We’ve had an absolute blast photographing all the adorable babies and kids for the contest and now is when YOUR fun begins! The voting is open for Kismet Photography’s 2nd Annual Cutest Kid Contest! Voting starts February 21st and ends February 28th at midnight. ANYONE can vote!

There are three different ways to vote:

1. Check out all the adorable kids on Kismet Photography’s Facebook page and cast your vote by clicking the “Like” button that corresponds to your vote for “Cutest Kid”. This requires a Facebook account and that you “Like” the Kismet Photography Facebook page by clicking the “Like” button at the top of the page.

2. While on Kismet Photography’s Facebook page leave a comment on your vote for “Cutest Kid”.

3. Leave a comment at the bottom of this post stating which child you think is the cutest. (First names only please)

Each person can use all of the voting methods only once. Any more than one vote per person per method will not be counted.

The winner will be notified on February 29th via email.

Bentley

Beason

Carter

Bennett

Jackson

Brayden

Daniel

Ellie

Logan

Lochlan

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Think you’ve got the cutest kid around?! Then enter your adorable child in our 2nd Annual Cutest Kid Contest. Kismet Photography is hosting a FREE contest and all you have to do to enter is schedule a FREE studio portrait session for your kid to take place on or before Monday, February 20th. This year we are expanding the age limit to 5 years!

After your child’s session we will select the most adorable portrait and feature it on our Blog and Facebook page on Tuesday, February 21st so all your friends and family (and anyone else who thinks your kid is cute) can cast their votes. The kid with the most “Likes” after one week will be declared Kismet Photography’s 2nd Annual Cutest Kid! In addition to bragging rights, the winner will receive a 15″ Wall Portrait of one of their contest portraits as well as a Gift Certificate for one of our Signature “Anytime” Sessions to be used within one year.

Their is no cost to enter and no obligation to purchase. All we require is a model release allowing us to post the portraits online. For this contest we are limiting the age to 5 years old. Families with multiple children under 5 years of age are welcome to enter more than one child. Previous contestants are not eligible, so if your child was photographed last year for the Contest they cannot reenter this year. (We already know they are cute anyway!)

Remember, your kid’s FREE portrait session must take place on or before Monday, February 20th so don’t delay, call (864) 350-2338 and schedule your kid’s session today! Or email us at info@kismetphotography.us. Session availability is on a first come, first serve basis.

Let the Contest of Cuteness begin,

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Most of the time our goal is to capture everybody at their best, but every now and then a moment comes along where flattery flies out the window for the sake of humor. These are some of those moments.

This cake feeding started out innocent enough…

That is until the cake fell down the bride’s dress!

Stay tuned for the final installment of Kismet’s Favorite Things coming soon!

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

We’ve had an absolute blast photographing all the adorable babies for this portrait contest and now is when your fun begins! The voting is open for Kismet Photography’s 1st Annual Cutest Baby Portrait Contest! Here are several ways you can cast your vote:

1) Check out all the adorable babies below and cast your vote by clicking the “Like” button below your favorite. Feel free to leave a comment but remember that we are only counting the number of likes.

2) Then head over to our website (handy link: www.kismetphotography.us) and click on the “1st Annual Cutest Baby Portrait Contest” banner and follow the super-easy instructions.

3) From our website you can click over to our Kismet Photography Facebook page (or click HERE) and click “Like” at the top of the page. Then navigate to our “Cutest Baby Portrait Contest” photo album and click “Like” on your favorite.

4) All the above voting options require a Facebook account but if you don’t have one, don’t fret. You can email us at info@kismetphotography.us with your choice in the “Subject” line. Only one vote from each email address will be counted so please don’t spam us.

It’s that simple! The winner of the contest will receive, in addition to bragging rights, a 15″ Wall Portrait of the winning photograph as well as a Gift Certificate for One Free Family or Child’s Portrait Session (a $300 total value). Remember, the voting ends at Midnight on Saturday, March 19th so tell all your friends and family to get their votes in before then.

And now…prepare for cuteness overload…

Addison

Annabelle aka “Belle”

Carson

Nicholas

Sarah

Sophia

Trinity

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Think you’ve got the cutest baby around?! Then why not enter your adorable child in our 1st Annual Cutest Baby Portrait Contest. Kismet Photography is hosting a FREE contest and all you have to do to enter is schedule a FREE portrait session for your baby to take place on or before March 12th.

After your baby’s session, we’ll select the most adorable portrait and feature it on our website, blog and Facebook page so all your friends and family (and anyone else that thinks your baby is cute) can cast their votes by clicking “Like” on your baby’s portrait. The baby with the most “Likes” after one week will be declared Kismet Photography’s 1st Annual Cutest Baby! In addition to bragging rights, the winner will receive a 15″ Wall Portrait of the winning photograph as well as a Gift Certificate for One Free Family or Child’s Portrait Session (a $300 total value).

Their is no cost to enter and no obligation. All we require is a model release allowing us to post the portrait(s) online. For this particular contest we are limiting the age to 2 years old. Families with multiple children under 2 years of age are welcome to enter more than one child.

Remember, your FREE portrait session must take place on or before March 12th so don’t delay, call (864) 350-2338 and schedule yours today! Or email us at info@kismetphotography.us. Session availability is on a first come, first served basis and may fill up quickly.

Let the Contest of Cuteness begin,

Curtis & Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography

Unfortunately we have zero time to post some of the awesome new things we’ve been doing, much less some of the many weddings and engagement shoots that are waaaay past due. But we do have a quick sec and thought we’d share some of the great things folks are saying about the images we are posting on Facebook. By the way, that’s where to go to see all the new stuff as it’s posted there first. So go ahead, click on over to our Facebook fan page and “Like” us to see the latest and greatest Kismet imagery. Back to the post at hand…Not many people leave comments on this blog (even though hundreds of people are reading it as evidenced by our web stats) but our Facebook fans and friends of fans are quick to show some love. Check out all the raves one of our couples, the undeniably awesome and fashion-forward Shannon and David, got for their engagement sneak peek we posted. (Names have been blurred to protect the innocent)

As if that wasn’t enough of an ego boost for us, the lovely Shannon posted this recently to our fan page:

Doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and gooey inside? Well it does for us! A special thanks to everyone who has ever and will ever say nice things about us and our work either to our face or on some form of media or whatever. It’s that praise and acknowledgment that lets us know we are accomplishing our number one goal: Make people happy through photography.

With love & thanks,

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

So we were in Atlanta this weekend for Christina and Minjae’s awesome wedding (which we will be blogging about soon) held at the Sugarloaf Golf & Country Club and we just happened to stumble upon our next house!

Ain’t she a beaut?! And this is just the backside that faces the lake! This was just one of the many colossal mansions in the “we’ve got more money than we know what to do with” area called Sugarloaf. Who needs this much house? Seriously?!

After much deliberation we’ve decided not to purchase it because we just like the Upstate too much to abandon it for the 6 lane megatropolis of Atlanta. And besides, we’d probably have to shoot 300 weddings and 1,000 portrait sessions a year just to afford the electricity to run the place. Not to mention it would be a full time job just to keep it all clean. No thanks. Live simple so you can enjoy life is our motto.

Enough lolly-gagging. Time to get back to work. Look for more fun e-shoots and wedding posts soon.

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

Our good friends Christy and John’s little man Conner turned 1 year old recently. And to commemorate this epic moment in his life, they brought him by the studio for a fun shoot…that turned into a massacre! A fun and ultimately very funny massacre that is. See for yourself:

We started off with a mirror and a little window light. He wasn’t nearly as intrigued with his own reflection as he was with Emily’s.

What’s a birthday celebration without balloons?!

And lots of them…

raining from the sky!

What can we say, the chemistry between us and our subjects is…electric!

And so it begins…

“Seriously…this is all for me?!”

“ooooooooo the sugar is hitting me!!!!”

“uuuggghhh the sugar is hitting me uuunnhhh.”

“I am so gonna get you guys back for this!”

“mmmm CHOCOLATE!!! Where have you been hiding all my life?!”

(Picture an opera singer voice) “I looove CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!”

Happy Birthday Conner! We enjoy watching you grow, just don’t do it too fast.

Thanks to Christy & John for going along with our idea. It was uber-messy but definitely worth it.

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

For this being our slower season, we certainly have been crazy busy. Firstly, the Wedding Festival at the Hyatt was a “great success” and we got to talk to so many brides and couples both at the show and since then with lots of new client meetings. We are almost completely booked up for 2010 and only have three spots left so if any brides are interested in having us work our magic for your wedding, you might want to get on the phone and let us know. We will also be at the February 6th Wedding Festival at the Carolina First Center and fully expect to fill our remaining spots shortly after that.

What has really been keeping us busy though is implementing all the juicy nuggets we learned at a national wedding and portrait photography convention we recently attended in Nashville, TN. We left for it right after loading out of the Hyatt and spent a week absorbing business and shooting tips from some of the world’s leading photographers. Needless to say our brains were exploding from all the great info. We were quite proud of ourselves though as we found out we were already doing a lot of the things the speakers were doing. Now the fun part is taking the rest of what we learned and making it work for us and our clients. With that said, Kismet Photography will be undergoing some changes both right now and in the near future. Some of the more immediate changes are related to strengthening our brand and our customer experience. We feel we have always done a great job with customer service and creating an enjoyable experience but we are now preparing to blow each and every client away! Heck we are even planning to blow their family and friends away too! We will be sharing some of the changes to come soon so stay tuned to find out more.

With all the brain-frying that has been going on here at Kismet Photography Headquarters, Emily and I have been in desperate need of some R&R. Even our week “vacation” in Nashville was spent almost entirely doing business. And what better way to blow off some steam than frolicking in the snow! Okay, we didn’t actually “frolick” but we did brave the ice and snow today to just get out and shoot for fun. Here are some of our favs from that:

And here is my lovely wife Emily sporting the latest in winter shooting fashion complete with “Griswold” hat and Nikon D3 to block the wind on her face.

After we walked around and shot for a while, we decided it was time to christen our sloped back yard that was covered in an ice/snow mix. The only thing was we didn’t have a sled But instead of letting that ruin the fun, we decided to use a little “redneck enginuitey” (purposely misspelled for comic value) and take a scrap piece of vinyl siding for a joy ride. And it worked beautifully! Check it out:

**DISCAIMER: Kismet Photography is not responsible for anyone attempting to recreate the scene you are about to witness. Any and all stunts resembling this should be done by professionals or at least in the presence of a supervising adult. And by “adult” we mean someone obviously smarter and with more sense than Curtis Snyder. To paraphrase: “Kids DO NOT try this at home!” **

Hey, at least I “stuck” the landing!

All joking aside this actually looks worse than it was. The yard levels out at the bottom and so I was slowing down to about 2mph before I was “gingerly” stopped by the fence. And yes we have matching “Griswold” hats. They were a joke one year for Christmas but we wear them proudly because we love National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and hey they keep your ears pretty toasty!

Well that’s enough frivolity for one day. Back to work!

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

On Thursday night we were at an Upstate Bridal Association meeting and totally missed watching our epic 5 seconds of television fame! WYFF4 ran a story featuring the wonderful wedding planner, Kim Wehunt, with All in the Details and footage from Amanda and Justin’s wedding that we photographed at the Acanthus.

Click here to watch the video. We have a few brief cameo appearances in which you can see us in action. We’ll be at the September Wedding Festival in Greenville so if anyone wants our autograph just stop by our booth! LOL.

Happy Saturday!

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography