Wells Family

Luisa and I recently returned home from photographing a wedding in Aruba, and while travel is nice, and Aruba was MORE than wonderful, it is so great to come home. I love where I live, and I love the fall. The leaves for the past few weeks have been a gorgeous blend of colors. Right before leaving for Aruba, I had the chance to photograph this awesome family at Kathryn Albertson Park in Boise. Luisa and I have become really great friends with the Wells, and I can say that they are one amazing family.

Thanks so much Wells Family. You are all absolutely wonderful and have the most amazing and cutest family!

Life Thru the Macro: The Wind and the 'BAM'...

My first introduction to using a 'reflector' was on our engagement shoot 3 years ago with Nate's Mom who ALSO happens to be an amazing photographer. It was a cold and cloudy day in February and we were on the beach in NH. In our family, this so-called 'reflector' had been christened with the name 'BAM' because of how it POPS wide open every time you take it out of its case. Nate's Dad was acting as 'assistant' that day and had us ROLLING with laughter at his antics with 'the bam', making it nearly impossible to get a good picture of us since we were cackling and guffawing so unabashedly, as featured here:

This past week, Nate and I spent some time in Aruba photographing the wedding of our dear friends, Nicole and Faruk. I found the situations similar [on the beach, windy, cloudy with tricky lighting] and yet reversed since THIS TIME I was the one with 'the BAM'. We were under a ridiculous time crunch, racing the sun before it set and so Nate was having me use the diffusor to get some images with the flash. Let me remind you, we were on the beach, and the wind was totally taking advantage of me as I tried to maneuver the flash and my 'sail' [a.k.a. the BAM]. Nate kept having to remind me to 'reposition', and 'hold my arms higher... and higher' and 'hold it steady' and 'keep the flash straight', and EVEN 'let's try pointing it at the couple'. My realization is that I need to work out my triceps.... and biceps... and shoulders... and probably my forearms as well. Perhaps I simply need to practice my ENTIRE Statue of Liberty pose; that should get me conditioned for the next 'windy' event.

*Stay tuned: Nate will be posting the rest of his amazing images about this amazing couple and location very soon. After viewing his post, you just might find yourself singing: "Aruba, Jamaica... oooohhh, I want to take ya!"

Larry+Katie Engagement Session

I know it's been said many times before, but I truly love what I do. For three main reasons: First, taking pictures is just fun and amazing, and hard and challenging, and rewarding, and crazy exciting. I love it! Second, people trust me to document some of the most important events in their life, and I'm truly honored to do so. MANY times during a wedding, I'll look down at my camera at the images that I'm getting, and it'll hit me how important it is what I'm doing and how important these images are to the bride and groom. Maybe I'm not putting out fires, or performing an emergency surgery to save someones life, but I get to document love. To record it through my eyes. To tell a story...THEIR story. And to me, that's pretty dang important, as it is to my clients. And third: I get to learn everyday how to love and live better through the couples that I photograph. I love being granted an intimate window seat to a couple's love story and romance. And in capturing that, I learn...and love even more.

Larry and Katie are why I love what I do; their love, their laugh. I loved this shoot. They love each other so much. They're happy. Like really really happy together, and I love that.

I love how much they laugh together, and how easily Larry can make Katie laugh. We laughed A LOT!

And of course my blasted left eye. I'm right eyed. But for some odd reason I leave my left eye open when I'm shooting. My brain just kinda tunes it out, so I literally only see through my right eye. Minor problem...my other eye is left basically staring down whoever I'm shooting. No joke. It's bad! Lucky for me, Larry and Katie found it more humorous than deranged.

LOVE this shot. You two are AWESOME!

Larry and Katie, thanks for laughing and loving like you do. I love it! You guys rock! Thanks for letting me capture your love through my eyes.

Life Thru the Macro: Dream Together...

In the depths of delectability, half way through my tub of 'Imagine Whirled Peace' Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, I found this:

Nate was sleeping at the moment [yes, that might have been a pregnant woman's confession to sneaking midnight delicacies], so as opposed to sharing that moment with him, I shared it with his D3S.

One of Nate's GREATEST talents in life is that... he dreams, and when he does, he dreams BIG and so enthusiastically that you can't help but dream WITH him.

So far, our life is greater than we could have ever dreamed or fabricated collectively OR individually. Who would have thought that such a realization would come in the form of 504 calories? Bliss is pricey, but that is what I experienced that night in that particular tub of "Whirled Peace".

Before&After

For some reason, I always love seeing how other photographers edit their photos. What their image looks like straight out of the camera, and how they get to the final product. Today, I'd like to share a few of my own, and my editing process and very basic workflow. But first...a few notes:

First. I believe in editing evolution. Meaning, oh wow, my editing style/abilities have changed. Well, not changed, but evolved and grown and refined. Just as much as my shooting style and ability has done the same. I'll go back and look at edited photos of when I first started out, and it'll make me chuckle. The end goal? For me? One, not to be dated. Two, to be myself. Three, to shoot more and edit less. The more and more I shoot, the better I become. The better I get, the less editing I do and the more I realize I want my images to look natural, with still a polished and finished look.

Second. I use Aperture 3. So many photographers might think I'm totally bogus for using it, and not Lightroom 3. Fact is, I LOVE Aperture 3. And it works really well for my editing style and workflow. I have used Lightroom 3, and like it, but Aperture and I just kinda mold better together. Also, I rarely open up a photo in actual Photoshop. Aperture can do just about everything that I personally need, much like Lightroom can. As of right now, I don't use any actions, although I've got my eyes set on some Totally Rad Actions that I've heard great things about.

Enough talk...let's get to the pictures. Some of my photos I do VERY little editing to. They just seemed to look great right out of the box. Some I do a lot more editing to. So I'll try to showcase different scenarios.

First Image SOOC (straight out of camera).

After editing:

In this photo I used my very favorite tool (actually, I pretty much do this to all photos). It uses levels and your histogram. If you don't know how to read a histogram, let me know and one day I'll do a post about that. But here's a screenshot of the levels on this image:

I bump up the blacks, and the whites depending on the histogram. I basically take the little black slider and slide it just about to where the "hill" of the histogram starts. And then I do the same to the whites (see picture above). I find this adds a really nice amout of contrast, and makes the blacks black, and the whites white. This works wonders on just flat grayish images...ESPECIALLY black and whites. Love it.

Second image SOOC:

Edited:

I did a bit more with this one. But I started with the same technique above with levels. Bumped up blacks and white. Then decreased the exposure a bit, dodged (brighten) a bit of her face to make her stand out more, and burned (darken) a bit of the pavement because I found the bright spot distracting.

Third image SOOC:

Edited:

Again, I did a bit more with this one. And again, levels adjustment (side note: because I shoot portraits almost always wide open at 1.4, it gives my images a slight vignette that I really like. When I bump up the blacks and whites in Levels, this increases the contrast, which in turn gives a stronger vignette. I rarely add an actual vignette to the actual images, unless I'm not shooting at 1.4). I also bumped up the Luminance in the Reds...a VERY cool trick I learned from Gray Photography. They explain it WAY better than I could, so check out their blog post here on luminance. Very cool stuff. Don't overdue it though!

Last image SOOC:

Edited:

Not too much done with this image. I had great lighting, a gorgeous couple and a beautiful location. I upped the blacks in levels increasing the contrast a bit, added a slight vignette (not shot at 1.4), and lowered the exposure JUST a touch.

And that's all! I plan on doing other Before&After Posts here on the blog. I have one HUGE piece of advice, that I still need to listen to as well. When you learn a new editing technique, awesome...use it. But use it SPARINGLY! Use it till it looks good, and then back it down even more. I remember when I first learned how to vignette, all my pictures had BLACK perfectly rounded corners...yuck. Seriously Nate?

If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know! Thanks and enjoy!