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. :)

Wish me luck...

As you can probably tell from some of the posts here or if you know me, Kelly turned me into a full-on football (real football, not that garbage they play here in the States) hooligan. I've played soccer now for almost five years, mostly in goal, but lately more and more as a forward or midfielder. My first love in sports though was volleyball. I played for three years at Purdue on the Purdue Men's team and for several years after that. Once I picked up soccer though, volleyball kind of fell by the wayside.

Well tomorrow night is my homecoming...I'm starting on a volleyball league. Just a local church league, but I'm still really looking forward to getting back on the court!! Still...wish me luck! :-)

Tracy & Adam From a pair of Purdue grads to a pair of soccer hooligans, how could life get any better?! We had the task of photographing this cute couple on the day of the US-Italy World Cup match. Though we had the TiVO set to record it, there was still a little twinge in the back of our minds of wondering what the score was. Luckily, the first thing we saw when we walked into the church was a big multimedia screen dropped from the ceiling and the utterly lovely vision of about twenty feet by twenty feet of glorious German World Cup soccer pitch projected above the heads of all the groomsmen. We watched and listened to the games right up until it was time to start photography, and immediately after the ceremony we were back at it. Another great day!

Valory & Kyle

This wedding had us on the road to sunny (well actually it rained that day) Elkhart, Indiana. I mean, how can you say no to a couple of fellow Purdue grads?! When they were introduced at the reception, it was to the sweet strains of 'Hail, Purdue'. What a way to kick off a party!!

Shannon & Chris

What a string of weddings we've been having! Kelly and I have both been getting some amazing photos over the past couple weeks. Here are a couple from Shannon & Chris's wedding. They were a blast to work with, and their reception was a three-alarm riot! :) We had an amazing time spending the day with them and their family. Here are just a few of the highest of the high points...

A New Sport... The child has discovered a new sport...laundry basket surfing. She crawls into the laundry basket and yells, "Riiii?!" ('ride'). Then we slide her around the floor. When our arms get tired, she yells, "Agaiiii??" ('again'). Thankfully, she eventually gets dizzy and won't ask for more. :-)

Planning Tips...

After being to more weddings than we can count, sometimes Kelly and I feel like we should go into the wedding planning business! ;-)

Here are a few random tips that can make your big day easier and more memorable...

• Unless you've got your heart dead-set on a summer wedding, go for a fall or even winter wedding. It'll be much easier to find vendors for your date, and you won't have to worry about wearing a heavy dress / tux in 90* heat!
• I know everyone wants to party into the night, but photography especially is a lot easier in well-lit conditions. Of course that's just the photographer in me talking, but overall your photos will come out much nicer in daylight.
• Make your day your own! Tradition is good, and there's nothing at all wrong with a traditional ceremony and/or reception, but don't be afraid to buck some trends here and there to make your wedding a truly memorable occasion.
• In our opinions, there are things to spend money on, and things it's okay to cut back on...spend on good food, moderately good booze, photography, and reception site. Things it's okay to cut back on...DJ, table settings, video. That's not to say those things aren't important, just in our experience those are the things that if you have to cut somewhere, that's where you'll notice it less.
• When considering a ceremony site, look at the details. The things that drive me batty as a photographer because I know they ruin photos...old carpet (70s orange, bay-beee!), bad lighting (including very low lighting, fluoroscent lighting, etc.), lots of power cords and other clutter draped all over everything.
  

jessica & john engagement photos Only a day after Jami & Ryan's wedding, I was out with a fresh set of batteries photographing Jessica & John for their engagement photos. Here are a couple from the set...

Jami & Ryan

We had the opportunity to photograph Jami and Ryan's wedding this past weekend. It was a fun day (even if the two Purdue grads had to venture into IU's Bloomington!). We got a lot of great photos, including these...

Just one quick shot from our most recent wedding. Good stuff! :)

Back Home...

Well I survived my trip to the great white north. Actually the great white north looks a lot like Indiana. It was a long and crazy three days, but I got the studio completely up and running, wireless camera systems and all. Now I'm back home and trying to get caught back up on everything that I missed in those three days. Wee! I just got finished processing the photos from our last wedding, so should be able to show some of those shortly. Got my first commercial shoot tomorrow (advertising layout for a bus company), and another wedding this weekend. Let the fun begin!!

I'm a Consultant!

I'm writing this from a slightly smelly, very out-dated room at the Holiday Inn East St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnnesota. The studio I do some work for is expanding a franchise into a suburb of the Twin Cities and they asked me to come up for a few days to do the complete tech setup. I flew in this afternoon, and have already set up several of their computer systems. Tomorrow they should have the cabling finished for their file server, as well as the delivery of the print server.

Today was long. Tomorrow is shaping up to be a marathon. But it's fun...I get to play with lots of computers and cameras with a couple of cool fellow Purdue alums. I have a feeling tomorrow night will involve beer. Tonight though, is just a hot shower...and hopefully this bed is a lot softer than it looks!

Daddy's Girl...

So we went out and shot a wedding today. First of all, good wedding. Second of all, Kelly is absolutely hard-core! She's still got stitches in her knee, still wearing the anti-embolism thigh-sock, still doing her PT several times a day...and she wanted to come to the wedding and help shoot. I told her she could come as long as she stayed sitting most of the time and let me do the majority of the shooting. Yeah, right. She shot it pretty much like a normal wedding. It's 10:40pm and I'm writing this while the photos are downloading from the CF cards. We've both been going since about 11:30 this morning, and she kept up with me pretty much shot-for-shot.

Anyway, good wedding, got lots of great shots, and will have some of Erica and Brad up in the next few days. But the real heart-breaker is that I was talking with my mom (who nannys for us during the week) about how Molly did tonight. From 7:00 until after 9:00 she just roamed the house crying and saying, "Daddddyyyyyyy" over and over and over. I just want to cry, I love that little kid so much!! I really want to go get her and let her sleep with us tonight, but you know...I really want to get some sleep, myself!