Wedding Photo Booth Fun

My brother Ryan and new sister-in-law Elizabeth had a beautiful wedding last Saturday at a beautiful church in Piedmont. A few weeks before the wedding, Ryan asked if I had any thoughts on setting up a photo booth. I did some searching on the internet and found an idea that seemed workable (more on that later).

We set up our version of the photo booth during Ryan and Elizabeth’s reception and the fun started. Here are some of my favorites (the rest are on Flickr):

Check out all of the wedding photo booth photos on Flickr.

To Craft an Invitation

A few months ago, Jamie’s grandmother asked me to put together some ideas for a postcard invitation to El Dorado Adventist School’s annual Alumni Weekend. This school has meant a lot to us — Jamie and I both spent almost all of our pre-college days attending EAS. And then, just this week, our nephew became the fourth generation to attend EAS as he started Kindergarten.

So, when I was asked to design the postcard invitation I immediately said yes. And then I started thinking of where I wanted to go with the design. I figured I should start with some research.

I did some image searches for various school reunion/alumni weekend invitations and came away generally unimpressed. Then I did some searches for more generic event invitations and found some inspiration in the tech sector. Based on my research, I determined that I wanted something bold, eye-catching, and memorable for the front — something that would catch your eye that was simple and uncluttered.

So I started thinking about what would make a good core for an idea — a good hook. I spent a lot of time thinking until one night, as I was supposed to be falling asleep, I had an idea.

Roots. Like “Return to Your Roots”. With an eye-catching image of a tree.

As I thought more about this, I began to get excited. This was it! It related to the idea of returning to a very formative period of one’s life. And it related to the region — there is a strong heritage of agriculture in our small foothill community, especially the regionally known Apple Hill. 

So I grabbed my iPad and very roughly finger painted my basic idea using the Paper app. And then I went to sleep.

In the morning, I showed Jamie my rough sketch and she suggested I go with “Celebrate” instead of “Return to”. I decided that put a more positive spin and sounded more like a party so I went with it.

Now that I had my idea, all that was left was all of the final graphics work. I went back to Paper and worked out a much more refined version of the tree graphic. Then I pulled that into Pixelmator, did some adjustments, and added the text in a font that fit well with the organic theme of the invitation. And I had my front:

 

Now all that was left was the back. Most of the back is prescribed by the postal service, so I only had about a third of the postcard to design. There was a lot of information to convey — the weekend schedule, honored classes, guest speaker, websites, and more. In addition, I wanted it to relate to the theme established on the front side. 

I decided that with the increased density of information I would try and keep the graphic design simpler and more subtle. I tried a few different ideas and settled on a tone on tone design with a two part tree graphic — branches and roots to relate to the overall theme. I eye-droppered a light yellow/green from the front design and used that as the basis for the backside colors. After some tweaking, I had the back:

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. Let me know what you think in the comments.

And if you went to EAS, definitely come out to this year’s Alumni Weekend. I’ll be there.

Portrait 14/52 - Ryan and Elizabeth

Just over a week ago, my brother Ryan provided some exciting family news — he had asked his girlfriend to marry him. And she said yes! So when the two of them came into town to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom, we decided to have an engagement session. So without further ado, here are my favorites from the shoot. Congratulations Ryan and Elizabeth!

 

Technical Details

These are all natural light portraits, so there wasn’t much to the setup. We were using reflectors and diffusers on voice activated light stands (my parents). The camera was set to P mode and auto ISO which resulted in a moderate (1/125s - 1/400s) shutter speed and pretty wide open (f2.8 - f4.5) aperture at pretty low ISOs (100 - 400). I had some trouble with blurry pictures which was a twofold problem. First, I should have set my camera to TV so that I controlled the shutter speed. Second, I was using my 70-200 f2.8 IS lens but when I put the lens back on my camera a few days later I noticed that the image stabilization was switched to Off. If I were to do it again, I would set my camera to around 1/500s shutter speed and let the camera select the aperture and ISO. I would also make sure my image stabilization was turned on!

Urban Fabrics

Ever since we graduated from Andrews University with our architecture degrees, my good friend Mike Weich and I have discussed working together at some point. We are happy to announce — that day has come!

We are exceptionally pleased to present to the world our brand new line of urbanism themed apparel and accessories: Urban Fabrics. We have a wide range of products based on our original designs. These designs are sometimes clever and sometimes playful; but always focused on what it means to be an urbanist.

This might seem like a trivial endeavor, and in some ways it is, but we are very excited about it’s potential to both be a successful business for ourselves and to be something that helps move the cause of crafting livable, lovable communities forward. While we appreciate a lively debate of the deep issues of urbanism, we felt there was room in the placemaking community for something a bit more lighthearted and playful. We believe that one way to bring our message of crafting livable communities to a wider audience is through fun products that celebrate urban themes in ways that might make a stranger on a street ask “what does that mean?”

So go check out our urban apparel products and, if you are interested in the backstory behind some our products, check out the Urban Fabrics blog. We are always working on new designs, so sign up for our email list or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest to keep up to date. We would love to hear from you so let us know what you think.

Portrait 13/52 - Nick

Last Sunday I put out a general call for volunteers on Facebook and my friend Nick volunteered. Nick works at the local casino and he’s into poker, so I thought we should go for a poker themed shoot. Nick was a patient and willing subject, so we tried a lot of different poses and ideas. 

My favorite of the day is this one:

I asked Nick to setup an epic hand. So he gave the unseen opponent a full house and himself a royal flush. Then we started shooting the reveal. Nick gave some pretty hardcore “pay up” looks:

Nick mentioned to me that the watch is an integral part the poker player’s attire. The rest of the clothing is meant to maintain comfort and hide tells, but the watch is meant to convey success — an intimidation factor of sorts. So we tried to make sure we featured Nick’s watch prominently in the pictures.

We finished off the shoot with Nick throwing cards at me. We tried a lot of different ways and I like this one the best:

Technical Details:

The main light was my 8x36 gridded soft box set to 1/2 power. This was typically camera right from Nick. I had a large umbrella set to 1/4 or 1/8 power to provide some general illumination from just camera left. I had a third bare flash set relatively low behind and to the left of Nick to provide some rim/hair lighting. Camera settings were ISO 100, f7.1, and 1/160s. 

Conclusions:

This was a fun shoot. Nick was a good subject as he was willing to try anything and stayed engaged in the whole process. There were a couple lessons I learned though. First, black backgrounds and black clothing make my edting much more difficult. It would have been better if Nick had been wearing a shirt that was any color but black. Second, I think that the black background itself was too simple and blank. I would have preferred to have something to simulate dim casino lighting in the background. Next time I’ll have to expirement with other options and maybe bring out my fog machine.

Portrait 12/52 - Jordyn

Last but not least from my photo shoot of my friends’ children: Jordyn. She is the older sister of the twins and is a lively young lady. At first Jordyn wasn’t too keen on posing for portraits so I had to settle for more candid action shots.

It was a pretty cool day, so after a few minutes outside Jordyn opted for her very stylish coat. I really enjoyed photographing her in that coat as it lent a certain sophistication to her poses.

I really liked the way these last two turned out — something about them feels timeless to me.

It was really great getting to photograph Jordyn and her brothers. It was my first time getting to take pictures of an entire family of siblings and I thought it was a great learning experience. 

I’m always interested in connecting with my visitors. Leave a comment below or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter.

Portrait of the Twins

In addition to photographing Christopher and Jonathan separately, I wanted to get some shots of the two of them together. Twins share a unique bond and I hoped to capture just a bit of that on camera.

My first chance happened when they were encouraged to do a “brother hug”. 

We then got them both on the stump at the same time. This made for some really good opportunities.

 

These two year old boys couldn’t keep still for long, but that was great because we got some wonderful character shots.

And to finish up, probably the truest portrait of twin brothers!

I’m always interested in connecting with my visitors. Leave a comment below or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter.

Portrait 11/52 - Christopher

Christopher is Jonathan’s twin brother. And just like Jonathan, Christopher has the full helping of 2-year old energy. He was a bit harder to catch than Jonathan until he found a stump he liked and just stayed there. I have many more total pictures of Christopher but they are all in the same exact place. Like his brother, Christopher was a bit ambivelent about my presence at first.

But it didn’t take long for Christopher to give me some personality.

He really liked this stump, so I got a lot of pictures of him standing there. Here are a few more of the best.

More pictures of the twin brothers together and their older sister Jordyn are coming soon.

I’m always interested in connecting with my visitors. Leave a comment below or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter.

Portrait 10/52 - Jonathan

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to photograph some friends’ kids. They have a daughter and two twin boys, so I was able to begin to catch up for the weeks I’ve missed!

First up, we have one of the twins — Jonathan.

At first, Jonathan wasn’t too sure about me. While he isn’t smiling, I like the focus in his expression and the way he is framed within the angles of the pipe railing.

We started with a walk to get everyone relaxed and find some good locations for pictures. Like most 2 year old boys, Jonathan is a fan of sticks.

 

One of my favorite pictures from the day is this one where Jonathan is walking along the gravel road which curves away gently behind him.

 

We finally got a little bit of sun as we were walking through the green spring grasses.

With Jonathan now pretty used to me, we were able to get some good portraits.  

Technical Details

I was hoping for partly cloudy but we ended up with mostly cloudy. While I didn’t get the backlit glow I was hoping for, the cloudy sky provided very soft, even lighting. The only lighting modification I did was to have a reflector on some of the more stationary/portrait type shots. Everything else was purely natural lighting. I set my camera to 1/800s as I knew that young kids can be quite active and I didn’t want to lose any shots due to motion blur. I let my camera’s auto ISO function select the ISO — generally between 100 and 800. This meant I was shooting pretty wide open — f2.8 - f4.0. 

Check back for pictures of Jonathan’s twin brother and older sister. I’ll be posting those soon.

I’m always interested in connecting with my visitors. Leave a comment below or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter.

Sky Wolves

On Friday, we had a family outing to the West Coast Falconry for an incredible falconry experience. While we learned a lot about what falconry entails, the stars of the experience were definitely the birds. It was amazing to hold a hawk on your outstretched arm and look it in the eye. It was thrilling to watch such powerful birds glide within mere feet of our heads as it flew from person to person. And it was incredible when the hawk expertly landed on our arms despite the windy day.

This is Tika, the Harris Hawk who was the focus of our experience. 

We also got up close to this Red Tail Hawk, the personal bird of a young apprentice at the falconry.

These powerful hawks were quite incredible up close, but nothing quite compared to the sophistication and beauty of this smaller American Kestrel:

It truly was an amazing experience to be so close to these incredible birds.

I’m always interested in connecting with my visitors. Leave a comment below or connect with me via Facebook or Twitter.