Here are a few images from the engagement session I shot this weekend. Shyla found my website with a search on Google for “engagement photography”. It’s very exciting that I’m starting to get business through organic web searches like Google. I’m sure my website was on page 60 of the results, but that’s still a WIN in my book! I have always wanted to shoot on this dock near OMSI. It offers a great backdrop of the city along with the Hawthorn Bridge. I have a wedding I am shooting in September that is very close to this location. I may try to get the bride and groom here for a sunset shot in the same spot. The road with the leaves was in the Lloyd district by the State Buildings. I can’t tell you what type of tree produces these pink leaves, but they look great blanketing the road. Shyla and Jason were great to work with; they were up for just about anything, floating docks, puddles and dodging street traffic to name just a few. Best wishes to them. Oh, and let me know if you need anyone to shoot the wedding in Maui, I know a great photographer  

Sunsets are hit and miss this time of the year in Oregon. If you want to practice with lighting during one. you really cant hesitate or it will be cloudy before you know it. I packed up my gear and sweet talked my wife into being my test subject the other day. This is with a two strobe set up. One strobe is set up to the left of my camera at about 6ft high and the other is set up behind her, and to the left, at around 8ft height. If I didn’t have a second strobe I could have slowed down my shutter to around 1/50th of a sec and used the setting sun  “hair light”. However,  in this case I used  a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second @f4 to darken the background and leave the blue haze of the sunset. The trick is keeping your flashes set on low or they will easily blow out your subject at this low of an aperture. At least she has some new Facebook photos now!

Here are a few images from the wedding last weekend in Phoenix. It was nice to get out of the rain and soak up a few rays. I am really happy with the images. I am starting to learn that every wedding presents a challenge in terms of lighting. This one was no different. As the sun began to set the lighting was changing very rapidly. My white balance was all over the place at times, and what was was a proper exposure at one time, wouldn’t be in 5 minutes! Ryan & Erin were great to work with. We were running a little behind schedule following the ceremony but they made time to take one last shot out in font of the country club with the sun setting. Its on my websites home screen right now. The shot of them dancing was interesting. I set one of my flashes on slave and controlled it with the other that was on my camera. I thought it would look cool to get a shot of them back lit during the first dance.  The tricky part is that to do this I have to stay in one place to have the other flash directly opposite of me. I took several shots and never got the “look” that I wanted. Just as their dance was ending I took one last shot and got the image below. My flash was sitting on the table behind them; it really makes them pop out of the background! I love it when an idea works!

Oh man it’s been a while since the last blog entry. Between vacations, moves and pure laziness, the blog hasn’t seen much love lately.  It’s been so long I even forgot my password to write an entry! I have a good backlog of things to write about, so I guess I will start with the oldest. This is my co-workers daughter, Riley. The last time we attempted photos of her it didn’t go well. She was a little tired and wasn’t in the mood for my camera poking around. This time she was in a fairly good mood, but has since gone mobile. When she wasn’t moving out of the range of my strobes, she was sitting with her back to the camera. This was one of the few shots I got with the help of her mother grabbing her dress to slow her down a bit. When I first took the shot I thought it would be a “throw-a-way” but I started to like it more because it really does a good job at telling a story about a time in life. She doesn’t want to stay still, so why should we have a photo of her trying to do so!

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!

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!

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.

“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 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.

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!