I finished the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not!” It was easy to read but didn’t really offer a lot of insight. I’m sure many people will find it useful, though I thought that a lot of the information was common sense and easily found in many other books or derived from real life situations. For the money and for the amount of time that it will take to read it is worth buying.

I met with the best Western New York and Central New York wedding photographers on Monday in Rochester. Here is a picture of Luke Walker and I that was taken by Frank DiMeo. You know what I love about that picture… the combined age of Luke and I is still less than most wedding photographers!

My friend Leland Hardy, the founder of NEWYORK.COM, is traveling to Dubai on business for two days. That is such a cool trip; I’ll have to work on booking a few weddings in the UAE next year.

This is Neil Cowley, Liesl Cowley, Luke Walker and me at the wny+cny photography event on Monday. Luke and I had the idea to set it up and Neil and Liesl pulled it all together since we had crazy travel schedules. Who can guess what I was looking at when we took this?

Have a great day.

This is the slideshow for the baptism of my cousin, Mara Grace Dye.

New York was good, I’ll post more about it after I get caught up on work. Look forward to lots of photos, I have around 3,500 to go through from the past four or five jobs…

This weekend is going to be packed. I am photographing in NYC on Friday and Saturday, photographing in Buffalo on Sunday and meeting New York wedding photographers in Rochester on Monday.

Check this awesome Reebok commercial out from back in the day, it was written by and starred in by my good friend, and NEWYORK.COM founder, Leland Hardy.

I don’t really feel compelled to write, but the weekend was so great that I want to share some of it now!

My friends in the rock band NAVAR came to Rochester on Saturday for a great photo session today in the studio. I asked my good friend Garry Geer to photograph the band with me so we could give the guys as many great images as possible while working as effectively as we could.

The week started off with a few phone calls to determine a general direction for the photo session. After a few pages of notes from the lead singer, Pat Barry, I called Garry and gave him the rough ideas that we planned to take the session in. I worked through the night on Friday to prepare for the session and ended up getting about two hours of sleep before photographing.

On Saturday morning I got to the studio at 9:00am to scout out locations and to set up the lights. Garry arrived at around 9:40am with breakfast and to get the locations and lighting finalized with me.

We spent around 30 minutes planning out how we would approach this session to keep everyone working as effectively as possible. Garry decided that he would start out in the studio with John (lead guitar) and Tim (drummer) and I would work in the attic and stairwells with the brothers Pat (lead vocals) and Ben (bass).

Garry and I photographed NAVAR for around 4 hours in 6 different locations. We ended up making about 2,000 images of the group as well as the four members. Ben brought his daughter Elizabeth and his brother Brad and we took photographs of them too.

I will post more of the photographs after I get through all 2,000 images, for the time being this is my favorite from me and my favorite from Garry.

NAVAR by Brady

NAVAR by Garry

That image is why I love photographing with Garry. Both of our images are great but have totally different styles, his series in the attic is awesome, I am really pleased! I can’t wait to show off more of the photos.

My good friend Pat Barry, of the rock band NAVAR, is flying into Rochester from NYC this weekend. We spoke on the telephone to plan out an amazing photo session for he and the band. We have some great concepts nailed down and I am going to spend a few days planning out how I will take the usual ‘normal’ band photo up to the next level.

I am thinking about using the studio to make an intriguing scene that the band is an element of, though, we’ll do it without props so the focus will be on the band. I may also have a second photographer set up in the building shooting in the amazing stairwells, basement and elevator so we can get the most out of our limited time.

I had to cancel my meeting on Thursday with my friend Luke Walker, who is a great wedding photographer in Ithaca. I’ve said before, and genuinely mean it, that if I am booked for your wedding date but you love my style you need to call Luke and hire him, he’s great! We are planning on setting that meeting up for next week, after he gets back from NYC.

I had two clients call me over the past week, which is not anything unusual; however there is more to the story. Client one emails me about her wedding on 9-2 which is IN Wilmington, DE then a few days later client two emails FROM Wilmington, DE for her wedding in Skaneateles on 9-3. I think that is wild, I’ll have to call them both this week and find out if they know each other!

PS Get ready for a full review and images of my absolute favorite wedding album company ever! These albums are awesome and I know my clients will be as excited as I am. I should have that blog entry written up later in this week

File your taxes early and have a great day!

I met with a great wedding DJ today, Nathan W Baker, to photograph some portraits of him for his website.

We worked across the street from his office and created all natural light images. I think this one will look great on his ads, business cards and website.

I was reluctant to photograph with all of his DJ gear since the area where we photographed these would be hosting president bush on Tuesday… with military helicopters flying over and the potential of being watched we/I decided to keep it low profile

I highly suggest that everyone read the book ‘Love is the Killer App,’ by Tim Sanders. It is an easy read that is absolutely worth it, the whole book took me about three days to finish and I seriously took a lot away from it.

Without going too much into depth, the book places a lot of emphasis on creating a high quality network of professionals that you freely connect people to without the expectation of repayment. The book Love is the Killer App is $10.00 at Amazon.com