We’re recruiting ten high school students to start spreading the word about getting senior photos done for next year. It may seem early, but it’s safest to have your photos done early so that you can get them in on time! We’ll start with a quick Q&A for those of you who are new to the party — if you already know the deal, feel free to scroll down to the bottom of this post to fill out the application!

What is a Senior Rep?
A Senior Rep is a senior who represents Yost Photo to their friends and classmates. Pretty simple! In other words, we’re going to give you a free photo session in the hopes that once other people see what we can do, they’ll want to use our studio for their senior pictures.

What do you get for being a Senior Rep?
Glad you asked. Ten lucky students will receive:

1. One free photo session that will last no longer than three hours. Bring as many changes of clothes as you like.  Pick up to three locations for the shoot.
2. One DVD containing full resolution photos from your session.
3. 50% off sessions for all your friends when you refer them to us.
4. $20 cold hard cash for every referral you bring in. Think about how quickly that adds up!

After the first five referrals, you also receive a free 4×4 leather album ($200 value).

And finally, the Senior Rep with the MOST referrals by October 1st, 2010 will win a brand new Apple iPod Touch!

What’s the catch?
There isn’t one. If someone sees your pictures and likes them, give them a rep card. Tell them what it was like having your photos taken by us. Easy. You are not expected to discuss pricing or packages with them. Just tell them to contact us and we’ll do the rest!

What are the rules?
1. You need your parents’ permission.
2. You will promise to promote us exclusively.
3. You must be a senior after the summer break.

How do I become a Senior Rep?
Just fill out the application below. If you’ve made the cut, we will contact you!

We were so excited about photographing Karina and Devin’s wedding on the Outer Banks this weekend. You couldn’t ask for better weather, and it’s just indescribable how lovely it is to be surrounded with so many people who are having a great time and sharing the love. Here are a few photos from Karina and Devin’s special day!

Karina takes some time to chant meditatively before the ceremony.

I loved her veil.

Karina’s fabulous dress is from an exclusive designer in Spain. It was breathtaking!

The ceremony was traditional yet wonderfully unique to Karina and Devin.

Sigh. I’m going to miss this place.

Don’t forget to check out her awesome shoes!

The cake was every bit delicious as it looks.

Their faces pretty much sum up the day.

It was hard to take pictures without unconsciously swaying along with them to the music.

Thanks so much for letting us be a part of your day, Devin and Karina! Congratulations, and have a blast on your honeymoon!

Some friends of ours offered to let us use some of their land for gardening this year, so after four hours hard labor and one sunburn later, we’re halfway done! That’s 64 seeds of corn, 55 cabbage, and about 100 potatoes. We’ll have to go back another day to finish the rest of the potatoes and plant peas. I don’t think pictures of little mounds of dirt would be very interesting to you, but I did take some pictures from around the farm.

While I was grumbling that honeybees don’t stand still enough to pose for pictures very well, I realized that the bees thought my big camera was some kind of threat to the nest. I stood in a swarm that landed by my shirt and hair (luckily none of them stung me) to get this shot before running away like a character in a comical silent movie.

It’s hard to believe that these three little pigs will each be 250 pounds in just a few months!

I believe Corey is wondering in this photo just how long I’m going to keep taking pictures instead of getting down to business. So, do you have a green thumb? What have you planted this year? We’d love to hear all about it!

I bet these cougars were thinking, “How can we get into the deer paddock without the rangers noticing?”

Shhh…he’s sleeping.

Too…cold…can’t…feel…fingers…must…get…home…

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

I loved the cinematography for this so much! I thought you guys might like it too.

I had to share these cute personalized wedding hangers with you all! What a romantic little detail for the wedding day.

We get a fair number of emails asking some really good questions that we don’t seem to have a place to answer on our website, so we thought we’d take the most popular and answer them on the blog!

1. How do you decide when to keep a photo full-color versus black and white?

This is a tough one for us, because Corey prefers color and I prefer black and white. I think it’d be awesome to design an entire wedding album in just black and white — maybe that means I’m deranged, or maybe I’m just an artiste. You decide. Luckily for our clients, we are determined to solve the color/b&w stand-off by providing all of our brides and grooms with versions of their high resolution images in both color and black and white.

There are particular times when black and white photos can really shine, such as when a photo seems to have to move impact in black and white so that the subject is more of the focus. I also think particularly emotional moments seem more timeless in black and white. When we create the pre-design of the wedding album, we choose which photos we think look best in color or black and white, but it’s always up to our clients whether they’d like to keep our initial choices or if they’d like to use a different version.

2.  How does the album ordering process work again?

You receive a 50% credit to the album of your choice with your package, and we always encourage our clients to use it because the album will be the most important heirloom to your wedding (second only perhaps to your dress!). Each album comes with a default 30 pages, and after the wedding, we design a sample album for you.

That’s where you come in. You and your new hubby sit down with all your proofs and the sample album and decide which pictures you can live without in your album and which ones you’d like to add in. And if there are a considerable amount of photos you’d like added in and there isn’t enough room, you can always purchase more pages at any point.

When you’re totally stoked with your album, we order it and ship it to you ASAP. We always try to put an album pre-design online for our brides and grooms within the first two weeks after their wedding. After they’ve made the changes they’d like, from the time of ordering to the time it gets to your door, the album should be there in two to four weeks. If you’re on the hunt for a photographer, always ask about timelines when it comes to your proofs and the album ordering process (and make sure it’s in the contract!) — we’ve heard too many stories of photographers who did a fantastic job at the wedding, but took six months or even a year or more to get the clients’ products to them.

3.  Do you outsource your photo editing or do you do it yourselves? If you do it yourselves, how long does it take and what software do you use?

To be honest, our philosophy is pretty opposed to outsourcing. In part, because we feel that outsourcing is giving up a certain level of detail and attention that would inevitably trickle down to a decrease in the level of service to our clients, and also in part because we would have to raise our rates in order to outsource our work. We don’t want to raise our rates any higher than we absolutely have to!

We use Photoshop to edit our images and Adobe InDesign to design our albums. Everything is done “by hand” as it were, so the average wedding takes about 30 to 40 hours of editing. Also, if you’re wondering how many images to expect from your wedding, we typically get about 60 images per hour and each one of those is fully edited to achieve its highest quality in color, crop, white balance, exposure, etc.

4.  How do you protect your images?

Our archive system is very thorough. We use Time Machine, an Apple external harddrive that automatically backs up everything on an hourly basis. We also store the images on two separate computers, as well as burn them to a DVD as a hard copy. Finally, we upload the photos to an online hosting site in case of the remote possibility that we ever have a house fire that could destroy our harddrives and DVDs. And of course, we send our clients the images on DVD, so they have a copy as well!

5.  I’m interested in photography as a hobby, what camera and lenses do you recommend?

Check out this post for beginner equipment recommendations. Whatever you decide to purchase, start small and add more equipment gradually.

Is there anything else you’re dying to know that isn’t answered on our website or blog? Leave a comment and we’ll try our best to to answer!

We went without electricity for three days here in Boone. Here are a few photos from the ice storm!

Thank goodness no one was hurt (and home insurance).