What’s Gotta Stay

I had the wonderful opportunity to be the photographer for Nicole & Brodie’s wedding process, from engagement & bridals to the wedding and reception. I am not a frequent wedding photographer, so I feel like I need to work extra hard to rise to the occasion each time. I feel blessed for being a part of their experience and share in their joy. This post is long overdue, but I thought I’d share a few highlights from the various shoots. I am going to break from my normally concise post format and put quite a few photos on this post. As a result you will need to click through to the post page to see them all.

I hope you enjoy getting a peek into their happiness from these few photos. You can see their full event page with many more photos.

Continue to the full post to see the rest of the photos

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Tags: bridal, engagement, reception, wedding

Serenity: repose – a disposition free from stress or emotion

This was the scene I enjoyed every night on my recent family vacation to San Clemente, CA. Pure relaxation.

Tags: beach, sunset

This last weekend I had the opportunity to return as a photographer for the “Big Blue Bash,” an annual event held by the Salt Lake Chapter of the Cougar Club. My good friend Kelly Branan invited me along last year to co-shoot, and we repeated shooting this event together. It’s always a pleasure hanging out with Kelly, and the BBB is a fun event at which to capture photos.

The event typically features a couple of current players, a recognizable past player and some coaching staff that each share their thoughts on the upcoming season. This year didn’t disappoint featuring Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall, Tom Holmoe, Chad Lewis, JJ Diluigi and Brian Logan. MC’d by Greg Rubel and Blaine Fowler. This is a great event for Cougar fans north of Utah Valley put together by Chapter President Brad Jensen.

Everyone was talking about the possible conference changes, quarterback possibilities, etc. The short answer is that no answers were given Lots of fun talk though.

I look forward to this event now and appreciate being called on to help document the fun evening. Here are a few highlights out of the over 400 images I shot that night, of which just over 300 were delivered. This night was yet another situation where I was very happy to have the ability to shoot at 3200 ISO to deal with the very low light conditions typical to this kind of event.

And of course I have to post one “shooting-the-shooter” of Kelly at work

Tags: byu, cougarclub, event

Having just completed a 12 hour drive and arriving on the beach with camera in hand, I was like a kid unleashed on a candy store with too many choices. I took a lot of “snapshots” but it was fun getting out and shooting for fun, which I haven’t really done in awhile. I grew up around water and coastal options, so living inland leaves me wanting to get out and enjoy a beach periodically, so the family vacations that include a beach tend to be my favorite!

After taking a few snaps of the sunset on the beach we were headed to the car and I decided I need to run over to the palm trees and capture this vantage point. Something just cool about silhouettes, even if it isn’t a perfect picture.

All of these photos were taken handheld as I bounced around the beach trying to also watch kids and with a very patient wife that knew I was just itching to get out with my camera

Tags: beach, silhouette, sunset

 

This last week I had a wonderfully relaxing time on vacation with my wife’s family, including all their wonderful little kids. We had a beautiful house on a bluff overlooking San Clemente beach. We were fortunate to be all in one house as though the location made a wonderful place to visit, the real point was to be together as family.

As is typical now on every family outing, we plan some portrait photo time where I set up my gear and take some family photos. I have a large number of photos yet to process, and it is going to take me some time to work through them as I have a full schedule over the next few weeks of projects and outings. I wanted to share a couple of our wonderful family.

 

I’ll have more to share later, but I wanted to get a few of these up and shared with family & friends

Technical info: Canon 5D Mark II. First and last photo 70-200L 2.8 lit with a 60″ diffuser camera right,  580EXii shot through 45″ Westcott convertible umbrella camera left. Middle photo 24-105L lit with 2 580EXiis shot full power into reflected 45″ Westcott umbrellas for full on the shadows.

Tags: baby, portrait

A new project has been organized giving Utah Photographers an opportunity to showcase their work at the GAllivan Center on September 10, 2010. Some fine individuals I happen to have the pleasure of knowing are participating on the board which assures me this event is going to be top notch!

From the site:

In conjunction with the Gallivan Center’s Broadway & Opera Under the Stars, we seek photographs to continue the artistic and interpretive theme of the event on a visual level — poetic and visceral photos that make you feel first and think second.

From your submissions we will select 25 photographs and mount a print exhibition in conjunction with the Gallivan Center’s Opera Under the Stars on September 10. This show is coming up quick, so our submission deadline is 11:59pm, Friday, August 20.

The Salt City 50 are promoters of great photography and the creative endeavor. We strive to connect with the best artists, the known and the unknown, and provide a venue where a wide audience can celebrate their work.

See more details at: http://www.saltcity50.com/

Tags: exhibition, photography, show

A couple of days ago I wanted to create a new profile photo for my Facebook, plus I just purchased a new tripod that I was taking for a spin. The lights were set up in the basement for food photos I have been taking for Heather, so I rearranged things, put up the black muslin and used the wireless trigger to snap off some self-portraits.

I really didn’t give a lot of thought to how I looked in front of the camera, just made sure I was in frame, adjusted some lighting and snapped off some shots.

In the photos I took, I was partial to the the ones looking away from the camera. This feeling of introspection that I think this protrays seems fitting as I have felt a lot like this lately.

Tags: bw, photo, self-portrait

There’s no restraining my lab when he gets near water. He has to get in there.

Tags: dog, lake, mist, water

Last night I had a few neighbors come out to a nearby field for some portrait practice & instruction on camera usage. It started as mom wanting just a few photos of her camera avoiding son, but I figured I would invite a few others to come along for practice and instruction as we played taking some fun photos. It’s always fun to get together to learn & make photos, plus in this environment I don’t mind if the end results aren’t perfect as we are just practicing and no one is expecting paid results.

I’d like to do this more often as time permits. So if you are local, link up with me on Twitter or Facebook to know when I’m putting something together.

Here are a few from the hour we spent playing with reflectors and a flash head carving some light on our subjects.

All photos were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105L, various settings. Light modifiers used included a 60″ diffuser, 60″ gold reflector (wish I had mixed that up a bit) and a 580EXii shot into a 45″ Westcott reflected umbrella.

There were plenty more photos, and when I get to processing them I’ll post a gallery on my photo site for those that were in them to grab.

Tags: meetup

In my post yesterday I highlighted a few photos from our company outing where I shot a lot of candids of the day where we all had fun. One of the photos was of my co-worker and his young daughter enjoying the waterfront, as most little kids love to do.

The shot was a candid like the rest, shot with my versatile Sigma 50-500 lens. Because it was so bright, and the limitations of the lens, most of the entire scene was in focus. Unlike a portrait setting, I didn’t think about distracting elements in the background and just dealt with the lighting conditions as best as I could.

They loved the shot, and want to print & frame it, so I decided to play with a little post-processing to see if I could improve the image. I had read and seen examples of people using the Alien Skin Bokeh plugin to blur the background, so I downloaded the trial version to see what I could do with it (versus doing it by hand). After learning the various settings & options I was pretty happy with the results. Adding in a few “content-aware” and patch tool edits to remove distracting elements, the end result is what you see above. I was pretty happy with the results of just a few minutes of edits.

I was happy with how easy the tool was to use. I made a selection of the dad & daughter before entering the plugin, then used the “planar” setting to do a foreground to background blur emulating an 85mm f/2 DOF.

For comparison, here is the original photo again. Quite a difference.

Tags: bokeh, edit, post-processing