Did we say November’ish?  Psych!  Of course these things never go according to plan, but we are excited to start 2009 with our new brand!  Thornton-Photo is now (drum roll please …) Phindy Studios. Isn’t that a much prettier name?   Along with launching our new brand, we have a brand-spankin’ new website and blog.  (They’re awesome and major props to Phil for designing them.  They are beautiful!  I could sit and look at them all day)

Some of you might be wondering:  “Hey, why the change, I liked Thornton-Photo!”  Well, it really was a culmination of several factors that made us decide to change the name and brand of our company.  The first reason was that we like to consider our images and style to be unique and our name really did not reflect that.  There are about a million “Thornton Photos” out there and we wanted to stand out!  Another reason was that our domain name (thornton-photo.com) was not all we wanted it to be.  Because of all of those other studios using similar names we had to adopt that dreaded dash (-) in our domain name which really just made things complicated for our visitors.  We also felt like we have come a long way since we started this business all those years ago and we kind of “outgrew” our old brand.  So, there it is, the reason our blog has been quiet for the last few months.  Along with our new look we plan to make some fundamental improvements to our business, one of which is more blogging!  With a swanky new blog like this how could we not?

Quick Tour:  Okay, so you may notice a few new items here on the blog so let me point out some of them.

1. Twitter Feeds! Up top in the bar above the most recent post you will see two areas for live updates of our twitter feeds.  For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, it’s basically a service that lets you post status updates, a lot like facebook’s status.  We can post these “tweets” from our iphones so you can know exactly what we are up to whenever you check the blog (why anyone would WANT to know that much about us we are not sure but we love twittering)
2. Slideshow/Proof Links! Inside some posts you will see two gray boxes with links in them (see this post for an example) these links are there so that we can send you to relative info about that post.  For instance, if the post is about a wedding and we have made a slideshow for that wedding you can just click that purdy little link to go straight to it!  Or, if you want to purchase prints or view proofs from the event you can follow that link directly to the event at Pictage (our online lab partner.) Sweetness.
3. Easier Comments! Comments are now “inline” with the post so you can quickly view and JOIN IN on the conversation!  We love comments so keep them coming

We know a post just isn’t complete without some killer photos for you guys to look at so this time we are including some new portraits we had made of us!  And boy, are they AMAZING!  Our good friend and super talented photographer Joy Marie took these almost 2 months ago for us but we were saving them for the new launch.  Ironic as it may seem we both HATE getting our picture taken but like any great photographer, Joy made it a fun experience and we love how these turned out.

Side note: A very special thanks to all of our 2008 clients.  You guys made it our best year yet!  We already have some incredible clients to shoot in 2009 and can’t wait to see what else this year holds for us.   Anyways, take a second to look around our new site and blog.  Let us know what you think!

xoxo

Phil & Mindy (can you guess how we came up with Phindy?)

We know you guys love the purdy wedding pictures but today’s post is a little bit different!  Here is a look at some portraits we just did for the super talented Zach Spencer.  If you haven’t heard Zach’s music drop what you are doing and go check it out! He is a great guy and an awesome musician.  We had a lot of fun in the freezing cold taking photos for his upcoming album.  Here are just a few to check out, Mindy & I think the very last image should be his album cover but unfortunately he already has an illustration selected for that

(Below: Mindy, Zach, Phil)

We are so excited to finally share Amanda & Stephen’s wedding.  We had so much fun shooting their engagement portraits, so we knew their wedding would be just as much fun and it definitely didn’t disappoint.

The ceremony was held at the beautiful Monroe Street United Methodist Church in Germantown.  Their reception was held at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel.  I would definitely suggest this as a reception spot to future couples.  They have a great permanent white tent in the back of the hotel.  It was beautiful and they kept it nice and toasty since it was freezing outside.   The entertainment for the reception was provided by Stephen and his band, local Nashville rock heroes, The Nobility.   We’ve known these guys for a while and it was fun to see a free show.

If you would like to register to view all of the images when they are ready, click here.   Here are a few to look at (actually a ton) until then.  Enjoy!

Here are a couple getting ready shots…Love the one Phil got of Stephen’s tie and boutonniere.

The beautiful couple

Amanda’s bridesmaids peeking through the door while Amanda & Stephen see each other for the first time.  As soon as they saw me with my camera catching them, they quickly ducked.

Another cute one of the bridesmaids.  Love the pencil skirts, pretty shirts & fabulous purple sashes that matched Amanda’s shoes.

We found this incredible antique piano in the upstairs of the church.  Love these images.

Pretty cake topper and the cool Hatch Show Prints they had made up especially for their guests to take home.

We can’t decide which ring picture we like best…let us know what you think.

Two of our favorites…some people just make it easy to take a great picture.

Amanda and Stephen, thanks again for letting us be apart of your wedding.  We enjoyed every minute of it and we hope you guys love your photos.

We went out last week and shot the Gillilands for some pretty fall portraits.  I’m so glad that we got to see the leaves change this year.  I feel like last year we completely skipped Fall.  Thanks to Michael, Beth & Haley (the best dog babysitter on the planet)…you guys were great!  Enjoy

Ok, so this blog post is about 5 days late, but we thought we’d share a photo of our attempt to get dressed up for Halloween. That’s Phil dressed up as a mummy and me trying to look tough like Sydney Bristow from Alias. If anyone ever needs professional mummy makeup, you can contact me. I am now an expert on applying latex & toilet paper.

The “I Voted” sticker.  We just went and got ours…did you???

We are so excited to finally be able to share Amanda’s Bridal Portraits.  Of course we had to keep these under-wraps until Amanda & Stephen were married this past Saturday (sneak peek coming soon!), but now here they are!  We had so much fun with Amanda…not only does she have the best style of anyone I have ever met, but she was able to spend as much time as we wanted shooting at Cheekwood.  We spent about three hours and were there until after dark.  As you can see, Phil and I couldn’t seem to narrow down our picks for the blog, so we decided to blog all of our favorites.  Enjoy!

Love, love, love Amanda’s flowers.  I’d usually insert a link to the wonderful florist who did them, but in this case it was Amanda herself.  Yep you read that right.  She did all the flowers for her wedding.  Incredible.

Stunning dress.  Love the silhouette.  Check out that reflection, I guess that’s why they call it the reflection pool.

Coolest veil I have ever seen.

Coolest bridal shoes I have ever seen.  (Are we seeing a pattern?)

Phil is so lucky he never needs a ladder.  I wish I had his height sometimes.  Me on the other hand, I have to defy my huge fear of heights to get my shots.

A huge thanks to Amanda, her sister, Diana, and sweet mom for coming out to help us.  Hope you guys love them

Our blog has been a little quiet lately and it will be for the next week or so.  However, we are not being lazy or have nothing going on.  Quite the opposite.  We have some HUGE plans for November’ish, so keep checking back for our big announcement.  We shot some beautiful bridal portraits of Amanda that we have been dying to blog and will be able to, finally, on the 25th…her wedding day :)  We’re also super excited to shoot Amanda & Stephen’s wedding next Saturday, so we’ll have those images soon as well.  Anyways, we are still here so keep checking in with us!  For now, since this blog was so boring, enjoy one of the greatest videos of all time:

Gotta love dancing puppets.

Tim & Jenn celebrated their 5 year wedding anniversary last Saturday.  We shot their family portraits last fall, so we were super excited when they called and wanted to have us shoot them again to get some new fun images for this milestone.  We had a blast shooting you guys and eating some Satco afterwards.  Congratulations on being married 5 years!!