The end of April

Yet another month has flown by and tomorrow will welcome the first day of May.

Yesterday, Sharon put out the hummingbird feeders and sure enough, we quickly saw the first hummingbird of the year. Today she had the camera ready for the little guys and managed to get off a quick shot. Those birds are fast - and tiny! Next time I need to have the 300mm lens on her camera. She also took some photos of the rose-breasted grosbeaks which often visit our back feeder. I love the last shot, he's looking straight at the camera like, "Why are you taking my picture?"

Engagement Portraits (x2)

As mentioned in my earlier blog, today I shot two engagement sessions. The first was with Lauren and Randy whose wedding we'll be shooting in July. Coincidentally, I ran into them yesterday at Amy and Mike's wedding and it was fantastic to get to spend more time with them today.

Later in the afternoon, April and Sean came in from Pittsburgh for their engagement session. April was a real trooper as I had her slogging through the mud and water (in heels, nonetheless) en route to some new locations. I'm sorry, April! Hopefully she won't hold it against me. I think the location was worth the extra effort and their playful spirits really made the shoot a blast.

I had a ton of fun with both of today's couples but I am absolutely exhausted so please forgive the brief blog and enjoy the photos (there are lots of them, Randy & Lauren's are first, followed by Sean and April's)!

Amy & Mike's Wedding

Yesterday Sharon and I shot video for Mike and Amy's wedding. It was one of our last "video only" weddings and we're now down to 3 more, all of which were booked early last year. As always when we shoot video, we brought a regular camera along to get some still shots for the blog. It was a pretty busy day so we didn't have much free time, but Sharon got some cool pics of the dancing and the single ladies eagerly waiting the bouquet toss and we both took some photos of the "details". I loved their trolley and the overcast sky added some drama to a pretty standard exterior of the church shot.

This is just a quick blog as I'm heading out to shoot 2 engagement portrait sessions this afternoon. I should have another blog this evening.

Rachel & Ben's engagement photos

This afternoon I was scheduled to shoot Rachel and Ben's engagement portraits. Early in the day the weather was miserable and I was afraid it would be another session filled with rain, but we lucked out and the rain stopped about an hour before they arrived. We hit several locations including a few new spots. At one point, they even broke out their Steelers jerseys so we headed to the railroad tracks to play into the "Steel City" theme. I loved working with these two, they're just so much fun and obviously very much in love. I know their wedding will be a blast!

Luke and Laura's engagement photos (part 1)

Early this evening I met with Luke and Laura to shoot their engagement portraits. It was pouring down rain so we decided to wait a few weeks for their outdoor shots, but we went ahead with some in studio shooting so they'll have a "newspaper photo" to use for their engagement announcement.

Laura and Luke are great people and so easy to work with. We had their formal shots finished in just a few minutes and I can't wait to see them again in a few weeks to shoot the rest of their engagement photos.

100 - Shooky

This afternoon I did some more photography for 100. My father works with Harry "Shooky" Shook ("Don't call me Mr. Shook, I'm just one of the boys") and when I asked if I could shoot his portrait for the project he quickly agreed. I stopped in today and worked with him for a little while and got some great shots. Two of my favorites are below.

For those who have been following 100, I'm happy to say that the project is coming along great. Shooting will last at least throughout the year, possibly longer as I fill the various ages of each gender. I feel like I've really hit my stride over the past few weeks and I'm really happy with how the portraits are turning out. If you want to be involved, or know someone who would be interested, feel free to email me (contact info is on my site) and we'll set something up.

Also, in "blog news", I'm increasing the size of the photos displayed on the blog so they're easier to view and display more detail. Hopefully they'll still fit within the constraints of the blog border.

Worthy cause

You may have noticed the "Blog Red" logo which I recently added to the right column of the blog. I figured I'd take a moment to point it out in case you missed it. Blog Red was formed by a conglomeration of various companies to raise money to eliminate AIDS in Africa. The way it works is that if you buy their stuff, they give some money to charity. So you get cool stuff like iPods, cell phones and sneakers, the charity gets money, people get help, and everyone wins. I don't get anything, of course. :)

Blog Red also ties in with American Idol. Yes, I watch American Idol (go, Blake & Jordan!) and this week they've been airing the America Gives Back shows. Watching the show was both informative and heartbreaking. Since I was a kid, I've heard about the starving kids in Africa, but seeing the utter squalor and despair that so many of the people of Africa live in makes it "real". It's just incredible that in this day in age, with all of our technology and riches, that people are still dying from things like starvation and malaria.

America is the "world's policeman", so why can't we take some of the money spent taking lives and save some instead? $20 buys enough medicine to treat 40 cases of malaria. The same $20 can feed 15 starving children for a week. Think about what our government could really do for the world if they just made the effort. Heck, make everyone pay a $20 per year tax with all of the money going to save these lives. Millions of lives could be saved and who really couldn't afford to lose $20 a year to save the lives of their fellow human beings?

"American Idol" has raised over 30 million dollars so far. If you want to donate through "America Gives Back", you can simply click this link.

Karyn & John's Engagement Shoot

Before I begin today's blog, I want to apologize to my regular readers for not posting more often lately. The past two weeks have been very hectic with work stuff and life stuff. Things are finally getting back to normal and I should be back to daily or semi-daily posting.

This afternoon I met with Karyn and John to shoot their engagement portraits and I finally lucked out and had nice weather. This was my first engagement shoot of the year that I didn't have to deal with rain, and I'd nearly forgotten how nice it is to shoot in sunny weather!

I'll be photographing John and Karyn's wedding in May and it's always nice to work with a couple beforehand. I had a blast with these folks and now I'm even more excited for their big day! Some of my favorite photos from their engagement shoot are below.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's...

Monday morning we woke up to several inches of snow. After a winter that had already stretched into Spring, seeing snow plows hitting the streets in mid April was not a pleasant sight. It made the entire week very "blah" and between the constant snowfall and the bitter cold temperatures, I didn't even want to look out the window let alone take the camera outside.

Fortunately, things took a turn for the better at the end of the week and today I looked outside and saw a bright, shiny object in the sky. At first I though it a meteor hurtling through space, about to smash our planet into a billion pieces, but then I realized that (amazingly enough) it was the sun. We haven't seen the sun much in Western PA and I'd almost forgotten what it looked like. Just in case we don't see it again, I took a picture. I nearly blinded myself in the process too. (reminder to self: don't look directly into the sun via the camera's viewfinder)

Shooting in the rain

This afternoon I met with Jeremy and Liane to shoot their engagement portraits. I thought we were going to catch a break with the weather as it was decent all morning and early afternoon, but it began raining about 30 minutes before their shoot. I hate shooting in the rain because it's so limiting in terms of locations and poses, but we didn't have a choice. They were both troopers and toughed out the rain and bitter cold and fortunately, you can't even tell how miserable the day was in the photos. We hit some new locations which I think worked great. This time of year, it's hard to find "pretty" spots, with scenery and flowers, so instead I was after cool colors and textures. I'm really happy with the results.

I'll be shooting Liane and Jeremy's wedding later this year and their reception will be held at the Frank J. Pasquerilla Center which is a gorgeous, state of the art facility in Johnstown, PA. They were both extremely friendly and fun to work with and I'm really looking forward to photographing their big day.

Some of my favorite shots from their engagement session are below.

A day without rain

While the rain gave us a short reprieve, Sharon photographed some goldfinches which have been frequenting the thistle seed feeders we have behind the house. There must be a hundred of the birds or more residing in the woods behind the house and you can hear them singing all day long.

Later in the day, we were scouting locations for tomorrow's engagement shoot and we spotted a field filled with deer. There were at least a dozen of them. Sharon took a few photos, but we only had our 28-70 zoom (the "walking around lens") on the camera and they were pretty far away. I still liked the photos, especially because the colors of the field are such a pretty gold.

More shooting for 100

Earlier this week, I was surfing MySpace and spotted Ira's profile. I immediately thought he'd be great to photograph for 100 and he also seemed like an incredibly cool guy so I sent him a message telling him about the project. He responded quickly and expressed his interest so we set up a shoot. Today he came by the studio and I had a great time chatting with him. Ira is a promoter for the KISS Army and regularly speaks at conventions for the band. He's a great guy and a lot of fun to work with, and I'm posting 2 of my favorite photos from the shoot below.

What the hail is going on?

Do young people complain about the weather? I don't see many 13 year olds walking around saying "Is this winter ever going to end?" Caring about the weather must be an adult thing, and maybe I've finally turned into an adult because mother nature is driving me crazy this year.

We had snow last weekend, then a few cold, but sunny days. Today started off nicely, but within a period of about 30 second the bright blue skies disappeared and an onslaught of rain began to fall. The rain turned into a hail storm which lasted 10 minutes or so, and now we're back to a steady rain. And to top it off, on the 12 o'clock news, they are now predicting a "noreaster" this weekend. For those that don't know what a "noreaster" is, it basically means we're going to get a heck of a lot of snow. In the middle of April. I live in Pennsylvania, not Siberia. We aren't supposed to have a heck of a lot of snow and 20 degree temperatures in April. This stinks.

Busy day

Today was a hectic day and tomorrow is shaping up to be busy as well.

This afternoon I was fortunate enough to shoot some more portraits for 100. Arlene had called me last week after seeing one of the newspaper articles about the project and expressed interest in having her family involved. I ended up shooting portraits of she and her husband, their 2 daughters and their grandson. Jake is 10 months old, so I'm unsure how I should classify him in terms of years. Should I list him as "0"? I have no idea. Anyway, below are some of my favorite portraits from today's shooting.

Still cold, less snowy

It's still unseasonably cold in western PA, but the forecast is now calling for rain instead of snow. I never thought I'd be happy to hear the meteorologist predicting rain, but after 4 days of snow in April, rain sounds downright wonderful.

This afternoon Jacquline stopped by the studio to have some portraits shot for 100. She had read about the project in the Somerset Daily American when they ran a piece on it last week and called to express her interest. She was so friendly and a lot of fun to work with and we got some great shots. Some of my favorites are below.

Old Man Winter gets his revenge

This is officially the winter that will never end. Last week was gorgeous with the sun shining, flowers blooming and birds singing. That all changed Thursday when we were hit with another salvo from Old Man Winter and we've had snow on the ground ever since. It's so darn annoying.

With the freezing cold temperatures, it's looking doubtful the spring flowers will be able to bounce back. Even the birds are flying around outside like "Why exactly did we come North?" My 35th anniversary Ford Mustang, which has never seen a snowflake, now has road salt all over the side panels. Oh well, complaining about it certainly doesn't do any good.

This weekend Sharon and I went to see Grindhouse at the Richland Cinemas in Johnstown, PA. The movie (it's actually two movies) was fantastic. I just hate having to drive 30 miles to Johnstown every time we want to see a movie. Somerset's only theatre closed down in April of '06 and it doesn't look like it'll be replaced any time soon.

Also over the weekend I booked two weddings. The first is "Luke and Laura's Wedding". I've known Laura for years as we went to school together and her fiance Luke is a wonderful guy. They're getting married on New Year's Eve of '07 and I'm excited about the holiday wedding. The second is also a former a classmate. I was originally going to shoot Deekota's wedding this month but the wedding was pushed back for planning reasons and will now be taking place in September. I'm really happy to have the chance to work with two brides who I've known for such a long time.

Hopefully my new website will be completed in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I'm trying to "spiff up" my blog. I'm using a new template (which may not be permanent if I can find something I like better), and I'll be changing the way I display images. I'm not using the black frames on the photos any more, which will make the actual images a bit larger. I'm also trying to figure out how to make "rollover" images so that when your mouse goes over an image, a large image appears. I'm just not sure how to do that yet.

In closing, below is a pic of my poor, snowy Mustang.

Family photos

I love looking through old family photos. After grandmother's Alzheimer's Disease progressed to the point where she needed 24 hour a day care she moved into the nursing home and the house was put up for sale. We had to clean everything out and in doing so we came across hundreds of old photos, the vast majority of which I'd never seen before. It was an incredible experience to see my grandparents at such young ages, younger than I am now. It just made me realize again how important photos are, especially when the people we love are no longer with us.

My grandparents married in their mid twenties, after my grandfather served several years overseas in WWII. They were married for over 40 years before he passed away in 1991 and had an incredible marriage. I wanted to post some of those old family photos below.

Sunny day

Yesterday's rainfall gave way overnight and a gorgeous spring day emerged. Sharon took one of the cameras outside and grabbed some shot of the daffodils which just opened up as well as some of the other spring flowers. She also got a neat shot of our dog Tobe as he too enjoyed the blue skies and sunshine. The day was so nice that I'm just going to ignore the fact that the forecast for Thursday through Sunday is calling for snow.

April showers bring... engagement photos?

A few months ago I blogged about booking Danielle and Brad's wedding which will take place this June on Pittsburgh's Gateway Clipper. I'm extremely excited about their wedding partly because of the unique venue but also because Brad and Danielle are such a great couple. Their engagement session was scheduled for today, but the forecast looked more ominous with each passing day. This morning I woke up to steady rain and I made a quick call to Danielle to see if they wanted to brave the weather or reschedule and she said they'd brave it.

As the hours passed, the rain would dissipate only to return with a vengeance. Five minutes before they arrived at the studio it was pouring, but just as they pulled into the drive it slacked off and we quickly dashed off to our first location. Danielle told me they wanted "original and different" photos so we hit some new spots and I had a fantastic time. The rain only returned for a few minutes, but Brad and Danielle broke out their umbrella and we made it work for the shot. Below are some of my favorite photos from the day's shoot.