For those couples interested in having a wedding on a Friday or Sunday, we are happy to announce that all Friday & Sunday clients will receive a 15% product credit!  You may apply this to prints, album upgrades, etc.

The catch?  Your wedding must be within 60 miles of our Saturday wedding, which for the most part they are in NW Indiana or Chicago, so that isn’t a problem.  Second, your coverage must include an album to receive this credit.

I love the seasons and the changes.  What I don’t like is winter and the countless opportunities we have for turning our bodies into a feeding ground for a random virus or bacteria.

Three weeks ago I developed a little sniffle, I didn’t think anything about it.  I had it for approximately a week.  The following week, all hell broke loose.  5 days of almost 24 hours of bed rest.   I’m not talking sitting in front of the TV laying on the couch, I’m talking sitting in bed, feeling miserable, sleeping bed rest!   Follow that with a week of horrible head congestion and a cough that felt like you were about to dislodge a lung and you really wonder what the hell hit you.

Antibiotics were no good (most likely a virus), decongestant was useless, as was any other drugs I attempted to use to cut off the advancing army of germs.   It’s colds like this that make me VERY happy that January is a wedding-free month.

I guess it’s just my luck.  Going from an INSANE holiday season and my accident, to the cold with a deathgrip.   I should be good for the rest of the year now since I’ve gotten all of the insanity done and over with!

New changes are being implemented on the Jim Karr Photography website.

The first of these changes is moving to a new gallery management system. While SimpleViewer has treated us well for the past 2 years, management and maintenance of the galleries has been tedious to say the least, requiring at least an hours worth of work when we wanted to add, modify or delete images, or a gallery itself.

Our new product has an additional management program that allows us to easily add new galleries, change the order of the galleries, modify descriptions, etc. which will really come in handy with the upcoming wedding season.

For the time being, we have 10 galleries posted from 2006. We hope in the next 2 weeks to have all of our 2006 galleries converted to the new system. With so much going on here, it’s nice to have gallery management software to handle some of the things we did by hand before!

You can view the new gallery by clicking here
Enjoy!

I’ve been anxiously awaiting delivery of new albums from a new vendor. I’m happy to say they are in and I LOVE the results!I didn’t have much time to take pictures this afternoon, hopefully tomorrow I will have more time to grab a few more and get them posted here.

This is a sample of a 5×7 parent album with a photowrap cover.

A 7×5 parent album with a suede cover. This is considered a mini since it is an exact duplicate of the 15×10 album, just in a smaller “mini” size.

This is the bride & grooms full-size album, 15×10 ( landscape ) with a phtoowrap cover

Next we have an 8×10 album with leather cover with blind embossed text on the cover:

the inside of the 8×10 album:

Next is a 12×8 (landscape) leather cover, again with blind embossing:

Finally we have a custom album, which is 6×12 that features a photo-wrap cover:

A spread from the custom 6×12:

Another new product we now carry is the Image Box.  Each box has 12 or 20 inserts that each contain one photo in various sizes (depending on the mat selected.)

Inside the image box with the various mats:

Three months later and I’m back to work full time again, FINALLY!

For those of you who have just started reading this blog, a little cliff notes version of what’s been going on at Jim Karr Photography.

August 12th on my way home from a wedding I was rear-ended (some details below in older posts.)   I was taken to the hospital via an ambulance due to the horrible neck pain I started experiencing about 5 minutes post-accident.

Released from the hospital that night (although my 2 week old car wasn’t so lucky, $4000 of damage. ) all seemed well.   Over the next week I started to experience headaches.  BAD headaches.   I was also taking daily 6-8 hour naps, which anyone who knows me will tell you is very atypical of me (the one that sleeps 6 hours a night and no naps!)    So off to the doctor I went.

My doctor did a full workup including a CT scan to see if there was anything wrong internally.  One one hand it was good nothing was broken, but on the other, it didn’t show anything was broken so the headaches and long naps were still a mystery.   My doctor referred me to a neurologist, which was the next step in my journey.

Enter Dr. Christea, a great Neurologist in Dyer.  I met with him, explained my symptoms and he started a physical exam.   During this exam he was feeling the muscles/bones in my neck and pressing on various points.  One point he hit, felt like ice picks being plunged into my skull.  That couldn’t be good!   We talked for a few minutes and then it happened, instant headache.   It was a good thing he was doing the physical exam and we were still talking afterwards.  The pressure point he hit and the subsequent headache told him that I had compressed nerves from the whiplash action of the accident.   Sorry I can’t tell you the technical term, but it was some kind of compression syndrome.   We finally knew what it was that was causing my problems.  Now, to fix it!  But, just to be safe I took a trip to the local MRI center.

For those of you that know me, you know I am NOT a small boy.  At just over 6′9″ I’ve never had problems in my life with claustrophobia.   That was until I was strapped down on that MRI table and pushed into the belly of the beast.   Wow.  I had to have the technician pull me out and wait a few minutes.. then I followed his advice and closed my eyes before going back in and didn’t open them again until I was on my way out!

Thankfully, my MRI didn’t show anything, so nothing broke in the accident, which is always good to know.  To help with the headaches, my neurologist sent me to physical therapy twice a week, where they performed wonderful treatments like electro stimulation and ultrasound.  Electro stimulation, I can only think that feels like a mild version of sticking a fork in an outlet!

Between the physical therapy, exercise and stretching, I’m now happy to report that I’m back to 100% and ready to take on the holidays.

I would also like to apologize to those customers that have made attempts to reach me over the phone during the last 3 months and had less than stellar results.  I am in the process of returning all phone calls and making sure we are up to date with all orders, albums, etc.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Jim Karr
Jim Karr Photography

August 12th on the way back from shooting a wedding I was involved in an accident.  I stopped due to police activity.. the guy behind me was paying attention to other “distractions” on the road and slammed into the back of my 2 week old Murano.    While I was annoyed after the impact, I started thinking about recovery.. so while looking for my phone, which I could not locate, my neck started to really hurt.   So, in the interest of being safe, I took a ride to the hospital.   They did their 5 minute checkup and I was out the door.  Thanks for being really thorough guys.. really..   Needless to say, I wasn’t thinking straight so I let it go and called for a ride home.

Next day I went to pick up a few items from my car and the tow truck driver told me he found my phone.. yes!   The celebration was short lived when I found this sitting in the drivers side seat

Phones can be replaced… but the data.. well, it will be replaced, but slowly, very slowly.   It’s taken me a while to get things perfect and once I did, I lost it all.  Again, it can be replaced!

So, fast forward 2 weeks and I start getting packets of “helpful information” from attorneys.  Great.  The ambulance chasers found me!   I don’t know how they got my information, but  they did.   Aggressive to say the least, one lawyer has sent me 3 different packets of information.  The others, just one.   If you need it, you need it, but let me make the choices.. don’t force your services down my throat!  Nice packet guys…

Add all of this to my training seminar last week with [b]ecker (www.thebecker.com), Cliff Mautner (www.cmphotography.com) and Jeff & Julia Woods (www.jwweddings.com) and I’ve had time to do nothing.   As of today I’m finally catching up with albums and DVD’s.   The next step?  Voicemail.   Please, if you’ve left voicemail in the past 2-3 weeks, I will be returning it shortly.   This whole accident has just thrown a nasty wrench into my whole workflow.

Last thing.. DRIVE SAFE!!!!

This morning we had some storms in the area.   Storms bad enough to make the power flicker on and off a few times.   When my computer, used for email, voicemail retrieval and editing booted up it no longer recognized one of the hard drives.   The hard drive that contains all of my email, programs and voicemail!   Panic quickly set in.

I removed the hard drives from the computer and placed the 2 offending drives in the freezer.  Yes, the freezer.   Once removed I quickly connected them to the computer and magically, the data reappeared!   Now comes the process of backing everything up to another computer, installing a new hard drive and then restoring the data.

The reason I’m writing this post is two fold.  If you don’t make regular backups of important data, please do so!   My last backup was a month old and I quickly realized how much happens in just 4 short weeks.  From now on, ALL of my email will be delivered and stored on my redundant server, where it should had been in the first place.

The next reason, if you called or emailed me in the last 4 days and I have yet to respond, it may take me until Sunday to get back to you.  I have a wedding tomorrow and won’t have a chance to finish complete recovery/install until then.

Last point I’d like to make.. if you don’t have a UPS and live in an area that gets frequent storms.. it’s a good investment.  I do have a UPS, but as of right now only my Server and second computer are connected because of them being in another room.   I’ll be running out tonight to buy another to place alongside my desktop so this problem doesn’t happen again.   I’m not sure if it was the power outtage that caused the problem, or the Maxtor hard drives which I no longer trust.   The drives were scheduled to be replaced with another brand, but I hadn’t had the time.  I’m making the time now!

Yesterday I shot the beautiful wedding of Chad & Kristen in Hobart, IN.  We dodged a little rain, but in the end it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day!

My clients never cease to amaze me!  What a great client and fun group to work with!   This wedding set a new record for the number of proofs delivered at just over 900!   Here is a quick preview of what’s to come!

I ran into a client the other day that told me how much she enjoyed seeing my blog. We got to talking about photography and photoshop and all the things a lot of people do to make pictures look good. She asked me how much time I spent working on editing pictures for my blog.. My answer? Little to none. The pictures you see here are as they came out of the camera, with the exception of the spot colored (black & white with color accents, like the red ‘57 chevy in the picture below) and random special effects which I mainly use on my model shoots. Other than that the only thing I normally do in photoshop is do minor retouching of the faces (soften wrinkles, remove blemishes), resize the image, add my logo and upload the photo to my webserver. That’s it.

I have to get on my soap box now..

Photoshop wasn’t meant to take bad pictures and make them “acceptable”, it was made to take good photos and allow them to be enhanced and turned into great photos. Not every picture needs photoshop, so I don’t believe in editing every single picture. The exception to that rule is retouching for cosmetic reasons.. There isn’t much you can do about skin problems the day of a shoot or a 2 year old that may had only looked at the camera once out of 40 attempts. That is where the skilled hands of a photoshop artist come in handy.