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.

Yeah Baby!  I would be running next door to the package store to get a nice bottle of red to celebrate the launch of the new CDP blog…. I would, were  I not up until 4am working on the thing!  If my eyes weren’t swollen half shut, if I could speak in full sentences without the aid of a constant coffee drip, if I could keep from drooling on my Mac and nodding off as I type, I would be drinking a big, fat glass of red wine!

Seriously!! This has been a long awaited refresh of our online presence…. which will be followed by our new website that is currently under construction with LiveBooks.  Yep… we have been busy.  But, we are SUPER excited.

But wait, this is merely round one, the marvelous Mr Brian with Flaunt Books is developing some cool new content for our blog;  more slideshows and a memory match game and other things to come…. we are JUST really getting started on a grand ride!  We did try to roll over some of our older posts from our antiquated blog which, frankly, was so challenging to update, that we turned to facebook.  And, though we still love facebook, it is nice to have a new home for our newest shoots and latest buzz.  I have just begun to blog our 2010 weddings – and will follow with engagements, etc.  Not everything in 2010 will get retro-blogged….. but I do have some recent favorites that I hope to share soon.

So, please peak back often.  And, in the next month or so, be watching for our new website launch.  When that is finally done, I am going to go for that red – WITHOUT question!  I may even have to order some bottles from a favorite Napa vineyard that Bob and I went to years ag0…… hmmmmm, I should get on that right now!!!

So, it will take me awhile to catch up May and “Monsoon June” here on the blog…  

Hello everyone I am pleased to announce that the new baby has arrived, 6 days early at 4:25 am. Everyone is happy and healthy. I am going to see Carrie and the new baby girl today. I will get all of the details and see if she would like me to share or if Carrie wants to do the honors herself. Pictures to follow soon. Obviously!
Sheri-