Read on to see where Kelly & Tom’s wedding art lives…

It lives in their hallway…

You may be wondering what ‘it’ is, and I don’t bother to take a picture of it because the piece is not a picture – it is a painting with a picture in it. Kelly and Tom took me out to their wooded property for part of their engagement photo session and they mentioned this as one of their favorite photos. It was used on their save-the-date card. And for each of our clients who spent more thank 6k with us this year I have attempted to do something outside their contract, as contracts seem to constrict the heart – and I need to open mine. As a result I painted this piece, it started with an artistic retouching process:

And continued as I fastened the printed photo to a hardboard and painted in an impressionistic surface with acrylics.

Now art lives in their livingroom

Kelly used a series of framed 4×6 prints to fill her living room with emotional touch points – her wedding photos.

Here’s the same setting from their engagement photos – when the walls were blank.

We encourage you to fill your live with real moments love, service and life this holiday season – we hope our pictures documenting your year remind you of all the blessings you are surrounded with.

We are so blessed to make these pieces, that can work such small joys in your life!

Then get on your dirt-bike and let’s rock you some cool images!

I use alternative digital  processes  to give the photos a funky fresh feel.  My package includes 100 double sided business cards for you to give out to your family and friends.

Putting our creativity together will form something amazing, contact me to book a cool High School Senior graduation session in Ballantyne or Fort Mill today.

Make Love Real serves these High School students:

• Charlotte Latin School‎ » 9502 Providence Rd » Charlotte, NC 28277
• Ardrey Kell High School‎ » 10220 Ardrey Kell Rd » Charlotte, NC 28277
• Corban Christian Academy‎ » 15008 Lancaster Highway » Pineville, NC 28134
• Charlotte Catholic High School‎ » 7702 Pineville-Matthews Rd » Charlotte, NC 28226
• Providence High School‎ » 1800 Pineville Matthews Rd » Charlotte, NC 28270
• South Mecklenburg High School‎ » 8900 Park Rd » Charlotte, NC 28210

Purchase your senior portrait session now and book your date before you run out of time!

South Charlotte NC – Senior Portrait Photographer Package <–book session now

PSSST – You’ll want headphones to savor this 4min experience.

The slideshow track is by John Martyn – Small Hours from the album Sweet Little Mysteries: The Island Anthology

Many of the slides on this slideshow are longer than 10 seconds.

I enjoyed stretching the rules and am beginning to feel the space between the photos more fully.

Check your wedding date to see if we are available for your wedding!

This was my last wedding in Lima, my once-upon-a-time hometown, where My wife and I bought our first house, and where the sky invites the face of god. It reminds me of the amazing tropical thunderheads I’ve seen in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.  I am so  grateful  I was blessed to experience this August evening.

Just a technical note of interest – the web is the best place to view these photos because of the amazing Electric Magenta, or Fucia color of the sky.  It is nearly impossible to reproduce that coloring in a print as explained by wikipedia:

Electric magenta vs. process magenta

When electric magenta is reproduced on paper, it is called fuchsia and it is physically impossible for it to appear on paper as vivid as on a computer screen. In order to reproduce it, a small amount of cyan printer’s ink must be added to printer’s magenta to make fuchsia, and therefore fuchsia is not a primary color of pigment–it is the color of printer’s magenta that is one of the primary colors of pigment (along with cyan and yellow).

The name fuchsia was chosen as the alias for electric magenta because that is the color name for the color that in printed reproduction is its equivalent.

Since prior to the introduction of  personal computers magenta was synonymous with printer’s magenta, colored pencils and  crayons called “magenta” are usually colored the color ofprocess magenta (printer’s magenta) shown above.

So while we experience it – it’s not yet something that we can fully capture!

I just thought that was a beautiful analogy to a photograph.

“um, aaah, well….the face of God smiled on me”

I can’t really explain it any other way…in case you were wondering what I was doing earlier tonight.

We had to tolerate thunderstorm downpours – but we got to  receive  the blessings of the August sunset.  If you’re planning an August wedding in Upstate New York be sure to plan some time for sunset portraits.

I’d like to credit the tunes to John Martyn’s Head and Heart from the album “Sweet Little Mysteries: The Island Anthology” and Jem’s Stay Now from the album “Finally Woken” The story is an instant classic by Jeremy and Sarah, look for their upcoming wedding in September and recommend me to all your friends who are getting married and need their love story told.

And Sara would like to thank her stylist Ellen at Scot Miller Salon, along with her colorist Jarrod and the sweetie Cory for doing her makeup and giving the dogs something to lick off.

If you would like a multimedia presentation for your engagement, wedding, anniversary, or just as a family journal – you can read more about these two packages:

3 Media package – Custom Slideshow – Documentary Audio

BLUE – blue is the hardest color for a camera sensor, or film, to capture.

You can browse any photo in my Flickr stream with a blue tag, even if it’s more recent than this post.

You can read about the technical steps I take to achieve blue at www.Make Light Real.com. It’s very easy to control the saturation and luminosity of blue using the B* channel in L*A*B* color mode.

Some say blue is a color of sadness, but to me – the blue of a sky is electric, energizing, full of potential and the promise of tomorrow – of crossing the horizon and the joy of the next moment.

Free blue texture download from Free Light Friday

Most often, blue is a great background color and it can really make both red and yellow (and everything in between) sing, so it’s a great color to accent the design of any photo with.

I used the blue sky and cold desert light to highlight the bride under the lemon tree waiting before her wedding.

Well hopefully you as my client will love blue too!

Click play to listen to their engagement story, and enjoy the music by Helios from the Eingya album, titled Coast off

This will be the last post on these images, so here’s a summary of the saga!

• The first glimpse
  
• Intoxicated engagement shooting – tounge in cheek
  
• Neil show’s off his biking ‘skills’ for the camera
  
• Deanna’s wardrobe alterations for the engagement shoot
  
• Neil’s attempt to reach Deanna’s level of hilarity, in the shoot and in the post
  
• WPJA awards sunrise photo 11th place in 2007 engagement category
  
• Double sided, full color save the date cards.
• Engagement photos custom designed wedding signature journal.
• Read Deanna’s posts from her wedding planning experience.

That completes their 3 media engagement session.   This project has to be a highlight of my career this far and I look forward to getting to know so many more of you as I meet you for your engagement sessions.

So it’s been a while since I’ve discussed a picture, and I thought this would be a good one to talk about. I shot this image at a recent November wedding with it’s bride only counterpart. I enjoyed creating this image in an empty lot next to Christina’s (the bride’s) parent’s home where she prepared for the wedding. The enjoyment came from being able to create mood and style easily in the early evening that comes in November. The frame above was made at 5:03:22PM between the ceremony and reception. The early sunset gave me the chance to control the lighting in the image by using my strobes instead of relying on the mood of the natural light.

Planning for pictures

The early evening gave us ample time between the ceremony and reception and the double bonus of having both daylight and dusk to make pictures in. With a wedding plan that allowed us two hours of shooting between the ceremony and reception I was able to shoot several styles of pictures with the wedding party and the couple. The November temperatures, the foliage valiantly holding on the Red Oaks and a freshly dressed bride inspired this photo’s tonality:

Even though the day was started with a light snow and the grey skies remained through the day – with my equipment and vision I was able to create a unique photo for Christina. She was brave enough to wear her lacy dress into the weeds before the ceremony to win this great photo!

Composition and presentation

I made a new category today in the content management system here called presentation as I will be posting some interesting presentation options soon. Let me talk just a moment about the composition and how it affects presentation of the photo. First, the proportion – or the size of the couple related to the overall image – has several relationships to how you may or may not appreciate presenting the image in your home. My experience in preparing images for display in my clients homes, mailing as postcards and designing into websites has shown me that there are two general groups of clients that hire me; the visuals and the emotionals. One group are generally more bold and visually literate, meaning they have greater experience reading, using, or collecting images. The other group of image buyers are less sure of what they want in visual terms but are drawn to My wife & I’s work on emotional terms and the romance of documenting real moments of family and friend’s connections.

The visually literate bunch, often work in advertising, communications, or practice photography as a hobby and have more graphic tastes in photos and a stronger tolerance for seeing themselves in the photos. The emotionally motivated bunch, have less of a tolerance for displaying themselves and would rather see demonstrations of love but not of themselves. Interesting paradox, I know since it’s their love that is demonstrated.

Print size and proportions

No client represents either of these polarities completely, however I felt Christina and Mike were somewhat of the more romantic type and so I composed several of these images in this proportion to give them the opportunity to make a large print where they don’t feel visually large in the print, but can cherish their togetherness and warmth in the chill night air under the moon. The scale of this image should allow it to be printed as large as some of our largest prints, meaning 4 feet tall by 6 feel long on a fine canvas frame. If you have a big blank wall to cover in your home, we can take care of you!

Browse the ‘Where Art Lives’ category to get more ideas about how to frame, mount, and creatively present your wedding and portrait images.

∞

So we were on our way to see if we could get some nice sunset pictures from the top of Cobbs hill and we saw this mountainous pile of leaves near the playgroud. And I mean mountainous, to get to the top to jump Erica and Josh climbed a good 14-16ft up and Josh convinced Erica to jump with him. I only got one exposure per jump, but as you can tell – it was a good exposure! My clients are the bravest people in town – the 10 year old that was there thought we were the coolest adults he’d ever seen!

You can see some group photos we’ve taken on the wedding day at Cobb’s hill overlook of the Skyline of Rochester.

Contact us to book a grand package for your Arizona high desert wedding.