Paul Pichugin Photography & Design - Blog

Hey All,

Sorry for the long delay in posts.. I’ve been stupidly busy. The good news though, is that I’ve nearly finished editing up another two weddings.. they should be up on the website in the next week.

I’ve also been doing some more shooting at the Brisbane Jazz Club and a few other places. I’ll have some new landscape prints going up on my RedBubble account real soon too. In the meantime feel free to check out my landscape prints at redbubble: http://www.redbubble.com/people/paulmp/art

The new design for the website is coming along nicely.. should have it ready to be coded up fairly soon. I’ll be posting up some sneak previews here in the coming weeks.

Now for the offer.. If you book a wedding with me before the end of July (booking can be anytime I have available in the next 12 months), I will include a free 2 hour on location portrait shoot that can be redeemed anytime between now and the wedding. Even if you aren’t getting married, but know someone who is, suggest me as a photographer and I will give both you and the couple a free portrait shoot.

The portrait shoot will be digital only, so you will get a CD with the edited images on it free of charge. The images will be of good enough quality to print up to A4 size. You can also purchase them hard mounted, matted and / or framed.

I’m happy to travel anywhere for a wedding shoot, I’m looking to extend my photography to South East Asia (Thailand, Bali, Guam, Palau etc) and the Pacific Islands (Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga etc), so don’t hesitate to contact me regarding these places as well if you are having a destination wedding. I’ve already shot weddings in Perth, Sydney, Lismore and the Gold Coast.

Any questions or suggestions, feel free to get in contact with me or to leave a comment on my blog :)

Regards

Paul Pichugin
http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hey All,

Well on Saturday night Bec and I were invited out to the Brisbane Jazz club’s 36th Birthday, mostly to take photos, but also to enjoy the evening. We got there about 7pm and immediately met up with some lovely people, who were at the table behind us, turns out that they are all committee members of the Jazz Club and one of them is the current president of the club. We got talking and had a great night listening to the Royal Australian Artillery Band and vocalist Melissa Western.

Melissa has a great sound and worked well with the band, I’ve got to give credit to Mark Smith, the sound engineer, who did an awesome job of mixing such a large band in a relatively small venue. Great quality sound. There was some pretty smoth dancing going on the dance floor too, old school dancing, not the shaking fits they try to call dancing today.. lol

Just want to say thank you to Yvonne (president), David, Joan and Alan for making us feel welcome, it was lovely to meet you and we will be back many times for sure!

Anyone else reading this, if you like Jazz, you have to make it out one night to the Brisbane Jazz Club, probably be a great place for a wedding reception too, if you book far enough ahead.

I’ve included some shots of the evening

Regards

Paul Pichugin

http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hey All,

I shot an intimate wedding for some friends, Poe & Annette, today they had close friends and family for a small church ceremony and a casual reception after the photo shoot. It was a lovely ceremony held in the Marsden Potters House church with the photoshoot at a park near by.

Here are the photos in a slideshow:

Feel free to leave your comments on the photos and leave a message for Poe & Annette. To Poe & Annette - Thank you very much for having me at your wedding today, it was an honor to be there to capture it.

Regards

Paul Pichugin
http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hey All,

Well after the hustle and bustle of Claud & Larissa’s wedding Bec and I decided to join my parents in a quick trip to Adelaide to visit some family. We had an early flight on Tuesday morning with Qantas.. their service gets worse every time I fly with them.. we had really unfriendly and almost rude flight attendants, our food (which was “free”) was pretty awful and the inflight movie was pretty woeful..

I’ve got to say the more I fly with Qantas, the more of a fan of VirginBlue I become.. no I’m not sponsored by them (yet.. haha), but I have to say that I find their staff so much more friendly and helpful. I also actually prefer that Virigin have individual user-pays screens, I can turn if off if I don’t want to watch some garbage
and pick the movie I want to watch (so it’s my own fault if I don’t like it.. lol).. anyways, enough about that.

We arrived in Adelaide safely, picked up the hire car, a nice Mitsubishi 380 GT from budget, then headed on to find something decent to eat. After a quick look around Adelaide we decided to go to Vagabondo’s, a nice little cafe in North Adelaide.. we had some exceptional service and great food.. and they make a really good coffee, which was much needed after the early flight. We met the owners Melina and Sam, they both were really friendly and you could tell that they love their cafe and their patrons :-)

Moving on from the much needed breakfast and coffee we headed out to Hahndorf, a little german village in the Barossa Valley. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, admiring the architecture and the shops, buying a few things in the process (lucky we’re on a budget, or it would have been more than just a few..). I took a massive amount of photos while in the town, got some great shots through out the place, a couple will go up on RedBubble when I get back home. I’ve included a couple of shots below for you to have a look at. We pretty much spent all day in Hahndorf and then went and chilled out in the hotel.. a very comfortable place to stay: Hotel 208.

Next day was mainly spent visiting family, catching up and introducing them to my beautiful wife Rebecca :) Some of the family had been too ill or busy to make it to our wedding. It was a great day and we got some good photos on a quick trip out to Whispering Wall, a dam wall that has been built in a perfect curve, allowing some pretty weird accoustics to occur. If 2 people stand at either end of the wall, you can whisper to each other and hear it as if it’s right next to you.. even though you are over 140m apart.. apparently it wasn’t built like that on purpose either.. bizarre. I’ve got some photos of me at one end and my parents at other :) I’ll upload some of those shots in my next post :)

Anyways.. I should have some more photos up soon from my trip to Goolwa to visit family.

Regards

Paul Pichugin

http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hahndorf

Hahndorf

My favorite shot from Hanhdorf

A really friendly guy from Hahndorf, has lived there for 87 years

Hey All,

Sorry for the delay in getting the slideshow up, here it is:

The wedding was a great day, everything went off with out too much trouble.. we started the day at Larissa’s place, getting some photos of the girls getting ready with the makeup artist and hair dresser.. some great shots of the girls helping Larissa get into her wedding dress.

The fun really began when Elton from Impact Limos rocked up in the massive stretched Hummer.. seats 14 people in the back, lots of fun. Elton was really friendly and helpful, the limo was absolutely immaculate and really comfortable, the type of travel that I could really get used to. :-) The limo took us to the Beechboro Potters House ‘Church for the ceremony. After the ceremony we went to Whiteman Park for a location shoot, probably one of the more challenging shoots I’ve had to do, due to the lack of light, we got some great shots though.

After the photo shoot we moved on to Joondalup Country Club, a very nice location for a reception, we did some shooting around the foyer and on the stairs before moving on to the reception. I’ve got to say that the service at the reception was exceptional, all the staff were very friendly and helpful, alert to the needs of everyone there.

Feel free to leave your comments and messages for Claud and Larissa, as they will be checking out the photos here too. :)

Regards

Paul Pichugin
http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hey All,

Well Claud & Larissa’s wedding went very well, no glitches at all during the day, got some great photos. The ceremony went very well, we headed off to Whiteman Park after the cermony for a very quick shoot in the rapidly fading sunlight.. lots of fun trying to shoot in the semi-dark.

I’ve had a few issues with the slideshow that I usually do, I will definitely have it up with in the next 24 hours, so please check back.. or you can subscribe to my blog and you will get an email when it has been uploaded. Sorry about that.. you always have computer problems when you need it the least.. :-)

Regards

Paul Pichugin
http://www.paulpichugin.com

Hey All,

Well I’m heading off to Perth tonight, I get in just before midnight their time. I’ll be spending friday and saturday scouting out a place for the location shoot and then shooting the wedding Sunday afternoon.

I will put in some updates as I can, I should have the slideshow up and running sometime late sunday night or early monday morning though :)

regards

- paul

Hey All,

Bec and I decided to have a bit of a night out last night.. well actually I decided and planned it all as a bit of a surprise for Bec, she heads off to Western Australia today.. I don’t follow her over until Thursday night unfortunately.. some things I have to look after before I leave too. So we decided to have a night out before she left.. and a bit of a late birthday celebration for myself (it was on the 7th of May).

Anyway.. back to last night.. we headed out to a great little place called the Jazbar (http://www.jazbar.com.au) which is over at Milton, they have an awesome atmosphere on a Friday night, a little Jazz trio called Sass n’ Jazz, they had the Piano, Guitar and a Vocalist.. they played some great chillout jazz and a bit of old school jazz. The service was brilliant, we were seated within a minute of walking in, drinks came out super quick and the little things were looked after, with out feeling rushed by a waiter who is waiting by your table.

Both Bec and I decided to go with the Stonegrill mains, I had a steak and Bec had a seafood combination. The idea of the Stonegrill food is that you cook the food yourself at your own table.. it’s a great experience, one that I really like because I’m a bit of cook myself. Both of us had a great time cooking and trying each others food. The owner, Randy, came over to introduce himself and I watched him do a few meet and greets with other patrons during the night, making sure everything was up to his standards and that everyone was enjoying themselves and their food.

We had some great service from our waitress, Janis (or it could be Janice, but from her accent I would say it’s spelt the other way), who, we later found out, was on her first night of work there. We were also served by a waiter named Sean, who I would have to guess is Irish, just based on his accent, he did a great job, was friendly and quick with out hovering by our table.

I think the Jazbar would be an awesome place for a wedding reception, specially on a Saturday night, they have a 4 piece jazz band playing on the the balcony. There is probably enough room to seat about 150 in total and the service would be great.

After the Jazbar we headed on over to the Brisbane Jazz Club (http://www.brisbanejazzclub.com.au) for about an hour or so, we were probably the only people under 30 inside, there were a few younger people outside on the deck. Great atmosphere in the Jazz club, they had a 7 piece band playing called Jo’s Boys, I’m assuming that the piano player was “Jo” as the rest of them were all “boys”. They played with the comfort of people who have played together for a long time and new each other very well, some great music that night.

Anyways, I’ll have to wrap it up there. I got quite a few shots from both the Jazbar and Brisbane Jazz Club, so they will be put up after this post.

Regards

Paul Pichugin
http://www.paulpichugin.com

The Jazbar:

Brisbane Jazz Club:

Hey All,

Sorry for the delay in the post.. it’s been pretty busy lately and unfortunately I’ve been sick to top it all off. Anyway.. I’ve got some new photos to put up in the next couple of days, I’ve got one I’m putting up today.. it’s a portrait of Esther :)

She has got the bluest (is that a word??) eyes ever!

I’m still working on a new design for the whole website, I’m putting a fair bit of research and development into it this time.. because I have some time.. also because I’m currently ranked pretty highly in google, so I don’t want to do anything to ruin that. I’ve got a rough design down on paper.. working on getting it into the computer and then on to the internet!

I’ve recently sent off the wedding album to Leigh & Jan from New Zealand, looking forward to getting their remarks and comments. Here’s an electronic preview: http://paulpichugin.com/albums/leighjan.htm

Also I have had the best comment ever left by Duncan & Lisa, I shot their wedding on March 29th, their comments and slideshow are here Can’t really ask for a better testimonial than that!

As always, feel free to leave your comments or subscribe to this blog!

Regards

Paul Pichugn

http://www.paulpichugin.com