images by Voir Photography

We are finally settling into a routine with our new little one – as much as you can have a routine with a new baby who grows and changes every day.  We do most of our work these days at night–Nikita’s fussiest time is around 3am and we’ve found it easiest to stay up until then. Which means we go to bed around dawn and sleep until the afternoon.  We are so lucky to both have flexible schedules and work at home!

In the past week we have gotten back to a good working routine.  Jennifer has been working with many new couples, including the silent auction winners from last week’s Get Hitched, Give Hope.  Sasha is back to the ‘editing cave’ and clearing out our editing queue.  We have no events all winter and for this we are glad–we have time to finish up our past obligations, we can enjoy life as a new family, and focus our energy on making next summer’s wedding season AMAZING!

Over the next few months, we will be blogging some new highlights films–we have some really creative edits to share! However, finishing our past feature film edits is our priority. So hold tight and check back occasionally for new films and new baby pics

This year’s event is Thursday, October 27th from 6-9pm, at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seattle. This year’s goal is to raise $75,000 to grant wishes for adult patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families, and ZinchukFilms is doing it’s part. We are donating a full wedding film package to the cause!!!

Last year, Taz and Channy won an extra-special Love Story film and it was so fun telling their story, which was shown at the wedding of their dreams.  This year we decided to up the ante and donate our ‘Vintage Fusion’ wedding film package—an over $2,500 value!  It includes up to 8 hours of wedding day coverage on high definition film AND vintage Super 8 film.  We will edit the events of the wedding day into a cinematic film that lasts up to 15 minutes.  This is an exciting way to remember the sounds and moments that made your day really special!!

This is an awesome opportunity to get your wedding cinematography taken care of AND to know that your money is going to a great cause!!  We hope you can join us on Thursday – get your tickets online or at the door.  It will be an awesome evening with free drinks, yummy food, fun entertainment, a LIVE AUCTION, and the chance to win some really amazing stuff!!

We look forward to seeing you!!

We have one last wedding to wrap up our summer season and then we will finally slow down a bit. We can finally put our equipment away and begin the work behind our computers to share some amazing images and film with you, our friends and supporters!

Coming over the next few weeks: a summer wedding in Seattle/Snohomish, a gorgeous Russian wedding, some stunning images from Hawaii, an adorable family, and bit by bit, some additional wedding trailers AND a new look for our business!

Until them, a few images from paradise:

A few nights ago, we met up with some of our photographer friends at the Seattle/Tacoma Pictage User Group (PUG) meeting. Pictage is the amazing company we use for our photo-hosting and they are so supportive of creative businesses.  The Seattle/Tacoma PUG is organized by Gerald and Airika of The Popes and was hosted by JFK Studios (in their AMAZING new studio space).  It was great to see some familiar faces and meet some new friends!

The topic of this month’s meeting was “Creativity.”  We had a lively discussion and it really got us thinking: what is creativity? What inspires us?

Today I spent an hour or so getting caught up on my Google Reader. I subscribe to, well, lots and lots of blogs. Some days I skim through blog content to wake up or unwind. But days like today it has provided endless inspiration. I follow photographers, videographers & cinematographers, creative professionals, wives and mamas. I know some of the blog writers, some I simply admire. And very often these blogs provide just the creative inspiration I need. Today’s inspiration:

City of Lakes: an amazing film/wedding put together by Kevin Shahinian. It brings up interesting questions about truth and fiction in the creative process and pushes the boundaries of wedding cinematography. A definite must-see.

How do I price myself?: This is an interesting FAQ posted by The Youngrens that discusses creative pricing. How do creative professionals balance cost and value for the consumer and also make some kind of profit to keep a business afloat. This is something that we’re working to balance, and in that vein I’ve been looking at several different album and print companies to find the best deals for our clients. We’re inspired to offer some cool new products and offer some new sessions–details coming soon!

Things we love: Our friends at Alante Photography just re-did their blog and added this “things we love” page. I loved reading though and finding we have so much in common! I’ve been “homesick” for Great Britain for a while now, and Kimberly & Loren’s love  of Britpop, Radiohead and Aston Martins made me swoon just a bit

Friends in the industry: We are inspired by our friends in the wedding industry–from PUG meetings to Facebook chats to our Twitter connections, we gain so much insight and inspiration from the support of our friends. Come join in the conversations!

Three Cups of Tea: I read this book this weekend cover-to-cover. Many of you know that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and I could definitely sympathize with Greg Mortenson’s desire to create change a world away and the difficulties he faced in working with a new culture. I am inspired by his perseverance to help his friends across the world in the face of war, poverty, and public outrage.  It is also a great reminder that good things take patience. In a world of multi-tasking, fast communication, and instant gratificiation, it is a good reminder that good things come to those who work hard and are patient.  This book is definitely on my bookshelf (next to River Town, which has a story in itself) in the stack of inspiring reads.

Those are some of the thoughts running around in my mind. Now I’m off to a fabulous photo shoot at Hotel 1000 and hopefully I can bring some of this inspiration to my pictures. Happy Weekend!

Happy Easter!

Eggs are dyed in bright, shiny colors; chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies are in our bellies: Easter is here!

Easter is by far my favorite Orthodox holiday–the traditions are so sacred & beautiful. This year we didn’t make the trek to our nearest Orthodox church for nighttime services. Instead we are resting and celebrating at home. This day of rest is especially nice when all Christians–whether Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or other–can celebrate together.

Easter has always been a time of new beginnings, and this year the first group of ducklings appeared on our pond this week. These tiny little wild creatures are a reminder of life! Every day is a new day and Easter is our yearly reminder of fresh starts

Every morning, Alex gets up and makes coffee.  Still sleepy, he slowly wakes up to the aroma of a good dark roast and sits down at the computer.  He doesn’t start work right away; instead, he takes a few minutes to visit the vimeo website.

We have been using vimeo for over a year for our HD video hosting on our blog.  We love the high quality internet videos the site produces (much better than the SD gallery on our website!).  However, vimeo is more than just a window into our wedding films–it is a community where fellow videographers and cinematographers can share their work, advice, and support.

Working alone can be difficult at times because there’s no one to give feedback (except your wife who loves everything you do ).  In order to have some human contact, vimeo has been a great outlet for Alex to give and to get comments and new inspiration.  It is a great place to get to know fellow filmmakers around the US and around the world.  We have many new professional contacts that we never would have known without this networking website.  Vimeo has helped us grow into the cinematographers we are today by pushing us to be more and more creative.

If you love video–or just want to check out our updated profile–take a look around the vimeo website

Zinchuk Studios is just over 3 years old.  Over the past 3 years we have grown so much in our creativity, in our technical skills, and in our business sense.  When we started out, we just had one (awesome) SD video camera, a tripod and some wireless mics–now we can hardly fit all our equipment in our car (not sure how it’s all gonna fit on an airplane ).  Since then, we have grown and changed from a documentary wedding video business to a boutique photography and cinematography studio.  It has been such an amazing journey filled with awesome couples and great business buddies along the way!

As with our own growth from children to adults, growing a business comes in fits and starts.  It is amazing to go out into the world and find inspiration in the people we work with; it is lonely to sit in a dark office for hours a day.  It is exciting to travel to new destinations; it is frustrating when technology breaks down.  But with our failures and our successes we have learned to find our eye, our voice, our passion in this business.

I can honestly say that we are perfectionists. Alex works loooong days to edit together each wedding film that we shoot, edit, package and pass into the loving hands of our couples. A wedding is such a precious event that we simply cannot leave the job halfway done.  After shooting a wedding day, most couples book us for 10 hours, we weave together 2-3 camera tracks, 2 audio tracks plus sound straight from the DJ’s system or music from a CD. It is simple to just put shots together with music, but to edit real sound, several camera shots, and background music together in a way that is cinematic simply takes time.

As we have transitioned from a documentary-type studio to a cinematic wedding film studio, we have fallen behind. When we earlier edited a 2-hour film in 4-6 months, it now takes 6-9. We have upgraded our computers to the fastest processors and mobile systems so we can work even on the road, yet we push them to the max when we process the 8 hours, on average, of full high-definition video we work with for each event. As we communicate and commiserate with our industry peers, this 6-9 month timeframe is standard.  Yet we push our computers to overheating, we push ourselves to overworking every day (we haven’t had a vacation since NYE 2008) and with that, we get sick and we get tired and we lose our passion.

But spring is here and we have decided to get our energy back!  We LOVE our couples and we LOVE our work!  Our business has experienced a growth spurt and it is not easy. We appreciate the support and patience of our friends and of all our couples.  We apologize that we have gotten behind in our edits, but are passionately working to complete all of our 2009 weddings beautifully.

As we look forward to Summer 2010, we are excited! We will work with so many new venues, planners, photographers–not to mention our amazing couples!  We will see so many exciting places (Hawaii! Alaska!) and we have so many great ideas! We look forward to sharing all the love–and all our adventures–with you.

Thank you for your support of Zinchuk Studios! Here’s to another great year!!

We hope that all your dreams come true 100% this year. It is a time of new beginnings–so take this opportunity to turn a new leaf! We wish everyone strong health and financial success in 2010!!!

With much love,
Alex & Jennifer

We’ve gathered cans for Round 1 of Cans for Comments!  As of today, 12/21 you guys have commented 25 times. So tomorrow it’s off to the food bank with our 2 big bags of cans

Remember, we’re gathering cans through ‘Old New Year’–January 13. Keep the comments coming, anywhere on the blog.

Happy Holidays!!