Last of the summer

Last weekend marked the end of a long and busy wedding season. I was very happy to end on the wedding of two friends, Eric and Emily. I've waxed poetic about outdoor weddings before, and I will do it again. Outdoor weddings are fantastic because you have great light, plenty of room for movement, and normally very nice weather. This wedding had all of those and more. I was also able to try out a new assistant, the ever talented and just downright cool Clay Lomneth. He did a fantastic job, and once I get done processing the images and have time to give his shots back, you more than likely will have a chance to check out his stuff at his blog, claylomneth.blogspot.com.



This is probably my favorite shot from the whole wedding. The look on her face as she peeks around the corner to look her future husband was perfect, and fantastic late afternoon light is always good.



Stick cam! Another fun thing with outdoor weddings is that you can slap a camera and wide angle lens on top of a mono pod, stick it up in the air, and shoot some really cool shots from way up high.



This is Eric and his kid getting ready before the ceremony.



Now, I don't know if this one is that great, but it has started to grow on me. Yeah, they are not in focus, but i really like the feel of it.



Cake!!!



This is one from the rehearsal, with the groomsmen. I loves me some layering.



Here is Clay wearing a suit coat that is far, far too large for him as one of the bridesmaids de-fuzzes it for the groomsman.



Eric and Em getting in an amazing 67 Firebird Convertible. That is one cool way to leave the wedding in style.

All in all, a great day. I still have hours and hours of post processing ahead of me, with a total of more than 7000 images from the day to sort through. Congrats to both of them.

Scrumpy Jacks

It always makes me sad to see a local bar go out of business. Scrumpy Jacks was a fun bar in south lincoln that i frequented, and i will miss it.

Fun with flash

The fun thing with a small flash is that there are many options as to what you want it to do. This photo would be completely different if it was shot with an on-camera standard flash. however, i placed it at a right angle to me, zoomed the flash head as far as it would go, and popped it at about 1/8th power. the good thing with zooming the flash head is that you get a much more focused beam of light. If it was shot with just a wide flash, it would not look nearly as cool.

Monkeys!

I went to the zoo up in omaha with my mother a few days ago. I love that zoo. This was the fifth year in a row that I have gone with my mom to the zoo. I have to say that looking at apes or monkeys is the best part.








This is a photo of my mom complaining that i never put up a good photo of her.

the ghost kid

Here is a photo from a wedding reception a little while back. i have had to do some heavy post-processing to get this to close to what i would like it to be, but i still think it is not that strong of an image. i just really liked the ghosted kid passing by.

shooting receptions down at the train depot in the haymarket can be a bit of a challenge. it is dark, very dark, and there are not many good backgrounds. but, i love a challenge. is this a great image? i would argue not, but i do not feel that it is a bad image.

Sports

Hooray for sports!

fun in the sun

Played some croquet with some friends a few weeks back. Sombreros will add fun to anything, from photos to lawn games. Also, i found out that kittens love cameras. or camera bags, at the least.

Get ready

So, long time no post. Been real busy, a whole bunch of weddings and other gigs. I will post those as soon as possible, along with a few senior portraits, engagement shots, sports, news, and editorial. what can i say? i'm a bum when it comes to updating.

Here is a rather failed attempt at doing a composite of downtown lincoln, shot during the half time of the shrine bowl. I mostly just posted this after having a discussion involving my handful of illogical fears. I have a fear of falling down lots of stairs. not a short amount, but somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred or so. I had to climb a lot of stairs to go shoot this at memorial stadium, so that is why i am saying this. The really odd thing is that i really enjoy heights. I just would not like to fall down a bunch of stairs.

Also, and my brother scott makes fun of me to no end for this fear, i have a fear of pulling up behind a tow truck at a stop light and having the tow truck driver drop his tow-thing and pick up my car. yes, i realize that is crazy. but, just stop and think about that for a moment. that sure would suck.

enough rambling. as i said, updates will be coming soon. I will not say they will be coming fast and furiously (i hated those movies) but they will be coming.

p.s. the last of my 3 illogical fears is having my bottom jaw ripped off, like in that vampire/werewolf moving underworld 2. once again, it will never happen, but it still scares me thinking of those things.

Some new stuff

Fireworks, fishing, and family, oh my!

Week 2 of shoot out

The theme for this week is eyes to the sky. I tried to get some star photos, but nothing was that good. But, talked with a guy who was really cool. I love fishing, and the people you meet.



Head on over to HERE to see the shots from other photogs, some really nice stuff over there.

Congrats to Eric and Emily

Congrats to Eric and Emily on their upcoming wedding in a few months. I am looking forward to shooting it, it is an outdoor wedding, and i love outdoor weddings. plenty of great light, usually shorter weddings, and plenty of fun.

Mom

My mother had surgery earlier this week and is recovering fine. This makes me very happy. Love ya, mom. My mom is in the middle, my aunt on the left, and my brother on the right.

Red

So, last week fellow photog Clay Lomneth and I decided to start a shoot out. The theme for this shoot out is red. We were supposed to enter 4 shots, but i only have 2 this week. Head over to Clay's blog to see his shots, and feel free to leave comments.





Ideas for future themes are welcome. I think he has won this week, but I vow to come back and represent Lincoln on the next installment.

Storm

Some lightning from my patio.

After the storm

Shot some photos down by Fairbury (my hometown) of the destruction caused by a tornado. This shoot was slightly different, because I knew one of the families that was hit. I started out by Reynolds, a quite small town about 14 miles SW from Fairbury, looking for one of the houses that was destroyed. I eventually found it, but the residents had already left. From what the clean up crew said, they probably will not rebuild. I always feel terrible when I have to cover things like this, because I hate profiting off of peoples pain.





Another house that was hit was that of Doyle and Brenda Mannshreck. They have been family friends since before I was born, and I stopped by to see how they were doing, but sadly Doyle and Brenda had already left. They had a beautiful house just to the north of town, and now it has no roof. The thing that made me happy was that when I pulled up was the droves of people who were sitting outside. I was told that the head of american family insurance had already cut them a check for the house, so that was another happy moment from what was a terrible event. It was good to see people hanging out in the ruins of the house drinking a beer after a full day of picking up the pieces.

The important thing to remember from these events is that the families did not get hurt. Buildings can be replaced, tvs bought again, but thankfully no one was injured. My heart goes out to those who lost something in the storm.

new background

I like to change my desktop background to match the seasons. A nice feet up baseball shot from rosenblatt gets the job done.

A cloudy day congrats

Shot an engagement session yesterday with Chris and Andrea. They were at first worried about it being cloudy, but i am glad that i convinced them that I could take just as nice photos with a cloudy day as a beautiful sunset. I am very pleased with how the shoot turned out, and i really like the feel of these photos. Congrats to both of them, and they will be getting married in about 6 months.

It was a lot of fun shooting all of these, as shooting on a cloudy day lets me get creative with the flash. Having a cloudy day lets me really the subjects pop. i would say on average i was exposing 2 stops underexposed on the sky and popping the flash at between 1/8 and 1/2 power. I was only using one flash the whole time, but i think it worked well. but, popping the flash at 1/2 power sure is a battery destroyer, as i had to switch out batteries a couple of times in the 4 hour shoot.

Update!

Some baseball and croquet. hooray!