Kameron Bayne Images :: Signature Photography :: Studio News

On December 12th of this year, photographer Jeremy Cowart inspired photographers all over the world (including Italy – check out this cool time-lapse video) with a vision to give back to their respective communities with Help-Portrait.  The idea was to give the experience of a professional portrait and the tangible printed results to a person who may never have ever been photographed before.  Some of you might remember awhile back I made a post sharing my excitement about the idea.  A big hand goes to Christine Pagan (pictured above with some fellow “portrait-helpers”) for putting the Omaha chapter together and coordinating several different sites ranging from folks living on the streets at the inCommon Community Development meal to sick children at the Nebraska Medical Center to a church that adopted formerly abused women and their children.  Among hundreds of other photographers, my brother Jordan and Cara of CB Yates Photography & Design came out to help make it a wonderful success.

We setup shop with inCommon and I met some amazing people through this experience — brave, joyous people full of personality and life.  Part of me wishes I could show you more images than just the ones of volunteers during setup, but not entirely because that was the beauty of the idea — to create images for no other purpose than to be enjoyed by the people we created them for.

We have some very exciting news we’ve been working on for several months now–we are opening a brand new gallery and viewing space at the Shaker Place (10730 Pacific St. Suite 218)! To celebrate, we are hosting an open house for our friends and clients on June 25th, 3-8pm.

I want to say thank you to several people who gave us their expertise and sweat to make this a reality… Kylan Block is the architect who saw potential in a small room covered with wood paneling and put together a truly “out of the box” layout. Ron was the contractor at the Shaker Place who built most of it with his bare hands and patiently allowed us to make several changes in the midst.  The vision of interior designer, Aaron Carlson and his assistant Franny High, deserve a creative solution award as they took our ideas to heights we never dreamed were possible!  Thanks to Ben Holt who built the cabinets, Roger Wulff who did all the electrical, Kathy Foust for her upholstery work, Ken for painting and Sherri for keeping a pulse on all the details.  Everyone came together as a team to create a space that marries both beautiful form and concise function; we can’t wait to share it with our friends and clients.  Keep an eye out for invitations!

**If you are a professional photographer, we are going to have a special gallery event just for you a few months down the road.

Kameron Bayne, Photographer
With an educational background in philosophy, theology, interpersonal communication, and conflict resolution, the first thing you may notice about Kameron is he’s awful at small talk.  But he enjoys thoughtful conversation and has a gift for sorting out complicated ideas.  As a true artist at heart, the beauty he sees in life is inspired most by the invisible qualities of love, faith, and hope.  Once behind the camera, his quiet presence becomes a source of confidence for our clients as they invite him into a small, but significant part of their lives.

Heather Bayne, Viewing Director
Heather is a genuinely caring, technical savvy, task accomplisher and problem solver (she used to take calculus classes in college just for fun!).  With a positive and upbeat attitude, she heads up each viewing premiere.  She also maintains the back-end of our computer systems, helps occasionally with retouching or album design and corrects Kameron when he mispronounces words.

Brenda Block, Client Relations
Disarming, outgoing and generous–Brenda loves people and can often be found chatting with anyone from the corner grocery store clerk to the CEO of a fortune 500 company.  She will be the one to help you get acquainted with our studio and walk through the entire creation process.  She’ll also be there at the end to ensure you had a wonderful experience working with us.

Matthew Bower, Production Assistant
Matt is a young college student studying anthropology.  Good-natured and eager to help, he works behind the scenes to maintain our production schedule; he responds to support emails, answers the phone, and wraps everything up into a finished product.  When he’s not working or studying, you might find him at a number of local coffee shops sipping an espresso while reading the latest issue of TIME or Game Informer.

This past Saturday, we had a low key “training day” with a group of our assistants/second shooters – Stephanie, Jordan, Shelly, and Kacie (and Patches, but she was just a model).  We spent the day reviewing the basics and getting some hands-on experience with new equipment.  New in our arsenal is a 5D Mark II, a 580 EX II Speedlite and a couple Radio Poppers.  I’m excited to start creating more images together!

Last weekend turned out to be a beautiful time for an engagement session. We knew it was going to be bit chilly, but with the wind chill it was downright cold with frostbitten fingers! Thankfully we took several breaks at Rick’s Boatyard Café (their first date!) to warm up and chat a bit. We also created some images outside the Orpheum Theather and inside the Magnolia for some fun variety of their dating history.  I really enjoyed getting to know Melanie and Ricky as they are a wonderful and beautiful couple – inside and out.  The wedding is just a couple months away (the first on our schedule) and there’s no doubt it will be a day to remember!

During our plans for the shoot we decided to emphasize the idea of an image series and photographed accordingly.  In post-production, I had so many sequence images I thought I’d do a little fusion type experiment to celebrate the connection between Melanie and Ricky.  For me, this kind of “still motion video” has the subtle sense of nostalgia and anticipation – that wonderful combination of the comfort of familiarity with the excitement of something new and hopeful.  The whole process was a lot of fun; if you haven’t already, check it out!

For those of you who don’t know, Heather and I are going to have a baby!!  This week, our little peanut is the size of a lemon.

We will be out of town all next week for a photographer’s workshop to recap the 2008 year and refresh our approach to a balanced life and business. With the 2009 new year, some exciting new changes are coming…

• an updated look for our blog and WebReady images (see below)
• a new online cart system at clients.kameronbayneimages.com
• a brand new employee to help in the office! (we’ll be dedicating a whole post to introduce him in the couple weeks)
• new online workflow/client management system to help keep us better connected with clients by allowing secure access to 2009 wedding or photo shoot details via a unique portal page website

We have one more piece of news we want to share – but it requires a picture that has yet to be taken… and we hope that opportunity will come sometime this week.

We will be closed Christmas through New Year’s Day to spend some time with our family. We will return on January 2nd all ready for the Bridal Showcase at the Mid-America Center on January 4th. Until then, we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2009!

Our store front know as The Shop (shop.kameronbayneimages.com), will be closing shortly after the New Year.  Unfortunately, it was never fully finished and the company that developed the site appears to be going out of business after numerous financial and legal problems.  As a small company ourselves, we empathize with their situation and don’t wish it on anyone, but at the same time, we are glad to be free to pursue a much more “user-friendly” kart system with a much more stable company.

It will take a couple months to finish the new build out, so we will be without online ordering capabilities for a while and apologize for the inconvenience.  But we hope to start the process in a couple days and will keep everyone posted!

Heather did a wonderful job putting together the booth – we couldn’t of done it without Brenda (and Jordan and Kylan for renting the truck and moving the couch).  Stephanie worked with me all day Saturday and Sunday and was so upbeat and cheery, she made it easy to forget how tired we all were.  It’s true that shared joy is doubled joy and shared burdens are half the load.  I’m so very proud of our team!  I can’t forget to mention her husband Mike helped tear everything down so we finished in a little over 30 minutes.

Indeed, it was a very long weekend; full coverage Saturday wedding (be on a look out for posted images 4 weeks from now), up at 5am for the Omaha Bridal Show on Sunday, and ending the night with our friend Gary’s 50th birthday bash. But we enjoyed every bit of it!

We wanted to say thank you to everyone who stopped by and saw us at the show! We met a lot of excited brides planning their weddings for 2009 and 2010. It seems May 23 and June 13 are popular dates for next year – we felt so bad for disappointing some brides because we were already booked. We also met some other photographers like Tanya of Candid Moments Photography and Jada Scott of Capturing Candids, and old friends like Terry Cue of Images by TLC. Hopefully the show provided everyone with lots of good information and gave a little hands on experience with the personalities and styles of the vendors.  We are happy to help anyway we can.