Still slowly catching up. With my wedding in 3 weeks, it's been tough to find time to blog. Here is the Madden Family from our shoot back in July at the Roswell Mill. It's always fun talking with new parents to see how it's going because you can often get very different experiences... The Maddens are lucky in that they have been blessed with a very happy baby and have been loving every minute of parenthood.
Family number two of our Super Sunday Photo Block (sounds like a radio show, right?) was the Sullivans. We've seen them on the APG blog before but the occasion today was Elena's two-year photos. She is such a cutie and was definitely taught the word "cheeeeeese" as can be seen in this first photo. She was saying it even before I started snapping photos, so you could tell Mommy and Daddy prepped her well.
Throwing stones with Mommy.
Family photos are a fun reason to get outside and take pictures. When the weather's nice, you can't beat fun family time at a beautiful location. This is why I decided to schedule four families in a day at the Roswell Mill Park in Roswell, GA. It worked out great for everyone. The families ended up with pretty photos and a fun afternoon while I was happy to save a little gas money on an all-in-one photo day. First up is Addie (and Krista) Bleisath. I put Krista in parenthesis because this was supposed to be something of a model shoot for the gorgeous young Addie. Apparently Addie has no problem hamming it up and striking a pose at home with Mommy and Daddy, but becomes very shy when around outsiders. Needless to say, the shoot ended up with lots of Mommy photos as well. We eventually coaxed a few smiles out of her and ended up with some great photos. She definitely has a future career as a model as long as she can get rid of the pre-shoot jitters. :)
A few Saturdays ago, I had the pleasure of taking photos of one of the more serious babies I know. The truth is that she's a very happy and fun child, but when a camera comes around she's all business. My take on it is that when you photograph young ones, you take them out of their element- whether that be changing clothes, mom and dad yelling from a distance to get your attention, or it could be travelling to a place they've never been. What I found with Isabella was that as soon as we stepped onto Agnes Scott's campus in Decatur, she was just too curious about her surroundings to think about smiling. She wanted to play with the grass or put things in her mouth to take it all in. Once she got comfortable we got some smiles and a good bit of laughter as well. You'll see a mix of both here.
With wedding planning, job searching, potential photography business development, photography shoots, a roommate moving out, Greg's studio moving in, vacations, and writing bass parts for an upcoming Clap for Daylight EP- I've fallen a little behind on blogging. I'm lucky that one or two of them were basically written for me. There are about 5 or so shoots in the past 6 months that I completely missed. This weekend CFD will be in the studio but it looks like my calendar next week is more open than usual.
Expect some catch-up posts from me next week, but for now I leave you with a pic from Saturday in Florida.
Apparently May is the month of Alex the Photo Guy features. Today, I found out that 4 of my photos are featured in a 2-page spread on Heidi "Etsy Lady" Paruta in the new Atlanta magazine, Common Creativ. Click here and take a look at this amazing new magazine geared toward the Atlanta creative scene. They cover everything from photography to body art. Pay particularly close attention to pages 22 & 23 in the print edition and 24 & 25 in the electronic version for the APG photos seen here!
From my post a couple of weeks back, you saw the men in uniform that performed the Saber Arch down the aisle for Marisa and Andy. Now the full post with the rest of the photos. Keri and had a wonderful time helping share in the Geberts' big day and also give a big thanks to the Cobb Galleria Center and St. Joseph's Catholic Church for being so helpful with all of the photography needs.
And the best pic from the church...
Best cake cutting tool ever.
Good thing I've got Fstoppers.com on my RSS reader or I would have never seen it! Alex the Photo Guy is featured TODAY on their weekly section "The Week’s Best Photo/Video Related Stories." They seemed to like Keri and my Save the Date and Behind the Scenes posts. Here's a screen shot of what they published!
Fstoppers posts videos everyday of amazing photo shoots, time-lapse videos, behind the scenes, and even profiles photographers with their own produtions. I read it everyday because I know I will always find something interesting there.
Use the ScanLife (or similar) app. Then of course, add it as a bookmark. You're gonna want to come here often.
For the last two years I have volunteered as The Nature Conservancy's official photographer for their Hoochie fundraising event. In case you aren't familiar with TNC, you can learn more here. TNC is a conservation organization that, since its founding in 1951, has protected more than 119 million acres of land, 5,000 miles of rivers, and operates more than 100 marine conservation projects globally.
Our dear friend, Erin Vilines, is the event coordinator for the Hoochie and has pulled off an absolutely fabulous party two years in a row in the heart of Buckhead. Despite this year's toretial thunderstorm, the plans still went perfectly. In fact, the party was such a success that people didn't even notice the rain... until they had to get to their car.
Steve Hein with the Birds of Prey show was conducting hands down the best photobombs I've ever seen with this live bald eagle.
...and this was the moment I considered taking fewer photos with my flash.
One of the guests of honor was Chuck Leavell. Chuck is co-founder of The Mother Nature Network, an environmental news and information website that launched in January 2009. He is also most famous for playing keyboard with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and the Allman Brothers. He wasn't there to play, but was gracious enough to kick the night off with a blues riff and the Bradley Cole Smith Band.
To finish off, I cannot begin to tell you how amazing locally grown fresh hot pralines are. Possibly the best thing I've ever eaten.
Most of my wedding previews don't look like this one, but I will say the Saber Arch at Marisa and Andy Gebert's wedding was pretty darn cool. I got an email from Marisa today saying that they moved out to Oklahoma where Andy is stationed just a week after the honeymoon. These men below in uniform represent all the branches of the military and I know we can't thank them enough for serving.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to shoot my friend Ryan's wedding. It was the largest wedding I've shot so far with over 300 people in attendance. We had a great time and I'm really excited for them and their new life together. I'm also excited to see the final product of video Atlanta Cinematic was filming of the ceremony and reception. With some of the footage I saw at the reception, I can only imagine it'll end up being a full-length motion picture. Without further ado, I'll get into the pictures beginning with the bridal bouquet assembled with family brooches from both sides.
No- seriously... PILLOW FIGHT! The International Pillow Fight Day was this Saturday at Freedom Park. I have been wanting to go for the past few years- not to fight- just to take pictures. Keri and I were tipped off by our friend David so rode our bikes there and had an awesome time. I was hit by copious amounts of pillows of all sizes even though I was unarmed. I could do nothing but cry... and keep taking pictures. I mean really- if you opened your eyes and saw this, how would you react?
The King of Pops showed up too.
If you want to see more- just click here!
Keri and I have received an awesome response to our Save the Date. People have been asking me how we did it, so I figured I'd post about it. It was incredibly simple for those that have not seen a stop-motion video before. First off- there was no video footage whatsoever. The entire thing was completed using still photos. All one really needs is a camera.
For the footage of Keri and I, we had our good friend Curt come over with some props to snap the shots and help with art direction. I set up a black backdrop in the living room for our "studio." Then we set my camera on a tripod so we knew it would be in the same spot the entire time. I also had a wireless flash set up to light the entire scene (detailed info for the photo nerds below). That's all it was. Just lots of pictures in a row like a flip-book. If I were to do it again, I would have done it outside because we could only snap photos as fast as the flash could recycle. Otherwise, we could have had it look a little smoother. In the end, we walked away with 1,500 photos. I cut it down to about 1,000 for the final version (took out extra takes).
You'll see below here a shot without any editing but with the nerdy info. You can see the black cloth in the background.
For most of the shots, they're more zoomed in so I didn't have to do much in post-production. For the full length shots (the park scene), I had to take them into photoshop and black out the sides as seen here. I also added the hearts for fun.
For the chalkboard scenes I set up a chalkboard from my kitchen (Ikea) on an easel outside in the shade. I made sure to tape everything down so it didn't move from frame to frame. I also taped down my tripod for the camera. I made sure to position the camera close enough to where I didn't see the edges of the chalkboard (less work to do in post). Those scenes were really simple too. All I did was take a picture, have Keri draw one letter, take a picture, another letter, and so on. The lighting stayed mostly constant but with the outdoor light, the white balance changed a bit because of clouds and sun.
All in all it took about four hours for the live action scenes, 2 hours for the chalk scenes, and about 6 hours of post production in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Not a bad weekend project and the outcome was perfect. Feel free to leave comments below if you have additional questions! I'm off today at 3 to take pictures of International Pillowfight Day at Freedom Park.Expect pictures on the blog!
Here is something fun that Keri and I just couldn't wait to show you. It's the Save the Date video for our wedding! Unfortunately, we cannot invite everyone who reads the blog. However, we did want to share the video. We hope you like it!
This week and next week I'll have lots of photos for the blog! I've been busy getting my backlog of shots from the past month edited and uploaded to the client site. We have an engagement session, a wedding, portraits, and another fun surprise I'm sure you'll get a kick out of.
Saturday night I made the long trek up to Marietta (30 min) to stay the night with my good friend Curt. We had plans to go mountain biking up there in the morning and I had no real plans that evening, so we decided to grill out and enjoy the amazing weather. As it just so happens, all of the food we prepared was homemade: homemade burgers, homemade buns, homemade fries, and homebrew.
After dinner, we packed our photo gear to check out the Super Moon. It pretty much looked like a normal full moon, but it was bright enough out to throw a football. After a few close-up shots of the moon (they're actually on Curt's camera, so I don't have them for ya!), Curt discovered how easy light-painting can be with a cell phone. Well... easy in that you can physically do it. Making shapes and writing mirror-image messages proved a little tricky. Here's what we came up with at a 30 second exposure setting on a tripod. None are perfect, but we had a good time!
The last one here is a composite of 4 pictures of our outlines. Curt's idea. The ones on one leg were tough to hold for 30 seconds...
For all of the brides-to-be out there worried about rain on your wedding day, I present the following photo taken on a rainy Saturday this past weekend at the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church. I'll have more of these photos in a few weeks but when I took this shot of Melissa, I knew it would be my teaser photo for the blog. Let me know what you think!
We kept wondering why the train stations kept saying "Firenze" and not "Florence." I can honestly say Keri and I gave Italian the old [community] college try before hopping on a plane overseas. We found about 8 hours of Italian on CDs and listened to them all in about 2 months. I knew 8 hours of listening in the car wouldn't get me to conversational Italian, but I thought it would at least cover "why the hell isn't Florence on the map? Should we ask someone in what city The David is located? We eventually figured it out... and arrived in the artist's city.
To be honest, we were expecting something different. We thought Rome was going to be a big, busy, bustling city; Florence would be a small, artsy city easy to get around; and Sienna would be just a big neighborhood town. We were right about Rome and Sienna, but we overestimated the quaintness of Florence. We're not saying we didn't like Florence, because we did experience some amazing art, stayed in a beautiful former convent, and Keri met "Bernini"- her new baby lamb leather jacket. Florence just seemed full of crazy mopeds, long lines for museums, and a few unfriendly waiters.
I'll start the photo series with our first moment of peace from the trip. Between the 5 missed standby flights to Italy, going to Germany first, getting acclimated in Venice, and the sightseeing in Cinque Terre, we began Florence with our first moment of downtime- laundry day. Because Keri and I flew standby, we had to pack roughly 3 weeks of clothes in a "carry-on and one personal item." Florence was about all our wardrobe could handle without offending the natives. We settled into the Setti Santi Hostile (Seven Saints)- a former Catholic Convent- for a few hours of laundry, napping, and relaxation. The window you see immediately below opened to an olive orchard.
The Ponte Vecchio and a close-up of the stilts supporting the retail shops that open to the inside of the bridge.
A random opera singer on the street.
And onto the market day 2.
This woman freehand embroiders fabric in about 20 seconds. Pretty amazing to watch.
And of course, I had to include pictures of Bernini. The coat that came to Keri by way of an Italian man that knows Keri's style and size by just one look at her. No joke. It was pretty amazing.
Part II on the way...
On the first day of the year with perfect weather, Keri and I decided to have a picnic prior to the Perry photo shoot at Piedmont Park. I figured she and I could get there and just hang out for a bit basking the warm pre-spring sunlight. We had a great relaxing time... then Molly called and informed me that she had chosen Centennial Park for the shoot, not Piedmont. Entirely my fault, because I realized she did tell me correctly. It's just when she was talking about the playground and great skyline views, I envisioned the same thing... at a different spot. Oops! But the weather was amazing, so we had plenty of time to get all of these fun shots in. By far my favs were at the fountain below.
