Soooo, I now that I only rebranded back in July last year, however, since all of the goings on at the conclusion of last year and the loss of my artwork on my now defunct HDD, as well as the complete wiping of my website (thanks so much for that Chinese Hackers!), I feel that it is a great time to take  along hard look at what Love Bytes is about.

I have decided this year to accept some of the wedding enquiries that I have been receiving and am looking forward to the 7 weddings that I already have booked for this 2012. 

As a result,  guys and gals, I have something exciting to share with you today! You may remember the beautiful love heart shaped leaf that I posted an image of on Facebook the other day? It is here, just in case you missed it:

Some of you may also remember me having some discussions about rebranding Love Bytes on account of expanding to encompass wedding work this year?

Well, the deal is done! I have designed another logo to go along with my gorgeous new website and to take Love Bytes into the direction that my photography has been evolving. In short, Love Bytes has grown up a little. The love heart leaf represents a lot of things about me personally, my name being “love”, my hopes and dreams for our planet, and respect for Mother Nature, and general feeling of “earthiness” that is a part of my personality. It is also quite precious as my kids have really taken to the “theme” and have been bringing me every leaf that remotely looks like a loveheart over previous weeks!

I have chosen to stay with my black, white and red theme, and a clean, modern look, but softened it a little to include the loveheart leaf, and a gentler, handwritten font. I think that the new look works well for both my children/families and weddings combined. It is still fun and fresh, but a little more refined.

What do you guys think?!

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Ok, so we had our ups and downs this past year, mostly downs, but let’s not focus on those! Instead, lets look forward to a busy and beautiful 2012!

To kick things off, I am working on a brand new website, the beginnings of which you are viewing right now! Thanks to remorseless Chinese hacking bots that keep attacking this site, we have lost what was once known as the Love Bytes little corner of the web. All is not lost though, I have decided to “keep on truckin’” and onto bigger and better things. A new look for a new year! This site will be evolving over coming months as I add new content and tweaks and galleries and lots of fun bits and pieces, so stay tuned.   At the moment, I have managed to restore all of my old blog posts, but not the “uploads” folder containing the images, so things are looking a wee bit bare right now, but I will be plugging along and fixing what I can asap.

As well as this, I am taking a slightly different direction this year. I have finally decided to cave in to pressure (lol!), and accept a small number of wedding bookings this year. I say “cave in” as I once swore that I would never shoot a wedding again after suffering from severe burn-out back in the day of shooting and editing 3 weddings every week. Sure the money was nice but *I* was not a nice mummy/wife and promised my family that I would “never go back there”.

As such, I am going to be a bit of a diva. A select number of weddings, on my terms, my way. No stress, no ego, no hard sell, no wedding expos. Just me and my camera, some beautiful images and exquisite products and (hopefully) lots of yummy wedding cake!

Kinda appropriate now that I think about it that we are called “Love Bytes” these days, isn’t it?

Ok, so here’s a sampling from two weddings that I shot in November, and which reignited my passion for all things luuuurv…  These two weddings couldn’t have been more different, but both were absolutely wonderful!

Ann-Marie and Craig; chic, sassy and fun…

Heidi and Richard, eco vintage wonderland…

(…and btw, you can read more about the gorgeous family in the second set of images by visiting their lovely blog: There Were Three In The Bed.)

So what do you guys think? Would you want to share your most very special day and entrust your wedding memories to moi?

tan.x.

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We are putting together some very special Christmas magic for our lucky Brisbane clients!  2 days of beautifully styled shoots, guaranteed to result in beautiful images, awesome gift ideas and a fun experience for your kids too!

The beautiful styling of each shoot will have a Christmas theme, but not in a traditional sense.  The resulting images will be suitable for display and gift-giving all year round!  Tanya has gone all out this year, and you will be impressed!

Two days of shoots are available – one at a North Brisbane location, and one at a South Brisbane location for your convenience.  Full details of location and times available will be emailed to you after booking.

*Please note that we will do our best to accommodate specifically requested booking times, but it will be a case of first come first served as spots are limited to only 8 each day.

Book (and pay for) your 2011 Christmas Mini Shoots HERE:

(all prices on this page are in Australian dollars and payment is via Paypal only).

Please note that we are happy to offer payment plans to make it a little easier to manage the fee for your session. If you wish to take advantage of this, please select the red, “BOOK NOW” link when you are booking your workshop to pay only the $50 deposit that is required to secure your place. The remaining balance ($145) will be payable by cash only on the day or via direct deposit into our bank account prior to your shoot.  We will contact you to reserve a time suitable for your family for the date you have chosen…

Brisbane NORTHSIDE location -  Saturday 19th November 2011:

Date: Saturday, 19th November 2011.

Times available: from 10am-5pm, every hour.  Maximum of only 8 spots available!

Fee: aud$195.00

Venue: tba upon confirmation of booking.

Inclusions:
- 30-45 minute session fully styled with a gorgeous Christmas theme.
- Images provided as 10-15 beautifully photographed/edited HIGH RESOLUTION files with full usage rights, allowing you to have them printed wherever you like, and delivered as a password protected digital download directly from my client proofing website.
- Session is for one child or set of siblings only, and inclusion of additional family members will need to be requested.
- All images will be delivered in plenty of time for Christmas and Christmas gifts.

- Additional print products, Christmas cards etc available at extra cost upon request.

Please click the “book now” button below, to book your NORTHSIDE session and pay aud$50 non-refundable deposit to secure it. We will contact you to arrange payment of the remaining balance.

OR

Please click the “purchase now” button below, to book your NORTHSIDE session and to PAY IN FULL (aud$195):

Brisbane SOUTHSIDE location – Sunday 20th November 2011:

Date: Sunday,  20th November 2011.

Times available: from 10am-5.30pm, every hour. Maximum of only 8 spots available!

Fee: aud$195.00

Venue: tba upon confirmation of booking.

Inclusions:
- 30-45 minute session fully styled with a gorgeous Christmas theme.
- Images provided as 10-15 beautifully photographed/edited HIGH RESOLUTION files with full usage rights, allowing you to have them printed wherever you like, and delivered as a password protected digital download directly from my client proofing website.
- Session is for one child or set of siblings only, and inclusion of additional family members will need to be requested.
- All images will be delivered in plenty of time for Christmas and Christmas gifts.

- Additional print products, Christmas cards etc available at extra cost upon request.

Please click the “book now” button below, to book your SOUTHSIDE session and pay aud$50 non-refundable deposit to secure it. We will contact you to arrange payment of the remaining balance.

OR

Please click the “purchase now” button below, to book your SOUTHSIDE session and to PAY IN FULL (aud$195):

SPECIAL OFFER!!

To compliment your Christmas Mini session, we are offering our gorgeous, bespoke “Life Mosaic”, 20×30 inch canvases at the drastically reduced price of $299.  They are usually $599 dollars, so you will save $300!

We will select up to 6 of the most beautiful images from your session, and custom design a beautiful montage incorporating these images, text, overlays, textures and other graphical elements to give you a beautiful piece of art that will proudly grace your walls for many years to come.

Our canvases are premium, fine art quality canvases beautifully printed on 430gsm Premium Cotton canvas, hand-stretched on ECO-FRIENDLY 42mm deep kiln-dried and finger-jointed Qld regrowth timber stretcher bars, and then finished with two coats of Aquathane spray laminate with UV inhibiting and anti-fungal qualities in a gorgeous Satin finish.

This very special offer for all of our Christmas Mini Shoot clients!  This offer is ONLY available from this page here, and must be prepaid/pre-ordered before your session.  Orders for this special will not be accepted on the shoot day or afterwards.  You can order at the time of booking your session or anytime BEFORE your session, by returning to this page.  You may order as many as you wish, but all orders must be placed (and paid in full) by clicking the green “purchase now” button below, prior to Saturday 19th November, 2011.

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Ok, so it has been a looooong time since I posted! I know this, but there is a good reason. Well, a couple really.  

1. This entire website was hacked, and vaporised a couple of months back. It took about 4 weeks of frustrating forehead-bashing-against-a-brickwall to and froing with my web host before they finally managed to restore it. It is only still *barely* here, lots of stuff is missing, but thankfully, all of my blog posts were saved, and this is the most important thing!  

2. Following on from what will forever be known as “The Love Bytes Hacking Incident of 2011″, I began to build a new site. I have been reticent to post on the blog since as I wanted my next post to be a “big reveal” of the new site. But of course, as per my usual mantra, there aren’t enough hours in the day, and I STILL don’t have it ready to go, and at the risk of all of my lovely subscribers disappearing into oblivion, I thought it was about time that I at least came by and said Hi! And, I promise that yes, a new fancy, schmancy, hacker-proof (well, hopefully), site is on its way!  

3. Reason number 3, my perpetual moan/whinge – there just isn’t enough of me to go around!  

BUT, I have a STACK of editing that I am working on right now, and some gorgeous sneak peeks that will be going up on the blog in coming days, so I thought I’d better get my butt into gear and start posting again!  

Christmas is creeping up, yet again, and I have some special mini-shoots planned for my SEQ clients that I will post about shortly too, but until then, here is a beautiful little family that I photographed a couple of weeks ago and who I will be sharing more of in coming days…  

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Following on from my last post about my direction, and evolving style as a photographer, I have been thinking more and more about this.

I have come to the following conclusion. Rather than labeling myself as having a definite “style” for capturing the children and families that I photograph, I think that my “style” is to shoot colour, form, composition, styling, lighting etc as dictated by the personalities of those I am photographing.  My “style” is actually YOUR style.

There was a time when I heavily styled and themed all of my shoots, and I still love to do this and play “dress ups” when I can. However, I no longer feel that I need a gimmick to produce my collections. Instead, within moments of physically meeting a family, I can usually tell what their expectations are from a shoot that we do together and the kind of images that they would like to have in their collection.  If I style or theme shoots these days it is for a good reason – because of a request from the family, or because the chosen theme has an important meaning to the family/child that I am photographing.

Rather than thinking of the final “look” of the images, I find myself more and more, wanting to do the family/child justice by showing who they “really” are – their spirit, their personality, their loves, their vulnerabilities. I want to show them as they are at that particular point in time so that when the parents look back on our session together they can say “oh, yes, remember how she used to love doing that”, or “I remember that sad face he used to give me”.

This is also the reason that I am starting to, more and more, incorporate video and fusion into my shoots. More on this in coming months as I perfect the product that I am getting very excited to offer!

As such, and in light of the fact that I now have a quirky new studio that I am about to go public with, I have decided to do a spot of re-branding for Love Bytes. I have redesigned the logo, to reflect my stronger identity and cleaner way of thinking and shooting.  I am keeping the infamous polka dots (to come out on “special occasions” ), but throwing away the lollies which I have outgrown and which I think are a bit too gimmicky for what I want Love Bytes to be about.  Of course, all of my orders will still come with lollies, that is my trade mark, and besides, I’d get hungry without a huge stash next to me as I work.

I have made some some changes to the website and will tweak it more as I go along, to reflect the new branding and the look/feel of our new studio too. And so, without further ado, I’d like to unveil the new Love Bytes logo, drum roll please….

So, it is cleaner, but it is still bold, and vibrant, and in keeping with the quirkiness that is Love Bytes.  It is still red, black and white, and I will add/use polka dots when/where ever I see fit (hehe!), but, the most important thing to me about the new logo is that it is less ME, and more YOU.

As I mentioned in my last post, it is my ability to connect with you and your kids that I think is my “talent” (if any!), and it is this that I am going to work to capture as my top priority for all of my clients from now on in.  It is for this reason that I have now added my very special little tag line to the bottom of our new logo, and I would love for you all to think about it for a few moments.  It truly encompasses everything that Love Bytes and me, as a photographer is about at this point in time…

….because a child’s true beauty can only be seen with the heart.

What do you guys all think?

tan.x.

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