Jake's (very cool) Senior Pictures

Meeting Jake was like meeting my brother Sean's twin. It's really quite uncanny how they both look so alike. In fact, here's Sean's trail journal album and here's his blog with a few pictures, too so you can see for yourself. Pretty amazing, huh? Jake, if you or Sean ever need a double, you'll be all set! =) Actually, Sean would be delighted to be your stunt double, I'll bet.

So, we hit downtown OKC and had a perfectly overcast day providing great lighting for shooting anywhere we wanted to. I think downtown senior guy portraits are my personal favorite to do right now. It's fun just to roll with what we find and get unique shots in new places every time. I don't know why that's easier for me to do with guys... Maybe because they don't bring along an entourage and they don't mind just going with the flow, in general? I dunno... but it's fun! And even if they weren't really looking forward to having their pictures done, by the time we're finished I think they usually comment that they had a great time and it was a lot more fun than they expected. =) That always makes us feel good.

Okay, I know you didn't come here to read about how I feel. =) Here are a few from Jake's recent session and you can click on any of the pictures to see his official proof page.







Thanks for reading!

Time-Lapsed Photoshop

I love time-lapsed photography. You know, seeing flowers open, clouds race across the sky, birds hatch from eggs, tides rise and fall... Here's something I don't recall seeing before. Time-lapsed photography and retouching. This is really cool and a great message, too!

Tammy & Jason's Engagement

We had a lot of fun photographing Tammy and Jason and I guess they had a good time, too, since Tammy's sister has already called us to schedule a portrait session for her family. =) I'll tell you, if there's one thing that's really contributed to our enjoyment of photography, it's been working with such nice people and their friends and family!

Tammy and Jason have a real heart for working with kids and their family has a boys' ranch that they help with. Talk about really great people! We talked about helping them get some great photos of the ranch for marketing and publicity purposes and we look forward to helping them with that at some point in the future.

Here are some of our favorites, but there are many more on the proof page, which you can see by clicking on any of the photos.

You've got to see this one up close... her eyes are just beautiful!

I think any girl would be just a little bit envious of hair like that. Tammy's, not Jason's. =)

I love how the sun shines through the tree above them. Such a beautiful spot...

Thanks for reading!

Nikon Equipment for Sale!

As we published earlier this year, we've moved to "the dark side" -- Canon. =) It's actually been a great move for us, despite the high financial cost to sell our Nikon equipment and buy an entire Canon setup. We were starting to do a lot more low-light photography and Canon's sensors seem to do better in those situations (i.e. wedding receptions, etc.).

As a result, we have a lot of Nikon equipment that we need to sell! If you or anyone you know would be interested, let me know. I'm going to take best offers on any of this equipment. I'd really like to keep it simple and sell it all locally so I don't have to mess with shipping and insurance.


Here's what I have:

-Nikon D100 camera body w/ all original packaging, battery and charger $399 (looks new still, not a scratch!)
-Nikon MB-D100 battery grip for D100 camera body (new/perfect condition!) ($100 new, used for $79)
-2 EN-EL3 batteries for D100 (brand new, used just a few times before buying the D200) ($10 ea.)
-70-200 2.8 VR ED lense w/ Tiffen 77mm UV filter (perfect condition!) ($1,400 on eBay, $1,600 on BH)
-50mm 1.4D AF w/ UV filter (used @ 2 wedding receptions, perfect cond.) ($200 on eBay, $270 new on B&H)
-18-70mm AF-S 3.5-4.5G ED with Tiffen UV protector filter (never used, $309 @ B&H, $200 on eBay)
-Stroboframe off-camera flash mount with SC-17 flash adapter for Nikon equip. ($100 new, $50 on eBay)
-F100 body, gently used by an amateur, few cosmetic scratches, otherwise perfect condition! c.$250 on ebay
-AF Nikkor 24-120 F3.5-5.6D w/ big rubber lens hood, Tiffen UV filter (c.$200 on eBay)
-Tiffen filter: 72mm Pro-Mist ½ ($86 on eBay)
-Tiffen filter: 72mm Pro-Mist 1 ($86 on eBay)
-Tiffen filter: 72mm Pro-Mist 3 ($86 on eBay)
-Tiffen filter: 72mm Cir. Polarizer ($45 on eBay)
-SB28 Speedlight (not currently working - old battery leak?)

Taking best offers! All great products in great condition, except the flash unit. Well cared for!

This all adds up to about $3100, would sell all together for $2,799 just to make it easy on everyone!

Thanks for reading, and please pass this along to anyone who may be interested!

Behymer Family Portraits

I think the Behymers got one of the last really warm days here in Oklahoma City for their family portrait session. I'm sitting at home with the fireplace going and the sound of a football game in the background and looking at these pictures, it seems like it was months ago that we took them already!

Here are some of our favorites from the day, but more can be found by clicking on any of the photos below.


Holly and I just LOVE the Fall weather and although photography starts to slow down, we can't complain... we're usually ready for that. In fact, we're talking about really cutting back on the number of portrait sessions we take next year in order to still "have a life" at home. Wedding and commercial photography is a better investment of our time and time is our most limited commodity these days, so we're going to do whatever we can to maximize our time at work and at home. I guess the baby due in January is inspiring us to review priorities, schedules, etc. We already have a 2-year old girl, as many of you know and so our expenses associated with portrait sessions have climbed over the past couple of years since we have to pay for babysitting, etc. I think we're going to have to raise our session fees in the next couple of months to help cover those expenses and even still we'll limit how many sessions we'll be accepting. We'll keep you posted!

Thanks for reading!

Edmond Chamber Sporting Clays Event

When I heard that the Edmond Chamber was interested in photographs of this fundraiser event, I jumped at the chance. The folks at the Chamber are great people to be around anyway, but combine the fun of photography with the thrill of gunpowder and you have a really great experience. =)

"Sporting Clays" was a new experience for me. I've shot clays before, but it was always out in the country, in an open field, and with a friend or family member "pulling" clays until their arm got tired and someone else took over. Not the case with sporting clays! The shooter stands in the cage and the clays fly out from different angles and some even roll across the ground out in front of them. What a great challenge! Every shooter gets 50 shots to hit 50 clays. "Mulligans" were available for purchase, giving them a 2nd shot at just 2 clays (2 more shells).

Everybody seemed to have a really good time and I had a great time just watching some of the sharp-shooters. I had to leave before the scores were read, but I saw one guy who never missed while I was watching him.

Check out some of these great shots from the day. I love the ones that show the shooter and the clay off in the distance shattering from the perfect shot. Pretty cool stuff!

Loading up.

Going... going...

GONE!

I love these shots because in each one you can see the shell being ejected, still in mid-air.

Look for these pictures in the upcoming Edmond Chamber newsletter!

Thanks for visiting our blog and reading up on our latest adventures and projects!

Temporary Blog Issues

Hey, just a quick note that we're working on the problem with some of our older blog images not loading. Stay tuned... should have it fixed in a day or two.

A Nichols Hills Affair

If you're from Oklahoma, you need not be told that some of the most impressive homes around are in Nichols Hills. My friends at the Mercy Hospital Foundation asked if I would join them and photograph a special fundraiser to be held at a home in Nichols Hills for a cancer center. I'm a bit embarrassed now that I can't tell you who the fashion jewelry designer was or even whose home it was, but it was all very impressive and nicely done. =) I was quite involved just taking pictures that I didn't get a chance to meet the designer or really anybody else, although I understand it was attended by a veritable "who's who" of Oklahoma City.

Photographing the event was a lot of fun. Everyone was nice and didn't seem to mind me moving around taking pictures despite my flash brightly lighting up the dimly lit room. The main purpose for photography was to just document the event for the Foundation, but they may find use for some of the images in their newsletter like they did with the Mercy Golf Classic photos I took earlier this month.

Without further ado, here are a few of my favorites.

The spread was just amazing, and I loved the decor in the house.

I thought the lighting here was really cool with the warm light inside in contrast to the cold twilight outside.There was a great fireplace dividing two rooms, so I just had to get a shot from the opposite sides. =)

These guys were hard at work. I used a slower shutter speed to capture the ambient light (and also the movement of the bartenders).

Cheers! Everyone had a great time.

As always, thanks for reading!

Looking For A Good Camera?

One thing I've noticed that all of our customers appreciate is good photography! Whether it's professional or the pictures they take at home with their own consumer or pro-sumer grade digital cameras.

Holly and I recently went on a quest to buy our own point-and-shoot digital camera. One that we can actually grab and use for those cute moments at home when the little one decides to give us a photo opp. =)

Well, you'd think that since we're photographers buying a camera would be an easy thing. Not the case, at all! Ever since Addie was born 2 years ago, Holly especially has been wishing we had a video camera. I wanted something digital that would be more easily transferred to Addie's blog for the grandparents who live out of state. The answer? One that will do both: The Canon SD800 IS.
You might feel like you're reading the script from a TV commercial, but that's how passionate we are about cameras! I did quite a bit of research and this is the camera we went with. It actually has the new Digic III processor in it by Canon and it recognizes faces and adjusts focus and exposure accordingly, even if they're not in the center of the frame. Video is not going to be it's strong point, but even footage from the nicest video cameras gets compressed down to minimal quality for online publishing with YouTube and the like. This little camera can shoot 60 fps (frames per second), so we can even shoot high-speed and them make the videos slow-motion if we wanted to. (Most movies are 24 fps and most online streaming is at 15 fps just to give you a frame of reference.)

Here's what we looked for in a camera:

Not necessarily the highest mega-pixel count. The processor and handling of those mega-pixels is more important to me than how many there are. This little camera does better than the 10 mega-pixel Nikon D200 that we recently sold. The sensor and processor are significantly better, so the pictures come out looking better with less retouching needed! That means a lot to us since we spend so much time retouching pictures for customers. We really don't spend any time at all retouching personal pictures. =)

We also wanted something small enough that we'd actually take it with us when we might need it. It's nice to have $3000 cameras, but whey they weigh 5 lbs and are bigger than your notebook computer, they don't come along on many of our everyday excursions. =)

We wanted a camera that would record in some easily transferable digital media so we could easily upload the video to the computer for sharing online, burning to DVDs and backing up. You just can't do that easily with Hi-8, or anything else as easily as with a little SD card.

We wanted the camera to allow us to take unlimited video clips, limited only by the amount of memory on the card inside. Since we bought a 4GB SD card for it, we should have all the flexibility we need for recording video as well as photos.

We compared several cameras on CNet.com and the SD800 IS compared very favorably in several areas that were important to us including the amount of time it takes from the moment you turn it on until the moment it can snap a picture, and the 3.8x optical zoom. Digital zooms aren't very helpful since they tend to pixelate the image and mess it up.

One of the really nice features on this particular model is the Image Stabilization (IS) that's built in. This will really help prevent blurry pictures as a result of camera-shake. Small cameras are very susceptible to shaking and if you zoom in or are in low-light conditions, image stabilization is invaluable.

We get a lot of questions from customers and friends on how to get better pictures and have started casually consulting on an hourly basis to help you get your camera settings where they should be and to help you take better pictures as well by helping you with the areas you want help with. Inspiration, courtesy Mark Cafiero. Let us know if you're interested!

Thanks for reading!

Little Olivia

Photographing kids is how Holly launched Prints Charming Photography back in 1999 and it always has a special place in our hearts. Little Olivia needed her 2-year pictures so we headed out to the park with her family and had a great time! With kids this age, we usually start out with the posed shots the family wants to get, and then we let loose and run around and have a great time! Once you let loose, though, there's no going back to posed shots, so it has to be timed just right. =) The kids have a great time and so do we! It really is fun (and sometimes challenging) to keep up with them and get a great shot while they're just being themselves and showing how much fun they're having.

Here are a few of our favorites...





Click on any of the pictures above to see more proofs. Thanks for reading!

Where The Magic Happens

Well, we've added to our growing family of Canon equipment by buying a super cool new SD800 IS. Straight out of the box, we started taking pictures and video with it to test it out and so far we're pretty impressed. That's the introduction to the following pictures. I'm the tech-freak, so I'm playing with the new camera while sitting in the leather club chair in what we call our "post production studio" (slash office) next to Holly who is retouching one of our recent photo sessions. What better subject to take pictures of? =)

Our studio is decorated in an Australian theme as you might be able to tell from the big map of Aussie and the kangaroo skin on the back of the chair. This is where the magic happens. After each and every photo session, we download images, flag the best ones and then retouch the 30 or so that make the final cut for proofing.

Our Aussie-themed post-production studio

Holly being productive with side-by-side Apple cinema displays and a nice Wacom tablet

This little camera is quite impressive! I like the contrasting light temperatures.

I've read that most photographers work more to impress other photographers than they do their own customers. That said, we didn't retouch any of these pictures... They're all just straight out of the camera. It's actually really nice to have such an easy camera to snatch up when our little girl does something cute.

That reminds me... Every so often, someone will ask if we give private lessons on photography. After talking it over, we have agreed to try it out next time someone asks. With such high-end consumer cameras on the market, there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to take really nice pictures, especially if you want to improve.

Thanks for reading!

Photography for Craig Groeschel and Life Church

It's hard to live near Oklahoma City without hearing about, seeing or going to Life Church. I'm not sure there's a bigger church in Oklahoma despite the fact that it was only started 10 years ago. Senior Pastor Craig Groeschel is really a pleasure to listen to if you ever get the chance. Actually, you can hear him online, so there's your chance!

He's really down-to-earth and practical and one on one he's a really genuine and nice guy. We've had the pleasure to help Craig with photos for his two books as well as family portraits. As an artist, it's really fulfilling to see your work so widely distributed, even though nobody is buying the books because of my photos of Craig. =)

Here's a photo we took of Craig and his beautiful wife, Amy, as seen on LifeChurch.tv website.


And here's the photo from his most recent book. Yes, I know his face is covered; we knew that when we did the photo. We had a good time joking about it during the shoot. I have yet to get my hands on a copy of this book. I guess I should have stipulated that I get a copy when I gave Multnomah Publishers my standard commercial contract. At least this time I remembered to ask them to give me credit as the photographer.

You can click on both pictures above to be taken to additional respective resources.

Thanks for reading!

Inspiration :: The Best Photographers Out There

I think every photographer, every artist, has their sources of inspiration... those they admire and are challenged by. It's always nice to hear that we can be that for someone or some group. I heard recently that a school in Midwest City uses our site as part of their photography course training. (Hopefully it's not in the chapter "What not to do" =)

Here are a few of the photographers that we visit on a regular basis when we want to see things from a new perspective, enjoy great photographic images and just relax and take in some really great photography. All of these are really awesome photographers.

Boutwell Studio
The Becker
Six Peeps (Mark Cafiero's blog... It's a really enjoyable read. I love his sense of humor.)
Mark Cafiero's official site

If you have time to check them out, I'm sure you'll enjoy their work! We have a lot more links, but I figured we'll start with the best. Hope you're inspired by their work like I am!

Thanks for reading!

Small Family Portraits

The Small family was blessed with a little girl not too long ago and she is SO cute! We caught at least some of her totally adorable personality during the photo session. Even though she didn't get her nap in before the session, you really couldn't tell. She did so well! Here are a few of our favorites...

Who can resist a face like this? =)

Mother and daughter both have porcelain skin!

Click here to see the rest of the proofs.
Thanks for reading!

Punk Senior Pictures

Grant is a real punk. Maybe you should read that again... He's a great guy; his style is punk! When we set up this session, Holly and I didn't know really what to expect, to be honest. But once we met Grant, we realized it was going to be a fun session and we had nothing to worry about. =)

I really had a good time processing these pictures using some gritty and edgy effects that I thought went well with the overall urban, punk theme of the shoot. Here are six of my favorites. Click on the pictures to see larger versions for more clarity and detail.

I think this is my favorite of them all. Love the texture and luminosity!
I love stairs and repeated structures/themes like these. This is "Old Photo" style, with added film grain.

You can almost feel the grit of those bricks. Great contrasting colors, too.

I like the mohawk reflection in the glass, balancing the picture.

If this isn't a great "James Dean" look, I don't know what is... Another in "Old Photo" style.

Click here to see the rest of the proofs.
Thanks for reading!