Monroe Payne

“This program doesn’t do a lot of things.  It doesn’t tell you how to begin and grow a successful stock business.  It doesn’t tell you all the bits and pieces of making sale able stock photos.  It doesn’t sell you on being a stock photographer.

What I WILL show you is examples of successful images and how they were eventually used.

I WILL show you how talented graphic artists have used my images, my beautiful finished images, as raw material in their own creations.  I started out having a real problem with this.

I WILL share with you the unique vision I had, and how its beginning to bear fruit.

I WILL share some ideas for unique manipulation of the images to catch your prospective client’s attention.

I will share some of my philosophy about creation, presentation, copyright, theft, giving, volunteering, and maintaining sanity.  They are all related.

And we WILL have fun.”

Monroe Payne is an Ithaca native who has been camera ready his whole life.  He is the founder and developer of IthacaStock.com and Monroe Payne Photography.  Monroe is also involved in IVT Virtual Tours, providing imagery tours to Ithaca business and Real Estate Professionals.  Monroe is the current chairman of the Professional Photographers Society of New York State Finger Lakes Section, and is active on the State Society’s Executive Council.  Monroe donates his time and energies to Tompkins County 4-H, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, which is a worldwide organization of professional photographer who donate their time and expertise to families who have suffered a still birth, and a variety of local educational concerns, including the Lansing CDC Auction.  He says, “The best piece of advice I was ever given is to not shoot what I see, but to shoot what I FEEL!”  “Photography is not a job; its a passion.”

Date:  Wednesday, February 8, 2012 Location: Lumiere Photo,  100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607. Free parking is along the street and in a near by parking lot.

Time:  Social hour begins at 6:00. Announcements at 7:00, and the main presentation will begin shortly after.

The meeting is free for members of PPSNYS/GRPP.  The fee for non-members is $30.  If you have never attended a GRPP meeting before, your first meeting is free.

Admit it.  You crave them.  If you say you don’t, you’re lying.
Apps.
If you don’t know what one is, there’s an app to help you find out.

Many of you may have gotten brand new “iToys” from iSanta recently.
Thanks to smart phones, we are digitally connected to our world 25 hours a day, 8 days a week.
But being connected doesn’t always mean you are productive.

It doesn’t matter whether you own an Apple computer or a PC, an iPad or a lily pad, an iPhone or a megaphone, you can’t escape apps.
But which ones should you buy, and which free ones will help you run your business and increase your efficiency?

During January’s meeting of the Greater Rochester Professional Photographers (GRPP), we will be joined by a business representative from the Apple Store, who will share with us the best apps for both photography and for running a business.  And no, I don’t think Angry Birds is on the list.

This month’s meeting will also include the installation of the new GRPP Officers for 2012.

Note:  This month’s meeting location is at the ONE Nightclub, located at 1 Ryan’s Alley.  We decided back in October to look at several places to have our meetings at in 2012.  We will gather your opinions after January’s meeting, and decide on a permanent location for the rest of 2012′s meetings.

Date:  Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Location:  ONE Restaurant and Lounge, 1 Ryan Alley, Rochester, NY.
It is  a stone’s throw from the intersection of East Avenue and Alexander Street, near the Genesee Valley Club and the former Milestones restaurant.
Free parking is adjacent to the restaurant.

Time:  Social hour begins at 6:00.
Announcements at 7:00, and the main presentation will begin shortly after.

The meeting is free for members of PPSNYS/GRPP.  The fee for non-members is $30.

To celebrate the year’s end, we will be taking in a showing of “Disenchanted – The Bitches of the Kingdom” at the Downstairs Cabaret Theater.  You know all those fairy tale princess stories you read to your kids when they were small?  Now the princesses are all grown up and you’ll hear all the sordid details and listen to them comically kvetch about the exploitation they’ve suffered in today’s animated films, theme parks and pop cultures.  This is not a show for your kids.

Ladies: think twice before you kiss that frog.
Guys: Prince Charming has nothing on you.

The cost is $25/person, which includes one ticket to the show, a small private reception with coffee and dessert afterward, and a selection of wines from Heron Hill winery.

Pay Here Through PayPal

Date:  Wednesday, December 14
Time:  6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:  Downstairs Cabaret Theater, 540 East Main Street (near Eastman Theatre) Rochester, NY

GRPP Members: bring your family and friends.
Come join us in a celebration of making it through 2011 and hitting 2012 in full force.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could take all the information that you’ve collected while running your photography career and be able to plan for a bigger, brighter, richer future?

What?  You don’t have a plan?
You haven’t collected any data?

For November’s monthly meeting of the Greater Rochester Professional Photographers (GRPP), we’ve invited Lisa Pelletier, a financial expert from SCORE, an organization of experienced business professionals, to give us tips on how to set up our records to allow us to collect better information that will allow us to plan better.

Remember, we are not photographers…we are running a business that happens to entail photography.  Studies have shown that most businesses fail not because they are not good at what they do…they fail because they cannot sufficiently operate a business.

As part of Lisa’s business, Pelletier Accounting and Tax Service, she speaks on behalf of SCORE to business owners and groups all over Rochester on how to properly manage your books and set yourselves up to succeed.

Lisa will not be throwing accounting terms at you, which has historically been proven to put an insomniac to sleep in four-and-a-half seconds.  She’ll be using easily understood terms that have proven to work with all of her audiences.

Date:  Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Location:  Lumiere Photo, 100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY

Time:  Social hour begins at 6:00.
Announcements at 7:00, and Lisa’s presentation will begin shortly after.

The meeting is free for members of PPSNYS/GRPP.  The fee for non-members is $30.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been photographing weddings for 2 years or 20 years…Walter and Chris’ program, called “Weddings, Lighting, & Workflow – Streamlined” will show you the “what, why and how” of their wedding photography, which will have to you seeing more things on your wedding days than you ever have.

The seminar is on Sunday, January 29th, 2012 at the Green Lantern Inn, in Fairport, NY.  It will begin at at 9am and run through 4pm, and a delicious lunch is provided, because you won’t want to walk out and miss one minute of this day.

You may not have heard of Walter, but Nikon has.  They showcased him and his images in a 2-page advertising special spread in the September issue of Rangefinder magazine.

For full details and to register, please go to:  http://grpp.org/tep/
There is an early bird registration discount if you’ve registered by December 15th.  Don’t delay, or miss out.

Believe us…you need to separate yourselves from your competition by seeing something they don’t…so you won’t want to miss this.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to join the Professional Photographers’ of America (PPA), now they are offering $15,000 of equipment insurance for the rock-bottom low price of…..FREE.  Yeah, you can afford that.

The PPA annual membership price is $323, which can be paid all at once, or in monthly installments.  If you pay for equipment insurance on your own, it would likely cost you at least that much.  Now you get the insurance and tons of other benefits, all for the same membership price.

Individual membership for the professional photographer includes access to all benefits, including online referral database listing. *Also includes eligibility to opt in for $15,000 of equipment insurance and one full registration to Imaging USA 2012 in New Orleans, LA.

To look at the benefits of joining PPA, click here.
To get more information about the equipment insurance opt-in program, click here.

This month, we are thrilled to have Allana Taranto (Arse Magna Studio) from the greater Boston-area talk to us about “visual thinking”.

Visual Thinking gives you a keener ability to see and articulate what you are seeing when you look at your own  images. This is a necessary tool to critically analyze your own work and online presence.

A deeper understanding of your unique point of view differentiates you in the marketplace. This leads to making more money with the kind of clients you love.

During Allana’s presentation, we will learn a tool set to:
- articulate what you are seeing when you look;
- apply this to our own work; and
- define and refine (in language) our distinctive point of view.

Harnessing that language (and using it with clients) will give them the language to talk about you about what they want and what they like, and will make them your champion and bring in more referrals.

For more information on Allana, who also belong to Greener Photography, please go to:

http://www.inspireboston.com/allana-taranto-the-visual-thinker/

http://www.arsmagnastudio.com/

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IMPORTANT:  Please note that we are meeting in a new location for this month and November’s meeting.
Don’t worry, you are going to have to drive about 12 seconds more to get there.
Location:   Lumiere Photo’s new location
100 College Ave., Rochester, NY

All you have to do is drive past Booksmart Studio and the Village Gate and hang a left.

The social hour and print critique will begin at 6:00. The GRPP business portion of the meeting will begin at approximately 6;40pm, and Allana’s program will begin promptly at 7:00pm.

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We’ll order pizza again as we’ve done the last couple of meetings (donations are gladly accepted), but make sure you save at least $5 for the 50/50 raffle. All it takes is $5 and a dream.

Several photographers from Greater Rochester Professional Photographers (GRPP) took part in documenting the national day of remembrance that captured the resiliency and unity of the country  on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  As part of  “Project 9.11″  forty members of the the Professional Photographers of New York State (PPSNYS), captured images during a “day in the life of New York State”  on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Here are several images that were captured on that day by GRPP photographers Patrick Luke and Terri Parthum.  Select images from all participating photographers will be published in a book.

Patrick Luke:  On the morning of the attacks, I was sitting in a meeting a Kodak when we first heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.  We joked that, in the world of radar and GPS, how could that happen similar to when a B-25 bomber flew into the Empire State building amid a heavy fog in the 1940s?  After hearing that a 2nd plane crashed into the 2nd tower, all I remember thinking was that we were under attack, and that a nuclear WW III was about to start.  Still reeling from the death of my first daughter 3 years prior, my first thought was, “if this is going to happen, I’m going to be home with my family”.  I immediately left work…almost crashing into two cars in the parking lot… and picked up my 2nd daughter from the baby sitter and went home to watch the events unfold on TV like the rest of the nation.  Although we were free to capture anything going on that day, I chose to capture people remembering the events of the day and showing patriotism.  I attended a service to honor the first responders who lost heir lives: the firefighters, police officers and EMTs who rushed towards the disaster as everyone else was running away from it.  I then visited the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC) to see an exhibit of artifacts that were recovered from the attack sites and tributes to some of the victims.

Steely Resolve

Rescued

Mourning Bands

Remembering the Victims

Red, White and View

Timeline

Terri Parthum:  I attended the Operation Patriot Foundation 9/11 Anniversary Ride.  The motorcyclists rode from Ontario Beach Park to the Brockport Fire Department 9/11 Memorial., which contains a piece of steel from the World Trade Center Twin Towers.  Patriot Guard Motorcyclists lead the way for other participating motorcycle clubs (500 bikes in all).  Members of the Brockport Fire Department stood guard over the memorial on September 11th.

Sue Egan
As soon as I changed my calendar from August to September, I started seeing the towers in my mind, feeling the deep sadness for the families of the lost, and remembered the fear we all had in the days that followed.

I can’t believe it’s actually been 10 years since that unimaginable day. I had been sick all weekend that year, and eventually made the decision to call in to spare everyone from my germs and sluggishness.

I worked in a professional digital call center for Kodak and if you weren’t completely on your toes, you would never make it through the day. So, there I was…in bed feeling sorry for myself, when I got the call to turn on the t.v. Like everyone else, I was glued to the screen, mouth gaping open, grabbing tissue after tissue wiping tears from what I was seeing.

A few hours later, the news let us know that the Red Cross was waiting for any blood donations they could find. All I wanted to do was to drive to NYC to help, but in my heart I knew that I wasn’t the right person to be able to do much of anything. So, what I could do, was to give blood to my local Red Cross. I knew it would be really busy, so I hopped on my bike and rode over.

The nights and days following were solemn. I remember seeing memorials everywhere. I lived in the city of Rochester, and as you walked through the neighborhoods, there were candles, flags, and flowers on the porch steps, and in windows.

In thinking back to those 10 years ago, the American flag is what stuck out in my mind the most. I used to take it for granted sometimes, or forget about it … but now when I see one, I am instantly filled with pride and hope.

On this 10th year remembrance, I was going to head out and photograph some of the events that were going on to commemorate that day in history, but all I could think about was my family. How I still have a family, and how all the families out there had lost so many loved ones. I decided the best way to honor them, was to spend that time with my family and to proudly wave the flag at our home. So that’s what I did, and they were some of the best hours of my life.
 

GRPP member D. Brent Walton will speak to GRPP on September 14th on “The Art of the Self Assignment”, or why artists get the blues.

Come learn various techniques for overcoming creativity block. You will see examples of self-assignments. Learn why goal-setting is important to your business, and hear real-life examples of how Brent turned self-assignments into revenue.

Need inspiration for photo shoots?  Brent will talk about how he gets his inspiration and why you need to constantly be inspired.

The social hour will begin at 6:00. The GRPP business portion of the meeting will begin at approximately 6:40pm, and Brent’s program will begin promptly at 7:00pm.

Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Location: Booksmart Studio, 250 N. Goodman Street, Rochester, NY (near Village Gate and Memorial Art Gallery)

We’ll order pizza again as we’ve done the last couple of meetings (donations are gladly accepted), but make sure you save at least $5 for the 50/50 raffle. All it takes is $5 and a dream.

A special part of our gathering was spent recognizing and celebrating our friend, Bruce Hahn of Hahn Photographic , as the store is shortly coming to an end.  He will be starting on a new adventure and we are all very excited for him and all that’s ahead for his future.

I remember taking a field trip to Hahn Photographic when I was in college to buy my first film processing tank. I was SO excited to go into the city to a real supply store with all of my classmates. The specialists there were just as professional then as they have been all these years later; especially when I purchased my first Pro Digital camera from them. Whatever question I had as I made my decision, they made sure I was confident with my purchase. We will all miss Hahn Photographic, and will never forget what we learned from them.

I was quite pre-occupied watching over my baby girl running around, but was able to get a few quick shots, so take a peek!    Thanks again to everyone that helped, and to Chris Kogut for bringing me a plant as a house warming gift!  SO sweet!

{Our next meeting is our LAST time at Booksmart Studio; 250 North Goodman 9/14.  6-9pm.  ‘The Art of the Self Assignment with D. Brent Walton – Don’t miss it!}

This was the only photo I didn’t take ~ they convinced me to get IN one.    Thanks guys!