Archive for March, 2009

I recently read an inspiring quote by Cheryl Jacobs, an amazing fine art portrait photographer. She said, “Style is a voice, not a prop or action. If you can buy it, borrow it, download it, or steal it, it’s not a style. Don’t look outward for style; look inward.” I thought that was such a wise statement. There are so many wonderful tools our there for photographers right now. There are amazing action sets from talented artists like Jesh De Rox, the Boutwells, and Kevin Kubota, among many others. And I think that a lot of the time, it’s easy to purchase those things thinking that they will define your style and take your images to the next level. But unless you can define your style in your camera first, you will never find it in Photoshop. I love doing these before and after shots and sharing how we create our images but I never want anyone to think that it’s all about a process, or an action set. Those things are tools. Real style comes from inside. It comes from vision, connection and from the imagination of the artist. Everything else is just accenting.

I chose this image for a reason. This image is a perfect example of how you don’t need to go photoshop crazy to create a style. If any of you reading this know me personally, you know how much I LOVE editing images and how much I think that the post processing is just as much a part of the artistic process as taking the picture. I just want to be clear, photoshop should never be a crutch.

This one was shot by Nate and as you can see, this image looks pretty great straight out of the camera. I did not have to do much editing to it. Just a few tiny corrections and a bit of toning and sharpening. (I pretty much sharpen everything, we just like how it looks.) The actions we used were from the TRA set and are our favorite action set to use. We also used Nate’s newest toy, a neutral density filter, to help during this shoot as we were pretty much shooting straight into the sun for most of it. Nate nailed the shot in the camera, I enhanced it and voila! How’s that for teamwork? ;)

When Megan and Billy first met on September 10, 2005, they were 1512 days away from being husband and wife.
When they celebrated 2 years of dating, they were 743 days away.
When Billy asked Megan to be his wife, they were 365 days away.
When we shot their engagement session, the were 236 days away.
And today they are 233 days away.
Time flies, doesn’t it?

September 10, 2005 started out like any other day for both Billy and Megan. They woke up in their own separate worlds, made their own separate arrangements to attend the big game (UF vs. Louisiana Tech, for you college football fans), and decided separately to celebrate afterwards at the same local watering hole. Little did they know that this was the first day of a 1,512 day countdown from “separate” to “complete”.

As they walked up and down the beach, laughing into the setting sun, we knew that these two were meant to be standing there, on that beach, in that setting sun, letting us capture images of their love exactly how it was at “236 days to go”. And we are excited to be there again capturing images of their love when their countdown ends and their days start to count forward from 1.

Love at 236. Love at 1. We wish you tons of love and happiness to fill all the days between and after. See you soon!

If we can get 15 comments on this post, we’ll give you a before and after showing you how we did this one! ;)
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I knew that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship the first time we walked into their house and saw Anthony’s room of video game memorabilia. Nate and him were destined to be instant BFFs! ;)

We got to hang out with Anthony and Bristin for the 2nd half of their “Before and After” family sessions. (You may remember them from their steamy maternity session a few months ago.)

I can’t wait to finish the rest of the images for everyone to see. Anthony and Bristin are just the cutest, coolest, funniest, most adoring parents and their daughter is lucky to have been born into such a family. More to come, until then enjoy these three!

World, meet Aaralyn…

This may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…

He’s going to kill me for this one but it is MY FAVORITE!