As he writes, “…relationships are what make great and unique pictures. That’s why I love documenting people, their families, and their celebrations and sincerely enjoy developing a working friendship with my clients.” That was exactly the attitude I was hoping to find, and I wasn’t disappointed when we met Matthias a few Saturdays ago.  In fact, he greatly exceeded my expectations.

Part of the deal that I advertised was that I would write a post about the photographer, pointing to their site, and then put up several tweets about it.  What I didn’t expect is that the experience would be so incredible and perfect that I would want to write more than just an obligatory “go visit this person’s site”.  Spending that day with my children was such a personal experience and one that I wanted to remember with pictures, and Matthias didn’t just take a lot of pictures that will help with that (although honestly I would have been happy with that level of service), he truly captured the mood and the feel of our adventure together, and so perfectly caught the kids’ personalities in his images.

When he sent me a link to the photos I was excited, but when I started looking through them I was just blown away.  He caught the playfulness and bond of my two youngest, the beauty and joy of my oldest daughter and the pensive introspection and kindness of my oldest son.  I was mesmerized by the images, and they brought back the joy and excitement of that day immediately.  As I write this and look back over those pictures again, I’m just stricken by how well they turned out.

Beyond the amazing photography, our day with Matthias was a true joy.  He was with us during very personal times, and also exploring and heading in every direction in a sea of people at a popular tourist destination.  My kids felt comfortable with him right away and in a very short time they seemed to forget that he was taking pictures of us.  He laughed with us, he saw the world through the eyes of a child at times and as such was able to anticipate and capture the moments that he saw coming.  We had such an amazing time with him, and Matthias made everything comfortable, easy and memorable.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and are in need of a photographer for your personal moments, like a wedding, an engagement or something unique like a day at Alcatraz Island, I can honestly and enthusiastically recommend Matthias Giezendanner.  He is professional, attentive, unassuming, gentle and artistic.  Please go visit his site, look at his work, then get in touch with him.  I have no doubt that, like me, you will look forward to another time that you will be able to work with him.  Thank you Matthias for all that you did, you perfectly captured a very special day to me.

The Gig

On Saturday, September 5th I’m going to be hitting some cool points of interest in San Francisco with my four kids.  I would really like to capture it all with pictures, but I’m getting tired of lunking my own camera around everywhere, and frankly it’s a little challenging to get in any of the pictures with them.  We’re going to be going to Alcatraz Island around noon, and after all of that we’ll go for a quick hike/exploration in The Presidio, ending up at an old gun battery pretty near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’m not really wanting posed photos (although a few would be nice), but rather would have candid shots of the experience…me and my kids, them doing things that kids do…the good and craziness of life with four kids in San Francisco.  The total time commitment for this would be from 11am to about 6pm (maybe a little earlier).

What You’ll Give Me

My requirements really are very few.

• You don’t have to be a full-time photographer by any means, but you must be pursuing it as more than a point-and-click enthusiast. You need to have a website/blog that showcases your work.  This is less about me checking you out and more about me being able to point people in your direction
• You have to enjoy the company of kids.  I have four, ranging from 4-11.  They’re great, but if you don’t like kids, hanging out with 4 of them all day gets tiring.
• You need decent equipment.  Honestly, I don’t expect you do carry around 100 lbs of gear, but a decent SLR and some lenses would be great.  That shows me that you dig what you’re doing!

What I’ll Give You

This isn’t a photo shoot that is going to pay any cash, but it should pay off big time for those that need some publicity.

• I will write up one blog post about you and your work, and feature a few pics from the day.  I’ll send as many people to your site as I can, my blog gets thousands of daily hits.
• I will tweet about you 10 times a week for four weeks.  I have just a little over 25,000 followers, with retweets I usually have around 100,000 impressions.  That means you will get a lot of attention.
• I will write about you on Facebook.  This is my smallest area of influence, but I still have about 800 friends here.
• You’ll get a free trip to Alcatraz!  You have to let me know about this soon, I have to buy you a ticket before they are sold out.
• You’ll get lunch and dinner.  Hey, in this recessive economy, every meal counts!

That’s it!  I want to hear from you ASAP so we can get it figured out.  I’m very relaxed, very easy to work with, so I’m looking for somebody with the same attitude.  Please email me (matt at mattsingley dot com) or call my office at 323-774-1269 to get this set up.  Thanks, I’m looking forward to meeting you!

I’m going to be attending The Start Conference tomorrow, and I’m pretty excited to be a part of it. The conference is billed this way:Quit your day job.

"Start is a one-day conference in San Francisco designed for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies."

I’m not going there to learn how to start my own company (I’ve already done that a couple of times, the school of hard knocks has been good and bad to me), but I’m going there to hear and learn from some pretty savvy folks so I can help build other people’s companies and projects into things of spectacular success!  The conference speakers include people from Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, 43 Folders, TypePad and other amazing companies.  It almost sounds like too much info for one day…but I’ll do my best to take it all in.

A couple of notes about my travels over the next week.  First, I am not taking a laptop.  I plan on doing all communications, including blogging, from my iPhone.  Yes, I’m throwing the gauntlet down.  We’ll see if I love this thing after a week, or if I want to stab myself in the eye with a shrimp fork.  Second, and somewhat related to the first, this will be my first all-Moleskine conference.  I’m looking forward to putting pen to paper again, it’s been a while.  Third, I will be Tweeting with the hashtag #start08 unless the conference folks declare an "official" hashtag, which would be cool.  Sidenote: if you are putting together a conference or large get together of some type this year, you should declare and official hashtag so the tweeps can embrace it and have some uniformity.  You’re welcome for the idea.

That’s all folks…see you in San Francisco!  Oh, if you are going to be there, DM me on Twitter, username is @mattsingley