I’ve just had a prospective client ask to see 5 of my favorite images. I generally post some of my favorite work on the front page slideshow or on this blog, so if I were to pick out 5, they would be images he’s already seen – so I decided to go with 5 of my favorite images from my last wedding. I think I’l narrate them a bit, and also I might do this on a regular basis. It’s a pretty interesting idea.

It’s always an interesting challenge to creatively shoot the bride’s dress and shoes – there are so many parameters and so much going on during the getting ready – there’s makeup flying around, bridesmaids and maids of honor getting things done and of course the bride. It’s always fun to find a nice quiet moment to shoot the details. This was shot outside the bride’s hotel room, while I was waiting for her to get halfway into the dress. On the right, sometimes a great image (in my opinion) is not defined by how much is lighting the scene, but sometimes areas of dark as well. This was shot by lovely, soft window light and a little kiss of light from inside the room.
  
I love images that hold emotion. It’s important to stay attuned to the events of the day as they unfold – in this image, the coordinator tries to help the bridesmaid (the groom’s sister) as she reads a poem written for the bride by the groom. It was beautiful. In the background, the makeup artist holds the emotional bride’s hand as she applies finishing touches.

It’s important that images tell a story. Each image is a building block of the story of the day. In this frame, the groom’s other sister waits for the right moment to present the bride with a little gift from Tiffany’s from the groom. It’s all about the anticipation. On the right, the couple is bathed with light from a single spotlight in the reception hall. It’s always lovely to see the connection between the couple. There’s nobody in the world but the two of them at that moment.

I’ve been away from my blog for quite a while now and I’m going to try to post more often. Now that I’m back at it, it’s only fitting that I post about something near and dear to my heart – food! I shot a three day wedding in Dallas recently and my amazing clients K&D picked up the tab for my stay at the W hotel downtown. This was not such a good idea, because my favorite restaurant in the whole world is in that hotel! Craft – Dallas. For a foodie like me this is like dying and going to heaven. I got to eat brunch, breakfast, lunch and dinner there for 4 days. I tried not to repeat a meal so I really went through their menu. One of the most amazing things I had there, which was a first for me, was the Pork Belly. Amazing. I got to sneak in a few images of the restaurant on a couple of trips. Enjoy! And watch for more posts coming soon.

I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of months – I was invited to beta test the latest incarnation of Adobe’s ubiquitous Photoshop. I started using Photoshop back in version 2, when there were no layers and pretty much everything worth doing required an intimate knowledge of layers or later on, Kai’s Power Tools and other great plugins. I wish I could say I was selected to test CS5 because of some fantastic quality of mine, but I think I just won a crapshoot! It’s been a great experience, except for the constant downloading of new builds and retesting reported bugs to make sure they’re gone. I’ve done quite a lot of work using it lately, and it’s always been rock solid and only a little quirky at the beginning. Below is a quick before and after of a wooded area I shot recently – I used a few familiar tools as well as a couple of brand new groundbreaking tools, which I cannot name, confirm or deny (Seriously! It’s in the contract!)

Basically, there isn’t anything that couldn’t be done with an older version, but now I can do these things SIGNIFICANTLY faster, more efficiently and more accurately than ever before. It’s pretty amazing! I think it’s definitely worth the upgrade. Less time editing = more time shooting – yay!.

This past weekend, I participated in a lovely small bridal show at the Hilton Americas in Downtown Houston. It was a really great experience, and it was so much fun to show my work and meet so many brides! I got lots of great positive feedback, and it was so worth the behind the scenes work of getting everything ready really early in the morning! Thanks to all who come to say hi at my booth! It was really nice to meet and speak with everyone. I was really excited to get to show off lots of the things I’ve been working so hard on. I took photo guest books, of course flush mount albums, my matted image portfolios, my stunning Vision Art books, canvas prints and lots of other great samples! One of the funniest things that happened was there were two brides in front of me at the same time who had the same date – I tried to start a bidding war!

My friend Vivian runs The Event House, a well known destination for brides in Houston before their wedding – she’s an amazing wedding coordinator and invitation designer. Not too long ago, I got to shoot some images at her beautiful studio of some of her wedding & event invitations – check them out!

I’m so so so excited right now! A couple of months ago, I decided to experiment with album cover materials, and I went to a few unorthodox places and ordered different materials – a plastics company, a glasscutter and a couple of others – and I had my favorite album company – Albums Innova – help to bind them into covers for my new sample books. The results completely blew me (and everyone who has seen them) away! Well, as I type this, B&G – whose wedding I shot a couple of months ago, are on their way into Houston from Dallas for the weekend and they’re stopping by. They have no idea I’ve made this kickass sample with images from their wedding, and I can’t wait to show them! They’re also my first clients to let me pick the images for their album and run with the design, which is the model I’m working towards using from now on. Check out a few images of this new sample book!

I’m all excited, because today I finalized my new business card design. The fancy new paper is on it’s way, and everything is a go. I think i’m going to try to shoot the process of making my new cards, and I’ll post that too. One of my favorites is called Attack Duck – you can’t miss it. It’s so very interesting having this whole array of old cards – it’s so cool when a new prospect comes in clutching a 3 year old card. And I know it’s an old one because I keep changing them.

In the meantime, check out my past in business cards I’ll post the new ones in a separate post as soon as they’re ready.

A few weeks ago, I bought a 35mm Canon film camera from a lovely gentleman by the name of Kinjo, who was looking for a good home for his old camera. It certainly has found one! It’s an older EOS Elan 7E with Eye Focus, which means that it focuses wherever I look in the viewfinder  - amazing technology for the 80s!  I kind of wish I had that in my current camera. No idea why it was discontinued. Every time I tell a photog buddy I bought a film camera, they immediately ask “Why!??”

I have a couple of reasons – I’ve always heard about this unique inimitable look that film has, and I wanted to try it out and see how it came out, not with a view to switching to film, but shooting a few special frames every now and again. Also, since I fly so much now, and I often see great images out of the plane window that I’m not generally permitted to shoot with a digital camera (electronic device etc etc).

So far, the freakiest things about shooting film are: I keep looking on the back of the camera after I make an exposure, and of course I can’t see anything, and then it takes a while for me to get the film developed, to finally see the images – and when I finally do get the images, I can’t see the settings to figure out what I was doing when I captured each image. I think I read that Ansel Adams used a notebook, but I’m not sure I have that kind of patience. Plus, since I’ll be shooting around a roll of film a month, I can actually remember settings for 36-odd exposures.

So, the images below are – a shot from a reception, a few of my plane window images, and a couple of “on the road” images that I pulled over and shot on my way back from Austin one day. I think I’ll be shooting some more film – AZPhoto Lab did a great job processing it. So far, I’ve only shot black and white film, but I might get my hands on some color film in the future…

Also, I realized that for a wedding photographer, I have an awful lot of non-wedding blog posts, so I double posted today – there’s a lovely wedding right after this, and another coming shortly!
P.S. The flight images were from a flight to Dallas to shoot F&G’s session. I’ll post them after the wedding – they rocked!

Today’s the anniversary of Hurricane Ike 9/13/2008. Jumping right in, B went to the hospital – she was on the disaster preparedness team, and I stayed here to guard my fortress. I bought as much food as I possibly could from the grocery store, fighting through all the madness. Lots of water, a few roasted chickens, bread, canned goods, sodas, things I thought would survive the worst, and in a worst case scenario, not need much preparation. I filled the bathtubs with water, all except one, and I put a matress beside the empty tub to hide in and cover up with. I took Y to Austin a few days before as it was supposed to be out of the path of the hurricane. I remember packing up all my equipment in this huge Pelican case I have that’s waterproof, and has a pressure valve, and some say is bombproof. Then I sat here and waited, and waited and waited. I went to bed around ten pm, and not much had happened other than a stiff breeze. Around 11pm the electricity went out, but I was more than prepared for that – about 5 flashlights and quite a few candles. I had 2 fully charged laptops to watch movies on, a couple of charged ipods and my phone, and a good book to read by candlelight.

I slept through the ENTIRE THING. I woke up in the morning, and thank God, everything was ok at my house with the exception of my poor fallen tree. I had a wedding that was postponed by a couple of weeks because of the hurricane. We were only without power for about 36 hours, which is *much* better than most people. I never opened the fridge, so the food was all fine. I drove around while there was no power and took a few photos of the damage around town – here are some images below.

Some of you may recognize Angie from the pictures – she’s assisted me at a few weddings, our kids have played together, and now it’s time for her to be on the other side! It was a really fun wedding, it was great to meet her husband Patrick for the first time, as he lives in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately (for me), after the wedding, she’s moving out there to be with him. If it was anyone else moving, I would say great! – less traffic in Houston, but Mrs. Angelia Wilson will be missed.
Patrick and Angie had the DJ play a Michael Jackson tribute – it was awesome, but a little hard to focus on shooting. I’m pretty sure I busted a move in there a couple of times Everyone had a fantastic time, even the ceremony was standing room only, and yes – that IS a prom picture of the happy couple, 20 or so years ago!