Sony Diaries #988: missing my bus stop

It was a damp and foggy night on the commute home and the bus was so nice and cozy I fell asleep and missed my bus stop. I got off on the next stop and what would have been a 10 minute walk home turned into 30 minutes. 

And so I imagined myself to be Henri Cartier-Bresson, with a  Sony RX10 instead of a Leica M3.

Here is what I saw on the walk home:

3 runners and 3 border collies

 shower heads for light

 parking lights

warm bus. November 24th.

Sony Diaries #987: The views around College and University

 November 24th.

Sony Diaries #986: some black and whites

The Fields Institute. November 22nd.

Sony Diaries #985: on a walkabout on a cold Sunday morning

Walking (or biking) is the way to go to see and feel the view. After an early morning taking head shots of the members of the Guelph Marlins Aquatic Club, and not having the use of a car that morning, I walked home. These are some of what i saw.

November 20th.

Sony Diaries #984: it still comes down to great service with a genuine smile

photo courtesy of bostonimages.com

For the last nine years, and counting, from the demise of film to the advent of digital, from 6MP Pro cameras to today's current 24-36MP, I have been working with Chris and Shelley at Boston Images. In a business where you're only as good as your last job, in an industry where the price of entry is as low as the price of a consumer-grade camera at Best Buy, in a world where referrals rule and fancy websites, not as much, I'm still shooting. I work alongside shooters young enough to be my twenty-something kids. What's the formula for longevity?
I think it's the same formula used by any other long lived enterprise. Great Service. Beyond a basic level of technical and artistic competence commensurate with your pricing structure, what wedding clients will remember is the atmosphere of the day (or the absence of anxiety and concern for the photographers' conduct), the agreeable "flow of events" initiated by the photographers' instructions,  and the photographers' people-management skills (some clients need bossing around, others not so much). This is for the day of the wedding. 
There's is also the front-end consult and back-end post-shoot relationship, which I'm not qualified to comment on as much. Suffice it to say that they're just as crucial; these 3 aspects are closely interrelated. 
Wedding clients won't remember (or care to know) how much your gear costs, or what f-stop was used for the portrait session. They'll remember the feeling, of how they enjoyed themselves that day. This is what leads to referrals. And longevity in this business.