Jessi + Mike's Engagement Shoot

4 or 5 years ago, I met a kid called Jessi Disaster at a metal show at the Monaca VFW and we became friends.  Now she's getting ready to get married, so of course she and her fiance Mike wanted some photos done for Save the Dates.  They came by earlier this week and we took some cute studio shots.  It was nice to see them, because I haven't in awhile and catching up is always nice.

I set up a white backdrop to contrast Jessi and Mike's black clothes, which worked out really nicely.  They didn't need anything too crazy, so here are some pictures of Jessi and Mike being cute!

Rose and Rev

Yesterday I photographed Rose and Rev, a nice rock and roll couple.  I met them over summer when I went to see Rev's band, Only Flesh, play.  In October, I did a shoot with the band, which was really fun.  Recently they contacted me again - Rev knows some guys who have a tattoo magazine in Mexico and they want to do an article to promote Only Flesh's new album and needed some photos.

We shot down in The Fallout Shelter, nice three light setup (softbox, umbrella, and hair light) with a white background.  When they walked in, one of my co-workers nearly had a heart attack over Rose ("Who is SHE, she's SO beautiful!!"), which was kind of adorable.  Once we got downstairs, Rev explained to me exactly what he wanted, which was great - we had a plan and we stuck to it.  This is one of my favorite shots, though there are variations on pose and camera angle.  Oh, and yeah, the hooks are real.  He's a piercer and Only Flesh does suspension as part of their act, which is really interesting to watch and I absolutely want to do it myself.  We had a discussion on the pain level - he said it's not just size of the needle, but speed.  For example, if you pushed a safety pin thru your skin, but slowly, it's probably a similar amount of pain to him shoving that hook thru quickly.  It was really fascinating!!

While I had them here, I wanted to do some portraits for the tattoo project I've been on/off working on for the last year and a half or so.  My project isn't just "oh, I'm going to photograph tattoos" but "I'm going to make really nice portraits of tattooed/pierced people."  Rose and I discussed how we both love black and white photographs but since they're both highly colorful people (literally and figuratively) that it's hard to convert.  However, I found a couple shots that work well.  Colored photos of both of them are on my Facebook page.

Wrapping up, we took some cute couple pictures of them.  Awwww!!!

Jeff and Christine

My uncle Jeff and his wife Christine wanted to get photos taken, so they asked me, their amazing photographer niece, to do so for them.  We were supposed to do this last time they were in town like a year ago, but it didn't work out, so when they came up for his birthday last weekend, we finally got around to it.

Seeing as they don't live around here, there wasn't anywhere special they really wanted to go.  We ended up taking some shots on the roof of the bowling alley in their NASA shirts (they both work for NASA, cool, right?)

After that, we went to the park.  Not gonna lie, it's slightly creepy to see my uncle be cutesy, but these were couples pictures, so it had to happen.  I got over it.  Some of the shoot was pretty ridiculous, but then again, this is my family, so it's bound to be a little weird.

This last shot, by the way, is Christine and Uncle Jeff pretending to be fashion models who are not caring or being pleased about getting their picture taken for the cover of some huge magazine.  I told you we're ridiculous.

Ginny + Kyle's Engagement Photos (Part 1)

Last weekend (Saturday, mainly) was another one of those busy busy ones.  I had Ginny and Kyle's shoot, then Jeff and Christine's, then work that night, then work again in the morning, etc etc.  I like being busy though, so we're going to take a short bit out of this entry to make a note of what I did during the week.  It was discovered that my beautiful wonderful 27-inch iMac's hard drive was failing and I had to take it to the Apple store for repairs on Monday.  Got it back...Thursday night but since I was also shooting an event that night, didn't get to use it at all until Friday (yesterday).  So here I am feeling like I'm a little behind on everything, but gotta say that, wow, it was kind of nice to feel like a "normal" person and come home after work and chill out for a few days instead of continuing to work.  Oh, and the important part - BACK UP YOUR FILES!!  I work primarily off of external hard drives, but all my edits were on the iMac.  Luckily I had those backed up as well and use one of the hard drives as a Time Machine as well so was able to restore everything back to how it was when I took it in.  So, once again, BACK UP YOUR FILES!!  Music, photography, LightRoom presets, financial logs, even my FireFox bookmarks were saved.

Now then.  Ginny and Kyle.  Kyle used to be in a band (The Scratch 'n' Sniffs) that I'm friends with, and Ginny had me do photos of her nephew recently (there's one in my general September post).  We had discussed engagement pictures a couple times, and the reason the title here says Part 1 is because we're going to do some more in the winter which will be super cold but surely super pretty as well.  Part 1 occurred in the fall, obviously, and we started out at Geneva College.

Ok, so I am all about this clock photo.  In general, clocks are cool.  Time and our view of it is interesting.  But a clock for a couple, in engagement photos, kind of has a nice "forever" idea.  Like the clock will keep ticking and they'll still be together.  That's what I was going for, at least, but maybe I'm just a bit of a romantic on occasion.  Opinions?

After Geneva, we got breakfast.  It was early and none of us had remembered to eat, so we stopped at this cute little shop where I got a cinnamon roll and Apple Chai-der (half apple cider, half chai tea, SO GOOD) and then made our way to these benches along the river that Kyle and Ginny go to have cute romantic alone time.

I LOVE THESE.  They are so cute and beautiful.  Ok, the bench is beautiful and the ring/kiss is cute.  Either way, I adore them.

Our last stop was back to Kyle and Ginny's, to take a few shots of them carving pumpkins.  This was kind of ridiculous, but really just fun.  It was Kyle's idea, and since these sort of thing tend to be more about what the woman wants, Ginny and I were all for it.  Pumpkin carving, yay!

Winter pictures with these two will be really fun, I'm sure.  Gives me something in the miserable cold to look forward to!

Maternity - Katie

One of my good friends, Katie, is having a baby!!  She's 8 months along, so last week she and her boyfriend, Ed, had me do some maternity shots for them.   SO CUTE!  When baby Cody arrives, we might do some family portraits as well with all their kids, but these were about Katie and Ed and their coming child.  Ed is SO excited to be having a boy!

I LOVE this picture.  It's so freaking adorable, from the way he's kissing her belly to the way her hand is resting on his arm.  Just adorable.

Of course, I had to get a few shots just of Katie - this silhouette of her in front of the softbox is definitely a favorite.  You can still see the outline of her arm and hands touching her belly and the softbox is slightly tilted to give it an interesting sort of framing.  I dig.