chase + tara: engaged!
A couple weeks ago, I had the extreme pleasure of getting together with two very cool young people getting ready to tie the knot next month! I have known Chase’s family since about the time we moved here over 2 years ago, and on that Saturday, I was also lucky enough to meet the lovely lady that captured Chase’s heart, Tara.
We met on the Kansas State campus and hit a spot I’ve shot at a couple of times and then set off to find some new and very cool spots. And boy, did we ever find some!
I have the feeling this could be a bit longer than what I normally post…I’m just too excited about these. =]
Chase
and Tara
Just can’t get enough of these stairs…or that sunlight!
I wish I could take credit for this next moment, but it was all them. Every tenderness you see is all theirs. I stepped away to change a lens, told them to just hang out for a moment, and this was what I got: a perfect moment.
From here, we ventured off onto the campus more. We hit up one spot that I just love. Every time I saw it, I would think to myself how I would love to shoot someone there, and Chase and Tara worked it for me!
My absolute favoritest ones of the day:
Chase and Tara, I wish you every happiness in the world for your nuptials next month. Thanks for an incredible time!
pleasing the natives
We recently were given a portable dishwasher as a baby shower present for my wife (thanks, Leon!). Dishwashers, because of their size, come in rather large boxes. If you’ve ever been a kid, you will probably remember the joy that comes from having a rather large box at your disposal.
Keeping that joy in mind, just think how you would feel if your mom then broke out all her paints and helped you cut it up and paint it like a house.
And, as if that couldn’t get any better, imagine how you would then feel when the box ripped open at one end so you could lay it down and pretend it was a space shuttle with a perfectly placed front window.
Yeah…that’s how my kids have been feeling for the last couple of days.
This last one I spent a bit of time on in Photoshop. If you click it, you can see it a bit bigger on my photoblog.
Here’s the Space Commander, at the helm:
The top image was shot with a new umbrella I just bought: shoot-through 45″ white satin. I’ve been having lots of fun with that. The last two were shot with the same flash as the top (Vivitar 285HV), except that I shot it through my reflector frame, which has a translucent white material through the middle.
christmas portraits
My family are not usually the greatest models. My kids love to make silly faces or run away whenever they see the camera come out. They have very little patience for any direction, and lose interest in about 3.7 seconds. My wife usually flashes me a smile that lovingly indicates that she will tolerate my antics for just a very little while longer.
In short, my pictures of my family rarely turn out great. I think other photographers know what I mean.
All of that, however, changes when I get them into the studio.
Alan Honey, a wedding photographer in Manhattan that I second shoot for, recently let me use his studio to shoot some Christmas portraits of my family. Amazingly, the kids loved it. My wife, 6 months pregnant as she was, even enjoyed it.
I couldn’t share these until now because we gave a bunch of the prints as presents to grandma’s and grandpa’s this year, and we just didn’t want to spoil the surprise. But now, here they are.
We started with the kids in their Christmas outfits that Grandma sent.
Then we had a quick wardrobe and set change.
This is the one we used for our Christmas cards this year:
One more outfit swap and we even threw Mom into the mix as well, mostly because my mother-in-law threatened bodily harm if I didn’t I love my mother-in-law and think she should have lovely portraits of her daughter.
All told, we were in the studio for about an hour and a half without a single complaint from anyone! I’m super happy with these, too; they’ll be treasured images for me and our family for a long time.
a quick portrait session and an mcd ice cream run
A little bit ago, we hit the park right after work one evening to try and knock out a family portrait for some friends. They have three little monkeys boys, which means that it’s usually quite difficult to do anything in a short amount of time, but we managed a few decent images.
Things got even better once everyone hit the ground.
Poor, poor Valerie…so very outnumbered. Oh well. If you can’t beat ‘em… =P
After total chaos broke out we finished a few images, we hit the local McDonald’s for a bit of ice cream to wrap things up the right way.
No, I just don’t think he’s enjoying that thing enough.
Tired of the camera, perhaps?
You so have to click this one and see it bigger!
Thanks, guys! My family and I had a great time hanging with you guys, and the ice cream was a splendid surprise. =]
derek
A few weeks back I had the pleasure of running out to Derek’s house to do some work for him and his family. They live in a beautifully isolated part of the country that is just close enough to town for convenience sake, and just far enough to be, well far away. They have some gorgeous land surrounding their house and we had a good time looking around to see what we could use.
I had a couple of objectives to take care of while I was there: first, one of their beloved canines is advancing in years and they wanted to make sure they had a family portrait with him before he moved on; second, Derek’s a Senior and rapidly approaching that time when he needs his Senior portraits done.
We took care of the family shots first, but you’ll have to wait a bit for those. =] For the time being, take a look at a couple of my favorites from Derek’s session.
Told you he lived out away from everyone!
Believe it or not, we had him up in a tree for this one!
Derek and his dad have been working on this old truck for a while, so it means something special to him. Can we use it in his portraits? Of course!
Thanks for letting me come hang with you and your family, Derek! And I must say a big “Thanks!” to Derek’s dad–he was an invaluable assistant during the session, holding a reflector (for the tree shot, among others) and being my Voice-Activated Lightstand (in the truck shot). You did awesome!
little miss tay’s sneak peek
Wow…I just realized that it’s been forever since I’ve posted here. Between the end of the local wedding season and being so insanely busy with my day job lately, it’s seems like I’ve been neglecting this poor thing. Do candy and flowers and massages make blogs feel better?
Whatever the case, I’m back.
This past weekend, I had such a great time at little Miss Tay’s house. We hung out for an hour or so and had an awesome time. But that was no big surprise; when Tay’s mom and I sat down ahead of time to discuss the session so I could get some ideas of how things might go, she said a couple of my favorite words.
Words like we have big windows.
Words like she’s the most adorable little girl you’ve ever seen.
Words like she loves to finger paint.
So, you see, I knew from the very start what a marvelous time we were going to have (and for an even more marvelous time, you can click a couple of the pictures above for a bigger look).
Thanks so much, Tay, for the wonderful time I had at your house! I can’t wait to see you and your parents again. =]
the L family
A little over three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of getting together with the L family (yes, that’s an L in the title…hard to tell, I know). They basically live right on the shore of the Big Blue River where it spills out of the Tuttle Creek Reservoir, so I knew we’d be in for a great location.
Unfortunately, the location was so great, it was flooded. So, instead of giving up, we headed upstream a bit to a little observation site and had a great time.
Melissa, here’s a little sneak peek that I know you’ve been waiting for.
Thanks for the fun session, guys! I’ll be in touch soon when the whole session is finished.
near tragedy
I just accidentally deleted four months of personal and family pictures.
I was trying to clean up our poor, almost full hard drive (we’re running at 91% capacity these days, mostly full of pictures) after finishing the processing of Nichole’s session. I backed up all the files twice (one for storage here, one for storage off-site), like I do with all my sessions, and then started deleting the files I no longer needed to keep on the computer: the RAW, digital negatives and massive Photoshop documents.
I right-clicked on the folder of the RAW files and selected “Delete.” The computer thought for a second, told me the folder was too big to put in the recycle bin, so did I want to delete it permanently. This didn’t strike me as that odd–RAW files are, after all, quite large. I really didn’t see any need for them in the future, so I said yes, go ahead and delete them.
I watched as another window come up and start listing the files as they were being permanently deleted, bypassing the Recycle Bin on their way out of my life. I noticed something odd in the hundreds of files that were flashing by: none of them should be there. These were the names of folders containing personal and family pictures, not Nichole’s session!
I hit cancel about as fast as I could, but it was too late: I had already lost about 10 GB of family pictures, equating to the last four months’ worth of photography. As a habit, I back up my photo sessions as soon as I get home and don’t delete the originals off the card until they are safely backed up in a number of locations, just in case. Not so with the family stuff, however. I checked the Recycle Bin, but there was nothing there.
Fortunately, from reading past forums and discussion board postings from other photographers, I know this is not the first time that someone has accidentally wiped valuable photos from their computer, so I started searching the internet for help. I knew that the files I had deleted were still on the hard drive, and that they would be until something else was written over the same physical spot on the disk. All I needed was a tool that would look past all of the signals that said the files weren’t there, and there they would be.
A very short time later, I was downloading Pandora Recovery, a free personal file recovery tool. I installed it to my external hard drive (so I wouldn’t be writing over any of the deleted pictures with the new software) and started it up. It immediately showed me where on my computer I could find deleted files, and there they were. This lovely, easy-to-use program very quickly recovered about 95% of my pictures. Some of them couldn’t be recovered because they had already been partially written on, but most of them are back, safe and sound.
Well, at least, they will be safe…once I get around to actually backing them up.
I keep thinking there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this…
nichole and the girls
In between the summer session and the fall semester on campus, my family and I went to southern California to visit family and friends. While there, we went down with my wife’s family to spend a couple of days in San Diego right on the beach.
Frankly, I’m surprised I made it back.
But, while we were there, I had a fun little mini session with my sister-in-law and her two beautiful girls out on the beach. My mother-in-law was my trusty reflector-wielding assistant, which was fun because it was probably the only time I’ve ever been able to tell my mother-in-law what to do.
Ha ha! Just kidding! (Hi Kathy!)
On with the show!
Oh, and if you’re confused at this point because she looks a lot like my wife, it might help if I explained that they are identical twins.
Sorry to make you wait for these, Nichole–I hope they were worth the wait! Shoot me an email (or just call your sister) if you have any questions.
amanda & casey + 2
This summer, some random lady stopped my wife at the library to ask her a couple of questions. She saw that our kids were the same ages as her kids, and she was desperate: she had just moved to our small town from Oklahoma for the summer while her husband got some job training nearby and she was out of her mind for something to do.
Fast forward to the end of the summer and we had to say good-bye to our good friends, Amanda and Casey and their two adorable kids. Luckily, before they left, I got to get them in front of my lens for a family session on campus up at KSU.
Their little girl was such a treat for me! She’s only 7 and already knows how to work it for the camera.
Their little 2.5-year old was missing nothing in the charm department either.
Mom and Dad didn’t do too bad either. 
They may look great individually, but all the magic really happened when I put them together.
And there’s plenty more where these came from. So much so that you might get just a bit sick of them in the next little while!
Thanks you guys! We miss you and hope everyone’s getting settled back in at home.
tim + jodi
If you’ll remember from a couple posts ago, I recently convinced a friend, Jodi, that she really needed to get some maternity portraits done and she agreed. We set out to the Konza Prairie Reserve, stuffed chair in tow, to see what we could do (and boy, did we like what we did!). Since we were going to be out on the prairie, all dressed up nice, Jodi decided to make her husband, Tim, and their two adorable children dress up nicely as well so that, just in case, I could do a family picture or get a couple images of the kids as well.
So, while I was focusing on her and Tim, I did manage to grab a couple of the family as well. Little Miss M decided from the very beginning that she was going to play it cautious around the big guy with the camera, but I still managed to catch her looking once or twice:
Her big brother wasn’t so hard.
It’s so fun to see a couple’s relationship unfold in front of you during a photo session. You get to see how they really are together.
Oops! Wait…I meant this one:
Or this one:
The end of the day came and it was finally time to head home.
Tim, Jodi…you guys know I love you! And congratulations again on your brand new little baby girl! Can’t wait to meet her. =]
kable & sarah + 1 – more
I posted a couple of images from this session a while back, but I just couldn’t let these next few go unposted.
I’ve been experimenting with a slightly new black and white conversion, and I really like the way these turned out:
Thanks again, guys, for the amazing time!
kable and sarah + 1 – preview
Just a couple weeks ago, my family and I were at Manhattan’s City Park. It was a sunny and warm Friday evening around sunset, and there was a classic rock cover band playing at Arts in the Park. What more could I ask for?
Oh yeah: a couple of beautiful friends who wanted some family portraits!
Their little boy was not really into the whole idea of standing there while some big guy behind a camera cracked some very funny jokes that apparently went right over his almost-two-year-old head. Even though the jokes bombed, I still managed to get some great smiles out of him.
We got some absolutely gorgeous light that night.
But I think the greatest part of the session was when we ignored the “Keep Out” signs*.
There’s quite a bit more where these came from, so stay tuned!
*Don’t try this at home kids. And definitely don’t tell my mom and dad on me.
jodi – a sneak peek
On Wednesday, I drove out to the Konza Prairie and met with Jodi and her family for a portrait session. I was particularly excited about this session because Jodi and her husband, Tim, are great friends of ours. Jodi is 36 weeks along in her third pregnancy and had never done maternity portraits before but figured this was as good a time as any. Since neither Jodi nor her husband, Tim, are from Kansas, they thought it would be fun to get some portraits made out on a real Kansas prairie, so we also took a few of the whole family while we were out there.
Normally, I don’t turn images around in two days, but seriously, I’m just so excited about these, I could hardly wait. You’ll still have to wait just a bit for the rest, but don’t worry…they’re coming.
And yes, before you ask, we did drag a stuffed armchair out into the middle of the prairie.
Working it like a freakin’ model!
And my absolute favorite from the night:
ben + emily
Okay, so this one was really a long time in the making. Back in April—yes, April—I assisted Alan Honey on my second wedding. Before we got there, Alan told me that Ben and Emily were two of the nicest people I’d ever meet, and he was right. It turned out that I had already met them when they came into Alan’s studio for their engagement session, though it took us all a while to figure that out!
One of the many great things about Ben and Emily’s wedding was that it was in Wamego! Probably the only time in my life I’ll be able to walk to work. =]
Here are some of my favorite images from before the ceremony. Ben was such a nervous ball of energy waiting to see his future wife. He simply could not wait one more second to see her. The longing was evident and moving. This is Emily’s reaction as Ben opened his eyes:
Just before the ceremony, we stole Ben and Emily away and did some more relaxed portraits outside the church.
I just adore the love you can see between them in this totally candid moment:
The reception was held at the historic Columbian Theater, across the street from the church. The couple had asked to do a picture of the whole wedding party as they were crossing the street, all holding hands. Alan took it a step further:
And I just had to include this one detail shot from the reception:
Stay tuned for more incredibly delayed wedding posts, as well as the most recent weddings and a couple of family sessions I’m super excited about!
smiley little s
I can now officially announce that I have finally checked the last portrait session off my to-do list. I’m all caught up in that department…yay! Now I just have four or five weddings to get up here on the blog* and I’ll be a happy man.
Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of having one of my maternity clients come back with an adorable little bundle of joy ready for his own portraits. We were only able to squeeze in a little time together, but boy, was he cooperative.
He and his mom weren’t able to make it out during his first 10 days (really, the ideal time for newborn portraits), so instead, we did more of a 6-week portrait session. I was so amazed that, at 6 weeks, this little guy was already smiling! He really beamed a couple of them for me.
His mom brought along a teddy bear that his sister had held during some of her own baby portraits.
Just a few days after our session, my family was invited to attend his blessing at church and a lunch afterwards. Naturally, I brought my camera and managed to pick up a few more images for the family. Here’s little S with his grandpa.
I had such a hard time with these last two, trying to decide whether I liked it better in black and white or in color. In the end, I couldn’t decide, so you get both!
Keep smiling, little guy! I look forward to watching you grow. =]
*As a second shooter, all I need to do is edit out all the really bad shots and give the good ones to my boss, and that just takes me an hour or two and I’m done. Once I hand over the DVD, I don’t have to worry about processing the images for clients at all, so the pictures sit on my hard drive for weeks at a time. Don’t worry though, they’ll be up here soon!
8 years later
It’s nice to have professional photographers for friends. When they need help, sometimes they repay in pictures. Alan Honey‘s son left on a mission recently, so he wanted to get his family’s portrait made before he left and asked me to pull the trigger since he couldn’t do that himself and actually appear in the portrait. As a thank you, he said he’d shoot my family and give me the images to play with however I wanted. We were really excited by the offer. You see, I think the last time we had a family portrait done, both of the kids were still in diapers. Seriously.
And, yesterday was our 8th anniversary, so it was about time to get proof that we could still stand each other. =]
Here’s last year’s anniversary image.
unphotographable
This is a picture of the Wamego City Band conductor, handing his baton to a band member’s 2- or 3-year-old son because he really wanted his mommy and then walking over to sit in the stands as the boy conducted the entire march.
And he never took his binky out the whole time.
olivia + mac
Oh boy…I am excited to be posting today. As I’ve been going down my checklist of sessions to process and post, I was really looking forward to this one. This is Olivia and Mac’s engagement session, which we shot back in mid-May at the K-State Botanical Gardens. Olivia is the brave soul that hired me to shoot her wedding before I had ever shot anything wedding-related. Since then, I’ve been assisting Alan Honey at a number of weddings, and this weekend I’ll be working for another good friend of mine, Nicole Coleman of Nicoleman Photography, second shooting for her. I still have a bunch of Alan’s weddings left to assist at this summer as well, but Olivia’s will be my first solo wedding.
As (hopefully!) every wedding photographer would tell you, their first solo wedding is probably their most terrifying, their most sleep robbing, their most nerve wracking. I’m sure mine will be the same, but after this engagement session, I am super excited to be there for them!
This, incidentally, is the best reason to get an engagement session done if you’re planning a wedding: if you and your photographer have a good relationship, that will make the day of the wedding go all that much more smoothly. It’s tough to develop that relationship, that trust, if the first time you’re in front of your photographer’s lens is the big day. An engagement session allows you to get to know each other, to discuss your style, what you’d like to see, and to allow your photographer the chance to earn your trust ahead of time.
Back to the session: I knew I was in for a great day when I got there and discovered just about the most beautiful day ever.
This is where Olivia really wanted to get married, but when she called to find out if it was available, she was told that they don’t schedule any events here during football home games. So, we planned to do her engagement pictures here, even though they said it was the same day as graduation and that the grounds would probably be full of people. We decided to risk it and go ahead with the shoot.
We hardly saw another soul the whole time we were there.
Soon after Olivia and Mac showed up, we had a great time exploring the grounds and getting comfortable with each other. And let me tell you, they wasted no time getting comfortable.
Look at how easy these two are on the eyes!
They really wanted to make sure that we were able to make use of the fountain, and who am I to say no?
We made good use of the rest of the grounds and flora as well.
We also made good use of my Polaroid.
They were such an awesome couple to work with. Here’s a few more of my favorites:
I just love the feeling of this last one:
Olivia and Mac, thanks for such an incredible session! I had a blast, and I am just jazzed about your wedding in September!
sweet little d
Two weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of driving down to Pillsbury Crossing to meet young master D, a brand-new, 11-day-old little boy. His family has some beautiful farmland just around the corner from the river crossing, which almost made me late getting there. You would think that Google could put on their map if your directions take you, oh, I don’t know, through a river! I did end up getting there safe and sound after calling little D’s mom, just to confirm that all of the signs reading “Warning! Do not cross the river! You will die!” weren’t really all that serious.
We had a fantastic session. It was my first session with a newborn, but since it was D’s first session too, we were all able to relax and have a great time.
Here are a few of my favorites from the session:
Eventually, we got D’s big sister, little miss A, involved as well.
I think she’s a natural.
Finally, my two big faves from the session:
Sweet little D, thanks for sharing your time and your family with me. And thanks for not “christening” me,your mom, or any of my blankets or gear! You’ve got a wonderful family. Welcome to the world!
excitement
I’ve got a lot to do these days, now that I’m on vacation from my real job for a couple of weeks, and I’m really excited. There are just a few reasons for me to be excited (in order of occurrence):
- A beautiful wedding at a Wamego church.
- A fun wedding at a B&B that eventually got stormed out and relocated.
- A really fun newborn shoot for a friend at their farm.
- An engagement session for my first solo wedding (coming at the end of the summer)
- Another newborn shoot for a friend at my studio house.
Yeah, I’ll be busy for the next few days, but that means that you guys will get to see some fun stuff coming up, so stay tuned!
And, since this is a photoblog, a picture from a recent church event at City Park.
exciting news
Can you see that little photo credit there? Yeah, that’s my name. I was so excited this week to receive a copy of The Sailor’s Book of the Weather, by Simon Keeling, and finally see one of my pictures in something that I didn’t pay to print.
It’s a fun feeling.
The publisher was searching flickr for a picture illustrating centrifugal force when she found mine and liked it enough to ask if she could use it. A pleasant side effect of having my pictures online.
In case you can’t see it, here’s the original picture they used in the publication:
I shot this in November, 2006 with our old 3.1 MP point-and-shoot digital camera, so I’m not too sure about the settings, but here’s what the camera recorded on the picture:
ISO 100, 1/14s, f3.7, 10.9mm
The slow shutter speed (1/14s) is what’s producing the motion blur over most of the picture. The reason that the hand and bar are in (reasonable) focus is because I was panning, moving my camera from side to side, as I took the picture. It’s a really fun technique that you can use with any moving object with sometimes very surprising results.
lotus – maternity
A week or so before I went to New York, I got a call late one Friday from a friend of ours. She had been expecting to give birth any day (actually, a couple of days prior to that), so we expected the call to be the big news that her baby had been born. That wasn’t the case. But, she thought, since she was still pregnant with nothing to do, would I want to do a maternity shoot with her and her family the next day?
Of course!
We went to an old house in Manhattan for a fun shoot with her, her husband, and their daughter. I was apprehensive going into the shoot because I typically like to do my shooting outside, with all the wonderful natural light. I found, though, that there is lots of lovely light inside, too, so long as you know where to look. In this house, we started upstairs by a big window, moved our way to the staircase, and then eventually to the front room with its massive windows and yummy light.
Here are a few of my favorites:
I especially love the light on her belly in this one:
Their daughter, the lovely Miss M, was all too eager to get in on all the fun!
We got a couple of nice family portraits while we were there, too.
And, of course, we got some great belly shots:
Lotus, Charles, and little Miss M, I had such a fun time with you and your family! And it was great to get to see young Master S at conference this past weekend. All my best to you and your growing family!
because, if it hasn’t happened already, one day, you will miss a shot
Occasionally, because they know that I dabble in the photographic arts, people ask me what camera they should buy. That’s a really tough question to answer because, really, there are so many variables involved, the majority of which I cannot possibly foresee for whoever has posed the question. I recently ran across a blog post (that I have tried and tried and tried to find, to no avail) from a photographer who used to provide the best possible comparison of different camera types, models, and so on, in the hopes of providing some basis for the person to choose a camera from. It would take time, effort, and nerves (what if he recommended a camera that the person bought and then hated?). Now, however, he has a different response:
If you want to take better pictures, invest in a photography course instead.
That’s not the point of this post, but it is such an important point, I had to include it somewhere.
The point of this is to introduce all of you “I’m in the market for a camera, so what should I buy?” types, along with all you gadget-o-philes, to a brand-new camera that may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
You see, Casio has just announced that, in a short time (about two weeks), you can buy your very own time machine.
Really.
The Exilim EX-F1 is an amazing new digital camera that has all the features you always knew that you needed in a camera because Star Trek made you want them. With this camera, you can actually get those shots that you have missed every single time before. By holding the shutter button half-way down, the camera starts silently recording 60 shots a second until you press the button, discarding all the old shots as you go. After you hit the trigger, you can then review all 60 shots from the second before you hit the button, choose the perfect one, and get rid of the rest. Or keep them all, just for kicks (or to turn into a movie). Or delete them all because the shot you really want was over a second ago and your reflexes are just that bad.
And really, it’s the camera’s ability to shoot at 60 frames a second that is so extraordinary, especially when you consider that a movie camera only shoots at 24 or 30 frames a second, and the best, professional cameras that I know of can only pull 10 or 11 frames per second. Mine only does 3 per second. Of course, you can only keep up this sort of speed for a second, but you can, of course, adjust the frame rate to give you more shooting time: 30 frames a second for 2 seconds, 20 frames a second for 3 seconds, and so on.
One very important point to make: these are not tiny little shots that you would have to think hard about whether you’d even post them on your blog because they’re so small. No, they’re fully 6 MP images. You can print posters with these suckers.
So, you can start shooting 60 frames a second right before something happens, hold the button down half-way in anticipation of something happening, or you can set the camera down and let it shoot the good stuff all by itself. That’s right: if you ask it to, it will sit there for hours (if you’re battery is charged sufficiently, I’m sure), wait for something to move, and shoot a 60-fps burst all by itself. Catch all the great action that comes along when you are not there.
Did I mention it does full-HD movies with stereo sound? Or shoot ultra-high-speed movies for ultra-slow-mo playback? We’re talking up to 1200 frames per second here…that’s some serious speed!
Of course, with the good comes the bad (including the $1000 price tag, which actually sounds quite reasonable). Get the rest of the skinny from the NY Times (along with a nifty, and actually entertaining, video of the EX-F1 in action).
