Happy Thanksgiving!!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and bring you up to speed on our apparent absence from our blog lately. I wish I had a really cool excuse like we've been backpacking across Europe or diving in Fiji or something, but unfortunately our excuse is the usual mundanaity (is that even a word?!) of life in central Indiana. Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing...in fact it's been keeping us quite busy!!

We're finally seeing our way through the end of 'wedding season'. Only two more left in '06. We're really looking forward to these last two, but at the same time it feels so freakin' nice to have a Saturday off!! It was odd, though; last Saturday was our first off since somewhere back in early summer. Kel and I kept looking at each other and asking Are you sure we don't have a wedding today?!

We've been meeting with some great couples for 2007 weddings, and dates are starting to fill up! I don't mean that to sound like pressure if you're a couple looking for a photographer, but...oh who I am I kidding, of course it is! ;-) Seriously though, the prime dates in 07 are starting to fill!

In other news, Molly's two now. Holy cow time flies!! Here's one of her two-year photos...


Kel and I were talking today after the usual turkey gluttony, and remembering back to when she was born. After a long labor, Molly was tired and had trouble clearing the amniotic fluid from her lungs. Everything about that first night has kind of a haze over it now in my mind from the exhaustion and stress, so it's actually a little surreal to think that she almost didn't make it through her first night. She spent a week in the NICU, and Kelly and I had our Thanksgiving dinner in the hospital cafeteria. Now it's two years later and she's in the 98th percentile for height and the 50th for weight, and is as healthy and precocious as any preschooler (holy hell, that's scary in itself!!) I've seen. She had a great birthday--Kel made her a duck-shaped cake and she had a blast opening all her presents (already can't wait until Christmas!).

In other Whiteshark news, we're now offering photo viewing and print sales of events through our main website. Be sure to check it out! :) We're also offering all new options for albums in 2007, so look for more to come on that!

WHEW, I think that just about brings everything up to speed. I think. It's been a long day of cooking and eating and watching Curious George (Molly just has to watch George at least three times a day). I'm beat. But I'm installing album creation software on the computer, so I kind of want to play around with that a bit yet too.

Jessica & John...

Oh my, what a wedding! We just delivered their album last night, so we got to remind ourselves of just how much fun this day was. Their reception was one of the biggest all-out parties we've been to. There was dancing, there was laughing, there was pantsless dancing, there was more laughing! Great couple, great time, that's all I've got to say!

Teresa & Gary...

Two of the absolute nicest people you could ever want to meet. We had such a fun time at their wedding! Funny thing is...we didn't realize until we were at the wedding that they live just down the street from us in the next subdivision over!

Jamie & Matt...

You know, sometimes I wonder if I sound like a broken record when I keep posting 'great wedding'. Naaaaahhhhh!! Once again, we had a blast and got some fantastic photos. This was our second trip to this venue, and we love shooting there. Jamie & Matt had originally planned for this wedding to be outside, but they did a great job of rolling with the punches when it poured for pretty much the entire day. The wedding was inside and went off without a hitch!

Am I a Geek?

I think I can safely say that the answer to that is a resounding YES!! So we've been kicking around the idea of upgrading our main computer system in preparation for the next generation of Windows coming out (I've been running Vista RC-1 on my laptop for a few weeks now). Fry's had a good sale, and we decided to jump on it. So I'm talking with the salesguy, and he's hounding me and hounding me about the extended warranty program, and how it protects against this and that and it's really a great deal. I told him no at least three times. He actually started getting kind of pissy with me because I wasn't going to "take advantage of this great deal". Finally I told him, "Look, in two hours I'll have voided pretty much every warranty this thing has. I'm going to take it home, change out the power supply, add two more hard drives to it, change the video card, repartition the C:\ drive, and install a beta-level operating system." His response, "oh." It's like look, skippy, I'm in IT, I know what the heck I'm doing, and I know the guts of a computer probably as well as you do.

I love talking with other computer guys, whether I'm buying a system or component or just out shooting the bull, but what bugs the snot out of me more than anything is when someone won't take no for an answer. Telemarketers are another example. I know they're just doing a job, and I can respect that; everybody's got to earn a living. So I don't get rude or angry with them. As soon as I answer the phone and I realize it's a telemarketer, I just ask them to hang on a second, and put the phone down...for five or ten minutes. They get their bonus for keeping a caller for umpteen minutes, and I don't have to listen to them. When I hear the wa-wa-wa of the busy signal when the line goes dead, I hang it up. :-)

Kelly & Brandon...

Finally getting dug out of backlog of work I've had built up, and am loving getting back into looking through and editing photos again. Classes have been sapping my time more than I thought they would in recent days; have you ever spent two and a half hours on five lines of php code??!! Yeah that's no fun.

Anyway, back to the photos!! This is Kelly and Brandon; they are such a great couple, and we had a great time at their wedding! I just got done ordering their album, and can't wait to show them all their photos!

Am I a Workaholic??

So today I'm sitting at the computer pretty much all day, feeling all my muscles tighting up because Tuesday night I played three matches of soccer (after a two week layoff from that salmonella), and I realized I think I have a problem. I don't know how to relax anymore. A typical day has me up around 6:30 or so, grabbing a quick bowl of cereal, and then usually right into either photo editing or studying by 7:00 or 7:15 at the latest. In the past two days, I've processed about 4000 (yes, four thousand) photos (the processing process consists of opening the photo, adjusting the white balance, exposure, contrast and color levels, then sending it to a process batch). Once those photos were done processing, I went through and did the editing run on all of them. All 4000 photos into another software system; correcting flaws, converting to black and white, etc., on all 4000 photos one-by-one. I also coded a JAVA project, a PHP project, and completed a systems design project.

Now that's all great, and I for one think I deserve a bit of a break. (Oh, I forgot to mention that I vacuumed the whole house, mopped the kitchen and foyer, scrubbed the rugs downstairs, and did four loads of laundry.) The problem is that I really don't know how to relax. I'll sit down on the couch and say to myself, okay, you're not getting up until you've sat here and watched this entire soccer match and relaxed for at least an hour or two. Ten minutes later I'm up to get one of my textbooks or heading back into the den to work on more photos. ARGH!!!!! Some people are too lazy; I'm too un-lazy! What in the world do I need to do???

Some Portraits...

I don't know how, but amidst the chaos of wedding season, we do actually find time to shoot other stuff! :) This is Whitney and Courtney; they hadn't had photos taken together since they were kids.

Michelle & Adam...

As promised, I got caught up on my class projects this afternoon and took a break just long enough to get some more Tylenol and some Tang (nothin' better than Tang when you're sick!), then it was straight back to the computer for photo processing. These shots are from Michelle and Adam's wedding, which was weekend-before-last. As always, we had a great time!! :-)

The 5-second, 103* Update...

Just wanted to let all our faithful readers (all four of you...har-har-har) know that Kel and I haven't dropped off the face of the earth or forgotten that we've got a blog to run. We've just been swamped both behind the camera and away from the camera. We've shot three weddings in the past week and a half, and have been trying to keep up with the processing of images and ordering of prints, we've had a sick kiddie, and then a sick Johnny. Yup, Kel got to take charge and pretty much be the primary shooter at our past wedding, as I was sporting a shiny red face from my 103* salmonella-induced fever. She did a smashing job, and we still got all our usual killer shots (I used the monopod to help hold the camera (and myself) up), and I hope to have the images processed in the next several days.

Other pressing concerns continue to be my classes. Learning six new programming languages this semester, so trying to keep all that straight in my head is like trying to untangle the mess of wires behind our TV! I've got a ton of projects due in the next two days, so as soon as those are done I'm back at the photo processing.

Oh yeah, can't forget about hockey season rapidly approaching! With my fever slowly dropping down below 100*, I drove to the north side today to do the player headshots for the Ice and do a promo shot with a bunch of Shriners / former hockey players. Cool stuff! Just wish I wasn't quite so preoccupied with how many steps it was to the nearest bathroom! ;-) (Was that TMI? I still have a fever...gimme a break!)

Our First Book!!

Be sure to check out http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=404412 and buy a couple copies!

Valerie & Patrick



This past weekend's wedding. Outside at the golf course. A week ago it was 97F with >80% humidity. Three days ago it was upper 80s and pouring rain. Saturday it was 82 with a light breeze and low humidity. The gods smiled on this day, let me tell you!!!

Senior Photos

We don't do a ton of senior photos, but we enjoy them when we do. Kelly and I have trained this girl as a goalkeeper for her entire high school career, and shooting some of her senior photos was a blast!

We've got studio lights!!

This is too cool! My buddy Tim, who I got to know years ago when he was the team photographer for the Ice, had a bunch of his old studio equipment that he no longer used. He sold it to me (my birthday present!) and I've spent the past few days playing with it, testing it, and then playing with it some more. Here's one of the first shots...

Ashley & Brent Okay okay...even though these two are IU grads, and I smelled something burning the whole day (okay, it was my soul being on that campus), these guys were absolutely great. We had an awesome time spending the day with them and photographing them. Here are a few of the best...

Busy, busy, busy!!

While trying to stay out of the heat-wave that's been scorching our yard, Kelly and I have also been busy with many different endeavors. First and foremost, we've been shooting tons of great weddings! I'll be getting some current photos up here within the next couple days, so those of you that have been impatient to see photos from your wedding or just new stuff in general, take heart!

We've also been busy making a deal to purchase some studio lighting equipment. John has been in meetings several times with the Indiana Ice USHL hockey team, and there's good news! John and Kelly are now the team photographers for the Ice!! Both Kelly and I are huge hockey fans (I know, I know...hockey fans? In Indiana?? Yeah, well...basketball sucks. ;-) ), and this is going to be a great time! We've photographed the games as spectators and freelance photographers for several years now, and our sports portfolio will be able to grow and expand.

Kelly's coaching soccer again, and has been out sweating and running with the girls in the 90* + heat we've been having. Ugh! More power to her, I'll stay in the pool, thankyouverymuch.

John's getting ready to pack his bags again for another consulting trip. I'm on my way to the Philadelphia area for three days later this week to do the network and technical setup for another Celebrity Kids studio. Should be a great time!

We've also been quite busy chasing the child. She's coming up on two in a couple of months, and while ordinarily good natured, is definitely showing flashes of the 'terrible twos'. She'll go from smiling to screaming and back to smiling in record time. And we want to have another one??!! hehe.

Referrals...

Just a quick thank-you and request at the same time...

One of the ways that Kelly and I keep our client fees lower than most area photographers is because we don't advertise...no magazine ads, no bridal shows, no web registries, etc. All of that costs money, and that's money that we don't want to have to pass along to our clients. What that means is that we rely pretty much 100% on referrals. 2006 was (I say was because we're pretty much booked-up for '06 and are now looking into 2007) a fantastic year, and we look forward to photographing over the next few months all the weddings of the wonderful couples we've met with.

So to all our past, present, and upcoming couples...please remember to pass us along to all your friends and family members! And don't forget, we do family portraits, maternity and newborn portraits (when you get to that family-making stage!!), and just about any other kind of photography. :-D

-J

Shana & Joshua's Wedding...

What an awesome couple. We had such a great time at their wedding, these two truly love each other, and I think we captured that in their photos...

Rhea & Wade's Wedding... What a wild and crazy day! We ended up with almost no time for portraiture (15 minutes after the ceremony and about 20 minutes at the reception site), but we still ended up with some stellar posed and unposed images. Many thanks to the lovely couple for allowing us to share in their special day... :)

The Fam in Downtown Indy...

We all loaded up and went for a walk around downtown Indianapolis the other night after the Formula One Race. Hot, humid night, but it was a lot of fun seeing the child running around the Monument and having a great time. :)