Alyssa's Bridals

I met up with Alyssa and her posse in Salt Lake at Temple Square. We managed to schedule a time when they still had all these gorgeous tulips all over everywhere (alas, they have been replaced now with other flowers), which made for some eye-popping color in the backgrounds. Alyssa brought along three friends to help out with the session, and I put them all to work holding flashes and reflectors (future bridal-photo-posse-members be warned). Alyssa was so natural in front of the camera and just so easy to work with that I literally felt like I could shoot her all day.

She had this really fun shawl that she wore with her dress part of the time... I have never seen anything quite like it with a wedding dress.

Between the superbly manicured gardens and the classic architecture, Temple Square is a great place to shoot even when you are not trying to get "temple photos".

I LOVE the exposed bulbs along this exit by the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The lights, along with her pose, the way her dress is flared, and the combination with the visible flash give it a really "vintage 50's paparazzi" feel to me.

I love spring. Love it. It's just so refreshing after a really long, dull winter.

Click here for the full gallery.

Erin and Todd

Every once in a while I get a couple that no matter where we are and when we shoot it doesn't matter- I just get awesome photo after awesome photo. For this engagement session we had planned originally to start off at Wheeler Farm and then head on up to Saltair. Erin and Todd were just so natural in front of the camera, and we kept working so well together that time flew by and before we knew it we had spent much more time than expected at Wheeler Farm. Thus, we headed on up to Liberty Park to finish up the engagements.
I love their style, and both were just wonderful to deal with.  I've really gotten some fantastically easy-going clients recently.  :)

While at Liberty Park we had a visitor.  I've been shooting for a while, but I don't think I've ever been photobombed by a waterfowl before.

Some of the colors we were getting were almost like Fall.  It made for some really rich backgrounds...

Some tender moments at the most photographed truck in Utah.... :)

The blues in this next one just felt right...

While I put in more photos than normal, I really didn't scratch the surface of the awesomeness contained in their gallery.  Check out more of my favorites here.

Nasa's Graduation Session

Nasa recently graduated from BYU, and requested a portrait session to show off how she looked in her cap and gown. We ended up with some good shots of the outfit, as well as some fun photos from the more "regular-individual-portrait-session" part of the shoot.

It was a gorgeous spring day- I love when the trees finally start to bloom.

Both Nasa and her sister do a traditional style of dance, and we got some super fun pictures for them to send back to their family in Mongolia.

Good times. Fun sisters. See more here.

Lindsey's Bridals

Well, yesterday Lindsey and Justin tied the knot and Justin got the see his beautiful bride in her dress on the wedding day, without any bad-luck-inducing sneak peeks beforehand. Thus, the rest of the world gets to see her now too!
Given the style of the dress, ("Think ball gown. Really really big, old school ball gown." -Bride's response to my question in the planning session) we elected to head downtown to get some classic architecture for the bridal photos. We wandered around a bit, and got some shots I was really happy with.
Stay tuned for the photos from their wedding..... it was a longer one (~10-11 hrs), but we had a great time. Gotta love photography.

The photo above is one of my favorite bridal pics I have ever taken. I love the lighting in it.

The stone and pillars below create a setting that I think perfectly fit the feeling that I think the dress conveys. Something very classic, very I'm-waiting-for-my-Prince-Charming-to-show-up-in-the-carriage.

The dress itself weighed 12 pounds and had well over a dozen layers of tulle. It made for some very neat "just casually relaxing" photos.

Click here to see more bridally-related goodness.

Renae and Kenny- Fun in the Sun

It's funny...
When I first started out as a photographer, my ideal day to shoot was overcast weather, because I didn't have to worry about any harsh shadows or bad lighting- I could just shoot. Now I find myself grumbling when the sky is too cloudy and I have a shoot planned, because I can't get the yummy rim lighting or play with my reflectors the way I want to.
Renae and Kenny won a free engagement shoot by attending a recent bridal fair where I had a booth, and they were so easy to work with when we set up the session I ended up turning the shoot into a mini-workshop for my interns as we took the photos. For this shoot, we decided to go for some of the most difficult lighting situations we could find and started shooting at noon (LOTS of bright sunshine that day, and the corresponding risk of overly harsh shadows ). We played around with different bits of shade we could find, different types and kinds of reflectors, and a little bit of flash. Both Renae and Kenny were awesome to work with, and didn't miss a beat when focusing on each photographer- you would have thought they were seasoned models! :)
So both my interns, Justin and Valor, got a great rundown on shooting in midday sun, and our happy couple got some extra variety in the shots and subsequently some great pictures. It was a good day.

The orange on this building was awesome- very cool find in Provo.

So much texture in the corrugated steel. Love it!

Check out some more picks in the gallery here.

Jenna and Ben

I met Jenna while wedding dress shopping with my future sister-in-law-in-law. (fiancee of my brother-in-law, that works right?) Due to the fact I was going to be in Oakland the day before their wedding and couldn't get a flight up to Portland that would work we weren't to make wedding coverage happen, but I'm glad we were able to get engagements done.
I love the rim lighting on this one... gives such a such a warm feel to the scene.

Sometimes I tell my clients "Ok, now just pretend I'm not here for a moment." Be careful what you wish for, I guess.... ;)

Jordan the Ballerina

You probably recognize Jordan from a previous session I did of her as a bridal ballerina last year, or may have seen a few sneak peeks at this session on Facebook. She and I met up for a session as part of a recent project to specifically focus on window light as a way of refining my skill set as a photographer. She's a gorgeous girl, and a fun friend to hang out with. She was happy to model for me, and we got some portraits of her I was very pleased with. We did run into a bit of an awkward situation during the shoot, though. We were shooting on BYU campus and in the same building with us was a large group of business students, mostly male, who were all getting THEIR photos taken (for a directory or something). So we have a bunch of guys with nothing to do but wait around for their turn in front of the camera. Oh yeah, and watch the girl in tights doing ballet poses by the big windows. .... And whistle occasionally.

Fun while shooting through glass and with tungsten white balance.

I love the layers of light on her face that we got with the window as the source....

Jessica and Casey's Marathon Engagement Session

Meet Jessica and Casey.

I knew we were going to get along and that we were going to get some truly awesome pictures pretty much as soon as I met them. I think it was about the moment that they explained to me with a grin that as Jessica's last name is "Terribilini" and Casey's last name is "Skankey" their wedding was ultimately going to be a "Terribly Skanky" wedding. Yes, I thought to myself, I think we're going to be able to work together juuuust fine. :)
I think I must have been fated to shoot their wedding. Jessica's sister is also engaged, and had contacted me a month or so before Jessica asking if I could shoot her wedding. She had found me through Facebook ads and liked my style. Unfortunately I was already booked for that day, but was able to recommend a very good friend to photograph their wedding. I guess in the spirit of "if at first you don't succeed" the powers that be lead Jessica to my site, completely independent of her sister and unknowing that she had tried to book me, and we were able to sign a contract- thus paving the way for the sweet sweet photographic goodness you find before you.
Now something you probably already know about me is that I don't charge by the hour. There are several reasons why, among them simplicity in terms of pricing, the opportunity to be there as long as I need to to get that one perfect shot to capture your day, and the flexibility to deal with craziness in schedules and mishaps along the way. That being said, engagement and bridal sessions still only last anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 hours on average- mainly because not too many brides and grooms really want to be in front of a camera for longer than that. However, I am always ready and raring to do anything my clients want, and while talking with Casey and Jessica about engagements it quickly became apparent that they were up for a bit more than the norm.
Thus, I present to you... (drumroll, please) the Marathon Engagement Session. We started out at Wheeler Farm, then headed to a location west of Salt Lake City off the freeway, and finished up at Salt Air. I took over 1000 photos and the shoot lasted over 5 hours. Fun was had by all. I still haven't quite finished editing all of them, but I have put up a gallery of some of my picks from the session. Be sure and check them out here.

Remember the teaser post I put up a couple weeks ago? Yeah, these skies were AMAZING!

The colors just kept getting better as it got later.

They were such a pleasure to work with. I love happy people, which is why I love weddings!

I loved these stalks and reed thingys, you could just see how they moved in the wind- gorgeous setting.

Yeah, we got along fine.

Natalie's Bridals

Recently I've been reading a fantastic photography book entitled "Light: Science and Magic". Early on the authors make an observation that really struck home to me.

"In some ways, photographers resemble musicians more than painters, sculptors, and other visual artists. This is because photographers, like musicians, are more interested in the manipulation of energy than that of matter... Photography is the manipulation of light."

I was impressed by this simple statement, and it underlined one of the primary reasons I love photography as much as I do, and especially why I love to shoot on location as opposed to a studio. The ever-changing nature of the light and weather conditions ensures that nothing is EVER quite the same. You can go to the same locations, at the same time, and it's always different to one degree or another.
It was for this reason that when I saw the huge stormy clouds at the beginning of Natalie's bridals I started to get little jitters of delight. It made for some wonderfully dramatic contrasty goodness. (did I put enough modifiers in that last sentence?)

I love working with really serious, sophisticated models.... ;)

The deep purple of this bouquet was gorgeous...

Take a look at the rest of the photos at the full gallery here.