“Hello. My name is Dean Oros. I’m a photographer.

I love a good story. Especially stories of love and family. Films about people falling in love are completely cool. I don’t understand the term “Chick flick”. As a photographer, capturing honest emotions shared between people is a wonderful experience. It’s magic; a creative process unlike any other. Witnessing the amazing reactions of my clients when they view my work makes me feel like I’ve the best career in the world.

In my previous life, I was an international TV / film distributor, and traveled the world. I made TV programs, too. Some of them won many awards.

If you’d like to be in front of my camera, send me an email. I’d be happy to hear from you.

Hats off to Love.”

When I was introduced to the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep Foundation, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on the responsibility of creating a heirloom to help a family heal from the loss of their baby. “Remembrance Photography” allow families to honor and cherish their babies, and share the spirits of their lives and legacy. The last thing I’d want to do is start balling my eyes out in front of the family while photographing.

Then I thought about the work I do with the Canadian Cancer Society. I often meet families who have lost loved ones to cancer. So, I applied to the foundation and have been accepted as an affiliate photographer. It’s a volunteer role, and I’ve some training ahead of me before I start accepting assignments. Wish me luck!

My first camera: Pentax K1000 single-lens reflex 35mm camera, but without the long lens. I had one 50mm lens. Image used with permission. Photo by Martin Taylor, placed under CC-BY-SA by the photographer.

Camera manufacturers are great at marketing the automatic functionality of their cameras aimed at consumers and prosumers. “Buy this full-featured camera and you’ll take great pictures”.

I’ll have beginning photographers approach me who already own $5000 to $10,000 (CDN) worth of gear, thinking it will make them a better photographer. People, let’s get something straight: YOUR BRAIN and YOUR EYE sees the scene or image you’d like to capture. A camera is a tool you use to capture that image. Owning expensive gear does not a photographer make.

I wish I still had my Pentax K1000 SLR 35mm film camera. It’s what I learned on. I bought it used. It was completely manual with no automatic functions or programmable modes. I owned one 50mm lens. And because it was film I couldn’t whip off several hundred images at a time. Digital didn’t even exist then. Developing and processing film was expensive for a film student! So, I learned using black and white film which I could develop and print myself in the darkroom.

I’m going to hold a workshop this spring entitled: MY FIRST CAMERA PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP to help aspiring photographers learn camera basics and help you to develop your eye. Please feel free to get in touch if you are interested. To get the most benefit, a camera with a fully manual mode would be the preferred camera to participate, though we will accept participants with automatic-mode cameras. The cost will be $99 per person.

UPDATE JANUARY 31: We’ve decided to offer a much bigger and better workshop. Valued at $595, we’ll be offering a 1-DAY ONLY promotional workshop fee of $79! Follow us on Twitter and on this Blog for details coming very soon.

Wow, I can’t believe another year is drawing to a close. Christmas is three days away. I’ll be visiting family and catching up with friends.

I’m finishing work today and will re-open January 5th. I’ll be meeting clients at 6:30 tonight who are picking up their prints. All the wedding albums promised for December are done, as are the custom framed prints, gallery-wrapped canvases and fine-art greeting cards.

I’m looking forward to some time off and then gearing up for some exciting things in 2011.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone that reads my blog, and my clients and friends, some of which have been abroad a good part of this past year, a very happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

Cheers,
Dean

Date: 14 December 2010
Duration: 3 hours

START: 10:00 PM EST 14-DEC-2010
END: 01:00 AM EST 15-DEC-2010
(US Eastern Standard Time; GMT -05:00)

During this time, our websites, including the Client Area, will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience.

The challenge with One-Day promotions is they come and go very quickly. If you missed out, don’t fret! We have something special for you.

If you’d like to have custom greeting cards of your own in time for the holiday season, we’re offering a special 20% off our Winter Series images. Simply enter the special code WINE AND CHOCOLATE during checkout.

Click here to choose from 10 beautiful images.

Wintertime night driving on Willow Avenue. The Beaches, Toronto Canada.

Anyone may take advantage of this special offer. Offer valid today, November 11th only. Thanks and enjoy.

We’ve teamed up with Living Social to bring you a photography and fine-art greeting card collection that is to die for. Photography industry types refer to this as a U.W.C.D., or “unbelievable-wicked-cool-deal”.

If you’re a fan of our photography but haven’t yet treated yourself to you own professional shoot, this is a superb opportunity. If you’re already one of our wonderful clients ~ you know we loved photographing you ~ we hope you’ll tell your friends, family and work colleagues about it. Or book yourself another shoot; we’d love to photograph you again.

Here at the studio we’re a small team of creative people. So, we normally don’t subscribe to super-hyped promos. Our clients come to us because they love our pictures and professionalism, and feel our full fee is money well spent. We’ve a long list of accolades to our credit, which makes us super-happy. But it’s a big small world, and we know there are thousands of people who will also love our photography, if only they knew about us! We don’t have a big marketing department or budget to reach them. At times this can be frustrating.

Which means that when opportunity comes-a-knocking to introduce us to new people who might love how we see them through our cameras, we just might open our doors wide! Living Social reaches out to thousands of Torontonians every day with its emails (Hello everyone!), so it felt a bit silly to pass. And, as we did a soft launch this week of our new website for Images of a Promise, it’s a great way to celebrate with you!

For those that are seeing our photography for the first time, take a look around. The main menu at the top of our website will take you where you want to go.

All the U.W.C.D. details of today’s photography and greeting card collection is on the Living Social website and in your email, if you’re a subscriber. Feel free to call us during business hours with any questions. This one-day promotion is for Wednesday, November 10th only!

We look forward to talking with, and photographing you! Also, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more.

UPDATE
We’ve already received some inquiries, so here are some further details:
Limit 1 per person, up to 1 additional as gifts
• Appointments required and subject to availability
• Photographer will travel up to 30km from M1N 1A5 in the GTA (the Beaches) – locations outside this zone will incur an additional $25 traveling charge for every 10km outside the postal code area
• Some locations will require permits, these costs will be additional
• Purchasers must schedule photography session before voucher expires, although the actual session can take place after 
voucher expiration date
• Value of voucher can be used towards other event packaging
• Re-scheduling policy of 48 hours applies; voucher subject to forfeiture
• We’re keeping the phones open until 9pm so feel free to call with any questions
• We are able to start accepting booking requests on Thursday, November 11th. Living Social vouchers will arrive in your inbox the morning of.

All the best.

While I’m enjoying a cup of Mocha Java this morning, I thought I’d tell you about a few things we’re up to.

Facebook: We just set up a shiny-new Fan Page. I’d been posting a lot of the studio’s news on my personal Facebook profile, and I decided it was time to set up a proper Business Fan Page.

I’d love it if you’d become a fan! Visit the Fan Page here, and be sure to “Like” the studio.

RSS: For those that subscribe to our Blog via RSS, we have a new RSS feed that makes it a whole lot easier to choose the service you’d like to use to receive our latest news.

Click here for the new RSS feed

We’re also working on a new website for our weddings and families! Images of a Promise will have a new site soon. Stay tuned.

And, of course we’re working away at album design and a few promotions. If you’re a “Friend of the Studio” you already know we had an awesome 3-day, 50% off promotion on Holiday Season Greeting Cards this week. We featured images from the Winter in Toronto series.

If you missed out, don’t fret! We’ll have another 3-day promotion soon. Be sure you become a Friend of the Studio so you don’t miss out.

That’s all for now. Have a great weekend.

Many of our clients become friends of the studio, and I love keeping in touch. Recently, I introduced the option to subscribe to blog updates via email as a way to keep in touch. The cool thing about this is that when you sign up for email updates, you can choose which updates you’d like to receive. For example, if you only wish to receive updates about the image archive and weddings simply choose them from the list of categories. Want to receive everything? Check off all the categories.

And to make it even easier, you may sign-in via Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. This is becoming the popular thing to do so I decided the studio should offer it.

Let me illustrate in pictures (I know, I know, how surprising is it that I’d use pictures!):

You can log in here:

Above: The main Blog login page

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And here:

Above: Sign-in here from the Blog SIDEBAR

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Once you’re signed in, you’ll be taken to your Profile where you can choose your fav options:

Above: Dean Oros Photo Blog Profile Screen for Email Updates

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That’s it for today’s blog post. It’s Saturday morning, so hopefully you can spend some time outdoors today and enjoy some sunshine.

We’ve also added new images to the Images of a Promise website. Sit back and watch the opening slideshow in full-screen. Our wedding art looks best when viewed BIG. Viewing The Brides’ Ballet, for example, on a 30″ colour-calibrated monitor is wicked. It’s the first image on the new slideshow, so check it out.

Thanks go out to Photoshelter, Graph Paper Press and WordPress. We couldn’t perform these upgrades without them.

There will be more upgrades coming your way during the year, too.

Enjoy.