Jeff Mason Wedding and Portrait Photographer

I was contact a while back by a very enthusiastic student from the yearbook staff at Steinbrenner High School.  She saw Jeff Mason Photography ads for senior pictures on facebook and wanted to know if i would be interested in placing an ad in their yearbook.  Sydney is her name and I was very impressed with her professionalism and attitude.  I told her that I would place an ad but I needed a student from her school to be featured in the ad and asked if she would be interested in being that student?  After meeting with her and her family we scheduled a session.

We scheduled Sydney to have her hair and makeup done before the session by my good friend Priscilla Cruz of Destiny & Light Hair and Makeup Artists.  She looked great and had a good time being made up.  I also want to thank Stephanie Humphrey owner of Stephanie Humphrey Photography for her artful suggestions and expertise with a reflector.

Here is the ad for Jeff Mason Photography that is going to be in the yearbook:

Earlier this month I had the wonderful honor of creating a family portrait in honor of Mrs. Martha’s 90th birthday.  There was family from out of town as well as locals.   What an enjoyable experience it was.  Martha showed me all of her family pictures and told me about the countries they had visited.  It was remarkable all of the traveling that they have done during their lives.

Now as I have mentioned, this is Martha’s 90th birthday, right?  Well, Mrs. Martha was determined to enjoy it to the fullest…as she took a ride on the rope swing in the back yard!  Personally, she scared me to death but I get the feeling that this is Martha’s M.O.

Happy Birthday, it was truly an enjoyable afternoon.  Here are a couple of pictures from the day

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One of the great things about meeting a bride and groom and photographing their wedding is that they become a mom and dad.  I photographed Kimberly+David’s wedding in 2008, it was a super fun wedding at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa.  Kim and I have been kept in touch through facebook so I knew that they were expecting.  Well, in December Kim called me to say that they would be in Tampa and would I photograph their new baby girl, Sarah.  Uh, of course!   It was so nice to see Kim and David again and to meet the beautiful little Miss Sarah.  I look forward to being their family photographer for many years to come.

Here are a few of Sarah’s pictures.

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Chrissy and Ed were married on 4/18/2009 at St. Petersburg Sunken Gardens.  It’s a beautiful botanical garden and they had their ceremony near the butterfly garden.  Their reception was at the Marriott Pinellas Park.  Both of their families were a lot of fun and there was a lot of dancing during the reception but one thing that really stuck in my mind was what Ed’s brother, Pete,  said during his toast.  He said that Ed has always been one to do things his own way and that when Ed told him that he cared, truly cared, for Chrissy that was when Pete knew they were meant for each other.  Chrissy and Ed, I wish you many years of health and happiness together.  Here is a slideshow with a few images from their day.

Sarah is a Senior at Armwood High School and we attend church together.  She is active in the church youth group.  One of my favorite memories of Sarah since I’ve known her was when the youth group came to our house during christmas and Sarah had this “hat” on that was more a cone-shaped spring than a hat and had a bell on the top!  It reminded me of something from Dr. Suess.

Sarah has been president of Armwood’s FFA chapter and is looking forward to college.  She is a Senior Spokesmodel for our studio and will be earning discounts on her senior pictures.  She will also be earning gift certificates from some of her favorite stores like Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister for referring her friends to Jeff Mason Photography for their senior pictures.

Here is a slideshow from Sarah’s session.

Jeff Mason Photography is proud to announce that we are offering Senior Graduation Announcement Cards from Check Art Studio.  These are awesome cards that announce the date, time and place of your graduation.  Plus, they have your senior pictures on them.  If you want something different than everyone else, and you know you do, you’ve got to have these!  Schedule a session to have your senior pictures taken by Jeff Mason Photography and you get to choose from 8 fantastic designs.  We have several different types of cards and each one comes with a matching 411 cards to give to friends.  If you are anywhere near Tampa, Florida contact us today to schedule your session.

Here is the front of one of our cards.  More samples will be posted soon.

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I saw this posted on a Photographer friend’s blog.  Thanks, Tennille, this is too good not to share.

This is one of the coolest decorating things I’ve seen in a while.  I would love to have one of these in a studio.  You could put one in a reception area and also have one in the camera room.  Options as a background are huge!

     

 

GREEN FORTUNE – PLANTWALL.

I’m back in Washington this week doing work for HUD.  With the current environment of the housing market HUD is expecting their business volume to explode.  The problems with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac is driving business to HUD.  This, combined with recent legislation to assist homeowners with troubled mortgages, has raised concerns within the agency that their current business processes will not be able to effectively service the increased volume.  The consulting company that I work for, along with our partner, have been hired to re-engineer some of their critical internal processes.  I am supporting a lady who is facilitating these business changes and a giant in the industry of Lean Business Process.  Lean follows the principals laid down by Toyota and Henry Ford. It’s purpose is to eliminate waste in the form of unnecessary and/or non-value added process steps and focuses on only the essential steps.  As an example, one of the processes that was being re-engineered required 23 review/approval signatures.  After the team analyzed and re-engineered the process only 3 signatures were required!

For 15 years I have been a consultant implementing finance software systems.  One of the most frustrating things about going into a new client’s business to implement a system has been seeing all of the broken BUSINESS processes and not being able to make the smart changes.  We would point out that, “Well, if you changed x or y in the way you do business not only would it benefit the implementation of this $2 million software that you just purchased but guess what, you probably wouldn’t need the software.”  Of course we couldn’t say that exactly but when we did elude to it we were met with, “Oh, we can’t change that, you are here to implement the software, not change the way we do things.”  The Lean process is different.  With Lean we facilitate meetings that help the business process owners see their broken business processes and re-engineer to processes that eliminate wasted, non-value added activities in day to day operations.

This experience has also helped me with my photography business.  Lean focuses on the customer.  By making my own business streamlined and not wasting energy on inefficient tasks I have been able to free time to devote to taking care of my customers.

It was a little grey in D.C. today but after leaving the office I walked by the White House to snap a few pictures.  Here’s one from the front lawn.

It was a beautiful day in the Capital city today.  A cool front came through Tuesday night and the humidity and temp were down so instead of going directly to subway from the office I decided to walk over to the Mall and get a picture of the Capital. The Mall always has something going on and throughout history has always been a gathering place.  Today wasn’t any different.  It seems as though there are coed adult kickball leagues that play there regularly.  it was fun watching these guys and girls play a game that I haven’t played since grade school and from the looks of it, I’m missing out!