John, Leah, Emma, and Michael / It's been awhile since I've had the chance to do a family studio session, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I got in there and started the session. Their session was scheduled to be about 20-30 minutes and get a dozen or so photos. An hour and nearly a hundred photos later, we were all tired of the flashes but we had some awesome photos!

Some of my favorites...

Amy & Bryan / This wedding was a big change-of-pace for me personally as a shooter. It was a subcontracted wedding, so not Amy and Bryan weren't a couple that I met with personally and booked. As I got to know them throughout the course of the day, though, I realized that they were the same type of people that we typically book, so I knew that I was going to get some fantastic photos of them. I had the opportunity to shoot with Scott Cleveland, a photographer who I've known for a few years through an online professional discussion forum. It was a bit odd at first shooting with someone other than Kelly, but Scott and I worked great together and were doing the dance of staying out of each other's shots and making sure we had everything covered like we were old hands at shooting together.

As always, I had a blast and got some truly awesome photos. The reception was at the Fountain Square Theatre. Kelly had shot there a few weeks ago and warned me about how dark it was in there. I made sure to bring my big strobes, which gave me plenty of light. Once the technical details were sorted out, I could really start to appreciate how unique this venue is. And then, of course, I started playing around without the big strobes. :-)

Some photos...

Grandma's excited...


Lacing up...



Seeing each other for the first time before the wedding...




My 'arthouse' shot of the night...


Fountain Square Theatre...



My buddy...



Scott's pose, my angle. Yeah, I'd say we work well together...

Amanda & Eric / You remember how a few weddings back I said it was nice to have a kind of laid-back reception, but that we love a good party-reception too? Well guess what, this was a great party-reception! It's not very often that I end up dancing, but at the end of the night I found myself with no camera in my hand and trying not to make too much of a fool of myself. ;-)

Party aside, this was a great wedding. We had a beautiful ceremony under the tent. Some people think that rain ruins an outside wedding, but as long as there's a tent I kind of like rainy days like that--there's something very soothing and special about the soft rain overlapping the sounds of two people sharing their vows.


Here are just a few moments from the day...

The beast is done!!!

New computer, originally uploaded by whitesharkphoto.

Asus P5K-Deluxe motherboard.
Intel Core 2 Duo 6750 CPU, 64 bit.
700w power supply.
Diamond Stealth 512MB video card.
300GB SATA system drive.
Dual 1TB SATA RAID arrays.
Antec full-tower case with three-layer noise and thermal shielding.
Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition.

And I built it myself (with some help from my buddy, Jason).

So that's where I've been for the past week. It's been up and running, since the 2nd day of the build, but getting 500,000 photos (about 3/4 of a terabyte) migrated, along with installing all our application software on the new machine, has taken quite awhile.

Now I can finally get back to work (well, mostly. The data still has another two days to migrate!).

Policy Update \

Updated Policy Regarding Requests for Photo Edits
Effective Immediately
__________________________________________________________
Please note the following change to our policy regarding requested photo edits:

As we process a wedding photography imageset, we will continue to process all photos in the wedding imageset to our high standards of basic post-production. That includes at a minimum: adjusting white balance, exposure, contrast, color balance, and tonality to the RAW image prior to jpg processing. We will also continue to create several artistically enhanced photos to fulfill our creative vision of those selected images.

The client may request additional creative enhancements of up to ten (10) individual images. Enhancements requested beyond those ten will be billed at the rate of $20 per edited photo. An ‘enhancement’ consists of any adjustment to the image, including but not limited to: color adjustment, re-cropping, touch-ups, or application of an artistic effect (soften/glow, black-and-white, sepia, focal-color, etc.).

Marie & Calvin / It's August in northern Indiana. I grew up in northern Indiana, and I tell you what...what I remember most about August is bugs, heat, humidity, and the occasional thunderstorm. So someone pretty high up must've known that Marie and Calvin were planning an outside wedding for about three hundred and fifty of their friends and wanted to have some nice weather. In the weeks leading up to the wedding it's been a string of unending 90s. Then August 18. Slight overcast and 65*. I actually wore a jacket for the first part of the day. Wow.

And what a fun couple. How can we not love someone that was kind enough to bring us Tim-Tams all the way from Australia!! But aside from that, we had a spectacular day following Calvin and Marie around and documenting their wedding.

And of course, some photos...

'The Living Cross', where Calvin and Marie saw each other for the first time on the wedding day...

Ch-ch-ch-changesssss / Just a heads-up to those of you that are shopping around and keeping an eye on us in consideration for your wedding photography. We're about to implement some pretty comprehensive changes to our entire wedding photography schema. So if you like what you see from us, please be sure to give us a call or an email asap to lock in current rates and package offerings. :-)

Johnette & Mike's Engagement / We ventured out into yet another steamy evening to do these photos. Johnette and Mike are an awesome couple; it's not very often that I find myself joking around like old friends with people I've only met a couple times, but they're just so relaxed and comfortable with each other and in their love that it felt like photographing our best friends.

Megan & Scott / Okay, I'll toot my own horn with this post. I am the champeen of the universe! :-) It's 12:30pm on Sunday. I just got done processing over 1,100 photos from the wedding I got home from last night at 10:30pm. I haven't slept much, but I just couldn't wait to see these photos!

So...Megan and Scott. Great ceremony at St. Louis de Montfort church in Fishers, then we went halfway across town to possibly the most beautiful shooting location in the Indianapolis area, the Gardens at the Lilly House at the IMA. I'd shot out there once or twice before, but never ventured very far into the paths around the gardens. Even with all of us dripping in the 95* heat and humidity I'm so glad we stuck it out and went exploring down the trails a bit...










Then it was on to possibly the most technically challenging reception shoot I've ever done. It was at the Music Mill. Very cool place, but it's a normally dance club / concert venue, so the lighting was really challenging to work with. By the time the reception got started, though, I was seeing and understanding how the lighting was affecting my equipment and I ended up with some amazing photos...






And of course, what's a reception without some genuine polkas from a real-live accordion?!?!

I knew... / I knew I shouldn't have tempted fate by complaining about the weather. No sooner did I toss up that post the other day than I walked into the kitchen and noticed that I didn't feel the blast of arctic happiness when I walked under the ceiling-mounted HVAC vent. No. Oh please god no. I ran into the den and jumped on the couch, where usually you have to have a blanket even when the rest of the house is sweltering. Uncomfortably warm. Oh huh-uh, this cannot be happening. It's going to be 98* again today. Run to the thermostat. Yep, still set at 71*. House temp is 74*. As I stood there watching it clicked up to 75*. Then it skipped 76* and went right to 77*. I let out a weak little whimpery scream of terror. Our AC was broken.

Right now it's just after 7:00am. The AC has been totally down for about 16 hours. I'm bleary-eyed and miserable. I slept with nothing but a sheet covering me last night with the ceiling fan on high and a box-fan blowing directly at me. Wait, check that. I say 'slept' but what I really mean is I tossed and turned and spent the entire night rolling back and forth on the bed trying to find the cool spot on the sheets and flipping the pillows over to get the cool side. I think actual 'sleep' might have entered into the equation for...ohhhh thirty, maybe thirty-two minutes. I'm one of those people who just cannot sleep unless it's about 65* in the house (or cooler...we have a programmable thermostat and in the winter we regularly let the house drop into the 50s at night). So you can imagine just how much fun it was for me to try to sleep when it was 87* in the house at 11:30pm.

There are times when I really loathe summer in Indiana. Thankfully the AC guy is supposed to come sometime between 10 and 2 today. He gets that thing fixed, I told Kelly to break out the jackets because I'm going to make it snow in the house.

Is it October yet?? / Rant of the moment. My little Weatherbug widget on my desktop just clicked over to show that it is now 98* outside with enough humidity to make it feel like 105*. Oh my good gravy I'm so ready for a nice blustery October or November day. 45* with a dusting of snow in the morning...now that's heaven. I hate getting out of the shower and already being sweaty. That's just not fun.

Is it over yet? / A riddle for you today... The day you used to look forward to all year is now the day that you wish would never come.

Any takers?

Yeah, today's my birthday. Big 3-4 today. Kelly was teasing me and saying that she had to buy the super-sized box of candles for my cake this year. Har-de-har-har. I'm finally understanding how people can look at their birthdays as just another day. I woke up this morning and did all the things I usually do--got Molly's breakfast, started some laundry, got the trashcans in, started editing some photos. I don't feel any older. Well okay actually today I do feel a bit older--I played two games of soccer last night in 98* heat. I was sick most of the night and some of this morning from overheating. But I did score a really nifty back-heel goal in my first match with my new team, so I'm not complaining too loudly.

Anyway, that's really been the extent of my birthday. No real presents--we had our large-format printer die on us earlier this week, so we had to drop almost a grand on a new Canon Pixma Pro9500 (which is a gorgeous little piece of printer). I may get a good steak tonight or something, but other than that it's business-as-usual around here. :-)

Ashley & Travis / Oh where do I even begin with this couple. Let's see, how about this moment...



Or maybe this one??



Does that give you a good idea of the tone and mood of this day? Yeah, I thought so. Usually it's the bride and groom's faces that hurt from all the smiling throughout the day and our feet that hurt from all the standing and shooting. At this wedding it was our faces that hurt from all the laughing and joking around. Our feet? Well yeah they still hurt, but the keg of Woodchuck in the back room at the reception helped to soothe that problem. ;-)

Here are a couple great moments from the day...


Getting ready to see each other for the first time...


Portraits...





(Sorry Travis...two pics of Ashley and only one of you...she's just a lot prettier than you are! ;-) -J)

Rings...


Others...

The photographer on the wrong end of the lens / It's so rare that I actually get to be in a photo I just had to post this. One of the main reasons I became a photographer is because I think that overall I look like...well...let's just say I don't photograph well. Which again just reinforces how good a photographer Kelly is becoming. Or maybe Molly is just so cute she can overpower my un-photogenic-ness. ;-) Either way, here I am with Molly in the back yard last night.

Brandi & Eddie / July. Indiana. 4:00pm. Outside. I don't think 'hot' really describes wearing a black shirt, long pants, and about eighteen pounds of camera draped around your neck while trying to do formal portraiture outside in the sun. I just kept trying to remind myself that the guys were wearing full tuxes and just had to be worse off than me. Actually the heat itself wasn't terrible...only about 85F or so. But being July it was so humid that there was a haze hanging in the air.

But oh my gosh did we get great photographs.

I haven't the foggiest idea how Eddie is looking so cool and suave here, knowing how sweaty I was.



And as usual, I thought I nailed the killer portrait of the day when I was doing some solo stuff with Eddie before the ceremony (looks kind of like Robert De Niro, doesn't he??) ...



But then we start pulling cards around 11:30pm after getting home from the wedding, and I see this on one of Kelly's cards. Quite possibly the best flower-girl portrait I've ever seen. Okay, no 'possibly' about it, I LOVE this shot.



I'm amazed every week at how much Kelly is growing as a photographer. She consistently gets the great shots, and with this one showed me just how much a different crop can make one of our more 'stock' shots new and fresh again...



And finally, a couple other random shots from this rather sweaty, but very memorable wedding day...








PS: One last note. Brandi had the coolest idea I've ever seen at a reception. They did a traditional anniversary dance, but instead of giving the last remaining couple (the couple that had been married the longest) a flower or gift or whatever, Brandi surprised them by giving them her bouquet. How unbelievably cool. I like tradition and the bouquet-toss is neat, but this just blew it away. Everybody was tearing up. :-)