Test your RICHARD skills and win a bunch of free stuff to RPLprints powered by ROES!

Head to the Airplanes and Blazers site and enter the contest! Winners announced this Friday, 2/3 so don’t delay. And if you want to hang out with a bunch of really fun people at the Airplanes and Blazers party at WPPI this year, get tickets here See you there!

And thank you everyone at Flashdance for the RPL love!

I walked into a workshop in December and it hit me. There it was on the coffee table, PDN’s 20 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography and one of our young clients had the cover shot.  It wasn’t the first PDN one of our clients had the cover of, and while each one is special, it was turning the pages that really got my head spinning.

I was surprised to see that we had worked with the person that shot the inside front cover. Then as I kept going I hit the list of new photogs and that’s what shocked me, out of the 20 featured we have worked with 14 of them.  Is that even possible?? It seemed kind of unfair for a minute, (just for a minute….) To top it off the last page of editorial was a client too. It’s sort of amazing the number of our photographers featured in this magazine when you consider what a small lab we are!

But that just scratched the surface: I still had the current issue of Southern Weddings Mag with 6 of our clients in it sitting in my bag.  And a few days earlier Abby and Tait of Style Me Pretty had said that while they were still checking, so far our clients had been featured over 200 times.  I only gave them 30 names to check and 29 had been featured and most multiple times.  When I sat down to prepare for the workshop I had an email drafted to make plans to have lunch with a client/friend that was an American Photo “Best” winner. As I drifted into thought I realized that with the exception of one year, all 6 years we have had at least one client honored the title. One year we even had two clients listed.  All this knowing the Jose and Joel’s feature was just a few days away from hitting the news stands and while it reflected a great day for my friends and a great photographer was there to shoot it, Martha Stewart Weddings was showing something that they have never done before and that was just the icing on the cake!

Yeah, the last 30 days of 2011 were spent looking at all the great places our friends have been and I can say that I am proud to think that we played some role in their success.

So thanks, to all of you photographers (big, small, published or just quietly doing amazing work) that we have been honored to work with in 2011.  I hope that we have somehow helped you by giving you the best service we know how to give with great prints, great scans and maybe even some great business advise…

Here are some of the cool things we are working on for 2012:

You can meet me (or Angela!) at no less than 20 workshops this year, all over the world. Yeah I said world.

We are teaming up with Instaproofs to offer a service that brings two great companies into one seamless service.

Super excited to be involved in an expanded version of the [Framed] show this year! Can’t wait for you to see what’s in store.

Tuning up our services to take on even more photographers that care about quality.  Faster printing, more albums and books, digital processing, all the stuff you guys have been us asking for.

We have a couple of blogs that will happily list us as a vendor when our clients are featured but we need your help on this one!!!!  Please add us to you vendor list on your next submission!

And of course new ways to stay connected to our loyal clients.  As a small company, loyalty is how we pay the bills so we have a few things cooking for you guys that use us all the time!

Thanks again for making 2011 great and I look forward to seeing you in 2012!

-Brian

Jonathan Canlas traveled with “Champions” of the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital to Disney World in Orlando Florida and Washington D.C. photographing the kids, their families, caretakers, and sponsors. His photographs capture the genuine happiness and hope these children radiate. Read what Jonathan Canlas has to say about “Champions” and his experience on his blog. You’ll be thankful you did.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Canalas

Christopher Wilocki participated in the event “Honor Flight Chicago,” an organization focused on honoring American veterans for their services.  This group is one that had captured Wilocki’s attention for over a year and he describes his experience as being “the most emotional and humbling event [he has] ever witnessed.” This emotion comes across in his photographs of the event and we encourage all to visit his blog.

Photo Credit: Christopher Wilocki

Braedon Flynn flew down to Lima, Peru with the Krochet Kids, a charity with a fascinating story revolving around a group of high school friends. Krochet Kids encourages women to rise above poverty by teaching them the skill of crocheting. Breadon’s photo subjects include the women in the  program, the landscape and homes in Lima, the crochet “training sessions”, and the yarn factory. View his trip on his blog.

Photo credit: Braedon Flynn

Each year the Laurel Foundation serves over 500 children, youth and families affected by HIV and AIDS in the Los Angeles community. It was a pleasure working with their staff and Margot the founder and CEO. For more information on this great cause check out their site, http://www.laurel-foundation.org/

Richard Photo Lab wishes everyone a great holiday season and thanks all those who give back when they can.

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give – Winston Churchill

We can already here the faint sound of sugarplum fairies and jingle bells in the distance, and RPLprints powered by ROES hears it too. Live now on our ROES check out our new line of Holiday Cards and Borders. We’ve got a great variety of templates for Christmas, Hanukkah, and season greetings. Order now in time for the busy holiday season! http://www.rplprints.com

Join us for another webinar on Friday, October 14 on why 95% of wedding photographers will not make $100,000 this year plus much more!

We’ve been around for 20+ years and in that time we’ve seen some pretty amazing photographers go out of business. We’ve also worked first hand with photographers who run unbelievably successful businesses. We here at RPL want you to succeed, so we’ve done some extensive research. We’ve uncovered why some photographers fail, why others do well and we want to share the results with you! We believe we’re in this business together, so let us show you how to succeed.

On this Webinar we’re going to go over:

• How photographers can find the right allies
• Creating the right perception
• Building the referral business
• Branding
• Time management
• Q&A
• and much more!

The details:
Date: Friday, October 14, 2011
Time: 10:00 am- 11:00am PDT

Space is limited so email sarah.olea@richardphotolab.com for pricing information and to sign up!

We’re so happy to announce albums are the newest addition to our ROES ordering software! Jason’s been working on this for a while, building the specific application and making it as user friendly as possible for everyone. Now it’s easier than ever to build your own customized album from start to finish.

So what’s this album like, you ask? It’s a sophisticated flush-mounted album, printed in house and handcrafted by Cypress. The covers of the album are meticulously created with a smooth, sleek bookbinding fabric. The heavyweight pages are created to highlight your images. Find the new catalog of albums in “product type” on the bottom left hand corner of the application. Download the ROES application at RPLprints.com (if you haven’t already) and you’ll be uploading, designing and ordering in no time!