2008

WOW!! What a year, and it is already gone! How time flies, which is the exact reason I am a photographer; to stop time in its tracks. See how I blog in a little marketing! HA!!! I would like to say "Thank You" to all my clients for making 2008 the biggest year yet at Gina Clary Photography. I am especially grateful to you for allowing me the honor of photographing your precious families. Without you I wouldn't be living my dream!! Thank you all so much.

I hope you all are looking forward to 2009 as much as I am. Keep checking back often for updates and specials in the upcoming year.

Gina Clary

Carson

What a blast I had getting to photograph Carson and his dad at their favorite place. I have been photographing Carson since he was a baby so he is an extreme professional now getting his photos taken. Of course I pushed him a little too far as he began asking, "Can we be done now Ms. Gina?"

Double Trouble

I finally got to meet Charlie & Ben...little brothers to the beautiful Ms. Lucy. Of course, they are twins, and of course if one goes to the left, the other goes to the right and Ms. Lucy stays there and smiles her beautiful smile. I had an absolute blast with all of them and here are a few of my favorite shots.

Ian William

I was first blessed by this family by having the honor of shooting their wedding. Now they have allowed me the honor of capturing the first photos of their first born son. He is adorable and cooperated like a pro. :) Here are a few of my favorites from our session.

Motion Center for Dance

The Company Members of Motion Center for Dance allowed me to photograph them again this year in their casual wear. As always, the girls were great (guys too), and know how to pose in front of the camera.

Noah & Victoria

Here are a few of my favs from a recent session I had with one of my favorite families. Of course it was all about playtime with Noah, and all about posing like a big girl with Victoria. :)

Sloan

What a blast I always have with this little one...He is my "Sprung A Leak" baby as some of you are familiar with. :) They grow so fast, but the cheeks on him have not gone away over the 2 years! YIPPEE...I LOVE those cheeks.

Seniors 2009

Mandi

Mandi owns and runs Motion Center for Dance in Plano. When she asked me to do some head shots of her, I was excited and we decided to make it a little more edgy than going the 'traditional' route. Here are a few of my favorites from our session.

Faith - Senior 2009

I had the pleasure of photographing Faith for her Senior year. We had a blast!! Below is a short video showing how beautiful this girl is!!!

At The Ranch

Girls Trip

California 2008 Baby!! Girls trips ROCK! All 5 of us live in 4 different states between us and stretch from the East coast to the West. We couldn't all be more different and yet we have soooooooooooo much in common (especially since we are all photographers). Besides all the constant laughter that occurred for 5 days, we fit in a lot of sight seeing and nightlife in California. Here are a few fun shots of us fooling around.













We got to go to Napa Valley and did a little wine tasting; however, I think we spent more time taking pictures and laughing than we did of actually tasting wine. It was BEAUTIFUL out there.















Of course the Golden Gate Bridge was a must see. I could have done without seeing the naked man on the beach (not posting pics of that).











Then the dogs of San Francisco. Which one is real????

Vacation Pics

Here are a few shots my girlfriend took of us in Georgia. The kids had a blast, as did I. Being able to let you children go outside and play without worrying was a nice change of pace from the busy city life.

Vacation Time

The kids and I are in Georgia at my girlfriend's house for 2 more weeks!!! She is also a photographer so we are having an absolute blast. We spent 3 days at the beach, and now were are playing and photographing of course every chance we get. I am going to have her take some recent shots of the kids and me since it has been over a year!! I have soooooo many shots of everyone else in the family, so it is time to get some with me in them. :)

Some Recent Shots

Sarah's Senior Prom. Beautiful!!

Business Relevance

OK, Gina told me my posts have to be at least somewhat relevant to her business. So, a quick update on the world of Gina Clary Photography. I am trying to get the new office complete as quickly as possible (allowing lots of time for considerably lengthy breaks, of course). Next time you come to the studio, drop a hint with something to the effect of, "Wow, your new office looks amazing! Did Bob Vila do this?!?!" Also, Gina is in the process of developing her new fancy website. It looks pretty great. Hopefully it will be up and running soon.

Also related to the business is the fact that I really need to get the office/studio finished in the next week since baseball season is about to start and that will, of course, require three hour breaks when the Astros are playing. I am excited about the upcoming season, if we can just get a nice surprise from a few of our starters, we could contend for a division title.

Speaking of business relevance, what is going on with this recession? I am curious to see what, if any, impact this has on Gina's business. I do have an idea, though. As you may already be aware, many of us will be getting checks from the IRS where they are giving us back some of the money we paid in previously (the economic stimulus package). I would suggest that you invest in some high quality pictures of your family (the value of this investment in the future will be priceless, of course). This will spur the economy as intended, as Gina will take your money and go buy some new flooring (or restart the conversation about adding that second floor to the house over the garage...don't get me started). This way we can all help pull the economy out of the doldrums it is currently in. This will in turn, drive up stock prices helping our 401(k) plans and all our other investments to get us back into the black.

Also, did you know that you weigh about 0.5% less at the equator than at the north pole? How weird is that? I guess weight fluctuation is a small price to pay for not getting flung into outer space at 1,000 m.p.h. due to the rotation of the earth launching you jai alai style. Oh, and wouldn't that be an award-winning picture?! See it all comes back to photography.

As always, thanks for reading ~ Mark

What's the deal with that?

I have to admit something. I like Starbucks coffee. Just some straight up bold blend coffee, not the half-caf low-fat double mocha frappaccino on ice with whipped cream type, more of a tweener. I can sit on my throne and judge those fools who spend all that money and order those crazy drinks, because I am not that guy, but I also am not the guy who can just laugh at anyone who walks into these places. I'm a tweener.

But can someone tell me who is the guy that is by himself at night hanging out in there with no coffee and just his laptop? The only other car outside was a Mercedes so I assume he can afford his own wireless connection (we use our neighbor's, oh by the way, thanks neighbor). So, I'm sitting there with my little girl as we are waiting on her hot chocolate and Gina's heavy breve cappucino with four shots of sugar free vanilla and I was just wondering what he was doing there. Not drinking coffee, obviously. Or, who knows, maybe he slammed four espressos and is worried about getting behind the wheel and waiting to come off his high, but it just seems odd.

I could almost understand if it were one of those Starbucks connected to a book store. At least there is a lot of foot traffic, so he either a) has opportunities to meet ladies or b) gets cred from other patrons as a sophisticated book reader, or a sophisticated coffee orderer (although, remember, this guy didn't have any coffee). Of course, maybe he is a fan of Gina's (and now, partially, my) blog and needs the espressos to keep himself awake as he eagerly keeps hitting refresh waiting for our next post since we are so bad about posting regularly. Well, if so, congratulations dude. Go home.

As always, thanks for reading ~ Mark

p.s. I was just kidding about stealing our neighbors wifi connection (usually).

Hi all. This is Mark. Gina told me it would be okay if I posted something occasionally on her weblog (some call it a blog).

So last night we continued the transformation of Gina's new office (i.e. we cleaned up/boxed up all the crap that was all over the floor). Gina was nice enough to itemize the list of "to do" items for me so I could see just how much really needs to be done. Adding baseboards and crown, and painting (walls, new door, trim, baseboards, crown, etc.) were a few of the major items. Need to hang a new fan, still need to fix the phone lines (this is a great mystery to me as it seems so simple, yet I can't seem to master it).

I did notice while I was in the attic last night that we have a lot of boxes. It started as one of those deals where you say, "Sure, lets keep the box for that in case we need to pack it up or sell it." Well, since then we have gotten rid of so much stuff that I am finding boxes for items I haven't seen in years. I found the box for our kids' jumpster (you know, the bouncy swing chair thing that attaches to the horizontal portion of a door frame). Well, I haven't seen the jumper in a few years, but I just found the box. The pile of boxes is actually pretty impressive. At this point, I am considering collecting boxes just to see how big I can get that pile. Laudry detergent boxes, capri sun cartons, picture order boxes (my gosh do we have a lot of those!). I can just open the attic door and with a decent frisbee-style toss should be able to hit the growing mass.

I look forward to sharing random thoughts, good movie/TV quotes, sports trivia and opinions, as well as family, business, and family business updates with you, our loyal readers. Fortunately, Gina has disabled the reply function on her blog (a portmanteau of web log, for those of you who don't know). That way, I can keep pretending that what I write is of any interest to anyone.

"Wikipedia...is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject so you know you are getting the best possible information." - Michael Scott, The Office

As always, thanks for reading ~ Mark

The Latest

Well I've done it again. I'm sort of remodeling my studio. It's 11Pm and I have Mark in the attic trying to find the phone line to connect to my new "office"! :) Yep, I kicked Sydney out of her purple room and gave her the bigger bedroom in the back of the house. I am taking over her room and have knocked out a wall into my studio! LOVE IT! So now I get to say, "Please pardon our mess!" :) We are not quite done yet, another day to finish the door, then its onto painting. The purple room is going to have to go, for sure!

My Clients!!

I made it through the busy season...hence the lack of blogging. I have to apologize for that. I over extended myself AGAIN...which I vow to not do the next year; however, somehow I just can't help it. When you are doing what you love, the word 'no' doesn't exist in your vocabulary. I have to thank all of my wonderful clients for be such a complete pleasure to work with this past year. I hope everyone received the small gift card I sent in the mail, and I hope you all know how much I appreciate you. I am still technically working 'part time' since I have Sydney at home with me; however, she will be in Kindergarten his fall which means I will have more time to devote to you all. I will be doing some fun things this year, and running some specials, so please stay tuned! :)