Professional Services in Woodcrest

A photograph is the most economic way for a face to say roughly 800 to 1,000 words in seconds flat. Today's Groupon brings efficient communication through an hour-long on-location photo shoot and two 8x10 photos of your modeling with Illuminated Photography for $45 (a $169 value). Plus, today's deal also gets you 20% off anything you order post-shoot except canvas prints (must place order within two weeks of shoot). Choose the Laguna or North Orange County scenic location of your backdrop dreams (anything outside of that is $1 per mile) and put your recent mirror mugging to the picturesque test.

Julie Diebolt Price, president of JDP Photography, puts friendly faces on websites and brochures by crafting portraits for corporations, entrepreneurs, and organizations. In addition to helping clients such as Standard Pacific Homes, Women Helping Women, and Orange County Rescue Mission, Julie chronicles programs and events for the National Association of Women Business Owners, and she rubs elbows with august institutions such as the Professional Photographers of California and the Professional Photographers of America. Despite a successful professional career—her portfolio is filled with group portraits, product images for advertisements, and stock photos—she has not neglected her artistic side: a piece she dubbed “Tableau at Badling” landed a spot in the PPA’s 2010 International Photographic Competition general collection. When she isn't snapping photos, she teaches others how to use cameras such as DSLR, point-and-shoot, and camerae obscurae.

Providing full-service dry cleaning to the Orange County area since 1950, Kona Cleaners has tidied more than a semi-century worth of suits, space suits, jeans, space jeans, pope robes, dresses, and sticky gorilla costumes. Prices vary by location; pants, on average, cost $5.35, a dress is $9.96, and shirts run around $2.65. Specializing in cleaning unusual materials such as caviar sequins and bread-bowl hats, Kona also expertly performs alterations ($10 average for a pant hem) and employs environmentally conscious cleaning methods. Their use of wet cleaning when possible and high-tech cleaning equipment is buttressed by a sophisticated sorting system and a well-trained staff that ensures each garment is restored to its fresh-off-the-particle-assembler condition.

Green Acres Nursery maintains more than 600 varieties of plants and trees on more than 15 acres, most of which are tailored to southwestern landscapes. White, ornamental star jasmine bushes ($9.78 for 5 gal.) will withstand drought while inviting visiting noses to whiff their ambrosial scents, while vibrant, purple bougainvillea ($4.20 for 1 gal.) will florally fill gaps in any fence to keep opossums from trespassing. Since the ordinary backyard aquascape has deflated Mylar balloons for lily pads and aged pitas for skipping stones, make your pond superb by adding naturally luscious philodendrons ($49.40 for 15 gal.). Green Acres Nursery cultivates each greenling on-site in its nursery, caring for them from the time they're a tiny bud to their first day of kindergarten. Click here to see what plants are currently available.

By combining traditional snapshooting methods with digital image enhancement, Elizabeth Toller Productions captures engaging subjects in a laid-back, professional studio. Up to six subjects first meet the photographer to discuss session themes and clothing styles, ensuring apparel coordinates with both the background and any ghosts who may show up on film. A 30-minute in-studio shoot follows (a $150 value), during which the skilled shutterbug puts clients at ease to frame natural images free from tightly clenched bunny ears. After shutter-clicks have sounded their last, photographer and photographee together preview the proofs on a big screen to select the winning print. The 8"x10" photograph (a $75 value) is then printed onto thick linen paper before being mounted and wrapped, ready to grace mantels or car dashboards.

After a fruitful modeling career, Lori Brystan moved to the other side of the camera lens, where she began to capture artful portraits of families, kids, and women that would look at home in the pages of a fashion magazine. In 1989, she opened Brystan Studios, which eventually expanded to include a team of professional makeup artists, hairstylists, set designers, and photographers. Inside the professional studio, a large dressing room brims with props, fan mail, and glamorous costumes. Using in-studio sets, Lori captures images ranging from burlesque-themed boudoir shoots to pared-down images, such as women posing in front of a white sheet or siblings lying in a hammock. The studio also specializes in love-note videos, professionally produced short films that capture the subject's inner starlet without the use of a net. The busy shutterbug also works as beauty editor for the lifestyle pub Greer's OC and penned High Impact Portrait Photography, a book on framing eye-catching portraits.