This shoot is from right around the time I started doing headshots in a new way. I typically stay away from flat lighting, but it works well for the modeling portfolio headshots because it shows off features without heavy shadowing and it minimizes skin irregularities. I particularly love the look with the red dress and red lipstick. Raen (hair/makeup) always does a great job of going over the wardrobe choices with me so that we’re on the same page.
McKenna did a great job, nailed all her looks and we made use of some spaces at the studio that hadn’t been used before.
Princeton Battlefield is yet another place in New Jersey that I had never been to until this session came along. Boogs and I arrived a bit early to explore the grounds and it’s much more than just a big field. The Clark House is there and it’s an excellent backdrop for portraits and landscapes. Another beautiful spring day filled with funny moments and photos to last a lifetime. Thank you to Kelly, Rick and Sage for marching up and down the battlefield to make these photos happen!
We spent four days in the Hudson Valley of New York visiting places like Warwick, Sugar Loaf village, New Paltz, Benmarl winery and Huguenot Street. We stayed at the Inn at Stony Creek and the hospitality was top notch as usual! Some of my favorite photos are toward the bottom. I stood out in the freezing cold determined to photograph the Orion constellation. It was a cloudy night, so it was a bit tricky!
Today is the one year anniversary of our wedding. Planning our wedding was a lot of fun and hard work. So many thanks go out to all the people that helped us along the way! I think we spent just about every waking hour planning some aspect of the wedding.
It took a while to find talented people that also meshed with our personalities. I particularly had to find a photographer and videographer that really won me over. Jen Rutherford handled the photography and Rob Villano handled the videography. Very professional and easy to work with. Absolutely no worries.
One of my favorite pieces to create was the cake topper which we ended up putting near the cake instead of on top of it. This was the first time I had seriously sculpted anything since high school. I used air drying clay and coated it with a water based polymer to give it strength. (I made a smart decision by minimizing the amount of branches on the tree. It would have been much too difficult to move without worries on the day of the wedding.) A nice side effect of the polymer was that it gave the tree an icey appearance! The snow was added toward the of the project as a final touch.
All of the print pieces were designed by us and used the “GrekoDeko” and “Hightower” fonts throughout for consistency. We wanted everything to have a nice, classy appearance that would compliment the feeling of Shadowbrook.
It was great to break out the comping skills to make prototypes for Lindsay. The invitations themselves went through several revisions. Originally we were going to do a black invitation, but it was too cost prohibitive to print on black paper. Luckily, I planned ahead in case that happened. The design was solid and looked just as good inverted.
Our ceremony and reception was held at Shadowbrook. Our friend/life-cycle celebrant, Dana Zipkin, presided over the ceremony. People are still raving about the ceremony, so I highly suggest Ceremonies by Dana if you are tired of the same old crap at weddings.
We took a drive out to New Hope, Pennsylvania to visit Rice’s Flea Market. Even though there was a sign claiming they were open, and they technically were open, there were only a few souls there. It is winter after all. Not a problem for me because I planned to take photos anyway. Without further adeu…
I challenged myself to be both a guest and cinematographer for Lindsey and Dave’s wedding. That can be a tricky thing to accomplish. I didn’t have an assistant or second cinematographer, so I set cameras up at different angles to give me enough footage to work with. Everything from the rehearsal dinner to the reception was filmed on a Canon 7D as well as a Canon 5D MKII using a wide variety of EF lenses. The wonderful rehearsal dinner was held at The Pillars Bed & Breakfast Inn in Plainfield, NJ with the ceremony/reception at Pantagis Renaissance in Scotch Plains, NJ. I am very pleased with the results and the little touches thrown in to make this a very special wedding film.
Sit back, relax and enjoy The Wedding of Lindsey Clark & David Wind.
I have taken very few photographs of the night sky, but that doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to astrophotography. This is a composite image of a lunar eclipse I took on 12/21/2010 using my 7D and 70-200mm f/4.0 lens. It was a cold night but I was in a trance watching the moon turn red. That’s certainly not something a person sees too often.
Fast forward to January 27, 2013 and the largest and brightest full moon of the year. The Wolf Moon. My goal was to capture this enormous full moon using the 7D once again, but with a Televue TV-101 telescope (link is to newer TV-NP101) instead of one of my smaller lenses.
Here I am shooting the moon with the Televue TV-101
A few tips for shooting the moon outside on a cold night with a Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) camera:
Dress warm. This process requires patience. Shivering all over the place and shaking your camera is a no-no.
Use a quality tripod. Cheap tripods flex and that results in a blurry image.
Shoot manual. You will drive yourself crazy trying to auto-focus the moon or have the camera guess the proper exposure for something in outer space.
Mirror lockup. This is a feature that moves the mirror away from the sensor/film prior to the shutter being activated. Reduces shake.
Getting the camera hooked up to the telescope was an easy process. It required removing part of the viewfinder and connecting the camera with an adapter. From there it’s a pretty straight forward process of adjusting shutter speed and using the camera timer. The timer helps to eliminate any residual shake from adjusting the camera/telescope prior to the shutter actuating.
The final image of the moon needed minimal post-processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. Between the clear night and absolutely no wind, mother nature was on my side to create a perfectly crisp image of our moon. Special thanks to Dan Deutsch for letting me use this amazing telescope!
I took this photo tonight with the intention of posting on my favorite weather site, Severe NJ Weather on facebook, and people are loving it. They even made it their cover photo! Very honored. I just rewarded myself with a second Yuengling. Because it’s Friday and I feel like a champion!
