Insider Scoop from Emily Ku

The following blog post was written by Emily Ku after working with me during the holidays in 2009! The words & images are all hers, and the pleasure of working with her was all mine. ;-) Thank you Emily!!

"It all started when I read one of Anne's tweets saying that she needed some temporary help for a holiday photo booth. I have been following Anne's blog for around a year when she first started to blog on Weddingbee Pro (now on hiatus), so I knew she was an awesome wedding photographer and had a great sense of humor. At first I didn't really understand the free holiday photo booth since Anne mainly shoots weddings, but I knew it was going to be big and wanted to be a part of it. It turned out that the photo booth was to celebrate her studio opening at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, MA and more importantly, to have a really good time."

"From the outside, Western Ave looks like a big, rundown warehouse, but inside houses some of the most amazing local artists I've encountered. There are over a hundred artists who work on everything: glass figurines, hand painted scarves, jewelry, paintings, photography, etc. They open their doors to the public on the first Saturday of every month, and for holiday open studios, they opened the first two weekends in December. Most people who visited Western Ave during the holiday open studios didn't budget enough time to visit all the studios, so some people unfortunately didn't have enough time to take holiday photo booth pictures."

"These are just some of the many props that people could choose from. We also had a lot of holiday props which were the most popular, and we even had some festive Hanukkah props. Sometimes there were so many people waiting to get their picture taken that you'd think we were giving out free swine flu shots or something! I had a really fun time helping people pick out costumes, and Anne even let me shoot for a bit and play with the studio lights! It was quite challenging shooting a different group of people every ten minutes because there wasn't any time at all to get to know them and make the camera-shy people feel comfortable, but we were able to get a lot of really fabulous shots. When the shooting was over, the hard part started. I helped Anne edit through the thousands of photos that she took and also tried to help her complete holiday orders from her wedding clients. There was a ton of work to do after each weekend and while I could go home whenever I wanted, Anne was burning the midnight oil for weeks. I've now been introduced to the grueling life of a photographer, and I actually really enjoyed it!"

"Here's a picture of the wonderful people in Anne's beautiful studio: Anne Ruthmann (top left), Amanda  (top right) - the "hot chick" down the hall, aka the owner of Brick Mill Studio.  Ivan Feign (bottom left) - one of the wonderful assistants I worked with, and Lauren Peate (bottom right) - the other wonderful assistant I worked with. There were three of us total working for Anne, and it has truly been a pleasure! She is the best boss in the world!! Thanks Anne for letting me guest blog!"

"I just want to leave you with one last picture. Meet Emma, my fellow photographer friend Alex's dog. Isn't she so adorable?!"

To learn more about what Emily is up to now, visit Emily Ku Photo's Blog!