, if you are so ambitious, visit your local paining store and pick up an “idea book” with suggested colors for painting a room…. we have found some great color combinations at our local Home Depot!  How is that for an unlikely place to be inspired for your family photo?!?!  

Helen and I were honored to be a part of a really fantastic event – the Wedding Lovely “Shindig” at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago with some really amazing vendors. Take a peek at this quick recap from the very talented Jeremy White of Fairfax Films. Our pics will be on the Wedding Lovely blog soon, too. What a great time and what a great group of industry professionals! Thanks to Meena from 5th Avenue Weddings and Events and to Tracy from Wedding Lovely! 

Here is the link….  Wedding Lovely Shindig at Etsy Labs 2012

I am very excited and honored to be speaking in Boston for the ShootDotEdit Price-Process-Profit workshop tour stop on June 12th.  I will be presenting along with amazing, business-minded photographers, Jared Bauman of sunny San Diego and Leeann Marie of Pittsburgh.  It is FREE if you pre-register and only 25.00 at the door if you don’t. This workshop is all about the BIZ behind the art!

Click anywhere below for the link to register.

We are so excited to have been featured on Better Connecticut today. Thanks again to all of our amazing brides and grooms for honoring us with your nominations for both The Knot Best of Weddings as well as the Bride’s Choice award. It was word of that recognition, along with a little “serendipity” that ultimately brought Better Reporter, Melissa Cole, into the studio last week to do this feature on the studio. Better Connecticut even referred to me on their website as “the photographer of the year!” I am very, VERY honored…. and VERY, VERY blessed!  Thank you!

Click below to see the feature.

The “Off Season”…
It would likely be described by a New England photographer as something like this…. “The period of time between wrapping up the wedding season and holiday card season and the beginning of the next “season” of shooting which is typically consistent with a new, and arguably better season of weather!!! It is a time designated for projects…. LOTS and LOTS of projects!”

So what the H.E. (double the hockey sticks) happened to this off season?!?!? Oh yes, of course….. we were snowed in!!!!! This year it was snow, last year it was something else. In a nutshell, there is always something about the off season that prevents us from making it through that darn “off season” project list.  So we decided to focus on not just the studio’s projects – we came up with some very serious personal projects:

Seeing how much coffee we can drink from our “neighbors to the North,” So G Coffee Roasters…. answer, it is a lot!!!!!

Debating the merits of Sweet Potato fries vs. Regular fries from  our “neighbors to the South,” South Tavern.  It remains a split decision…. Carrie and Molly vote Sweet.  Helen and Colleen vote boring (Carrie wrote this)!

My way-too-time-consuming project/obsession with finding cool Converse Chuck Taylors… and Colleen and Bob having to reign me back in….. After all, how many pairs of Converse does one woman need?  Answer….. just wait…. I will show you!!!!!!

Preparing for our interview with Better CT – which is airing tomorrow at 3pm on CT WFSB Channel 3….   We are very excited and honored that they contacted us to do a feature on the studio.  (Be warned, they interviewed me in the morning, pre-coffee (see note above) so I can’t even remember what we talked about!!!!!).

Training for the upcoming Warrior Dash in June (please see our training video below… Warning – it is VERY hard core training and not for the faint of heart!).  Also, please keep in mind that we are professionals and that these stunts should not be attempted at home!

So, we are getting to our studio to do list slowly but surely…. but the above projects are far more fun!!!!

And we are excited to be kicking off our 2011 shooting season in just a couple of weeks with Laura and Lowell’s awesome Boston wedding!  We can’t wait!!!!

We have had the pleasure of working with student “shadows” from RHAM High School over the years.   If there is a student interested in photography, we get a call from a career counselor at the school.  And, we welcome the student in to “shadow” us for a day, for a shoot, etc.  We had Brendan to the studio to participate in a studio shoot for a business client of ours.  And, before we knew it, or could resist it, he became one of us!!!   Last I knew, the Carrie Draghi Photography logo/sticker made it onto Brendan’s Mac!  :)  We are honored!!!  BTW, nice photo with the candy cane!!!  :)

Brendan’s plans are to finish high school, formally study film and begin a career in the arts.  As you can see from this little promo piece he made “for fun” from two of our winter family photo shoots, this guy has talent!

To Brendan – Thank you for sharing your talent with us!  Thank you for going out of your way to put this together for us.  I know you said  you were just procrastinating for mid terms, but we feel very blessed that you procrastinated!

To Brendan’s mom and dad – WOW, what a great kid you have raised!  You must be so proud.  Thank you for letting him hang out with the ladies at CDP!  He is always welcome here!

We have been nutty here in the studio in our “Off Season.”  We are still wrapping up our final weddings from 2010, making changes to our internal processes and workflow, trying to find the studio in the snow, meeting great new couples at the bridal shows…. whew!  Not to mention, we are all training for The Warrior Dash in June www.warriordash.com (more details on that to come!)  All I can say is OUCH!

It has been a great start to 2011.  We were honored as a Top Pick in The Knot Best of Weddings for 2011 – our third time in four years!  And, we were also chosen for Wedding Wire’s Bride’s Choice Awards 2011.  Both of these awards are so meaningful to me – as they are essentially given to us by our couples.  THANK YOU!

We also have some fun things coming up on the blog (because my new year’s resolution is not to be a crappy blogger!!!)  And, now that I have stated my resolution out loud, Colleen, our amazing Studio Manager, is going to hold me accountable!  Actually, I have always struggled with prioritizing blogging…. if I have 10 shoots in my editing backlog, I feel badly taking the time to put together a good blog post.  And, what happens, is that nothing gets blogged!  However, thanks to Colleen and our dear photographer friend, Richard Esposito, we believe we have created a systematic way to blog without slowing down our workflow.

So, I had to put together a little slideshow of recent work for a local business meeting…. It is a little bit of all that we did this year…. and I know that it happens fast!  So, grab a cup of coffee and don’t blink…. here is a crazy trip through some of 2010…  We have some wedding-specific slideshows and things to come.  Please come back and visit!

We are so excited to welcome a new photographer to our studio team.  Her name is Tina and she is a very seasoned wedding photographer.  And, equally important, she is a darn right amazing, and very cool gal!  We are so glad to be joining forces with her.  We have a very similar artistic style and approach to shooting weddings.

She is currently booking for 2011 and beyond.  And, if you have contacted the studio and Carrie was booked, Tina might be a perfect fit!  Please call the studio at 860-633-4054 to schedule and appointment to meet Tina!

Here is a quick sample of some of recent work…..  See, I was right, she is pretty fantastic!!!  :)

When Colleen got the email for our first Christmas card order of the year we decided it was time to send out a fun little reminder.  :)  We are, in fact, booking sessions now for the holiday season.  If you want to give the gift of a family portrait or photo, or if you want to create very unique custom photo cards for the holiday season, our most-desirable fall dates book very quickly.  And, for all sessions booked within the month of August, we will be donating $10.00 to the American Cancer Society and giving you a $10.00 discount on your holiday card order.