Today's Guest: Steve Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography in Humble, Texas
Today's Host: John Bentley
November 2007
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Steve Tarver Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today's program is sponsored by morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
JOHN: Today we are in the Studio with Steve Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography of Humble, Texas . Welcome to the program, Steve.
STEVE: Thank you very much; glad to be here.
JOHN: Would you tell our listeners a little bit about your business.
STEVE: Ok. We have been doing official photography, in other words, set up a business so the state recognizes us for about 12 - 14 years, somewhere in that range, and we do mostly location work. About 75% of our present business is weddings, and we do all of those kinds of things which include engagement sessions or couple sessions and bridal portraits and occasionally, believe it or not, groom portraits...the formal ones that are usually displayed at the reception and then the weddings on location. There's usually at least two photographers at each of those events. If they are larger, then we take three, and that way we're getting all kinds of different aspects of the things that are going on. For instance, we do what we call "getting ready" and my bride goes in with the girls while they're getting ready for the ceremony, and then I'll go over with the guys and I'll do work there. And then if we have a third photographer who our daughter, she will be going around and getting all kinds of beautiful closeups of a lot of the work and attention that the bride and her mother and family has put into the wedding which is everything from decorations to actual shots of the venue where they're going to be married that we include as background and so forth in their album to ring shots together with the invitations and the cakes and all of the goodies that has taken so much time planning and efforts and yet while the bride and her mom are going through that day, they don't have a chance to really see. We also do an awful lot of work with seniors and we do a lot of that on location. We do non-traditional things, in other words, we don't necessarily do cap and gown, but we do a lot of other things that lend themselves to what the seniors are really interested in. And we do those a lot on location, although, we do some formal shots since that's what senior and mom and dad would like to have, and we try to put an awful lot of emphasis on, again, what the seniors are interested. For instance, we had one young man who played in a rock band, and so after we had done several shots, he and his brother, by the way, we got out his guitar and we had him playing the guitar and we found and old store over her in Ethel and we had him up on the porch - old wooden porch of the store - and we actually had him jumping in the air strumming that guitar just as hard as he could. Caught him in mid-air, froze the action, and then put some effects on it so it would look like a rock poster, and again, emphasizing what this senior is interested in. We also do infants and we have, matter of fact, two different programs that we're really pushing right now and one of those we call "maternity and newborn" and what we try to do there if the couple is interested is maternity shots, oh about the 8th month of pregnancy and we try to get the couple together, if possible, sometimes dad's schedule doesn't let that happen, but we try to do that. Then we try to do the newborn series, which is like we prefer like between day 12 or 14 and day 21 before they have an opportunity to begin to uncurl, and what we found there is that if dad can make it, they really fit nicely in that dad's hands still kind of curled up and still kind of small. If dad can't make it, we do the same thing with mom, and put them up real close and tight, and we do some special effects there. We also have another program based on our experience that we call "leaps and bounds" that is all the first year of that child's life, and we do that because we have read and have witnessed about how much change goes on in that period to the point that we have a list of things that you might expect your child to be going through at different points. So we try to schedule three and six and nine and twelve months, because that's the most change that most kids are going to go through. And if that doesn't fit a schedule, we also offer four, eight, and twelve months. So, we have some beautiful albums that encompass all four or all three of those sessions so that you can open that album up and really see the dramatic change in that youngster's life. We do occasionally have specials like last year we did a Halloween special here. We had the kids come over in their costumes and we had bales of hay and pumpkins out and all kinds of things for small kids like one year, two years, three years old in their costumes and it's also a wonderful possibility to do a family portrait at the same time, because usually we do that on the weekends when mom and dad can come and/or brothers and sisters can come and that was a pretty exciting thing. We got some really cute shots. We also do, on occasion, events. For instance, the last several years we've been doing the Joint Military Service Academy Ball for our region,and of course, whether or not you know it Humble is a small town in Texas, I think the population is less than 20,000, but we are totally surrounded by the city of Houston and this ball is for all of the cadets or students at all five service academies. And if they live in this region, they are invited and it's put on by the association for all of those parents, and we do everything that they would like to have done which is like "My Cadet" and "His Date" or "Our Cadet" if there's more than one and the family, and we also try to capture a lot of the celebrating that's going on during the ceremony part of that event and that's usually held the day after Christmas here in the Houston area. We've been down in Sugarland which is on the far side from where we are over into the galleria area for that event. They've had it several different places and that's pretty much the range. As far as weddings are concerned, we've done weddings in San Diego, we've done them in upstate New York. We had a tremendous time with one we did in Aberdeen, Mississippi, believe it or not in an old Antebellum mansion called "The Magnolias". There's the 12 wooden steps up to the front door and the front porch and all kinds of small rooms that we just decorated beautifully, and it was a garden wedding, and one of the unique things besides all of the people who showed up, and I believe the whole town of Aberdeen and the surrounding area showed up, was that they released some pigeons right at the end of their ceremony, and we managed to capture that just perfectly. We had the pigeons flapping their wings and the bride and the groom going whooo ahhh and enjoying that particular part of it. We've also done...we were invited to do a wedding in Thessaloniki, Greece, until it turned out that the mother of the bride had already gotten a photographer for there locally. So we wound up doing a series of albums for the couple once they came here for a reception and that was exciting. So we do cover a fair range, mostly on average I would say anywhere from Galveston all the way through Huntsville. From south to north and from east to west all the way from Beaumont over into, believe it or not, San Antonio on occasion.
JOHN: Well it sounds like you cover a broad spectrum of photography and your company sounds very thorough.
STEVE: Well, thank you.
JOHN: Yeah, certainly a lot to offer to anybody who is interested in hiring you. We're going to take a break here, Steve. We are in the studio with Steve Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography of Humble, Texas . This is VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight. We will be right back.
ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com, the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
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ANNOUNCER: We now return you to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Welcome back to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight, I'm your host, John Bentley. Today we are in the studio with Steve Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography of Humble, Texas. Welcome back to the program, Steve.
STEVE: Thank you.
JOHN: Now Steve were talking about the area that you cover, what about wedding facilities or banquet halls that you like to use?
STEVE: Well there's two or three or four that come to mind that are just really, really exciting. Matter of fact, there's a story behind one called Mauricimo Maritella and I think you can find that if you Google it. The original story that we were given on that was that, of course, this is an urban legend was that that was Anna Nicole Smith's play place that her husband had built for her when she was in town so she could have a fancy party, but it's really an outstanding location. We've done everything from weddings to receptions to actual bridal portraits during the day at that location and it's a constant change, because their constantly improving and adding on to it. But it's pretty exciting thing. We've also done the full wedding and reception at a little place right up here in Conroe which is not that far from us, it's well within 30 miles, and it's called Heather's Glen. I believe their site can be Goolged also so that you can take a look at what they have to offer. And they've just been really great with us. There's several other locations around close to us that we have done. One of the places we really enjoyed believe it or not is Kingwood Country Club, and we enjoy it for a couple of reasons. One because we can go out and back on the golf course itself in the late afternoon after the golfers are through and do romantic shots of the couple, but the other thing that we really enjoy about them is they just fix tremendously good food and they usually set some aside for us so if there is a long break, of course, we have an opportunity to enjoy that, and if there's not a long break, they make sure that we have take home boxes, and you know when you're involved with a wedding, that's anywhere from 6 - 8 hours of actual event going on not counting the commute time before and after and the equipment preparation even before and after. So, 6 - 8 hour wedding could take us 12 - 15 hours a day so that take home box is really pretty darn nice for us. The other two can do that, and they're all clubs like Kingwood is the Tascatheta Country Club which is across or south of the river from Kingwood Country Club and then the third one is Deerbrook, and it's more of a golf club, but their clubhouse is very, very nice, and we've had some really successful work done there that was just exciting. The couple was into it and the families were into it and the kids that were attending the wedding, believe it or not, had things to do so they weren't just sitting around bored all dressed up and can't play.
JOHN: Well Steve you obviously do a lot in weddings. You also do some commercial work too, is that true?
STEVE: We occasionally do some commercial work and that's everything from clients of ours, for instance, there is a young lady that's just tremendous that owns a company named Elegant Beginnings, and they provide everything that you need from linen to plate chargers, plate settings, to chair covers to the ties, the sashes, the colors, and we've done a lot of photography for them that is on their website and sample books for them and business cards for them and that includes photographing all of these different setups. We'll go in and set up a whole table with the chairs and everything and photograph all of that and then immediately take it all down and put up another one. We'll do 40 or 50 of those and everyone is pretty happy about it. We have done some other commercial work which includes some jewelry work that we did for a local jeweler that they wanted to have some very large, not necessarily transparencies, but translucencies. In other words the photograph is on a translucent face that they put lights behind to show and those are a lot of fun to do, because you're not having to worry about any blink that you might get that you do with people.
JOHN: When you have a client come in and talk to you about having some work done, what is the most important goal you want to achieve when you shoot a client?
STEVE: Well the first thing that we ask, and it doesn't matter which client it is whether it's just a real quick thing for instance a quick thing would be doing portraits of the teachers of the year for the local school district for a big overall image that goes up on the school districts wall, but most of our other work, the main thing that we're trying to ask the folks to do is to come and talk with us and make sure they get along with us. For instance, the first thing we're going to tell a mom or a bride or a bride and groom or even kids, parents is if you can't get along with your photographer, if you can't smile with your photographer, how you going to smile for the photograph. And we find that whatever their attitude is in our relationship comes through in the images. So we work and try to be friendly, we try to get along with folks. As I have said, there are three of us unless we actually need a fourth, but there are three of us in our family, and one of our phrases/mottos, if you will, is that we're a family photographing families. So that's what we're trying to do there. There's so many photographers in the business out here around us that are very, very good and you have your choice of the style they produce and/or the relationship that you can produce with them. And we're working on both.
JOHN: Steve, would you would you tell our listeners website address and contact information.
STEVE: Absolutely. Our current web address, and I expect it to stay that way for quite some time is www.stevetarverphotography.com and Tarver is spelled T as in Texas-A-R-V as in Victory-E-R and it's all one phrase. Our current contact information by telephone is (281) 446-3906 and our current email which is going to change by November, but our current email is stevetarver@earthlink.net and that's probably going to change to stevetarver@embarq or steve@stevetarverphotography.com.
JOHN: Well we are in the studio with Steve Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography of Humble, Texas. I want to thank you for coming on the program today, Steve.
STEVE: Absolutely, and I appreciate your time.
JOHN: It's been our pleasure. You have been listening to VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight. Have a great afternoon.
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight; only on www.vtalkradio.com. Radio for the 21st Century.
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