Vintage Wedding at Durham Train Museum

Just a quick sneak peek of Kara and Kyle's gorgeous wedding at the very cool Durham Museum. There were almost too many awesome areas to photograph in. I have over 50 gig of amazing portraits that I now have to spend the next week or two processing and getting ready to show them. I decided to take a moment to grab a few to brag about how beautiful it was. Kara was absolutely stunning in her dress and Kyle wasn't too shabby either :). Kyle was the one that actually selected the museum as their wedding and reception. With Kyle's choice of bride and venue it's easy to say that he has some pretty amazing taste and I'm crazy excited to show them their portraits.

Eagle Ridge Resort and Spa Wedding in Galena

Dylan and Katie chose the beautiful Eagle Ridge Resort and Spa in Galena, IL for their wedding.  It was the perfect day and with no shortage of cool locations to photograph, we started very early.  

 Dylan's family was all together in one cabin and Katie's was with her in a neighboring cabin. Dylan's father and mother helped him adjust the final touches on his tux and Katie's mother and grandmother helped her slip into her dress and put on her jewelry. You could clearly tell how close each of them were to their families and the love that they had for each other.

Dylan also has a great eye for photography and had selected a big hill overlooking Galena for him to first see Katie. We captured some awesome vistas there and then headed into Galena for some portraits around town. 

 We played around in lots of cool areas then had a beautiful wedding in the First Methodist Episcopal Church. Afterwards the whole family piled into a Trolley and rode back to Eagle Ridge Resort for their reception stopping at a few scenic spots along the way for a few more photo ops.

Katie's beautiful flowers were from Jean Carlson of Galena Florist

We found this awesome old structure and I had brought along a chandelier so the groomsmen helped me hang it from above to create a little more cool details for the portraits

Their reception at Eagle Ridge Resort and Spa had a beautiful dance floor with cool Chandeliers and right outside was the lake!

Dylan's crafty relatives had set up a cool photobooth for the guests

Working on lots of Team Posters

This time of year I am busy creating lots of team posters.   Here are a few of my recent creations....

This one was created earlier this year but I had originally used a stock image for the robot and I took a little time this spring to create my own robot out of a few snapshots I took in New Orleans of the interior of the building where they filmed The Expendables. I used the machines in the building for parts for the robot.

Beautiful People in Epic Places

  I love the challenge of creating something unique.  I get to a new place and start thinking about what everybody else would do then try to think of something that nobody else has done.  Here are some epic portraits from some of my excursions this year in the Dallas and Tucson areas. Many of these have won awards in contests already.

This was taken in an Airplane graveyard in Tucson Arizona.  It took a little work to get her up on that pontoon but the effort was more than woth it.

This portrait was also taken at the Airplane graveyard in Tucson.  It's an absolutely awesome to wonder around the old planes and learn about them from the WWII veterans that help out there.



This beautiful bridal portrait was also taken outside the awesome Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson at around 2am. I created it by exposing my camera for 30 seconds while painting her and the background with a flashlight beam so that the rest of the scene was also exposed. The last contest that I entered this into the judges didn't believe it was real.

This portrait was taken at the end of the night outside the resort at the Lowes Ventana Canyon Resort in Tucson.  A blue gel was used on my canon 580 EXII with radio poppers to capture the steam coming off the water behind her.

Yet another amazing portrait from Ventana Canyon Resort.  This one is a combination of a few images to create the final epic scene

This beautiful portrait was taken at the Hilton Rockwall Hotel in Dallas Texas. We played around for a large part of the night in the beautiful lobby, around the fountains and restaurant. There were tons of really cool areas to photograph here

This epic portrait of the stunning model Skye was also taken at the Hilton Rockwall Hotel in Dallas.  They have a 2 story scale model light house at the hotel on the lake.  I created this composite by combing images of the sky, close up shots of the water breaking and the rocks.  Skye was photographed in studio.

A great opportunity to learn

Many of you probably already know that I do a lot of speaking and teaching for photography around the country and I get a lot of inquires from photographers asking about when and where the next place I will be speaking at. Next week I will be teaching in Des Moines at the Iowa Workshop along with some of my very good friends. It is going to be an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the top photographers in the country. Travis Gugelman from Idaho will be there to help with studio management and pricing, Lori Nordstrom from here in Iowa will be there teaching about marketing and children. Mike Redinger from Idaho and Kevin Jordan from North Carolina will be doing lighting demonstrations. I will be also showing some lighting demonstrations and going over some photoshop techniques. It's going to be a great time with lots of live models and opportunities to learn and just hang out and make new friends. Hope to see you there!

Track Team Posters

Here are my two newest creations for the track teams.  For the girls I wanted to create something that could show off a bunch of them running, jumping and throwing.  I decided to try something with the sole of a shoe and make it look similar to a track seen from above.  I think the graphic turned out pretty strong and it turned out to be a fun concept.

For the guys track I have been wanting to try my hand at creating some tornados. The road was an image I had taken last year right after a storm and I simply warped and transformed the clouds into a funnel shape. Then replicated the tornado to create a few different ones in the background. Adding some extra mist and debris using some photoshop brushes really helped make the tornados more realistic though. The hardest part about the whole poster was taking the portraits. I had to have the guys run at me very quickly and trigger the shutter at exact moment when they reached the pre-appointed spot. Not only did I have to time it perfectly but the guys had to look good at that exact moment when they were running full speed at me which was probably even harder than timing the shutter.