Thursday, February 26, 2009

Celebrity wedding, a new website, and some horses.






That's right! A new website!! Oh boy, Katie is working on it right now...yes, right now, as you're reading this. No matter what time it is or where you are, Katie is working hard on re designing my website. It's actually going to look exactly like we've been wanting it to look like for a while now. I suppose now is just the best time.
I've been talking to our friend, a wedding coordinator in Paris for the last couple days. We're dying to photograph another wedding over there. We'll keep our fingers crossed!
Oh yeah, and I shot my first celebrity wedding recently. I had to sign a contract stating I couldn't use any pics of him on my website. I have heard of other photographers doing this and I never really thought that much about it. But, I got a few sweet pics I'm dying to put up. Oh well =) suppose you can see them if you come over. I can post some of the one's without him, so i'll do that, soon.
Here's a few pics I finished today, I'm busy updating my website, so my posts have and probably will be a little scarce. But I'm stoked to put up some senior pics I took recently and some pictures from my wedding last weekend soon.
Enjoy!
Oh and did you like the vids! I'm pretty excited about the possibilities I have with that platform.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

True Emotion Photography Class VI




Here's a few pictures from my latest TEP class. I love having it at my house, more comfortable, more laid back. I met a big shot photographer in Vegas at WPPI who has them at his home also. He only charges $5,000 each (How does $125 sound now?). Everyone stays in his guest home over night, samples wine from his wine cellar, there's a mock wedding, models, etc. Oh, I'd love to do that, maybe next year. anyways.... I had 7 students. We shot a beautiful model in perfect cloudy freezing weather, munched on pizza and talked shop. Perfect. Think I'll do it again in April. That's right Michelle, you'll wonder why you took all that college when you could have just spent 6 hours with me =).
WPPI is too much to get into tonight. Good night!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Kevin & Heidi Huston-St. Petersberg, FL Sept. 27th, 2008































First off I just want to say that I’m not sure if we were in St. Pete or Tampa or both or how that all works. Sometimes when I talk about this wedding, I say St. Pete and other times Tampa. I’m sure Taira will clear all of this up for me. My geography is quite bad as I don’t remember learning anything other than States and Capitals in school. It’s funny too b/c I’m a destination wedding photographer. I enjoy every place I visit, I just don’t always know how far I am away from Mexico City or Ireland other than in terms of hours on the plane.
So, I get a phone call in…let’s say Janurary about shooting a wedding in September in Tampa. I’m stoked of course and put it on my calendar, etc. A few months go by and I get an email that says, wedding is off (details). I was pretty bummed for a few obvious reasons and also by that point I have turned away another bride for that date and I had no more. Then on the Tuesday before their saturday wedding date I get a phone call, “hey, uh, I know this is short notice, but uh..” I was stoked to say the least but had to get things in order really fast, I left 2 days later. I know what you’re thinking, what’s the big deal dropping everything and leaving in 2 days. Nothing, except I have a wife and two kids, that makes for a lot of preparations. But Katie was cool and I left. I’ll spare you most of the traveling details, because I had recently gotten my IPhone, the first one, and was very into blogging from it at the time. So you can go back if you’d like.
I had a lot of down time with this wedding which was a nice opportunity to get focused and clear about what, how, and where I was going to shoot. They had their wedding at the botanical gardens which made for some tricky and also cool shadows, with the sun coming down through the leaves. Instead of fighting it (which I recommend never doing) I just went with it (which is what I recommend doing), and ended up with a few of my favorite pics from the entire wedding.
After the wedding we headed to St. Pete cove or that’s what I’m going to call it. I happened to find it after wandering around the day before. It is this big beautiful park next to the ocean with all these huge sail boats. The dock with the sail boats was locked, but I knew I'd get in there somehow. I have this unwavering confidence that I can get into places I'm not really supposed to be. Anyways, once I found an old man who was hesitant but willing, Heidi and I hopped on the dock and just started...shooting. I love the energy when you’re about to take what has to be amazing pictures in a place you’ve never been. The pressure’s on to find the right spot, right lighting, right backdrop, in the right amount of time. You don’t want the bride getting bored, you don’t want the old man to get mad you’re taking too long, so you just have to act fast, and you do it. I think it’s becomes instinct at that point. You really gotta stop thinking and just feel it out. Man, that’s what the entire Paris wedding was, but that’s another story.
Next…Starbucks of course. I mean I think that was almost as important to Kevin and Heidi as getting the sailboat shots. The reception (down the hall), was just a huge party to say the least. I had a lot of fun watching everyone, arms around each other, singing Journey songs into the night.
Overall, it was perfect. The traveling, the hotel, the area. St. Pete is one of my favorite places I have ever been. Plus, I got to have breakfast with my good friend Taira a couple times, which really, was just the bees knees.

ps, yes they're holding their zippers open for me in that 2nd picture =)