Susan Collins Photography » Banbridge, Co. Down Photographer – Children’s Portraits, Weddings, Collages, Story Boards, Pets, Commercial, Fine Art, Scanning & Retouching, and much more!

Wee Dotes Winners Announced!

The winners from last year’s Wee Dotes Competition were announced last week. You can see them here, and on the Wee Dotes site.

Congratulations to all our 2009 Wee Dotes winners who each receive a membership from Little Imps, a year of hairdressing from Banbridge’s brand new kids’ hair salon Salon Kids, and a super framed portrait from ourselves.

New Studio Premises for Susan Collins Photography!

I am delighted to tell you that the studio has lovely new premises!

We have moved from Scarva Street to just half a mile up the road, in the Business Centre on Scarva Road.

The new address is:

Unit 2 Banbridge Business Centre
62 Scarva Road
Banbridge.

Our phone number and email address are still the same as before.

Three SUPER deals for March

To celebrate the re-opening of the studio we have three great deals for you to choose from, or pass on to friends and family.

The Ones That Got Away: Half Price Prints

All online galleries from 2009 have been made active again for the month of March to give you a chance to make use of this deal.

This is a perfect chance for you to add those PRINTS (not including framing) you fancied, but never got round to ordering.

Simply choose images from your gallery and then phone through your order to us and they will be half price!

If you have forgotten your login details, don’t panic! We can send them to you again.

FREE Family Sitting:
Save £50

We are SO proud of the new premises we would love you to come along and see for yourself!

Take this opportunity to grab a free family sitting during March (must take place in March 2010).

Simply phone us and arrange a sitting, saving the £50 sitting.

OR

£50 Sitting:
Receive £103 worth of EXTRAS

Pay the £50 sitting and receive a family pack of prints saving £53,

AND

DVD Slideshow saving £50!

Again, your sitting must take place during March 2010.

If you are interested in any of these super deals, don’t hesitate to ring us at the studio.

028 40 660 330

We hope to see you again during 2010!

I can’t believe another year is over . . . and before you can blink, we are already well into 2010!

I want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who supported me during 2009. All the Mums and Dads, ‘children’ both young and grown up, all the Wee Dotes, all the Bride and Grooms, in fact just EVERYONE! Thank you for all your support, kind words, and custom during 2009.

Watch this space for some very exciting news about the future of the studio, and for the announcement of the Wee Dotes competition winners  which has been on hold for a while.

Here’s to 2010!

My 10 year old daughter, Jessica, came to work with me over her Halloween Half Term break. While I was photographing clients she was working away at my desk, colouring, cutting, sticking, and folding, pieces of paper. With a final “TA DAAAAA” she presented me with a paper ‘book’ featuring cartoons, a front and back cover and even a thick spine with her name as author. All from a couple of pieces of A4 paper!

It was too good an idea not to make use of as family Christmas presents so I encouraged her to re-draw the cartoons on squares of paper, and suggested that if she could think of a few more stories, we could perhaps put together a book.

She ended up with 7 stories, some were long, a couple extremely short. Most show her sense of humour, attention to detail, and an artistic flair she didn’t get from me!

After scanning them all into the computer we sat together this evening putting the pages in the correct order and uploading for the book to be printed. We are ordering enough copies to cover grandparents and sundry other interested parties and I can’t wait to see her face when she sees her work in print for the first time.

In the meantime, if you fancy a laugh, you can see all the stories over at Jessica’s Flickr set. Any comments will be passed on to her.

P.S. The pets are real, the annoying boy is real, she doesn’t have a sister, Papa is real but I can’t vouch for the names of his fish, and as far as I am aware she has never tried to squish a ghost in her life!

Every now and then I receive phone calls from youngsters seeking a work experience placement from school or college. Some are very far in the future and some are for immediate starts after some other employer has let them down at the last minute. I feel very strongly that employers ought to do their bit for the community by offering places, but it can be very draining taking someone on, and sometimes in our studio it can be very boring for the student if we don’t have a lot of work happening to let them actually experience.

This week poor Claire was with us and boy, did she have a baptism by fire! We had loads happening the days she was here, with shoots of different sizes and loads of processing to be done on the computer. Some of the students who turn up here don’t reallllly have too much of a passion for either learning, or photography, but Claire had both. She even had a questionnaire for me AFTER picking my brain all week. I think had I had her here for a month she still would have been happily sitting asking questions and helping out.

The highlight of her visit, for me, was when I was totally stressing over the weather for tomorrow’s wedding and she calmly told me she had looked up the weather forecast on her iPhone and it is going to be fine in Belfast all day.

Now, there’s a girl who will go far. And a girl who I would have total confidence in if she were to assist me some day. Big thumbs up to Claire ;)

We have a rule in our house that we don’t even think about Christmas until after David’s birthday, which is at the end of November, and I hate seeing Christmas decorations in shops before we have even thought about Halloween. However, in the world of photography studios you DO have to think ahead a little. It takes time to process photos after a sitting and then organise prints when the orders arrive in.

So, if you are thinking about booking a sitting and handing over photos as Christmas boxes please start planning now!

Deadlines for Christmas this year are as follows:

Sessions should be before November 13th and orders with us by November 27th if you want to make sure you have the prints back in time for Christmas. This is especially important if you are ordering one of our framed products or photo books.

Book now!