Brett and Sarah are about to enter into the wonderful adventure of parenthood.  I was honored to get to capture a few images of the lovely mother-to-be.

So I’ve yet to find a Zoe that I didn’t love to photograph .  She was such a great subject and is a beautiful young lady.  It was pretty crazy when I found out that her birthday is the EXACT same day as my Zoe’s (just separated by a couple years).  It must be a Zoe thing.

I had a great time with Roy a couple weeks back shooting his senior portraits.  One of the great things about working with seniors is that they tend to be as invested in the process of producing great pictures as I am.  I really work hard to capture their personalities and produce some WOW images that highlight their interests.  Roy is a big soccer player and I had a couple shots in mind as I was preparing to work with him.  My personal favorite from the day is this headshot.

I used a mixture of digital and film throughout the day to get some different looks.  Another one of my favorites was shot on black and white film and to me has such a classic feel to it with the simplicity of his uniform.

Here are some of my other favorites from the day:

If you are interested in setting up a session, please email me for more information or call me at (919)410-7740.

Last week was a vacation week for me and Monday was filled with lots of relaxation and resting.  Today it was back to the normal routine which for a Monday includes a lunch time group exercise spinning class led by a guy who used to be among the nation’s top amateur cyclists.  Chris is a really friendly guy, but a transformation occurs when he gets into the “zone”.  His intensity is amazing and he’s all about pushing everyone to their own personal limit.  I’ve definitely hit mine on a couple different occasions in there as I had to recover after class lying on the floor, consuming some glucose tablets.  Not a fun way to recover.

Chris is known in the class for such encouraging phrases as “you’d better get used to it… we’re gonna be here awhile” and “it only get’s harder from here”.  For some reason though, the same crew seems to keep returning each week for more punishment.  I appreciate what he does and got together with him early in the summer to get some portraits of him.  I was really trying to go for that look of intensity he gives us each week in class, but he had a hard time producing it on request not really knowing what I was talking about .  We were out there at about 5am to try to get the sunrise behind him that day, but there was none to be had.  It had actually rained most of the night before, but it all worked out… I think the clouds helped achieve some of the character I was looking for.

Funniest thing from the morning was when a group of riders was passing by on the road heckling Chris a bit and telling him how good he looked.  He quietly responded, “Yeah, I’ll be riding later today… a lot faster than that.”

One of my fondest memories growing up was when my brother and I got to stay with my grandparents for a week during the summer.  We always got the royal treatment while we were there.  We got to eat all kinds of good stuff, play in the basement bowling alley, and one of my all-time favorite things:  playing Aggravation at the kitchen table.  I wanted to hold on to the memory so much so that I requested the original game board from their house when my Aunt Liz passed into glory several years ago.  It looks to me like it was probably purchased in the ’60s or so.  Over the past few months, my kiddos and girls especially have started to get into game playing so we’ve since dusted off the old classic.  I got some shots of us playing earlier this year and thought this would be a good time to post it as they are getting some special time with their Opa this week.  It makes me smile to hear that Aggravation has been part of their week.  Special memories that will last a lifetime…

One of the toughest things associated with shooting film again is losing the instant gratification that you get spoiled with by shooting digital.  I was reminded of this the other day when I took a picture of my youngest and she immediately wanted to see it .  I had to explain that the old camera doesn’t work that way.  Wow.  It amazes me that my children’s generation will likely never deal with film.  As far as they know, cameras have always been digital.

Having to exercise patience is never a bad thing (easier to say than experience).  We hardly ever have to wait for anything these days.  So it’s actually been nice to have a change of pace.  Not knowing how the results turned out until days later.

Thinking about this reminded me of a shoot I did earlier this summer.  I had the opportunity to shoot some portraits of Billy Neal, a local tobacco farmer I met through a friend of a friend.  Billy is 75 years young and is out there in the fields every day because it’s what he loves to do.  I had a great time meeting him and getting to know him better.  I love to meet and talk to farmers.  Their lifestyle is characterized by lots of hard work and incredible patience.  It’s a breath of fresh air in our society and I for one hope that they will be able to continue to survive and even thrive in our ever-changing economy.

Billy Neal was described to me as an energetic old fella who wore jeans and flannel pretty much every day, so I found it funny when I got to the farm and found him in shorts, sandals, and a “Hawaiian” shirt he wore special for me that day.  It really added to his character to say the least.  Please note that these images were captured digitally so I didn’t actually have to exercise any patience .

I had the opportunity recently to shoot some portraits of Kasey.  She’s a delightful young lady and I had a wonderful time working with her and getting to know her better.  I was using some old film cameras for the shoot and she was very patient with me while I got everything set for each shot.  The results turned out fantastic.  Thanks Kasey!

I love this sweet little girl like she was one of my own.  I just had to get some shots of her wearing that fabulous birthday crown.  Happy birthday Allena!

Elysa and I LOVE contemporary Christian music.  We find it to be a great source of encouragement on a daily basis.  There are so many artists out there now who use their God-given talents to write and perform amazing music for this market.  I’m sure they sacrifice their potential earthly success to serve in this way, but I for one am thankful for them.  We had the opportunity to see Matthew West in concert last night.  Hadn’t seen a show in several years, but this one more than made up for that.  It was just a truly wonderful and blessed experience.  Check out his tour dates… if he’s coming anywhere near you, get tickets and go see it.  You will be blessed.  You can find out more about the tour and upcoming album from his website.  I can tell you that every song on the album is amazing.  Both inspired and inspiring.  I can’t wait till it’s released.  Had a chance to snap a few images that I’m thrilled with so I thought I’d share them here.  Make sure you scroll through all of them.  I saved the best for last.

I’ve recently gotten the itch to get back into shooting some film again.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but we’ve been doing a lot to try to simplify our lives a bit lately and the “simplicity” of film has piqued my curiosity.  Not as many exposures, thinking harder about how to get the shot, being more selective about what to shoot, spending less time on the computer tweaking images.  And not to mention the look of film can be fantastic.  So that’s what’s been behind it.  I’m still in the early stages and just started shooting some medium format over the past weekend.  Got some images from Labor Day weekend shot on a Nikon F4 using Kodak Portra 400 that turned out pretty cool.  Here are some of my favorites.

Pretty near zero processing on these.  I look forward to posting some more as my “experiment” continues in the coming weeks.