Here’s a quick couple shots from an engagement session I did recently:
Jun 302011
May 022011
Here’s a recent engagement shoot I did with Scott & January.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m all about showing off who my clients are and what makes them unique. Pretty pictures of couples in fields are great, so chalk it up to some A.D.D. on my part if you want, but I need to try something new and different every time I go out with my camera, so when I go out to photograph my millionth engagement shoot, there’s nothing more new, different and exciting than a couple of unique individuals:
Yoga and a game of poker are two things I’ve never shot before. I had no idea what to expect; I don’t know the first thing about yoga and I almost never play card games, not even poker. But man, what a blast Mat & Kristina were to work with on these concepts!
Those who know enough about my wedding photography know that I decided some time ago that it would be much more interesting if I shot a cohesive series that’s unique to that couple rather than aim for a series of great but disconnected imagery that don’t represent the couple in the least and looks like everyone else’s photography.
It’s more work for everyone involved, but I’ve been enjoying it a ton more than what I used to do.
Here’s what we got this time:
Jan 282011
After picking out a bunch of personal favorites from Justin & Melanie’s beautiful wedding for the sneak peek, I decided to do something very bold (for me at least) and go almost exclusively to black & white on all the images.
I’m really happy with what that did as a whole and it seems as though black & white is becoming a habit of mine. Almost anytime I try something in black & white, I fall in love with it and decide to leave it that way. Some of my shoots are even designed to only be presented in black & white, though these are usually model shoots (doing one later this afternoon! Woohooo!!)
Maybe my body is preparing itself for something I don’t know is coming… Like going color blind…
I’m going to start with my personal favorite from the whole wedding and possibly one of my all-time favorites:
Beyond just being an actor with whom I’ve worked on five short films (including the endlessly delayed NURF Wars – still in the works, naturally), Jerramy is another one of my close friends.
Strangely so, I think, because we’re so radically different. Yin and Yang I suppose. I’m all about controlling my environment, he’s all about going with the flow. I have a hard time letting go of precise planning, while he lets things evolve however they will.
So my first struggle with him when trying to setup this shoot was pinning down what exactly we were gonna do.
Me: “What defines you, Jerramy?”
Jerramy: “Living life, filling it with love and dreaming.”
Me: “Dude, I can’t shoot that…”
Love, for example, simply as a concept, is too broad and abstract to capture in an image. I shoot the consequence of love when I shoot a couple, I shoot the expression of love with a kiss or hands clasped together, but I can’t shoot love. And I can’t shoot life. And I can’t shoot dreams.
So I kept trying and trying to pin down something tangible to shoot. This proved to be very difficult with him. We did come up with some ideas, but nothing I was crazy about.
So when I decided to meet him by a park, still without a solid plan I felt confident about, I called…
Me: “Hey where are you?”
Jerramy: “I’m in the north parking lot. I’m sitting on the curb next to my car, playing my guitar.”
Me: “Don’t move!! This is you!! This is our shoot!!”
Screw the park; we shot this in the parking lot instead! And this is my best representation of Jerramy. Easy-going, filled with hopes and dreams, and loving life however it comes at him 
Oh and here’s the NURF Wars poster Jerramy was the star of. See? It’s making SOME progress! And yes, the “One Man. One Last Job. Lots of NERF Guns.” tag line is obviously meant as a joke. Otherwise I think it would mean I’m currently stuck in the 80s.
Sep 232010
Here’s Tom & Angela on their big day
Sep 052010
The happy couple:
Aug 222010
It can’t just be me… Emma looks a lot like Jennifer Aniston to everyone else right?! Especially that square image!
Jason and Emma were so much fun to work with. And lucky too; good light followed us everywhere we went despite threatening skies in the morning.
Aug 182010
There’s nothing quite like a little diversity here in Utah. It’s refreshing.
Even luckier for me, these guys were from the Middle-East. So the food was familiar (coussa, fatoush, wara’ anab… mmmmmmm), the language was familiar (I spoke Arabic to them half the time while the other half of the time, my flawless American-English turned into a heavy Arabic accent), the culture was familiar, the generosity was familiar; everything. And once I revealed to them that I was Lebanese, I became a lot less threatening with that giant brick of a camera in my hands.
Felt just like home.
To top it all off, Firas and Emma were, as with all my clients it seems, a dream to work with.
Here’s my favorites from the day:
These guys were just…
Fun.
Between their beautiful, low-key backyard reception and their ultra-low-key escape shortly after cutting their cake (they literally sprinted over to the neighbor’s house where the rental car was waiting – all without announcing a single thing to any of the guests), this was a wedding experience all its own. Not to mention Martin had some very inspiring stories to tell of his service in Iraq.
And before I forget…
I’m usually pretty good about staying out of guest’s picture-taking, but I totally walked into that dude’s shot… Sorry about that!
Still though, kind of a cool capture
