I predict that you will be seeing these two on the blog again in a short 10 months from now. I’m sure due to wedding checklists and planning that statement probably freaked Lindsay out a bit (maybe Ben too )  It’s tough to shoot outdoors during the Fall and Winter in Oregon. I found myself on weather websites trying to determine when a break in the rain will occur. I must hand it to them though, you really can’t tell how cold it was in these photos. I had my jacket and stocking hat on and still felt the chill! These were all taken in a little park in the Pearl District. It’s kind of fun to shoot there. With the condo market in the toilet there are tons of empty condo buildings and you have the area to yourself on the east side of the neighborhood.  They’re a fun couple and I look forward to shooting the wedding next Summer. Should be a blast!

“Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight? I always ask that of all my prey. I just like the sound of it”

Batman, 1989, The Joker – Played by Jack Nicholson

I’m still processing photos from the wedding I shot in Kansas City last weekend.  I wanted to post this particular shot first though. It was taken of the bride and groom dancing during the reception. Since the wedding was on the 31st of October they turned the reception into a costume party. You really couldn’t of asked for a better setting. It was located at the Bingham-Waggoner estate in Independance, MO. The house was built in the mid 1800’s and really looked like it had a few unexplained stories behind its doors. The area where the reception/dance was held was VERY dark. Its tough to shoot in this type of setting because  your constantly trying to find an appropriate balance of off camera flash and available light. To make things more difficult, you have to maintain a decent shutter speed if you want any chance of your flash being able to freeze the action on the dance floor. Not to mention the camera’s auto focus is pretty much useless because its so dark, so the only option is to manually focus.  I think the lighting balance in this shot turned out perfect and I squeaked by with a just enough shutter speed to freeze the action with a few light trails in the background. I guess it just goes to show how much goes into a shot like this to get it to turn out the way you want.

Technical details.

24mm @ f3.2 1/4 sec shutter ISO 1000

I had the joy of  being able to photograph this little cutie this weekend. Her name is Lauren, and she will be turning one year old this week. Her mother and I got onto the discussion of kids photography a couple of weeks ago while I was visiting her office for a work function. Anyway, this naturally allowed me to shamelessly plug my website.  The weather cooperated on Saturday and allowed us to go outside for a few shots too. I must say, one of the things I love the most about children photography is capturing moments of kids being kids. Clearly it wast too tough with Lauren!

Well this is a first, back-to-back niece photos on the blog. I just got back from a weekend trip to Colorado. This first one was taken at the KU vs CU football game. I wish we would have ended up winning; never-the-less it was a GREAT game to watch. Our defense gave up some yards in the first half, but shut down the Buffaloes in the second half. We allowed nearly 200 less yards as compared to last week against Iowa St. Not bad considering this was done with several first time starters. We have the Sooners coming into town this weekend, so I hopefully the bugs will get worked out. All of the other shots are from our Sunday trip to Estes Park, Co. I’ll post a few more later. Too tired right now from the early flight!

Ash and I went to Salem this weekend to take family photos for her long-time  friend Kim. Ash and Kim have known each other since 4th grade when they were neighbors in Forest Grove. I have gotten to know Kim and her husband Doug over the last few years.  Funny story; the photo of the adorable little girl (looking out the glass window) on my website is actually from Doug and Kim’s wedding in Bend a couple of years ago. I wasn’t completely certain who she was, but after speaking with Doug, apparently it is his niece. Thankfully her mom (Doug’s sister) is cool with me using the photo. I’ll make sure I get her a copy, although I’m sure she’s grown up a little by now! By the way, if its not on my home screen anymore you can find it in the “wedding” gallery. I’m thinking I may use one of the shots from this weekend as my home screen; at least I’m keeping it in the Jadin family! Their 3 month old, Kaylee, is adorable. She endured a two hour photo shoot with outfit changes and really didn’t put up a fuss. We shot all of the photos around Bush Park. It was bright out with the afternoon sun, but Bush Park offers so many large trees it didn’t prove too be much of a problem. Oregon is great for outdoor photography because it has an abundance of natural light diffusers; lots of clouds and trees! I really like the results I got from my new Sigma 70-200 2.8 lens. Of course, it helps when you have a cutie like this on the other side of the lens. Fun weekend, I wish we could hang out with Doug and Kim more; they’re a fun couple. Check out the website to see the new home screen photo. www.hauserphotography.com

Here are a few images from a recent photo shoot with my nephew. Technically these were for his 2nd birthday, but we were around 6 months late taking them. I bought a painters backdrop and washable finger paints for him to play with. My hope was that he would go wild; which would make for some really great shots of a kid being a kid. At first he was a little nervous about getting paint on himself right in front of his mother, but once she started to smear it on him he cut loose. I have one more posted in the “faces” portion of my website. www.hauserphotography.com.

I’m trying to get back into the blog, so here is a photo from this past weekend. Ash is helping me shoot a wedding in Connecticut next weekend, so we went out in the park to practice a little on Sunday. This naturally turned into a “play” session for me with the intermediate sun breaks and the big puffy clouds. I’m certain she will someday be in a business journal due to her success in some off-the-wall business that she started. Here is the photo that can accompany the article. I call it her “Business Journal Photo”!  I’m glad she’s helping me out with the wedding; with a minor in Art History she really has an eye for the creative shots.

It’s been a fairly lackluster month here on the old blog. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten about it. I’ve been busy building my website! As of last night hauserphotography.com has a nice little piece of real-estate on the World Wide Web. Feel free to go check it out and let me know what you think.

www.hauserphotography.com

Another supprise from my birthday last week were that my parents drove in from Kansas so we could all be together. It’s always fun to hang out with family. I wish I could do it more, but I also love how special it is when we get together since it doesn’t happen too often with me and my wife living in the Pacific Northwest. I made my brother, wife and niece take photos on Saturday evening.  I should clarify. I made my niece take photos, I made my brother and wife hold flashes. This is one of the shots. I was having trouble getting my flash system to work right. I have two speedlites with Elinchrom Skyport Radio Slaves to fire them. I was shooting on a low apreture with fast shutter and then remembered that the flashes will only sync up to 1/200th of a second with the Elinchrom system.  Easy fix, but if anyone out there is thinking about getting these radio slaves, just know that you will lose your high speed sync capabilities. She’s a cutie, I wish I could take more photos of her.

I just got back from my surprise 30th birthday trip . My wonderful wife set the whole weekend up for me. I woke up Thursday and the only thing I knew was that we were going somewhere. That somewhere turned out to be Colorado. We missed our original flight that morning, but luckily Alaska Air got us both on a direct flight to Denver. My brother picked me up  at the airport while my wife drove to Ft. Collins. He had sweet tickets for both of us at the Rockies game that afternoon. I would love to do more sports photography, but i don’t have credentials or a 500mm lens.  However, I didn’t need either of them with the seats we had! We were just off of home plate and only two rows back. I took this in the bottom of the 7th as Right Fielder Brad Hawpe waited on deck. I love this photo; probably some of my best post processing work yet.  A big thanks goes out to my brother for making it possible. I’ll post more photos from the weekend later as this game was only the first of many birthday surprises in store for me over the weekend.