Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Our September Baby of the Month!




This month we feature a newborn that just did not want to stay awake, and who can blame a newborn for sleeping? We photographed this precious newborn at Clovis Community Medical Center. We love the fact that you can see the newborn's face, as well as the relative size of the hand to adult finger. Parents love when we can incorporate features of the newborn, and not just the same boring old pose.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

New services at your home!

Next month we will look to expand our services to include at home photography. Photo Nursery will be able to visit homes and capture those important milestone photographs. Anyone can go to a studio and have photographs taken with studio lights, but we will be able to capture your newborn and family members with natural lighting in the comfort of your home.

We will also include family members into the portrait session so that we can document this important time in every family members life. We will offer the ability to proof orders via the internet, as well as the ability to buy a photo CD with the rights to print more photographs later, as well as use the CD as an insurance policy if anything happen to the photographs.

Our August Baby of the Month


This month we feature little Addison who we were able to photograph at Clovis Community Medical Center. As you can see we were able to capture some very precious first moments and we were honored to do so. Thanks again mom and dad for allowing us to showcase your newest family member!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

What is new?

Well we are currently ramping up to take care of existing and new mothers in Fresno and Clovis. We are excited as we have added new photographers today, and we will continue to train them through this weekend.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Welcome Tiffany!

After interviewing many candidates for our District Manager position in Fresno, CA, we were delighted to add Tiffany Bremer as the newest family member to Photo Nursery. Tiffany comes to us with a solid academic background, as well as a positive can do attitude who will quickly earn the respect and admiration of her staff. We will definitely feel the immediate positive effects of adding her to our team.

In the meantime we continue to interview for our photographer positions for Clovis, CA and Fresno, CA as we will start operations on July 31st.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Making the move.....


Making the move to California to start operations for Community Regional Medical Centers was a fun journey. I decided to drive and enjoy the scenery rather that take a boring flight. After all, I have taken hundreds of flights through the previous years, and it was most cost effective than flying.

I did stop and take photos a couple of times on the way to Fresno. On the way back I will take many more, so I will keep everyone up to date.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

May's Featured Newborn


We were invited to photograph a precious newborn today at Winnie Palmer Hospital, one of the largest birthing centers in the United States. Melani comes to us at just over a healthy 7lbs and is full of love. Welcome to the growing Photo Nursery VIP list!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

April's Featured Newborn


This month we look at Becky who was recently born at Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Fl. We were again contacted by a family who wanted something more than just a snapshot of their newborn. We were happy to help out and captured some great photographs.
Thanks again and congratulation to Becky and the entire family!

Monday, March 31, 2008

Photo Nursery's newest addition

Today we are pleased to welcome Katherine Stodtko to the Photo Nursery family. Katherine brings a wide range of retail and hospitality experience. She has worked with Kodak, Margaritaville, DKNY and Kid City USA.

Katherine's skills will be used to assist in the opening of new facilities, as well as the training of new staff members. She will also assist Jeff Secrease in the daily operations out of Orlando, Florida.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Success!!!




Thanks to the help of many talented individuals we are off and running. Today we received word that we have been awarded the contact for two hospitals run by Community Medical Centers in Fresno, CA. These facilities have very common goals to our own, and we will bring the hospitality and constancy that their current provider has lacked. Community Regional Medical Center and Clovis Community Medical Center will deliver over 10,000 newborns a year.

We will do this with our very well trained staff, and even some help from our friends at FIRST Day Photo! Again thanks to all those who have helped start Photo Nursery and get us moving in the right direction.

Thanks to Lorena Secrease, Brad Person, Jessica Person, Ryan Giron, and Christina Harrison.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Friends in the media.




Today we highlight Jessica Person who is with FIRST Day Photo! I met her and her husband Brad about 18 months ago and they are fantastic people, and here you can see just how kind they truly are. During a training I was doing while working for Kodak, I met Brad and he told me all about their company. Brad was the first person to speak with me about what their company provides. Our services and philosophies are very similar and he Today Show on NBC did a spot on NILMDTS and Jessica was a huge part of this. Please check out the link to watch her on this national spot!


Thursday, March 20, 2008

Find out about our services!


We are please to announce our latest Information Packet designed to give a basic overview of our operations and philosophy. We are committed to providing talented staff with a desire to exceed the expectations of the families we serve.

We would like to thank Visual Prospect with their diligence and design in this project. They have been a pleasure working with and we will continue to patronize them in the future.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The right cameras


At Photo Nursery we understand the importance of having up to date cameras to ensure optimal results. After all most parents are going to photograph their newborns anyway, so we must provide better quality than what the average person is going to capture. We offer a true service, not just snap shots of babies.

We currently use Nikon Professional D200's, D300's, and D80's to ensure a high resolution image, as well as a consistent platform in which to provide outstanding images for all our parents.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Professional Lens

We pride ourselves on not laying a newborn in some silly contraption with a camera attached to a pole to take a photo. We only use Nikon Professional lens to help ensure we capture high quality images of all out newborns. We use the ultra high-end Nikkor 24-70 2.8 lens as our choice in newborn photography. It allows us the ability to capture images with great contrast, and unprecedented sharpness in the hospital baby photo industry.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Our look....


As previously posted, at Photo Nursery we decided to go with an "apple green" polo for our standard appearance, with the help of Queensboro. We feel this will allow us to convey a consistent look while operating in hospitals.
In facilities that feel this look may not be proper, we are also to create a more professional appearance in a business casual look as well. You can also view the updated images at Photo Nursery.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Consistency


We currently are in talks with many great hospitals such as Community Medical Centers and Texas Health Resources to provider our services in the near future as contracts expire with their current providers. One unbelievable fact is that the photographers showing up in most these facilities do not wear appropriate attire. We are told photographers show up wearing jeans, t-shirts, and even scrubs! Coming from a professional theme atmosphere this is completely ludicrous in our eyes.

So in an effort to show how consistent and professional our staff will be, we have designed custom attire that all staff must wear. Currently this attire consists of our "apple" green polo along with khaki pants.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Our motivation...


During a conversation with my sister in-law, she explained something I found very interesting. She had already had her daughter Jasila at Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando, Fl, and the hospital photographs of course left something to be desired. She said that she would have given anything to have photos taken at the time that related to size of her daughter at birth. She told me "It will be hard to show Jasila in the future just how tiny she was. I remember I used to put her tiny hand in my palm and kiss it over and over".

I then knew it would be a great service to parents if we can achieve this for them during their hospital photography experience. This is just another reason why we started Photo Nursery, to help parents and families remember their newborns they way they were.

Friday, February 29, 2008

The memories...


We have photographed many newborns to create samples of our work over the past few months. Today we will showcase Mia, she is a beautiful girl that was born in mid November 2007. We were invited into the Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Fl by the mother, as she already knew the normal poor quality of photographs. Mia was her second child and even though she had a small little fit that day, we created some fantastic memories for the family.

Introduction




Welcome to the Photo Nursery blog! Here we will blog about our experience creating a new alterative to the newborn hospital photography industry. Photo Nursery Inc. was founded in 2007 with the idea of changing how parents remember their most prized moments in life.

My name is Jeff Secrease, and my wife Lorena and I started this venture with a good deal of experience in the digital imaging industry. We both met while working for Kodak in Orlando, Florida in June 2002. Combined we both have over 10 years or experience from various facets of the industry.

I was a manager for Kodak when I started in 2002, with over 50 photographers that I was responsible for daily. Lorena had actually worked as a manager as well for a year prior to my arrival. We were tasked with creating a positive experience in a theme park setting, where photographers would interact with guest from all over the world, and capture these images digital so that they can be printed for guest to purchase.

Lorena at the same time was a full time student at the University of Central Florida earning her degree in Aerospace Engineering. By far a difficult task for any person to do, but she also was able to accomplish this while working full time. In 2003 she transferred to technical support, where she was a valuable member of the support crew for over 200 locations in the United States. She would help trouble shoot Kodak software, printers, and other equipment to keep locations operating efficiently as possible. Lorena finished her degree in late 2005, and has since worked on the Space Shuttle program. She has helped repair and maintain Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour during her tenure at Kennedy Space Center. She currently is helping to design components for the program to replace the Shuttle program, and is also helping to develop Photo Nursery Inc.

In 2004 I took a new position as Training Specialist for Kodak. I was the only trainer in the company for 24 of my 30 months in this position, and in this position I was awarded the “Internal Partner of the Year Award” in 2005. I instructed photographers and managers on all areas of the business such as photography, software, printers, guest service, technical support, operations, and management. This was a great position and I had fantastic opportunities. I was able to teach in over 8 countries including China, Singapore,the United Arab Emirates, and through out the Caribbean. I helped to successfully launched over 50 new locations and establish two important hubs in the Middle East as well as Asia. I worked on such prestigious properties such as Disney, Universal, NBC, Jumeirah Properties, and Sandals Resorts just to name a few. It was after my 4th trip to Dubai that I decided I would finally go into business myself; after all I was opening new businesses worldwide and making millions for other companies.

Today Lorena and I are pursing the industry with our hearts and passion; we truly care about our guest and want them to be able to remember their newborns in a more unique creative view than the standard hospital photograph. We also want to bring hospitality to the industry, working in hospitality over 10 years has given us a great foundation and background. We look forward to redefining the hospital newborn photography industry.