Michael Chadwick Photography

NYRR Gridiron Classic – Sports Photography

Michael Chadwick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:52:39 +0000

On Super Bowl Sunday, NYRR hosts an annual 4 miler in Central Park to celebrate the big game. This year since the NY Giants were in it (and WON it!) there was quite a festive spirit out there on the course. A few Patriots fans reared their heads, but for the most part it was all Big Blue All the Way!

NYRR Manhattan Half – Sports Photography

Michael Chadwick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:46:29 +0000

It was a wild wintery day in Central Park, but these runners don’t know the meaning of the word QUIT. I came home from this shoot with a beard-cicle myself!

Joyce and Andrew – New York Wedding Photography

Michael Chadwick — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:58:06 +0000

Joyce and Andrew had a beautiful wedding ceremony at Moran’s in Chelsea, led by one of my favorite celebrants, Barbara Ann Michaels (a.k.a. Jester of the Peace). It was just after the new year, so Moran’s was still beautifully decorated not just for the wedding, but for the holidays. It was a fun and festive night full of love and laughter, and we all had a tremendously good time. Joyce and Andrew have been absolutely wonderful and I hope they enjoyed working with me as much as I did with them.

For privacy concerns due to their jobs, they have requested that no photos of any of the actual people involved be shown in public places, so the photos I am sharing with you will be only of certain details of the wedding. I hope you enjoy them!

Venue: Moran’s in Chelsea
Celebrant: Jester of the Peace
Music/DJ: Sound Connection
Cake: Love Street Cakes
Florist: fLorEsta

The Importance of a Breath

Michael Chadwick — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:10:20 +0000

Most of my wedding photography clients will tell you there is one word they hear me say often throughout their wedding day: Breathe. As a wedding photographer, one of my many duties is to make sure my couples look as relaxed and as natural as possible. With very few exceptions, most of the times in which either the bride or the groom is anxious or nervous, especially with photographs being taken of them, the simple solution has been that one simple word: Breathe. It even sometimes becomes a laughing point, an inside joke between the couple and me, throughout the day. It lets them know in a friendly, non-critical way that they have become rigid, that they look as if they must stand perfectly still for the 19th century daguerreotype to finish burning their image onto a copper sheet. It reminds them that they are living creatures, not statues, and that a breath gives a photograph precisely what it gives the human body – Life.

One of the things that happens when we are nervous or anxious is that we tend to breathe quite shallowly and more quickly. It’s a perfectly natural part of our “fight or flight” survival instincts. However, when your photographer encourages you to take a breath, it not only conveys a subconscious safety message (your photographer is not a panther about to snack on you), but it will help to eliminate photographs in which you look like you’re afraid a panther is about to snack on you. By taking a nice full breath, you are telling your brain that you are not in a life or death situation (despite the behavior of your future in-laws) and that release of anxiety will be reflected in your photographs.

Taking a nice full breath also helps to prevent the opposite problem, which is dead eyes. We’ve all seen pictures where a person is smiling, kind of, but their eyes convey the message that they are tired of being photographed or don’t really care for the person they’re being photographed with. Depending on the length of your wedding day, by the end you’ll be pretty tired of smiling not only for your photographer, but for your friends and family. There is a very easy way to help stave off the “I’m smiling but I actually don’t want you to point that flashy thing at me anymore” look. Whenever you are about to take a photograph, take a nice big breath. It will help you to relax, it will invigorate your body, and it will actually add life to your eyes.

Breathing isn’t just essential to our survival, it’s essential to us looking and feeling our best. Breathing has many side effects other than just keeping us alive. It energizes us, it helps our bodies detox, it helps us look alive and vital. It will wake up your brain at the end of a long, tiring wedding day (your brain requires more oxygen than any other organ). It will also release tension, making you look more relaxed and joyful in the photographs of your wedding day. When you look back on your wedding day photographs years later, which thought would you like to have those photographs bring to mind? Do you want to think “Wow, I looked hit!” or would you rather think “Wow, I looked so happy. What a beautiful day it was!” If the second sounds better to you, just remember this one simple word: Breathe.

Why Wedding Photographers are Expensive

Michael Chadwick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:11:18 +0000

The following is an actual Craigslist post by an upset bride…

“ATTN: Wedding Photographers:

WHY is finding an amazing wedding photographer so difficult? :/

I am a Bride who is getting married this summer and have yet to find a decently priced, exceptional, amazingly talented, fun photographer.

WHY because the word “WEDDING” is involved photographers think they can change you $ 3,000.00 for wedding photos? Oh, because no bride is going to go without so they are going to pay it, because they HAVE to. They are ripping people off for all they have! Why when you want to get married it costs you AT LEAST 15 grand after all is said-and-done? Its such CRAP!! I love all you $ 3,000.00 photographers out there but i think your prices are WACK. All your doing is hanging out at a wedding taking tons of photos and editing them.. and thats owrth 3 GRAND!!! You’re making so much money its crazy. I just wish people would be more realistic. I mean the “average” persons salary for 1 freaking month is somewhere around 3 grand. (Thats making 19$ an hour) So you’re going to take someones WHOLE MONTH paycheck for one flippen day of photos? Just because you CAN!!?????? So that maybe they will not be able to feed themselves or pay any other bills they have, right? It makes me SICK!

I know im speaking for more than just myself right now. Alot of brides out there think the same thing. & I bet all you fancy photographers wont even read this. oh-well.
Maybe there are cheaper photographers that will read this and LOVE to take my photos!”

This has upset a lot of professional photographers, and with good reason. Many have written about it of late, but I want to put my own two cents in here. My starting package is $2,500 for a six hour day. That’s low on the NY/NJ photographer scale. So, any brides out there who are shopping around and think I’m pocketing huge dollars and making a fortune as a wedding photographer, let me break down the hourly rate I make on the net for such a wedding…

Start with $2500. That includes NY State Sales Tax at 8.875% so if you take that $221.88 out, I am actually starting with about $2278

Over a year, the advertising and marketing costs are spread out over all of my wedding shoots. Assuming I shoot 30 weddings (less than I shot last year) that knocks out about $250. About 30% of my net goes to self-employment taxes. Take out another $683. My second shooter usually gets $500. Suddenly that $2278 is now $845. Take out another $350 or so for this wedding’s portion of my insurance and other business expenses including travel and printing costs. Now we’re down to $500. Maintenance and cleaning of the more than $30,000 worth of camera equipment I bring to your wedding day takes out another $50 or so per wedding. Down to $450.

I spend 1 hour meeting with you initially, another hour or two in communication with you prior to the wedding day, six hours actually shooting, probably another hour in travel, and probably about 32 hours in post-processing since there are two photographers shooting. Add another four hours with post-wedding requests, uploading, burning your DVD, etc. That’s 46 hours worth of work. In the end I make a little less than $10 per hour, and I don’t even maintain a full time studio office. That $10 per hour buys you years of expertise and artistry on a day which you cannot do over, dealing with adverse lighting conditions, running traffic and troubleshooting on the spot to make sure the day goes smoothly. It buys you a multiple award-winning professional photographer who will be responsible for capturing one of the most important days of your life, in photographs you will be holding onto your entire life and possibly passing along to generations which will follow you.

If you think $10 an hour for such expertise, experience, and artistry is an unreasonable amount, you are welcome to let Uncle Bob and his shiny new DSLR give it a shot. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So, before you complain too much about the amounts your wedding vendors are asking for, try to think about this: Those numbers are not inflated. There is a lot of competition out there, and if the value of the services they are offering are not worth what they are asking, the price point would not be supportable and they would not continue to get business. Weddings are a high-stress, high-performance job. Professional athletes make millions of dollars because they are expected to perform at the highest of levels. Yet, they make mistakes all the time and no one bats an eye. If we make a mistake at your wedding, it has a much greater negative impact on your wedding day and perhaps your life.

Do you still think we’re asking too much?

Megan and Nathan in Central Park – New York Wedding Photography

Michael Chadwick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:55:01 +0000

Many brides and grooms opt to have their weddings in the spring, summer, or fall. But I’m here to tell you that a snowy winter backdrop in Central Park is stunning, and shouldn’t be disqualified just because it feels like the ice planet Hoth out there! Megan and Nathan had a lovely ceremony at the Ladies’ Pavilion in Central Park, followed by a quick little tour of the area and some photos in the snow. We had a great time despite the cold, and I congratulate Megan and Nathan on starting their life together in such a beautiful setting!!

We won the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards 2012!

Michael Chadwick — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:32:26 +0000

We won the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards 2012!

This means we are in the top 5% of Wedding Pros nationwide! The WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ recognizes the top local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism. Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the organization, the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ are determined solely by the reviews from over 1.2 million newlyweds.

Thank you to all of my couples who wrote such wonderful reviews. I am ever grateful that I had the honor of being present for and capturing your wedding day in photographs that I hope you will treasure for the rest of your lives. Many thanks to all of you and we hope you have a wonderful 2012!!

—

New York, NY – January 24, 2012 – WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding Marketplace, is excited to announce Chadwick Creative Arts has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2012 for Photography!

The esteemed annual awards program recognizes the top local wedding vendors from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism within the wedding industry. While many industry awards are selected by the organization, Chadwick Creative Arts was selected based on its stellar reviews from past newlywed clients.

Chadwick Creative Arts is recognized as part of the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire local vendor community, comprised of over 200,000 wedding professionals throughout the United States and Canada. The Bride’s Choice Award recognizes the best local wedding vendors across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, based on their overall professional achievements throughout the past year.

“WeddingWire is thrilled to honor the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire. “Since the launch of the Bride’s Choice Awards™ program four years ago, thousands of outstanding wedding professionals have been recognized by the bridal community for their supreme service and dedication to the wedding industry. It is with great pleasure that we congratulate Chadwick Creative Arts for their continued professionalism and commitment to enriching the wedding planning experience for engaged couples.”

We are happy to announce that Chadwick Creative Arts is one of the very best photographers within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Project Wedding, Brides.com, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Weddingbee. We would like to thank our past clients for taking the time to review our business on WeddingWire. Thanks to their positive feedback we were able to receive the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ for 2012.

For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today at http://www.weddingwire.com/biz/chadwick-creative-arts-new-york/b7e3b453d3bc6033.html.

To learn more about the Bride’s Choice Awards™, please visit www.WeddingWire.com.

About WeddingWire, Inc.
WeddingWire™, the nation’s leading marketplace serving the $70 billion wedding industry, is the only online wedding planning resource designed to empower both engaged couples and wedding professionals. For engaged couples, WeddingWire offers the ability to search, compare and book over 200,000 reviewed wedding vendors, from wedding venues to wedding photographers. WeddingWire also offers a comprehensive suite of online planning tools for weddings, including wedding websites and wedding checklists, all at no charge. For wedding professionals, WeddingWire is the only all-in-one marketing platform for businesses online and on-the-go. WeddingWire offers one simple solution to build a professional network, improve search visibility, manage social media and reach mobile consumers. Businesses that advertise with WeddingWire appear on WeddingWire.com, ProjectWedding.com and other leading sites, including MarthaStewartWeddings.com (NYSE: MSO), Brides.com and Weddingbee.com.
###

Happy New Year!

Michael Chadwick — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:59:16 +0000

To all of the newly wedded couples, families, performers, and models who left me take their portraits this year, and every single one of my beloved clients, thank you for a wonderful 2011. 2012 is already looking like a wonderful year with lots of promise and some wonderful changes in store. This summer we will be relocating from Manhattan to south Jersey and opening up an official studio. We’re incredibly excited about it, and looking forward to creating a warm, family photography studio where we can bring all of you in and take wonderful photographs!

We will keep everyone in the loop about where we end up, so keep following the blog for updates. A happy and blessed 2012 to all of you!

Paula and Michael – New York Engagement Photography

Michael Chadwick — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:34:21 +0000

I am so excited to be shooting Paula and Michael’s wedding in 2012. We had a blast just getting to meet each other (they’re fellow Disney Dorks too!) and our Engagement Shoot in Central Park was even more fun. I really enjoyed spending the time with them, and the time just flew. They are so much fun to be around, and I just know their wedding is going to be an amazing celebration of love and laughter. Congratulations on your engagement, you two. You’re wonderful together!!

CCA is “Best of Weddings” on The Knot for 2012!

Michael Chadwick — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:52:48 +0000

I just got the call from my account representative at The Knot, who informed me that for the second year in a row, Chadwick Creative Arts has the honor of being awarded “Best of Weddings.” This is a huge honor, that few Manhattan photographers can claim in a single year, and I have received the award twice in a row! Thank you to all of my couples who wrote such wonderful reviews, which are the direct reason for this happening.

This is an important award for me, because I believe first and foremost in customer service, making sure my couples have everything they want and more from their experience with me. This is very much a “people’s choice” award, and I am so very happy that my couples are happy enough with my service to write such wonderful reviews and testimonials. I’ve put up a few of them on our “Kind Words” page, if you’d like to read them.

Thank you again to all of my 2011 couples, and let’s shoot for the trifecta in 2012!