That’s hot

George Hurrell is among one of my favorite portrait photographers. Classic Americana that you must check out if you’ve never seen his work.  If you google him you’ll immediately recognize that his subjects were mostly famous actors and actresses during the 40’s and 50’s.  I’ve been so fascinated with the classical lighting that I thought I’d take a crack at some “hot light” portraits. The reason for the term “hot lights” is because 1) they can literally ‘cook’ the subject due to the heat generated 2) they are a constant source of light. This is the epitome of “what you see is what you get” type of  studio lighting. There are a lot of drawbacks to using “hot lights” which is why it is usually very uncommon to find a studio using these. But I love a challenge and this should be a good one. So keep checking back for more updates as we also have additional engagement sessions + senior portraits to share!

These just arrived today in 2 massive crates! Shout out goes to Mitch at Cinequipt for unbelievable speediness in getting us these lights! Workhorse lights that should be up to the task!

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1941 Packard

A couple that we photographed this summer requested that we put together a small collage of pictures of the car they drove off in when they were married. They wanted to present it as a gift to the person that owned the car. Such a sweet idea! This gave me a great excuse to play around in photoshop more than I usually do. I’m extremely fond of the 1940’s and 50’s so this was a win win getting to play with old stock advertisements + car photos.  Let me know what you think.

Color

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B&W. Found a grungy old scanned advertisement for the car back in its popularity. I cleaned it up and added a little flair to it. I don’t think this will see print but it was a fun little side project.

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Ann : Senior 2010

We recently had a request for senior photographs in a country farm setting.  So we travelled out to the Wills Family Farm out in Adel, IA. It is very scenic and quite beautiful with a pumpkin patch and apple orchard! Made for perfect fall pictures. There was even a moment where a goat wanted to cozy up next to Ann! Soooo many pictures from this session. Thanks for having us out!







Mobile Editing + Same Day Slideshows!

Dear PC,

We’ve been through a lot together. I remember that fall day back in 2000 when the UPS guy dropped off the final piece to put my first home build together. The 3dfx Voodoo 5500 PCI video card. We stayed up late and played Quake Arena all night while drinking massive quantities of Dr. Thunder. I remember you’d get too hot inside my apartment that you’d lock up and not respond to my keystrokes. Together we learned the importance of airflow and cooling. I get all nostalgic thinking of that day we first experienced cable internet together. I didn’t think that cable installation guy would ever leave! But when he did…oh the times we had! We immediately tried out napster and found out we could download an entire Moxy Fruvous album in under 10 minutes! How exhilarating that was!

But over time things started to change. I realized quickly you required a lot of maintenance. In the beginning I was ok with it. But it seemed every 6-9 months you’d get really fussy and want a fresh OS installation. Or you’d contract a virus that was really tough to get rid of. I stayed by your side through thick and thin. Even when Vista came around and we decided to experiment together. Oh, I just look back and laugh and realize how foolish we were! Running task manager and seeing an OS chew through more memory than I could have ever imagined. It felt good when we sobered up and reloaded XP.

I’m sad to say that we are going to be apart for awhile. I’ve found a new computer that respects me as a user. Someone that doesn’t need hard drive defragging frequently or has .dll version nightmares. I think we should keep the relationship professional and I’ll still see you when I need to run AutoCad 2010 or Revit. But let’s keep it work related.

I hope you understand,
Chris

Ha! That was the nerd in me expressing my joy in the decision to go Apple.  We plan on making our next purchase the new 27″ iMac to team up with our new MacBook Pro. It was a good decision and current and future weddings will be benefiting from this immediately! Sarah and I can now post process twice as fast having two workstations! We can now then also offer same day slideshows for weddings. It is a win for everyone (except for the ol’ wallet).

And as always…many more photographs are on the way. From senior sessions to our last few weddings of the season! Come back soon to check ’em out!