Hello, my name is Dean, and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and tell you a little about how I got started with this woodmorephotos mission.

 

I've been married to Lynn since 1986 and we have three little girls, Abbie, Rachel, and Emily. We moved to the Elmore area in 1993 before our girls started their way through the Woodmore School system. Our girls have been involved in sports (soccer, volleyball and track mostly) and band/choir since they were young; and we've always enjoyed supporting their efforts. Way back in the spring of 2005, we began taking photos of our oldest daughters participating on the Varsity and Jr. High track teams. While we were at the meets anyway, we took a lot of pictures of their friends and teammates. After each meet, I would email a bunch of the photos to the school’s webmaster for her to use on the team’s website; and she would pick a few of them, shrink them down to save space, and post them for parents and students to look at. After a few months of doing this, I felt like I was overwhelming her with photos, so I decided to just create my own site, woodmorephotos.com, where I could control the quantity and quality of the photos posted. As word spread, other parents and teams started asking “why aren’t there any pictures of us?”  The beginning of the explosion….

 

I started carrying my camera to every event that we attended, sports, musicals, concerts, awards nights, you name it. I also went to events and games that we weren’t directly involved in to try to get as broad of coverage as possible. This is OK, as I really enjoy interacting with the kids on the sidelines; they’re a lot of fun.

 

Shortly after the website went live, a few folks started asking about buying photos. After hours of cost research and looking at what others in nearby cities were charging for similar services, I came up with a price sheet. I try to keep the prices fair, considering the cost of materials and how much time is involved in shooting, post-processing, editing, and printing the photos. So far, customers have told me that they’re very happy with the quality of their prints.  

 

I have been using all Nikon bodies and lenses for several years now, upgrading when I can, to better bodies and faster and/or more suitable lenses. I guess I’m a stickler at trying to improve my photos in order to keep folks wowed. I also use a variety of software to process all the photos after download to get them ready for print or for the website. I typically shoot over 200 shots per game/event, with a goal of 100-150 photos for the website. A few are poorly composed or out of focus, many are near duplicates of others, and some are specific shots that I need for something else, or that a parent has requested for their own use. After each game, I spend several hours in front of my computer getting the pictures ready and building the webpages to display them. It does take a lot of time, but so far I still enjoy doing it, and challenge myself to get that really unusual shot.

 

Learning some of the intricacies of the software has allowed me to come up with some unique collages and composites based on my photo archive. Examples of these are scattered throughout the website and on a sample page available from the purchasing page. These take a some time to create and are priced accordingly, but they do make very nice posters, gifts, or additions to a scrapbook or the “graduation shrine”.

 

Throughout this venture, a few of my greatest photographic achievements have been getting a headshot of Emily Pendleton published in Sports Illustrated, and providing the photo layout for the article entitled “Discus Dynasty” published this summer in Ohio High Magazine. Obviously, I’d like to sell enough of my work to keep funding my hobby; but the emotional satisfaction is huge when I receive and email saying that someone’s brother is serving in Iraq and he loves checking out his younger brother’s pictures after every football game. Or when someone’s Grandpa comes up to me and says “Hey, are you the guy who puts all those pictures on that website? Me and the missus live in Colorado and really enjoy keeping up with the kids’ sports. Thanks for doing this!” 

 

Dean