Sombrero on Pine Tree

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Before I shot the weddings for these last two months, Andy and Abby gave me the opportunity to help shoot their "Save the Date" photos for both their website and their invitations. They were so great about it, they let me play around with the flash and get used to shooting people outside in difficult lighting conditions. Again, practice makes perfect, and I couldn't thank them more for giving me some extra practice time.

This was really my first go at shooting a couple, and I learned a few key things that most people take for granted when they look at pictures, and that is creative posing. I found I had them sitting a lot and not really getting up and moving, and looking alive, which is where pictures that pop come from. The best shots were the ones where they had candid interactions, not the posed stiff shots. This took me a while to realize and that realization definitely helped when I went to the weddings (though I am still not as motivating as I need to be).

We shot the pictures at the National Arboretum, which lent itself to some great Midwestern type scenes shooting among the succulents and palms. One interesting thing to note, though, is that the plants there are federally protected, as we learned when we were shooting the hat picture. The security guard quickly came out and let us know...

Love sculpture and City Hall in Philadelphia

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Matt and Melissa's wedding in Philadelphia was awesome. They had such a beautiful venue at the Valley Green Inn, and the weather couldn't have been any better (no humidity, and under 90 degrees). Though Nezih of course needed no additional help taking pictures for the day (hell he has shot weddings on a medium format film camera, and THAT takes some real skill), he asked me to help out to make sure we could capture everything for the day. I can't wait to see the shots he got!

I tried something new for the day and stuck to only shooting with the 50mm lens. Though this gave some great shots for anything involving portraits, I still would rather have a macro or a wide angle for group and detail shots.

Post surgery photography has been a little hard (crouching/stretching are pretty difficult), so it was hard to get all the things I wanted to do (and I had to take a break from dancing later in the evening), but I think I still got a lot of great shots from the day.

Daisy Flowers selective color.

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Looking forward to another great wedding this weekend, this time up in Philadelphia. My friend's Matt and Melissa are tieing the knot on Saturday and it should be a beautiful wedding. Hopefully I get some great shots tomorrow and I will share some later on.

Shot tonight is just a random one taken at night in DC. I saw these perfect Daisies under the lamp light and I loved the look with the black backdrop. To show off the contrast of the white flowers and yellow middles with that black even more, I used the selective color technique I used in my Sushi Post.

Chicken and Ear Worms

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This photo is a little posed, but damnit that chicken was not cooperating!

My dad and I were shucking corn that was affected by Ear Worms (aptly named), and were coming across numerous worms and ears that were eaten out too much to save. Using some of these ears, I tried to get some shots of the chickens going after the worms. So I laid out the ears  and waited. Unfortunately, the birds weren't biting and I couldn't convince them to "come get some". In the end I had to have my dad grab one of the chickens and hold it over the corn. Even then she didn't want to eat, so I just took a few pictures anyways, and got back to peeling the rest of the corn.

Rings on Aspen leaf at Estes Park, CO

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One good thing about the amount of down time I had over the last week, was I was able to go thru and finish editing and finally posting the pictures from Sam's Wedding. It was such a great experience and it definitely convinced me that events and weddings are something I want to get into doing more of.

The wedding was just great, even though the day was almost destroyed by the fact that it rained. I learned more in that one day trying to get shots and figuring out how to frame things, than what multiple weekend trips over the last few months have shown me. I want to finish putting together a list of insights and thoughts from both shooting the day and editing the pictures afterward, and I will post it up on this site as well for prosperity.

I am going to host all the pictures on Sam's website to allow his family and friends to access them (and help to promote his site as well, the pictures he took from his honeymoon in Croatia are incredible). Here are some of my favorites, as well as a link to the Thumbnails and a Slide Show of all the images from the day.