I have been meaning to do this post for a long time, but just haven’t had the chance!! If you recall, I did a post about my new editing company, LAVALU, a while back! CLICK HERE to read the post! I know I’m a pretty passionate person, but my passion is real and not just to blow smoke…so when I say that I LOVE something, I MEAN IT! Well, it would be safe to say that HIRING LAVALU has CHANGED MY LIFE!!!! I genuinely mean that!! They have taken over the editing on ALL of my weddings!! I will do my blog selections and edit those, then send the wedding to Lavalu for editing! They do my rough editing (determining the keepers and deleters) and then my RAW processing. As I mentioned in the previous post, you give them your preferences on everything from preferred color temps to saturation levels, to cropping preferences and they edit for you, with those preferences applied! They also like to get feedback as you go along, so that after a few jobs, they really have your preferences and personal image style nailed down to the point that you don’t have to worry about a thing!! As much as I hate to admit it, I was roughly 6-8 weeks behind at any given point during the past few wedding seasons and that was just because I didn’t have enough hours in the day to keep up with the editing…and all the other stuff…album designs, album edits, accounting, emails, voicemails, meetings, portrait & commercial work, portrait & commercial session editing, etc, etc, etc…was all in line behind that editing!! It was the worst feeling that, although I worked 7 days a week, without a single day off, I was still soo behind that I couldn’t ever see the light at the end of the tunnel!! This wedding season is like a HUGE BREATH OF FRESH AIR and I feel like a NEW PERSON!!!! My life has changed because I now have LAVALU to help me!! The work is not TOTALLY gone, I still do a quick rough edit on the wedding, then do blog selections and then edit those, then when I get the wedding back from Lavalu, I pull it onto my computer, review it, make a final edit on any images that i felt needed a little adjusting, then DVD archive it and ftp it over and finally harddrive archive it at the end! It’s just that the DAUNTING part of the job is GONE and so the rest of it seems like a BREEZE now!!!! The BEST thing about LAVALU is the staff!! I work directly with Mike & Leon and they are genuinely the nicest, easy going guys EVER!!!! They always call if they are concerned or have questions, they keep in touch with me regarding status of the jobs, they welcome my calls and are always happy to help me! They are also constantly working to ensure my happiness, always working to perfect my images to “my look”…..offering input on helpful stuff like updates on Bridge or ACR! They even cross reference my blog to ensure that the images are looking like I will expect!! I CANNNNOT say enough good things about them!! They make me feel like I am their only customer, yet I know that countless other photographers use and love them…and who they are providing the same AWESOME service to! In fact, after doing my last post, I got THANK YOU emails from photogs who joined Lavalu per my advice and said it had CHANGED THEIR LIFE!!! NEEDLESS TO SAY, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LAVALU!!!!!! The service they provide, both technically and customer service wise is INVALUABLE to me!! I never knew how AMAZING outsourcing could be…but I do now and I’ll never go back!!! This wedding season, I have no more than about two weeks worth of work on my plate at any given moment and it’s all very managable (albums, portrait & engagement editing, accounting, emails & voicemails, etc)!!! I LOVE IT!! I feels GREAT!!! Pretty soon, I’m going to actually start taking DAYS OFF!!! Oh, I can’t wait!!!
CLICK HERE TO VIEW LAVALU’S WEBSITE, PRICING & CONTACT INFO!!! Be sure to tell Mike that JESS SENT YOU!!

(HERE is a sampling of a few recent images that lavalu processed for me!)