New Blog!

I have moved my blog! My new blog is located at: http://blog.AlexNguyenPortraits.com and is housed through WordPress. I will keep this old blog for archival purposes, but all my new clients and sessions will be shown on the new blog. :)

2008 Recap and welcome to 2009

2008 and the madness of my first busy holiday season has come to an end. I've learned a lot about photography, people, running a business, and the follys of dealing with Mother Nature in the last three months. I wanted to give a shout out and a huge THANK YOU to all my clients who have allowed me into their lives to capture their family memories for them. THANK YOU also goes to my wonderful family and friends who have been so supportive in my endeavors and getting my business off the ground.

I hope that in 2009 my business continues to grow, and I continue to grow as a photographer as well. Please check back for some changes to the blog, and visit my website for its new look and new images in the galleries as well.

Happy 2009 everyone!

And to leave you, a little montage storyboard of my boys from the last year.

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is an organization which does infant bereavement photography and helps families capture memories with their beloved infants after they have passed. I am proud to state that I'm a volunteer photographer for such a wonderful organization.

With the Month of October being recognized as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, The Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep Foundation holds its Annual Fund Drive for six weeks starting in mid-September and ending on October 31.

President Ronald Reagan enacted Proclamation 5890 in October of 1988 to recognize that each year, approximately a million pregnancies in the United States alone end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of a newborn child. Reagan stated, "A national observance offers us the opportunity to increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn or newborn babies. It also enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members... " To read the full Proclamation signed by Reagan, click here.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO NiLMDTS.

If you are in a place to make even a small contribution to NILMDTS, please know that doing so will continue to allow the organization to provide improved resources, training, communication, and other tools necessary in support of our amazing contingent of professional photographers who provide the gift of free remembrance portraiture to families in need.

Our next project we are working on is an online, interactive webinar version of our Formal NILMDTS Training taught by Co-Founder Sandy Puc' allowing anyone in any country with access to a computer to complete the course online. Donations help make programs like this a reality!

Your Donations Support the Organization in Many Ways -

By supporting the continued education of our volunteer photographers

By allowing us to further our outreach to hospitals and hospices across the world

By offsetting the costs associated with outreach efforts including Formal NILMDTS Traingin Seminars

By supporting the Family Forum which creates a productive and supportive haven for healing

By supporting the Photographers' Forum which provides a helpful environment for our member photographers to express their feelings and receive advice on the various issues that they face in this noble work

By supporting the day to day operations of our Headquarters Offices

Holiday Portrait Special

It's that time of year, when the leaves change, and the air smells crisper, and you start finding yourself thinking about how close the holidays are coming! This year I'm going to offer a Holiday Portrait Special for family portraits. Perfect if you're looking for a good gift for the parents or grandparents, and also for that great shot in the holiday card or newsletter.

The Holiday Portrait Special will include the following:

Consult with me to get an idea about what you want in your pictures

One hour photography session

up to 6 people can be included in a session (additional people in each session will be $25 each)

proof gallery will be available within one week of the shoot

includes two finished 8x10s

includes a CD of 5 high resolution images for your personal usage

$99 for the package

As an added bonus, I give a $50 credit towards any package/print order to any referral which books a session with me. If you refer three people who book a session with me, you get 50% off any photography package/print order. So get the word out! :)

You can visit the families gallery at my website for more examples of my family portraits.

Breastfeeding

I thought a lot about adding pictures depicting nursing or breastfeeding on my website. Originally I had included a nursing picture in my gallery, but after a couple of pointed comments about "seeing that sort of thing" from people, I took it off because I didn't want to appear offensive. I'll let it stand that I'm an advocate of breastfeeding, but more to the point, I wanted people who were looking to capture that nursing relationship with their child to come across my site and go "hey, I want something like that to remember these moments with my child".

What I didn't want was someone coming across my site and going "hey, those aren't pictures I want to be seeing on a prospective photographer's website" or "hey, those are inappropriate pictures". I was a little torn between treading the line of artistic expression, and not alienating prospecting clients. In the end, I realized that I couldn't please everyone, and the more true-to-myself photos I showcased in my portfolio, the more comfortable I would be with the types of clients that would be booking sessions with me. Long story short, I included two nursing pictures in the newborn category and hope that you find them as sweet and touching as I do. Let me know what you think about them. :)

Website is back online!

My website is back up and running, hurrah! :)

Website down

Currently my website is down. We're working on fixing the problem, but if you try to go there it just times out. Let me know via email if there are any problems or hassles and I'll try to resolve things. Hopefully we'll have it back up and running by this weekend. Thanks for all your patience!

Busy week!

Wow, this week has been super-busy photography-wise for me, so sorry about not updating. I had photoshoots saturday, a botched one sunday, monday, wednesday, and then yesterday was sunday's reschedule. Whew! Once I look at all the pictures I'll do some blog entries about what I learned during each shoot. Next week is calmer, I only have shoots scheduled monday and thursday! When it rain, it really pours.

Part of me super-excited to have all this portfolio building under my belt, but part of me is scared that all I'm doing is taking crappy pictures that people won't be happy with! Someone on another board I'm on said that the more experience you have, the more confidence you'll take with you to your shoots. :)

And to leave you with a picture, here's something from me wrangling with Samuel for a good Father's Day picture. Again, working with the white seamless background and a semi-cooperative 3 year old.



the storyboard we ended up giving my husband as his gift (thanks Amber for the help!) She pointed me here to a storyboard template tutorial which rocks!



bigger version of the storyboard here