Six months ago, my life completely changed. My husband’s company asked us to move to New England so that he could continue to expand his business and be closer to his clients. Our boys were 2 ½ and 8 months at the time. I had lived in the Tampa Bay area since I was eight. A new adventure, I told myself one minute. Yikes! I said to myself the next. An OPPORTUNITY, I finally decided.

I had lived in Newburyport, Mass. just a few weeks when I decided to sit down and e-mail Christine. As she mentioned in a previous post, the subject of my message: “proposition.” I wanted her to at least read it before she totally rejected the idea! I proposed she meet me in New York City, a photographer’s dream, and teach me everything, I mean everything, she knew.

It had been several years (University of Florida journalism school, 2002, to be exact) since I focused solely on my camera. As a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, I was often asked to shoot photos to accompany my stories, but usually I was on assignment as a reporter first and photographer second. I spent years doing side projects with friends’ weddings, children, pregnancies, etc. But now, I had the OPPORTUNITY to go for it. Start my own business. Fill a niche where I saw a void in my cute little northshore town.

Christine said yes. She said YES! So we started making plans.

To say that Christine and I hit it off is an understatement. She shot some photos of my family and I before we left Tampa, so I had met her. But spending two hours with someone while wrangling two little ones for a photo shoot is not exactly sitting down and having coffee. So, I’d hoped I wasn’t being over-confident when I decided we would share a hotel room for the weekend. Somehow I just knew we would be fine.

And fine we were… Christine taught me so much about my equipment, about using my talent and about how to run a business. There wasn’t a moment we weren’t “talking shop.” (OK, those few times we were stuffing our faces with fare only New York City can offer, we weren’t talking at all!) She set up an itinerary, organized photo shoots galore and even managed to make use of our wait time in the Mac store by shooting out a really cool window.  She was a little flustered when our schedule was derailed due to a computer problem, but I wasn’t worried. She was teaching me, refreshing me, building up my confidence. Just the fact that she was concerned at all showed me how seriously she had taken my “proposition” and that she really did want me to succeed.

Now that I’m home, I’m thankful the buzz has not worn off. We got some orders and some feedback from our clients – all raving reviews – and Christine has continued to answer all my questions. I’m now in the process of working with a graphic designer on my logo and branding materials and a web designer for my website and blog. Let’s just say, thanks to Christine, my OPPORTUNITY is turning into reality and I could not be more excited.  I know Christine will continue to be successful in her business and I can only hope that I can follow in her footsteps.

Below are a few of my favorites from our weekend of photo shoots. Enjoy!

-Rebekah

I’m sure you remember me talking about my amazing mentoring session earlier this month with Rebekah Doughty. The past few weeks we have been chatting back and forth about the weekend and also getting our images edited and toned from our shoots.

Part of the itinerary for the weekend was to have live shoots. One thing Rebekah really wanted to do was shadow me while I worked. I am fortunate enough to have family and friends in the area who were more than willing to be our guinea pigs for the day.

I tried to bring together all different ages and stages that she hoped to focus on with her own photography business. We had kids, families, high school seniors and Rebekah’s friends, Eric and Kim.

Here are a few of my favorites from the weekend. Check back to see a post by Rebekah in the next week. It’s part of her homework. Hey, I’m not letting her off that easy. Enjoy!

Holiday Mini Sessions are in full swing. I kicked off the season with seven this past weekend and was so eager to show you these gorgeous clients, that I’m giving you a tease. I have a few openings for my November dates if you want to book a session. Hurry, before they are all booked! Check back to see more of these amazing families and children.

Christine DeLessio Photography is proud to offer 12 amazing holiday card templates this season.

I hope you love them as much as we do.

These gorgeous two sided cards can be printed as flat or folded and everything is customizable to suit you and your families needs. We can change the text, the fonts, colors, you name it. We offer 5×5′s, 4×6′s and 5×7′s. If you book a holiday session I will design one of these beauties for you!

Can it get any easier? All you have to do is book the session, pick which card you like and the photos and I will take care of the rest.

Phew! I just got back from a whirlwind weekend in the Big Apple and I’m still recovering.

In early summer a former client sent me an email entitled, “Proposition.” Before reading it I had no idea what it would say. Lots of things ran through my head. I’m embarrassed to admit, but some were dirty. I really didn’t know what to think. After reading the first few lines I found out very quickly that Rebekah wanted to spend time with me in hopes of creating a similar business model of her own. She saw something in me and my business that she wanted for herself. My ego was stroked, my interest piqued and my head raced with ideas, I was ready to sign up. She proposed we go to New York City for a weekend. On her list of things to do, she wanted to go shopping at B&H,  (me too) for new camera gear and learn all about her new toys while exploring the city. It also was a chance for her to be away with her two boys and really focus on herself and her business.

I racked my brain about how to reply. I hadn’t thought that my career would lead to mentoring at such a young age. I was overwhelmed with ideas. I wanted to make this the best experience for both of us. I asked my friends with similar businesses to help me create a questionnaire for Rebekah so I would have the weekend all mapped out for her needs and wants. I sat down with my friend, the fabulous St. Petersburg photographer,  Elise Schreiner, to plan out an itinerary that would wow anyone. Both were well received and approved and airplane tickets bought, hotel rooms booked, photo sessions scheduled and off we both went.

I arrived late Thursday night. Rebekah and I met at LaGuardia Airport where I flew in and we headed to Manhattan. After a late night slice we went to bed talking about photography. It had been so long since I took part in photo chatter. It all came back to me. F-Stops, Shutter Speeds, ISO’s. Yea!

We woke up on Friday to a rainy, cool day. We decided to stay in the room and go over the technical stuff. I turned on my MacBook Pro. Well, I thought I had turned it on. It wouldn’t boot up. The dreaded gray screen appeared and the wheel of death just spun. I knew something was wrong. We decided it best that we go shopping for new gear. Retail Therapy! We walked in the rain to the camera store only to find out it was closed for a Jewish holiday. Strike three. Between the weather, my laptop and now the photo stores all closed we were batting a thousand. We prevailed and decided to make the best of the day and scout locations for our shoots on Saturday. We went to the gorgeous Bryant Park and Grand Central Station. We were all ready for our shoots the next day.

We ended the day with my friends Mike and Stacey Samuels at flex mussels. Yum.

I can’t thank Rebekah enough the amazing weekend. It had highs and lows and through it all she was such a great student. I’m thankful that my first time mentoring someone went so well.

The weekend concluded with awesome shoots, yummy cuisine, one broken hard drive, a new Crumpler camera bag, a four hour drive to Newburyport Massachusetts, and a friendship.

Here are a few photos from our sites of exploring the city. Check back to see my favorites from the photo sessions.