A few weeks ago, Rachel wanted to know if the Red Bats could take some holiday photos of her daughter, Sadie. (We photographed Rachel’s family a few months ago and posted about it here.) The theme for the holiday portrait session: Christmas at the beach, overwhelming-cuteness-style.

Rachel prepared thoroughly for this shoot. She bought the right outfit, she checked with her photographers to make sure the quick turnaround time was possible, she even planned around Sadie’s naptime to ensure the best possible mood. However, all the planning in the world can’t guarantee a smile from a baby at the right time. We got a few grins out of Sadie, but it was hard work. She was simply too mesmerized by the cameras to show us her biggest, goofiest smile. Fortunately, she smiled just enough to yield at least thirty adorable smiling shots, which was more than enough for Rachel’s top-secret purposes.

Here’s a little movie that tells the story of that shoot (click the photo to play it). As you’ll see, Sadie is ridiculously cute no matter what expression she has on her face.

UPDATE: There’s a new Sadie movie, for December 2009! Click here to see the post.

Throughout the ages, wedding photographers have offered to their clients, as a final product, nicely-bound albums of the clients’ favorite photos. Most photographers still do this (including the Red Bats). In order to share their wedding photos with friends and family, the couple must then bring the wedding album to their friends, or bring their friends to the wedding album.

This method of sharing one’s wedding photos has its limits. For one thing, there’s no soundtrack to make the experience seamless. Also, you have to turn the pages yourself, and that can be exhausting.

Modern times have brought the invention of the online gallery, which Red Bat Photography includes with every wedding package we offer, and this is a great way to share your photos with everyone without having to bring your album to their house. But there’s a drawback to this method too: it doesn’t quite convey the feeling of the wedding, of the day itself and what it was like to be there.

That’s why Red Bat Photography offers a wedding package that includes a multimedia photo presentation dvd (also known as a slideshow dvd). Visit this page to see our wedding packages (opens in a new window). About a month after your wedding, we give you a dvd with slideshows of your wedding photos, all set to music (and yes, we love it when you tell us what music you like so we can include it in the presentation). You can play the dvd on a regular dvd player, which means you can have your loved ones over for wine and cheese, or beer and hoagies, or RC Cola and popcorn, and everybody can watch the show and see how great you looked on your wedding day.

Later, when you’re feeling especially thrilled to be linked for life with your spouse, you can break out the champagne and pop in the dvd again, and celebrate your great luck in having found each other. We also give you two extra copies of the dvd for your parents (or whoever is going to want them the most).

Of course, every wedding package we offer includes full-resolution digital files of all your photos so you can keep making prints for yourself in any way you choose; we do offer printing services, but we don’t force you to get your prints through us (though we must say, our prints are going to be the best you can get.) Your photos are all yours to plaster all over the web, email to everyone in your address book, even submit to popular magazines for publication.

In other words, we want you to get the most out of your wedding photos. We want you to look at them over and over again, to laugh and cry over them, to share them with as many people as possible. You went through all the trouble to find that special person and make a lifetime commitment to them. We will put all our camera and production skills into helping you celebrate that achievement.

To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, here’s the final slideshow from the dvd we gave to Sara and Matt after their wedding. That dvd contained four shows: the first had photos from their ceremony at the beach; the second showed the reception at a nearby farm; the third showed Sara and Matt trying to catch a chicken (!) in their wedding clothes and wellington boots; and the final one had photos of Sara and Matt at sunset, just before they drove off to begin married life.

Sara and Matt, thanks again for letting us share this with everyone.