Tory and Andrew

Another favorite wedding from May. The best part was that everything was within three miles of my house. It's not often that I have a wedding right here in Albany. I had never been to any of the three main locations (all extraordinarily beautiful!), and we were lucky enough to be able to do formals in Washington Park one week before the Tulip Festival, so the flowers were in full bloom!

Wedding season is in full swing! Here's my first wedding of the year, shot this past March. I was lucky enough to have an amazing second-shooter with me that day, the awesome Louis Torres from www.foreverplatinum.com . Terrific wedding with an amazingly fun bride and groom! Thanks, Melissa and Garrett for having us!

Old Stuff

I'm trying to get back into the habit of bloggins, so for now I'm going to start with posting some old photos that I like.

Mazzy

Impromptu photo session with my daughter. We were at the park, flying kites, but her tummy started bothering her. I think it was motion sickness from looking up for so long. I hate that she wasn't feeling well, but it was nice to get the chance to take some more subdued photos of her.

Flowers and Bees

A couple of photos from the tulip festival. Not necessarily my genre, but I love a good bee shot!

Experimenting

Just some experimentation with the direct positive effect I like so much.

Effects

I try not to be too heavy-handed with effects, because I often like the photo and composition to speak for itself. However, sometimes a good effect can really make me love a photo. These were all done in Lightroom.

The first one, I didn't take. My sister, Cori, took it. It was in the bride's mom's living room. It was fall and the objects on that window sill area are ceramic pumpkins and other harvest-y type decor. Using this effect with it's high contrast, helped pull the focus away from the knick-knacks and back where it should be...on the bride and her gorgeous dress! This one, I did several different color variations, but I think this was my favorite. I like the color pop, but don't think it takes away from the couple. I like the color accent to really be an accent that adds to the photo, not just a gimmick.
The selenium tone if this photo probably is a gimmick in this case. The photo itself was nice, but not something that would really catch my attention. I thought the blue added an interesting "feel" to the photo. And have I mentioned that blue is my favorite color?
This is probably my favorite effect. It's called "direct positive" in lightroom, and in some photos I think it just looks amazing and really makes the photo pop! When it works (and a lot of the time it's a horrible horrible choice), I feel like the photo could have been found in a magazine, and that makes me really giddy!