Sarah & Allen E Shoot

Another fantastic couple and another fantastic day to shoot! Sarah and Allen love Kelly's Island, the water, and sharing a bottle of wine with friends. So with that in mind, we tried to show some of that in their engagement picutes. We started off just down the street from my studio in a small local vinyard....

Sarah & Allen are also big fans of black and white, which I am too.... so for this blog post, I chose to stick with that concept through out....

From the vinyard we went down the street yet again to one of my favorit shooting spots, the lake..... It was a beautiful calm day and would have been a great day to be out on the water. Allen and I were both bummed that we weren't able to be out there.... but soon!

One of the things that I love most about this shooting location is that nature has a way of always changing it around.... If anyone followed my site last year, you probably noticed a huge drift tree that I did quite a few shots on. Well that tree is all but gone now, so the entire landscape of the beach has changed. Being that I do shoot some of the same locations over, I constantly try to mix things up to keep it fresh. I try to use different lighting, different angles, etc to give the shots a unique perspective.

I hope you all enjoyed this shoot as much as I did.... as always, check out http://www.t1photo.com/ to see the rest of the shoot. Thanks for stopping by!

Laurie & Jason E Shoot....

Wow! What a perfect way to start off the Cleveland wedding season! Perfect day, perfect weather, perfect light, and the perfect couple. This is also a perfect example of why I like to do the engagement shoots with my couples.... It allows me another day to meet with and get to know my couples, it is amazing what you learn about each other in just a short hour long shoot with them. When Laurie and Jason asked if they could bring their guitars along for the shoot, I was more than happy to say yes.

Remember what I was talking about when I said the light was perfect? Take a look at this first picture and judge for yourself....

From the beach we went to a cool little old time train station I found only a few minutes from my home/studio. It's amazing what you can find to shoot right in your own back yard, all you have to do is open your eyes when your out and about. My wife may bed to differ, she thinks I look around a little too much when I drive...but in this case, I think was worth it....

Love it!

Ok, so if you would like to see the rest of the images from the shoot, please visit my site http://www.t1photo.com/ and go to the proofing gallery tab. Hope you enjoy! Looking forward to your comments.

Why I love my job....

Today was a perfect example of why I love my job. Last November I had the pleasure of shooting Brent and Angela Marinelli's wedding at the beautiful Hyatt Regency in downtown Cleveland. It was a beautiful wedding and they are a great couple to work with. Brent's job has taken them out of town where they now call North Carolina home, so I have not seen them since the wedding.

They were in town this weekend however and we were able to sit down with me to discuss album & print options etc.... It was great catching up with them and refreshing to see that they are doing so well. I love the relationships that being a wedding photographer allows me to build with each new couple I work with, but what I had the privilege to share with them today truly makes me grateful for the gift I had been given through the art of photography.... Today I got to meet the newest addition to the Marinelli family Kaitlyn Reese Marinelli their beautiful baby girl. I was also bestowed the honor of being the first photographer to take family pictures for the Marinelli's and baby Kaitlyn.

This is what I love about my job, how else can you become part of someones life in this way? I am able to capture a moment in time that will be a part of the rest of their lives.... I took the very first family pictures of this beautiful family and I hope to continue doing so for many years to come.

Brent and Angela, thank you so much. It has truly been a pleasure working with you and knowing you. Baby Kaitlyn, it was a pleasure to meet you! I hope you enjoy looking back on these pictures for many years to come....

I look forward to building these relationships with all my clients and to working with you all very soon! The 2009 wedding season is almost upon us! The E Shoots will be starting this weekend so keep an eye out for those too!

Smoky Mountains....

I now see why they call the Smoky Mountains, The Smoky Mountains.... Ok, so maybe taking pictures while your driving at 4825 feet above sea level isn't the best idea, but I got a few cool shots doing it!

Saturday was our day to drive up the big hill. It started out around 60 degrees and overcast so we thought it would be a decent day for the trip. About half way up the hill we started to hit the fog and never saw the light of day again until we came back down below the fog. It was still a cool trip though and cannot wait to try again some time soon. When we reached the top, it was next to zero visibility and had dropped down to 40 degrees....

This next shot was taken once we were back down out of the fog line. There are cool little creeks and other photo ops like this all over the place. There are also plenty of pull off areas along the route to park your car and walk around a bit. It's really an amazing place!

The drive home on Sunday was clear as could be and I was able stop at a spot I saw on the way in to Knoxville to get a couple cool shots of a rock face I liked.... So I pulled over, put on the 4 ways, hopped the guard rail and climbed down over the hill to get this next shot....

If you would like to see all the pictures from the shoot, click the link below and go to Smoky Mountains in the gallery tab.... Thanks for stopping by once again, hope you enjoyed the trip! http://t1photo.ifp3.com/root/t1photo/iphoto/main2.cfm

April Showers?

How about April snow showers.... Cleveland weather is like the Mafia, just when you think you have made it through another long hard winter and the warm weather is finally here, it sucks you right back in again....

I thought we might be ready to start doing some out door engagement shoots soon, but as you will see in the pictures, we are back to 32 degrees and snow..... Now not much snow by Cleveland standards mind you, but there are places where this much snow will close schools....

Oh well, it does make for some beautiful landscapes.... and you never know what your going to get from day to day.... Sometimes hour to hour....

So tonight I will be attending a seminar with the great David Ziser, one of the top wedding photographers in the country! Very much looking forward to that.

Then it's off to Knoxville, TN for the weekend to visit family for the holidays. I hope to get out to take some lanscape shots of the Smokey Mountains while we're there.... So watch for that!

Thanks again for stopping by!

Light Fun....

I once again find myself wishing I could be out shooting with a model other than myself.... but the weather just hasn't gotten to the point that people really enjoy being outside getting their picture taken. I recently purchased a Wescott 50" Soft Box & an Alien Bee 1600 Studio Light however and have been dying to get out and shoot a bit with both. The Wescott 50" box is a huge, soft light modifier and I am able to use the AB 1600 or a 580 EX II flash unit with this set up. The 580 rig is nice because it allows me to go totally wire less and very mobile where the AB needs AC power to run it. They do make portable power units for these lights, so I will have to look into that very soon so that I will be able to take the AB on location shoots and not have to worry about running a 50 ft power cord to the unit.

Okay, okay, who cares about all this tech stuff right? Get to the pictures....

So in this first shot, you will see just the AB 1600 in the 50" box lit from the subjects left at 1/4 power. The box is only about 1 ft away from the subject and the subject is only about 1 ft from the back wall which is pure white. Now here is some more tech data that will bore you to death I'm sure, but I feel I need to explain why I am doing what I'm doing.... Being that I am shooting alone it is a little difficult to get the focus perfect so what I did to make it a little more simple was to use the smallest aperture I could, F16 in this case on my 50mm 1.4 lens. This basically makes everything in focus when you set your lens to infinity in manual focus. Thus my shutter was at 1/30th and ISO was at 400.

Here is the shot....

You can see what a nice soft affect this light has on your subject creating a warm yet detailed look. There does seem to be a bit of a color cast from the bright orange jacket our subject is wearing.....

In the next set up, we added a 580 EX II to the scene and placed it directly behind the subject to basically nuke the white back ground behind him. This shot was done at F16 1/40th and ISO 250. Being I threw in another light, I needed to back off the ISO to get the exposure right.

Ok, so enough with the studio shots, the rain has let up for a minute, the sun is out and the sky is blue. Lets take it outside.... I switched the light in the soft box over to the 580EX II so that I could go mobile and moved all the gear just outside my studio. I love the lot my home/studio is on, I can walk right out the door and be in a nice wooded setting with endless shooting opportunities.... With that here is the next shot.

The picture on the left was done with the Soft Box and the 580 set to full power. Camera was set to F10 1/40th ISO 250. The shot on the right was Exactly the same set up only without the lighting. In the next and final shot, you will see that by raising the shutter to 1/250th we were able to cut the amount of natural light in the scene and bring out the blue sky keeping all the other setting the same.

Went for a little more of a Rembrandt look in this shot, but I really wanted to bring out the blue sky in the back ground.

Well, thanks for dropping by to check out the blog.... I promise over the next few months the posts will get much more interesting and geared toward my true passion in photography.... Weddings! I have a couple engagement shoots coming up soon so stop back to check those out!

Hope to hear some feed back from you all so please feel free to leave your comments!

Cold Shoot....

So Friday it started of pretty nice out, I loaded up the Yota with my gear and set out to do another little shoot since I am really starting to Jones now.... Spring, please get here soon! While it started out somewhat nice, by the time I got to where I wanted to shoot, it had dropped down to 27 degrees and was raining.... Not sure how that is possible, but I was still able to take some pretty cool photos. Ok, so I'm not going to ramble on about how I got these shots, just wanted to share, hope you enjoy....