Portland PRSA Draws Crowd for Spotlight Awards

Portland Oregon's chapter of the Public Relations Society of America drew a nice crowd for its annaul Spotlight Awards last night.  I was on hand as a volunteer still photographer, and my brother, David Bitton, volunteered to shoot video.  Here's the blrub from the PRSA website about the event:

PRSA-PDX's most festive and spirited gathering of the year to honor outstanding work in public relations, to recognize individuals who advance the profession and to have a great time. This annual awards program is an event not to be missed.

David and I had a great time getting to know the PR pros in attendance, especially the team from Portland General Electric, which let us sit at their table.  That's them in the photo above. Hi girls!  A complete gallery of images from the evening can be seen here.  Want to know who won and for what?  Check the results on the Portland PRSA website, www.prsa-portland.org.

SCORE! Free Advice from Pros Who've Been There

Bill Rooney worked for decades in the marketing department of forest products giant Georgia-Pacific.  Today, as a volunteer for SCORE, "Counselors to America's Small Business," he listened to my plans for Bitton Communications.  He said I've got a great start, and suggested some next steps:

1) Develop an "elevator pitch," a concise story to tell people what your company does.

2) Put a short version of that pitch on the back of your business card.

3) Read a book by marketing guru Bob Bly.

I've got the elevator pitch ready.  My business cards will soon be redesigned.  And Bob Bly? Haven't gotten to that yet.  It's on my list!

Thanks for your guidance, Bill!  I'll be in touch with more questions!

So What? He's Still a Rockstar!

This is Ryland, and he may not be a real rockstar yet, but he's gonna be. This is a shot from our recent photo session.

Ryland not only plays guitar with great precision, he sings with surprising control for a high school senior. To top it all off, he even writes his own songs. Music and lyrics both.

An Unconventional Family Portrait

Families are chaotic. Those prim and proper family portraits, where each member of the group is perfect, are few and far between, and there's a reason why.  That's not who they are.  That's not who any of us are.

The Brown Family of Vancouver, Wash., is about to send its second son on a two-year mission to Arizona. They asked me to capture some wall-worthy images of the gang, since they won't be together again for a long time.

As with any shoot, issues come up. The light changes. Somebody can't stop giggling. Everyone gets to a point where they're ready for the shoot to be over. This family was committed to making great pictures, and we worked until we had them.

That's our approach at Bitton Communications. Whether our job is to capture family history, as it was here, or to tell client stories in the most efficient and effective ways, we don't stop until we get it right.  

Somebody's Grandma is Gonna be Real Happy

What grandmother wouldn't burst with pride at the site of this photo of her grandson?  Visuals are a big part of what we do at Bitton Communications, and we just wrapped this shoot of the Fuger Family of Vancouver, Wash.

While this shot is destined for walls and mantles in the extended Fuger Family, our other visuals, which include still photos like this one, as well as videos, help tell the stories of our awesome clients.  Client imagry finds its way to their marketing materials, things like websites, brochures and blogs.

If you're old enough to remember the 1980s, you may recall a rebel tennis player named Andre Agassi.  Canon USA paid Agassi to endorse its Rebel camera, which carried the tag line "Image is Everything." As a marketing company, we couldn't agree more!

'Widget' From Yahoo!'s MyBlogLog Shows you Who's Dropping by

In developing the Boy Meets Dog blog about my Autistic nephew, I've been looking for ways to track not just traffic to the page, but who is visiting the page.  It's actually pretty easy to do if a visitor has an account with the Yahoo! service called My Blog Log.

Uncle Mike Launches Dog Blog

I do a lot of blogging for the Checkpoint Zero Adventure Racing website, and its owner, Paul "Yak" Angell, tells me I've taken to blogging like a duck to water. Practice is always a good thing, so I've pitched in to create and maintain a blog for my nephew, Garrett, a 6-year-old Autistic boy. The blog, titled Boy Meets Dog, will focus on the family's efforts to pair Garrett with a service dog trained to care for Autistic children. Follow the link and tell me what you think!

Welcome to Boy Meets Dog