I’m going to try something slightly different with my blog. Alongside wedding previews and the session availability, I am going to try doing photo break downs and different conditions/types of locations I like to shoot. For my first attempt at this I give you: Fog.
It’s pretty much without any merit to pinpoint an exact time that I first really enjoyed fog or even the first time I tried to capture the mood of fog in a scene. This cold and wet weather we’ve been experiencing in my area, as of late, has proved to create some fantastic fog; naturally, I’ve been yearning to shoot something in said fog. I ran out with my tripod, camera, and phone (for a remote trigger) one foggy morning and shot a few photos around my neighborhood. These aren’t exactly what I wanted to shoot but they were something and they’ll do for the sake of showing you guys what I mean.
The mood that fog pervades can be a few things along one continuum. It can be gloomy or mysterious, dark or stark bright and variants in between. I was aiming around the gloomy and dark aspects. For this you want to expose for the highlights in the photo, which can be very challenging as fog will throw off your camera’s metering so you sort of have to just take a few test shots to dial it in. With the shot of my neighbors house I was very focused on composition and depth of field. If this was crooked, it wouldn’t work. If the house filled the frame, the fog and trees would lose all power. And lastly, if the house was tac sharp and the trees were super blurry that wouldn’t work either, it’d be so distracting.
The self-portraits aren’t anything too special, I just wanted a person in the frame for the subject of a few. I did try tilting my head upward more than anything so as to fill in the shadows around my eyes and mouth area.
I hope you all enjoyed my little blurb about this set, I’ll be back with a few other ideas I have in store such as: Snow and Tilt Shift Lens.
This September I got to shoot a wedding in Wilmington, North Carolina and it was a great experience! The reception was at Oceanic Restaurant on Wrightsville Beach, it was a beautiful location to say the least! The sun was perfect for some golden backlit images as you will see in the shot of the bride and her bridesmaids on the pier. Honestly the area reminded me of Florida a lot, with its high temperature and humidity and scenery including palm trees and of course the beaches. The bride’s dress was a beautiful Allure dress and the groom’s cream vest/blue window pane suit complimented it all so well. Some of the photos were taken on the pier behind The Oceanic and others were at the gorgeous New Hanover Arboretum. Enjoy this 9 photo preview of the wedding photos!
After another inexcusable lull in my posting here we are again with a Wedding preview. This wedding was from a couple weeks ago and took place in Cleveland, OH. The venue was the beautiful Ariel International Center and the wedding party was nothing short of gorgeous! It was a very sunny and enjoyable day riding around Cleveland in the Hummer Limo provide by I Dream Limo Services. The groom, Blake, wore a sharp navy blue suit, argyle-like patterned gray bow tie, and a paisley pocket square. Yuliya wore a fabulous Mori Lee by Madeline Gardener mermaid gown with the perfect complimentary belt and ravishing gold dress sandals by Vince Camuto.
I’ll leave it at that for now, I hope everyone enjoys this preview. I look forward to everyones feedback when I add an full album of this wedding in the “Weddings” tab. If you are interested in a FREE quote please send me a message via the form on the “Contact”. :)
Here it is! I made a post last week about a video I shot back in March that I was finally piecing together. The video is my answer to 14 of the 23 questions that were part of a questionnaire I found on Pinterest that Wedding Party App posted. The reason I omitted a response to 9 of the questions was simply because they would require a more tailored answer, so if you want those or any other questions I didn’t answer drop me a line. I can be reached by filling out the Contact form found right here on my website. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoy the video.
This post has been long overdue, I have something worth announcing that I initially began working on back in March; a new video! My friend Levi, who has an extensive videography skill set and collection of proper equipment, filmed a video idea that I had. The video is based around this Pinterest post that I found entitled “Questions to Ask My Wedding Photographer” wherein I wanted to answer as many questions I could without getting into specifics that only make sense on a wedding-to-wedding basis due to differing circumstances and details. After shooting two angles and the audio, it was shelved because there was some B-roll I wanted to interject and it was simply not getting shot. So I went back over to Levi’s earlier this week and used his slider to get some additional footage to spice up the video. I’m hoping to have this go live by the weekend, hopefully this post will hold over any people who actually read my blog. (I know there are a few of you, and I am grateful.) In the meantime, check out a couple BTS shots from the filming. (pictured is my friend Josh lending a hand with the slate and Robert monitoring audio; Levi was taking this shot on his stills camera. The other shots are a look at my setup for the slider shot.)
Well, as you may assume right off the bat, there is a level of subjectiveness (yes, that’s a real word. haha.) to which one is “better” but there are hard facts to keep in mind when figuring out when you’d like to schedule your session. So I’m going to try being as comprehensive and helpful as possible in the post.
Spring
First thing that I think to compare would be the color palette. In the spring time you have bright colors more along the lines of pink, green, and purple along with clean whites. So if that appeals to you that could outweigh all other points. Along this you, the client, would want to consider wardrobe. Complimentary colors and fabrics will really make the photos standout from the look of autumn photos. Whites in cotton and linen look so nice in the spring.
Weather is a huge factor for both seasons. From my experience of primarily shooting in the Northeastern area of the United States it’s hard to say when winter is going to finally relinquish out sunshine and give us the beautiful days. Spring time tends to be on the rainy side (“April showers bring May flowers.”) but that also means a lot of overcast light which is absolutely wonderful to work with from a photographers standpoint.
Speaking of light, coming out of the winter the day light goes on further into the evening as the season progresses which can mean a more convenient time to schedule a session for all those with tricky work schedules.
Autumn
If you are a bigger fan of the brown, yellow, and orange color palette, Autumn is for you! The piles of leaves really paint the backdrop and setting for Autumn portraits. Wardrobe for the Autumn usually consists of wool, cotton, tweed, and denim in more muted forms like neutrals, burgundy, and deep green.
Again, dovetailing into weather, you’ll most likely favor the aforementioned heavy materials because it does start cooling off in the Autumn. I love cardigans and blazer so I think Autumn is great, maybe you don’t though. Needless to say, these are realities that could sway your decision.
Being that Autumn mirrors Spring in the sense that the Earth’s tilt is away from the Sun as the season goes, it gets dark earlier and earlier. There are a lot of lovely factors of Autumn but you may just not have the schedule to book a session.
Well, that concludes my comparison of the two seasons Spring and Autumn. No matter what your favorite is, there are positives of both! Drop me a line and we can book your session for this coming Autumn or Spring 2017 today! You can use the Contact form on my site, it takes only seconds to fill out!
As was mentioned in the previous post, I have shot quite a few weddings recently. I wanted to make a brief little post wherein I share a few photos from the weddings I shot in Pittsburgh, Campton, Chardon, and Elmira. It was truly an honor being a part of all these big days, I hope that my perspective is enjoyed. Also I wanted to let everyone know I have a new set up in my Weddings section. This wedding was incredible and I really enjoyed shooting it. We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art and I loved using the grounds as the backdrop for this fantastic wedding party. Enjoy!
I have been jam packed with shoots and the busyness is still not over, what more is a northern photographer expect out of spring time finally arriving. This post will be more or less and update and then I plan on getting back in the swing of posting about shoots as they go and some more fun supplementary content (BTS stuff, tutorials, projects, etc.)
So I shot 5 weddings in 4 weekends just recently, I’ve been in 5 different states, and met a whole lot of new faces. My most recent two weddings were back to back one in Chardon, OH (Saturday) and the other in Elmira, NY (Sunday). It was an exhausting yet incredible experience. I loved the attire, bridal parties, and locations I was privileged to work with. Rewinding a week from that, I shot went down to Cincinnati to hang out with friends, then to Kentucky for an incredible mountain wedding, and then to Gallipolis for a senior portrait session on my way back up north. The week before that was a fun wedding in Pittsburgh. And before that was the Cleveland wedding that I featured in my post wherein I reviewed my newest lens. Ahead of me lays a weekend of shoots and a wedding in Philadelphia to follow the next week. So I’ve been staying busy to say the least. Don’t hesitate to e-mail me though, because there is still availability throughout the summer, fall, and definitely in the winter!
I have included another travel video from my venture to Kentucky, I hope you enjoy the random clips I tried string together in some sort of narrative! Stay tuned for more regular postings!
My last post was the unboxing of my new wide angle lens. I ended the video by saying that I was shooting a wedding that weekend, and I’d be posting a review with images that I captured using the lens. I hope you enjoy the video where I not only go over 9 images, but I explain a little bit about how I captured each one and what the situations were like in real life. Comment on the video what your favorite shot was or any questions you have. Your question could be a whole new topic or about this particular piece of equipment.
I’ve been in the market for a wide angle lens for quite sometime, but I hadn’t been able to commit to one. I shoot all prime lenses so the idea of something like the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 seemed like an interesting possibility. The versatility was attractive, but I wasn’t completely sold on having something at the 2.8 mark rather than below 2.0 like my 50mm and 85mm. So then I began looking at a few wide angle primes like the 24mm f/2.8 and the 35mm f/2 but wasn’t completely in love. I use pixel peeper to really get an idea of the practical use of lenses and I started really taking note when I came across the 28mm f/1.8. It seemed like people were getting sharp photos in tight, low light situations; perfect for receptions and group shots. So I began looking around for one online and scooped this factory refurb from Canon’s online store and it came in 3 days. I made a little unboxing video where I give some first impressions and additional thoughts on the lens. You can check it out below.
