With Thanksgiving just a few days away it’s the perfect time to reflect on the blessings that came into our lives in 2011. We have so many stories to share with you from the events we photographed this year, but first we need to start with our biggest blessing – all 7 pounds 15 ounces of him – our son Eli.

We planned to have Eli at home, but after 21 hours of natural labor at home plus another 9 or so hours at the hospital it became apparent that a C-section was necessary. This image wouldn’t have been possible without our birth photographer, Kelli Collins, who let Curtis borrow her gear since no one else was allowed in the operating room besides Curtis and myself. Even though I didn’t want Curtis to “work” on the birth day of our child, I cannot thank him enough because he photographed Eli for the first time right as he was being born. And despite having thousands of photographs of our lives together, this is one of the most precious by far.

Eli – 2 days old

Eli at home – 1 week old

One of my favorite portraits of Eli, not only because he’s so stinkin’ adorable but the memory behind this photograph. While setting up for this shot he peed in the mixing bowl at least 2 times! Don’t worry, it’s since been washed!

Eli – 4 weeks old and learning to smile

Who wouldn’t give candy to this cutie?! No, we didn’t take him trick or treating this year but we’re definitely looking forward to eating all of his candy earnings next year!

Eli – 8 weeks old

With so much going on, sometimes we forget to appreciate the little things we take for granted. This holiday season, take a moment to stop, think and be grateful for all the blessings, big and small, in your life. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours!

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

As a little girl I never dreamed about the day that I would get married, what kind of wedding dress I’d wear or who my Prince Charming would be. I was a “girly-girl” but just not the kind who thought about those things. All I wanted was to be able to grow my hair really long and wear Lee-Press-On-Nails! Neither of which I do now.

The same goes for having babies. Until I caught the baby-bug about 4 years ago I didn’t dream about buying baby clothes or start picking out names. Then as soon as we started planning to have a family I immediately began thinking about my baby shower and maternity portraits! I’ve been excited about these events for many, many months and am so thrilled that quite a few family members, and a lot of good friends, were able to share the excitement with me.

Especially my sister, Liz, who flew in from England and will stay with us until Eli makes his appearance.

Also my Grandma who came down from Michigan.

Here are some of the treats that our incredibly talented friend, and past Kismet bride, Bunny, made for us to enjoy! All of which were fantastic!

Our theme for the baby shower was “nothing disposable”. All the decorations were handmade and/or reusable, like this alphabet banner for Eli’s room.

And one of my favorite things, the cloth diaper cake that my dad engineered!

A big thanks to everyone who helped make the shower so special and wonderful!

And now for Part 1 of my Belly Portraits – the Water Theme!

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me when I was going to post my Belly Portraits. With only 2 weeks to go until my “guess date” I know I’m cutting it close, but our planned “maternity leave” only recently started and we still haven’t taken all the portraits we have planned. Hopefully I’ll have the rest up before Eli arrives.

Swimming has provided incredible relief from the largeness and body ache I’ve been feeling lately and that’s one of the many reasons we’re planning a water birth.

My sincere appreciation goes out to my amazing husband, and photographer, Curtis. I love my Belly Portraits and can’t wait to do the rest!

Emily

Kismet Photography

Our pregnancy makes it’s debut on the blog!

For those of you who don’t know yet, we’re expecting a baby boy, Eli, who is due in September. Curtis and I could not be more excited about meeting our baby in the near future. Eli will most likely share his birthday month with yours truly along with a handful of other important people in our family. Talk about a lot of cake in one month!

Besides working hard creating beautiful wedding images for our couples we have also been busy turning our once empty storage room into a nursery. After things are a little more complete we will be posting pictures.

And now on to other bellies…

Our first pregnant momma, Pucci, who has already had her precious son, inspired me with her colorful, dramatic belly-dance costumes so we had to incorporate her hobby into the portraits of her baby belly.

At-home maternity portraits were perfect for our second momma, Melissa, who’s baby boy will be here later this month.

Can you tell her and her husband are Greenville Drive fans? They also had a Drive onesie and matching bib!

Our Maternity Portrait sessions are tailored to each woman to fit her style and personality as well as where she feels most comfortable. Another option for your Maternity Portraits is an Underwater Portrait Session.

As pool season is beginning, now is the perfect time for an Underwater Session at our pool (or yours). And, for a limited time, our Underwater Maternity Portrait sessions are only $75 (normally $100). You can make this session all about you and your belly or if your partner is willing to take the plunge, they can join in too!

Our summer availabilities are going quickly so call or email us today so we can talk about your Maternity Portraits.

Emily
Kismet Photography

Being wedding photographers, primarily, sometimes we don’t see our couples again until they start a family. Baby Carter’s mommy and daddy are a Kismet couple from 2009 and we got to meet their little bundle of joy when he was about three weeks old.

Looking at his images makes me all ooey-gooey inside thinking about what our baby, gender undetermined for another 5 days, will look like and who he/she will take after. As a child I was bald for quite some time and I hope baby Snyder comes out with gorgeous locks like Carter’s!

Here are a few of my favorites from his session. Enjoy!

Our “Baby Bits” Canvas Wraps are custom designed to coordinate with your nursery theme and colors.

Emily
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

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

We love what we do but even the fun parts can wear down our batteries in a year’s time. That’s why we need an annual recharge. And what better way to refresh ourselves than taking a two week cruise! It’s the perfect vacation for us because we spend our year planning our couples’ big events and photo shoots, and on a cruise, you don’t have to plan much at all! There’s no cooking, no driving, no cleaning (hallelujah!) and yet there is so much to do. Plus you get to see so many amazing places in one trip.

Our cruise started in Baltimore, Maryland and then went to Bermuda, Tortola, St. Maarten, Curacao, Aruba, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and ended in Tampa, FL. It was 2 weeks of blissful relaxation even though we did a lot and tried some new things. We could go on forever about how incredible it was but after being gone for 2 weeks, we have some work to do so we will just share some of the photos we took in our travels.

All of the following shots were taken with our new camera, a Sony Cybershot H20, our very first point and shoot ever…yes that’s right…EVER! We thought taking our huge, professional DSLR’s along would make it less like a vacation and more like work so we left those at home and opted for a pocket-sized camera that also has HD video capability. There were a few times when we wished we had our higher quality cameras but overall we loved the simplicity of the point and shoot, the fact that it weighs less than a pound (compared to more than the 6 lbs of camera+lens we normally work with) and it’s video mode. We are by no means videographers but it was hilarious when we would be taking a video horizontally and all of a sudden go vertical for a better composition! As photographers, we do that all the time and don’t even think about it but you just can’t do that with video.

We tried not to think about work too much but we thought this place would be perfect for a wedding or even just a photo shoot. It’s a really old church in Bermuda that was never finished so it looks like ruins.

Brides, could you imagine walking down the center between columns that are hundreds of years old, feeling the Caribbean breeze in your hair. Freakin’ sweet!

We tried to avoid the touristy spots of Bermuda and just ventured off on our own when we didn’t have an excursion planned. Sometimes we found little hidden spots that were so much neater or more beautiful and unspoiled, like this little cove called Tobacco Bay (bad name, gorgeous place).

Also Tobacco Bay.

Apparently this is where all the money went instead of finishing the “Unfinished Church” you saw above. Though this cathedral was certainly beautiful and grand, we thought the ruins of the other church were much more unique.

A view of the other British Virgin Islands as seem from Tortola. Missed the UV filters on our SLR lenses to cut down the haze but a beautiful view none-the-less.

For the most part, every island we went to seemed to be so divided between really fancy tourist resorts, beach houses and boutiques and the impoverished native homes and shops. There seemed to be no middle-class, but no matter what, everyone was always friendly and happy. Oh and goats seemed to be the most popular pet!
Here is an example of the disparities in wealth in St. Maarten. On the left is the castle-like mansion built by the owner of the island’s only casino. On the right, a tangle of what we presume to be water meters for 10 or so homes. Our tour guide told us that the mansion’s stone walls cost more than most “nice” homes on the island.

A divi tree on Aruba’s pristine Arashi beach. One of the most beautiful beaches and clearest water we have ever seen. We didn’t want to leave.

We did zip-lining again (we had done it in Jamaica on our cruise last year and got hooked. But by far one of the coolest excursions we have ever done was riding a dune buggy through a rain forest in Cozumel to a cenote, a sinkhole used by the Mayans for freshwater, that doubled as a bat cave!
Here is what we looked like after the ride to the cenote. With several mud holes on the path, we learned quickly, even though you are having the time of your life and want to scream your excitement the whole time…close your mouth for the mud holes Yeah we ate mud a couple times but what a fun ride!

Here is the cenote/bat cave. Pictures just do not do it justice as it was actually quite beautiful and serene. We even swam in the chilly water which was surprisingly clear and lovely. It was pretty cool to be chillin’ in the water with hundreds of bat’s hovering above us and occasionally swooping around. And to answer most people’s first thoughts, we were not swimming in tons of bat guano…or at least we didn’t see it

And here is a good depiction of how muddy and dirty our dune buggy got. If you are ever in Cozumel, Mexico and looking for something to do, we HIGHLY recommend doing the Xrails to the Jade Caverns tour. A truly awesome adventure.

Here is a shot just after sunset from the pier in Cozumel. The moon was full and beautiful. Notice they even had a Christmas tree up already.

Well, we’d love to post more but must get back to work. These Christmas cards won’t design themselves. Stay tuned for a couple posts from recent shoots. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is looking forward to a wonderful holiday season.

Curtis & Emily
Kismet Photography

In case you haven’t noticed, things look a little different around here. For one, no images on the blog! And two, our website at www.kismetphotography.net is gone! Is this some kind of new subliminal marketing technique you ask? No, but if it works, we’re patenting it. No, it is merely the kidnapping and subsequent holding for ransom of our website/email by our web hosting company, GISOL Inc., otherwise known as Global Internet Solutions, aka Our Worst Nightmare.

Because that company is so horrible and was actually demanding we pay a lot of money just to be able to keep our domain name, which we rightfully purchased and own, we decided the best choice was to remove our website from them all together, even though it means transitioning everything…repeat EVERYTHING over to a new web address. Yes, if you can believe it, it’s happened again. And again GISOL is to blame! GRRRRR! Our new web address is www.kismetphotography.us. We’re so patriotic . We are in the process of transitioning now but the website is up and we have email again. Our new email address is info@kismetphotography.us so please be sure to update it and add it to your contacts. If you have emailed us in the last couple of weeks and have not gotten a response, please resend it to the new email address or feel free call us.

If you experience any links taking you to the wrong site or email, we apologize in advance. Please be patient with us as we have very little free time now that we are in our busy Fall season, but eventually we will get all the kinks worked out. As for the images on this blog, it would be an incredibly time-consuming task to change the links to all the images to the new server so they actually appear. For that reason, we would rather devote our limited time to our clients and their images/products so that they receive them in a timely manner. In other words, all previous posts on this blog may be image-less for quite a while or indefinitely. Only time will tell. Better to invest that time in trying to actually keep up with new blog posts instead, right?! But at least our website is now with a company whose mission statement DOES NOT include the words “screw the customer” and “extort money from them”. Happy days!

Thanks in advance for your patience and understanding,

Curtis & Emily Snyder
Kismet Photography
http://www.kismetphotography.us
info@kismetphotography.us
(864) 350-2338

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