Wow…did Friday seem to come around quickly this week or what? Things are picking up around here and although we haven’t had much of a winter, it occurs to me that spring is right around the corner.  This week we were full with sessions and to start it off we did a great Valentine session on location with Kathryn (one of the adorable owners of (Koukla Kids) and her family. Kathryn is due soon with a little boy and she looks adorable with her little baby bump. Here is our pick for our Favorite Photo this week, it is The O’Connell family.

Speaking of Valentines photos we also had a wonderful time doing a Valentine themed Portrait Party at Koukla Kids this week along with some commercial photography for a wonderful local company and a “Meet the Family” session for KidAround magazine which will be out next month. Here are a few samples of our Koukla Kids portraits. We always have such beautiful children for our sessions and we were so lucky to have great weather this week.

Here are some additional updates from Bisharat Photography, this first week in February 2012.

Kristene and I have taken on the art of Bikram Yoga…getting addicted is a better description. If you cannot reach us by office phone/cell/email/text/face book/twitter, most likely you can find us at Arden Hot Yoga hating our very intense and sweaty work out and loving how awesome we feel when we have actually made it through the 26 Bikram poses in the 100+ very humid atmosphere.

I had a wonderful dinner-meeting with my good friends and partners, Anna and Selena of Annie and Isabel Hospital Gowns. We had the pleasure of enjoying a delicious meal at Fabians Bistro in Fair Oaks. Fabians is a wonderful restaurant serving an amazing Italian cuisine. Annie and Isabel have had some fantastic giveaways on Face Book and Twitter. Click here to “like” their FB page and check out their contests and amazing products. They are going to have some exciting new announcements coming soon. If you could please keep Anna in your prayers, she was recently diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer and will be undergoing surgery and a regimented treatment plan soon. We <3 you Anna!

Kristene and I also had the pleasure last night, of attending a “Guest Chef Dinner” at Plates Cafe and Catering. What a mouth watering, artfully presented meal prepared by the amazing chef, Matt Woolston of Matteo’s. I have had the pleasure of volunteering my time and photographing several of these events at Plates and last night was exceptionally fun for me attend as a guest. If you have not attended a guest chef dinners at Plates, I highly recommend you giving one a try. Plates has had some amazing chefs volunteer their time to benefit St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children, giving back to the community while enjoying a delicious and delightful meal is a win, win for all.

A busy weekend is planned for me, starting of course with Bikram Yoga, setting up for a crab feed, an intense Volleyball tournament, attending the yummy crab feed, followed by more Volleyball and then the Super Bowl.

I certainly hope our update finds you happy and healthy. Have a great week, unless I’m inspired to share more before Friday ;0)

Seems I am on a roll……Cheers!

Here is our favorite this week and I know someone who has been waiting to see it up here. tee. hee.

So, that answers the FPF question, now for the PP…. The PP stands for Portrait Parties and boy do we have an agenda for those coming up. About 5 years ago we formed a very unique partnership with the wonderful children’s clothing store Koukla Kids . If you have not been to Koukla Kids you will have to stop by there, it is a real treat *bonus-next door to Starbucks. Upon deciding to work together, I introduced my idea of Portrait Parties to them and boy oh boy has Bisharat Photos loved doing these special little parties with Koukla Kids. The idea is that we photograph your child during a 15 minute block of time. We find that the child typically is fully engaged for about the period of time and then they are over it, therefore we get the best expressions possible. Our next Portrait Party is this coming Wednesday, February 1st and we are hosting the theme of Valentines Day (of course). You can book your time with Koukla Kids by calling 916-254-5437, emailing info@kouklakids.com or by stopping by their store, 3809 J Street, Sacramento,  Ca  95816. They would love to meet you. Here is a small sample of some of the types of photographs we will be taking at Koukla Kids.

Remember you don’t have to use our theme, you can bring your own ideas along with you that day too.

Looking forward to seeing you soon. XOXOXOXOXOX

We are very happy to say we had a lovely holiday season with lots of nice weather to be photographing right up to December. Wish every year we could have that sort of weather although I know we need rain badly. For some reason we love the holiday “madness”,  it really gets our creative juices flowing.  Phew……now we are ready to get crackin for 2012 and we have some awesome ideas for some really great sessions that we are ready to share and we are ready to get busy.

We recently had our staff “specials and marketing” meeting for 2012 and the anticipation and excitement for our upcoming year grew even more! By popular demand we will be scheduling our portrait party sessions at Koukla Kids featuring our adorable  “Lemonade Stand” sessions as well as our “Bunny Day” sessions. This week we are doing our Valentine Day/ or Winter Day portrait parties. We also have some wonderful senior reps that are going to be helping us get the word out that it is now time to book those  “Senior Portrait” sessions. We are also offering seniors the chance at mini sessions this year, which our male  seniors typically like since a lot of times they don’t really want to be doing photographs to begin with.

Stay tuned, we are very excited for our 2012

It was unanimous in the office today that we would feature Mackenzie Brooke Bisharat or (Kenzie, Ninee or Mac as she is also known) as our Favorite Photo Friday. She celebrated her 19th birthday yesterday.  9-29-92 was a lucky day here at the Bisharat home. I remember a labor nurse at Sutter telling me I should play the lottery that day. After 2 days of labor, 3 trips to the doctor (because I just knew I was dilated to 10 HA!) and 2 trips to the hospital (because by this time there was no doubt I was dilated to 10 HA!), Ninee finally made her grand entrance into the world. The smallest of our 4 children, she weighed 8 Pounds, 6 Ounces. She was delivered by my best friend’s father (Dr. Eichhorn) and lucky enough my best friend Rebecca was in town to be able to hold my hand and be present for the birth of my second daughter.

We are so proud of  Mackenzie she has grown into an amazing women! She has a heart of gold and is so loving, caring and giving it is of no surprise to us that she is working hard to become a nurse. She will be an awesome one.

Keep dreaming big and reaching for the stars Kenz, that’s who you are! Happy Birthday!

I had a great time this past week with this family of three that we have featured. It was a bit of a funny story how we met. Adam likes to run and does so at a local park where I often photograph. He had been out running on a few occasions while I was doing family portraits. He stopped one day and said “I see you out here doing photographs and I’m wondering if you have a card”? I thought to myself “oh my” he sees me out here acting like a fool and he still wants my card? “Why of course”, I said “here is a card”.

Adam called a few days later to buy his wife a surprise family photo session. I thought that was the sweetest little gift ever. What a great guy!

We had a blast together and I just love this photo of his adorable little family.

 One more mention. I can’t help but say how much fun we had at Koukla Kids this week doing our lemonade photographs. Our new mode here at Bisharat Photography is:

When life gives you lemons…..make lemonade!

Details

 Chosen intern will learn the ins and outs of running a two location photography business. Sales and sessions taking place at our studio location (Gold River) and production and design work at our home office (Carmichael). This is a unique opportunity to learn about the creative as well as business aspects of running a photography business.

 About Brenda Bisharat Photography

• Specializes in maternity, newborn, children, family and high school senior photography
• Serves clients throughout the entire Sacramento and surrounding areas. Also available to travel for specialized photography sessions throughout California as well as other scenic and vacation destinations around the world.
• Been in business over 25 years in the Sacramento area and pride myself on personalized customer service, genuine caring attitude and the delivery of quality products.

Duties of Intern:

• Basic office organization and cleaning
• Filing and implementing our new paperless system
• Basic image editing, retouching and processing
• Date entry
• Album and card design
• Website, blog and social media updates
• Order check in and order shipping
• Learning sales software and sales techniques
• Studio clean up and set designing
• Research and assistance of new business projects
• Phone and email correspondence

Requirements:

• Creative, fun and passion for learning
• Self motivated and focused
• Dependable, honest and hard working
• Great customer service skills, works well with people
• Basic knowledge of Photoshop, face book and wordpress

While this is an unpaid position to start, there is a possibility that it can turn into a part time or full time position given the intern has proven him/her to be a great contribution to the business and team at Bisharat Photography. The intern would need to commit to approximately 10 to 20 hours per week and the hours may vary from week to week.

Qualified applicants should submit the following to brenda@bisharatphotos or Kristene@bisharatphotos.com . We will be interviewing interns as applications come in. Deadline for applications is October 5^th 2011.

Please submit:

• Resume with at least three references or letters of recommendation
• A creative self-portrait

Also included with your submission:

• What interests you most – photography or this type of business?
• Why do you want to apply for this internship?
• What is your schedule availability?
• What are your goals around this internship?

YUM-YUM!

ALOHA KRISTENE! BTW don’t you just love that word Aloha? It means Greetings, hello, good-bye, affection and love. One word that has all of those meanings.

This week I had so many things to say, but not much time to say them. To start, it was a short work week only having 4 work days doesn’t sit very well around here although the holiday on Monday was a very welcome break! Two of my daughters, my grand kids and I had a lot of fun going to the fundraising event at Fremont Park, Chalk it Up a non-profit organization dedicated to funding children’s art education in the Sacramento area. This year I sponsored a square and it was so much fun looking at all the squares to find what an artist might have done with one for me. Although, I never actually met the artist that I sponsored we have connected on Face Book. Thank you again Jen Christ Artist considering you have never worked with chalk and had no idea what sponsor you would be assigned until you got there I was more than impressed with this beautiful portrait you chalked, portraying my photography work.

This week has been a hectic up till midnight sort of week, but all in all I always love my job! Always! Here is one of my Favorite Photos from this week in addition to the above!

P.S. If you have not heard about our September Specials, just released click here to see what we have going on. Thanks so much! Have a great weekend!

Of course we love Fridays for many reasons, one being we get to take a look at what we have accomplished this week taking photographs and pick out our favorites. This week started with an adorable Annie and Isabel session at one of my favorite hospitals Kaiser Roseville. I love the beautiful window light that Kaiser has in their rooms. Sessions this week also included two newborns at the studio, a 4 month old, 6 month old, 2 year old, a few outdoor family and children sessions as well as our shoot for St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children fundraising project that is in the works. This was certainly a busy week at home and at work. We are trying to adjust to the difficult schedules of school, work and sports, seems like we don’t eat dinner before 9:00 these days….

I had the most fun this week photographing little George, documenting his year 5. He is very special to me in many ways but mostly because he is the son of one of the owners of Annie and Isabel Designer Hospital Gowns, Selena. Even though Selena’s family lived in the Bay area for many years, I have had the pleasure of photographing her and the rest of her family for quite a long time now. George is full of personality and he just L-O-V-E-S trains. I found it most fitting to do his 5 year session near some railroad tracks and he could not have been more thrilled with that. Happy Birthday George you are growing up so fast!

Here is one of my favorite photos from Wednesdays session.

Off to a full day today, including an Annie and Isabel Hospital Gown session with a new Mom (L-O-V-E)

Have a great weekend!