Hauser Photography Blog » Hauser

Andrew & Michelle — Portland, Oregon Wedding Photography

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 04:49:53 +0000

I took the day off work today to spend some time with the family and to get myself caught up processing wedding photos. These are from last weekend’s wedding in Parkdale, Or. Last fall, I was hopeful to have Mt. Hood in the background of Andrew and Michelle’s engagement photos, but it didn’t show. So, when it didn’t come out on their wedding day I was even more frustrated. I think I looked to the South every 10 minutes to see if it was out, but the clouds just seemed to keep drifting over the top all day long! With that being said, if Mt. Hood would have been visible it obviously would have been a clear day and one of the things that I really like about the shot in the wild flowers is the dark sky. Oh well, you can’t control mother nature (especially this year). After the wedding I took a shower and found a considerable amount of birdseed in the bathtub. I was standing over 10ft away from the bride and groom, so either someone has horrible aim or I was the target! Best wishes to Andrew and Michelle, and thanks for the fun day!

Selective Editing

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:49:20 +0000

I finally upgraded from the original Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to version 3.1, and I’m in love with the selective editing tool. Often times when shooting outdoors a correct exposure for some-one’s face will inevitably cause the sky to be overexposed and loose any of its true color. In the past I was limited to the degree of color correction I could use because it would turn other pieces of the image to a shade of blue as well. This might not sound too bad, but it’s unacceptable to turn a bride’s dress blue because I want a blue sky. Now with selective editing I can do just that and only make color correction to portions of my image. Here is an example of some editing with the software. I was able to bring out some highlights in the truck and barn with altering the exposure of the subjects. Cool stuff! I look forward to using it more.

Painting — Portland Children’s Photography

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:30:11 +0000

Do you remember Sam from one of my shoots last summer? Well, he’s a lot bigger now, and he’s got quite the artistic streak running through him. I love shooting with the paint set up for a couple of reasons. First, you are almost assured a ton of smiles. Secondly, it keeps your subject still long enough to capture some images. Studio shoots are notoriously hard to do with two year olds, because all they want to do run around. Really, the only way to combat this is to have a large studio and powerful strobes that allow for some wiggle room in terms of a lighting sweet spot. (Both of which I have neither of) When we first got the paint out Sam was a little hesitant to make a mess. I get why; it goes against everything he has been told for the last 12 months. But it really didn’t take much coaxing to get him to overlook the rules and go for it. In fact, he got a little too into it, and slung paint across the kitchen onto the blinds. It was washable paint, but I don’t know if it was coming out of the blinds any time soon. (My apologies to Mom and Dad) I guess I would classify this as Post Modern/Abstract Expressionism…. Oh who am I kidding, I got a D in Art History. What ever it is, nice work Sam!

Avery Brooke

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:41:57 +0000

Sorry for the break. This is the 7lb 14 oz reason I took a short hiatus. Her name is Avery Brooke Hauser and she is an angel. I have ALWAYS wanted the photo of a newborn on a stack of towels. I saw it done on another photographers website a few years back and I loved it. I’ve been patiently waiting for someone with a newborn to contact me for photos, but all my sessions to date have been for toddlers. Well, I don’t have to wait anymore!

Grandpa

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:01:39 +0000

I have been a bad blogger this month. This has been primarily due to two reasons. First, my computer room is freezing. The room is nice and cool in the summer, but in the winter the walls offer little help from the cold temperatures. I’m not joking. I just realized that I left an empty Coors can in here yesterday and the mountains are still “cold activated”. Second, I had a really busy October and November in the photography biz. It’s been nice to take a little break. Speaking of which, I was looking for something on television this afternoon and came across one of my favorite movies, “Memphis Belle”. It’s based on a true story of the first B-17 crew that finished their tour of duty in Europe during WWII. It made me think about this particular photograph of my grandfather. He passed away this summer and I was given some of his war keepsakes; including a photo album that he put together while in the service. This photo stood out to me. I love it because my Grandfather was very gentle by nature; he was clearly hamming it up and looking tough in this photo. Also, if you look at the bunk beds, they are clearly just regular beds with the top one turned upside down and strapped to the bottom. I hope those on the top bunk weren’t squirrely sleepers, because that’s a long fall!

Jason and Denise

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:10:07 +0000

Here are a few more from the wedding last weekend in Kansas City. The weather turned out to be quite nice, but it was not looking so good the day before the wedding. I barely got into Kansas City due to over a foot of snow being on the ground in Denver, where where I was scheduled to catch my connecting flight. It took us three attempts to land. I’m not a nervous flier by any means, but by the time we were on our third approach; I could have told you where every exit was and how many people I was going to need to climb over to reach it first… My connecting flight ended up getting canceled into Kansas City, as did the evening fight. As soon as I exited the plane I rushed to the gate for the earlier flight in hopes that it was delayed. Sure enough, it was still at the gate and they got me into Kansas City almost on time. My lighting stands didn’t make it, but they got delivered the next day. The weather in KC wasn’t much better, hard rain and wind. It continued to do this up until the night before Jason and Denise’s wedding day, and then Saturday turned out with no clouds and 60 degrees. They are a fun couple and it was nice to see some of my brother’s friends at the wedding. Jason and my brother roomed together at the University of Kansas. It was nice to see everyone back together.

Danced with the Devil by the pale moonlight

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:36:09 +0000

“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

HDR Photography

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:17:29 +0000

HDR stands for High Dramatic Range. Basically its the process of taking several photos of the same object at different exposures. You then combine, or layer all of the images into one photo. It can be done at several levels. I have seen some images that were made from 10-15 different exposures. At this point the images beginto look less like photos and more like paintings. I took these at my dad’s hanger on my recent trip back to Kansas to shoot a wedding (coming soon to the blog) All three of these were made from 5 different exposures. I then combined them in photomatix and tone mapped at different levels. If your a purest I guess this may be considered pushing the limits of true photography. I was just having a little fun.

Portraits

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:35:56 +0000

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!

Emalyn

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:59:35 +0000

Oh man I have been a bad blogger lately. October has, and will continue to be very busy. Ashley and I were in Bend last week to see our new niece, Emalyn. Such a cutie! She’s already proving to be just as photogenic as her older brother. I didn’t think he had a chance vs. the Costco hot dog, but he proved me wrong.