Elias Photography

Read on for a great gift idea and a special offer from Elias Photography

One of the most stressful elements of the holiday season is the age old question: “What do I get for (insert special person’s name here)?

Usually, a gift certificate entails a plastic card or a nondescript piece of paper that you place in an envelope and hand it over on the special day. To some, the gift card or certificate is sort of a catch-all thing you can give for a gift exchange or to someone you don’t know that well. Of course, they can be lost, which is only good for the merchant from whom you bought it!

But what if you are really stumped and it just *has* to be good?

Every year, we get a few customers at the last moment, looking for a gift, but not really knowing what to get, they come in and get a gift certificate.

At Elias Photography we offer specially made gift certificates. We understand that, if you come to us, you must know that the recipient really needs photography done, or else would appreciate the very personal nature of the gift. When you get a gift certificate from us, if there is time, we will custom-create wordage just for you, with special seasonal graphics to suit your needs. We have you sign the certificate, yourself, and put it in a clear envelope with with backing, for protection. You can then wrap that up in a box to put under the tree, or purchase a document frame for presentation.

We recommend that you buy a small “package” with us for a gift certificate. The absence of a dollar value, but with a brief description, looks much nicer and lets the recipient know exactly what they will be getting.

Elias Photography gift certificates are great gifts for special employees, spouses, parents-to-be, young families, thank-you gifts to great customers, or a “from Santa” gift to both you and your spouse.

We offer gift certificates year round, for all occasions. However… Today I was cleared to make a special offer:

From now, through January 15th, 2009, You can get an Elias Photography Gift Certificate for a photo session and an 11×14 print for 50% off the regular price. Depending on demand and time constraints, we may be able to customize each one!

So look no further for a special gift - and at a great price!

~~Carol

PS.  Our “gift certificates” are not just a piece of paper. They represent an account with a positive balance that belongs to the buyer until the gift is brought in by the recipient, and then we transfer the account to them. You never have to worry about losing your gift!

Well, golly.

It’s been a long time since we updated our Site, but then, how much can two individuals be expected to do??

For the last several months, we have been working on a fabulous site, the purpose of which is to promote shopping in Whittier… Particularly Uptown Whittier, since that’s where we are located.

We encourage you to visit ShopWhittier.com and browse the site. The site incorporates hundreds of photographs by Rick Elias - even more than we have on this site! The reason for this is we felt that the entire shopping district needs more exposure.  If we improve the state of Uptown, we hope that brings some business our way, too. We felt it was worth it to put off working on our own site for the cause.

It is planned that we will have about two new articles or stories per month - once we get in full swing - incorporating lots of photography. With stories, detailed information about businesses and lots of images, it is hoped that the content will bring lots of visitors, not just from everywhere on the web, but from people in the local area.

~~ Carol

Note: ShopWhittier.com is created with some of the latest Internet Technology. In order to see the images, you may need to update your Internet Browser and your Adobe Flash Player. This is always a good idea anyway, it can improve security, performance, and allow you to experience the best the Web has to offer.

We have almost got our move done and I can’t wait to put up photos of our new “digs.” My own computer’s internet connection is down, so this will have to wait. Hopefully I will have a connection and some photos in a week or so.

Keeping this short, as the wireless signal is off as much as it is on!

~~Carol

What is “Gallery Quality Photography”? I’m not sure where I got this term… maybe I pulled it out of my hat.

In another post or page somewhere I was trying to find another way describe our work. I think the distinction I am trying to make is that our work is not done in a studio with the same blue or brown background, the same props, the same lighting and the same pose. I think there are four elements at play, here.

1. We do our work in the real world, in real environments, using real lighting, photographing real people having real moments. Hence, Rick Elias has used the term “Real Life Photography” to describe his work.
2. Our work is as unique as individual people are because it is a reflection of them as described as above. Therefore…
3. You will not see image after image of the same setting with a different face in it. This is what you will see in a lot of portrait photography studios… and it’s fine… but not that interesting.
4. In each photo session, you will be able to find images that are unique and dynamic, interesting enough to be appreciated by many people, not just the family of the person who is portrayed. This is important because when you put artwork on the wall, you hope that everyone that enters your home enjoys it, not only your immediate family.

What you get at Elias Photography is artwork that is created specifically for you, but which anyone can appreciate.

~~Carol

Studio II

This is a rough sketch (you can click to see it larger) of our new reception room. The walls are already done, but the mouldings, ceiling tiles/track and part of the floor are rendered in by computer to check our design ideas. You can see that some of the switch plates are missing and construction is going on in Rick’s office.

~~Carol

There is not much that can hurt a business more than having the phones out for a day or longer.

Unless your phones do not go out, but parts of your service do not work and there is no way of knowing it, unless you call yourself. And who does that?

Our voice mail has not been working properly for weeks… Continue Reading »

Right before Christmas last year, one of the tenants here in the Elias Building moved out, leaving Rick with a vacancy. Because of the large size of this particular office, one of the frequent discussions - and drawbacks - is that it needs to be divided to accommodate multiple people. Rick took matters into his own hands and decided to divide it, himself, and upgrade it, with the possibility that it would rent faster - since nobody would need to divide it - and fetch a much-deserved higher rate.

Meanwhile, we would sit where we are today, and when/if the new tennants across the hall moved, we would move there temporarily to remodel our space.

My response to that was…. well I am sure I looked… confused. After a couple of hours, the discussion about how to best divide the office and have it be very elegant turned into “Why don’t we just move in, ourselves?” Continue Reading »

Elias Photography: A Step Forward in Our Website Technology.

Some people are just not technically savvy. In our business, technology comes in slowly and with a great deal of consideration and effort. We keep our eyes out and when something becomes available and seems to fit with what we are doing we have a look.

Today is one of the days where we have found something that we hope will solve a myriad of problems. This is the slide show that we have in our front window:

Yes, indeed, a slide show on our new Web Site is a good thing!

~~Carol

The links to the left will provide a lot of information about our services and our philosophy about photography. Whether you feel more comfortable knowing how and why we do things the way we do or you just want specific information, we hope you find it here.