Edgar & Tiffany's Engagement, Part 2

Engagements are so exciting! If you recall, I posted recently about Edgar & Tiffany's engagement session, where Edgar surprised Tiffany with a ring while playing her favorite romantic song on his saxophone, on one knee. They were such a sweet couple and we had a great time hiking around Bricktown after dark to find some cool places for pictures.

Here are some of our favorites from the evening...

At just the right moment, Edgar dropped to one knee while playing Tiffany's favorite romantic song -- "Here and Now" I believe it was, by Luther Vandross. Then it hit her...

We had to reassure her she wasn't dreaming. =)

Congratulations, again, Edgar and Tiffany! I heard you booked at Coles Garden (Amanda passed along the news - thanks, Amanda!) and I hope it works out to be your wedding photographer! It was just last year, that we photographed Amanda's wedding there at Coles Garden, and it's a great location if you're considering venues for an upcoming wedding. Ask for Amanda Taylor if you can! She's great to work with and is certainly one of the coolest wedding coordinators in OKC.

Saturday's Wedding - Lydia & Jake

This may just be the longest post to date on our blog, but we have a ton of great photos from Saturday's wedding and we're so excited to share them. I think we narrowed them down to around 30 to blog about. =)

Lydia and Jake had a storybook wedding from the grand sanctuary of St. John's to the country-club reception at River Oaks and we were really honored to be there handling the photography!

We started out at Lydia's apartment with some fun getting-ready shots of the girls in the wedding party.

The guys' boutonnières were pretty incredible and sported a peacock feather

Seeing each other for the first time

Peacock feathers adorned the church decorations as well

I like this shot Holly managed to sneak between people as they signed the marriage license

We had time before the ceremony to get some nice pictures out on the golf course

Jake and Lydia had a hard time keeping straight faces long enough for the shot above. Here's how they ended up looking. Great smiles, guys! The proper wedding day expression: glee!

This was probably one of the most unique cakes I've ever seen! Jake and his buddies love to fish, so the what better idea for a groom's cake?! It was even outfit with lures as you'll see below...

Party favors! These make an appearance again as Jake and Lydia left for the night. In the absence of confetti, jellybeans will do! [ouch!] =)

Jake mingling with guests and having a great time

I like this shot of Jake pouring Lydia a glass of champagne

The reception decorations also featured peacock feathers. Don't worry, no peacocks were hurt in the making of this wedding. They were definitely annoyed with the plucking, but I think peacocks enjoy that kind of humor.

First dance

I loved the atmosphere out on the patio at the country club. The lighting was really cool and made it feel very festive.

Nobody had any fun dancing that night, as you can tell. Here's Lydia's younger sister having a great time.

And Lydia's younger brother dancing as well

Even this little guy couldn't help but dance when his mom helped him to stand. You should have seen him bounce to the music!

The father of the groom got out there to show a few good old-school moves

These two guys enjoyed dancing with the bride until one of them spotted me on the floor and came over to jump on me. =)

Heartfelt goodbyes as the reception draws to an end

Okay, here's where those jellybeans come back into play. Check out the air filled with pelted jellybeans!!!

Poor Lydia getting them right in the face!

Lydia and Jake, have a great honeymoon! Thanks so much for having us! We were really honored to be there to help capture those special moments.

Family and friends, to see the rest of the pictures, click here.

Painting with Light: Late Night Experiments

Here's just a fun post of some images we created last night using long exposures (i.e. 20-30 seconds). Wes came over and we were sitting around our chimenea talking about life and the subject of painting with light came up. He had seen some pictures of people actually writing with flashlights so you can read exactly what they wrote. Then I remembered seeing a podcast from alt f where he showed how to paint people with light so we decided to try it out ourselves.

Here's what we came up with!

First was Wes's turn

Then Wes painted one of me sporting my new belt buckle

Then I tried painting myself

I'm everywhere!

Me and Holly. She couldn't keep it together and bent over laughing and then got up. You can actually see the light trail!

With Halloween just around the corner, here's a spooky shot. It's actually both of our faces exposed over each other.

And the best images of the evening! Helps when you have a really pretty subject, doesn't it?

Hope you have a great weekend! We're off to shoot a wedding... More photos to be posted soon!

Oh What a Night

Last night was just one of those perfect nights!

The fair was going on in full swing and it was just $1 entry fee, so everyone in the city and within a huge radius was there, apparently. We changed our plans and instead of going to the fair ourselves, we hit The Cheesecake Factory and enjoyed a really long, leisurely dinner on the patio, mostly to ourselves.

Then we caught a late movie downtown (The Solomon Brothers - it was pretty funny!) and celebrated the fact that the kids were spending the night at Grammy & Papa's house.

Here's a fish-eye picture of us on our back porch enjoying the cooler nights that we've been having recently. It's hard to see the stars in this smaller version of the picture, but there's a lot of detail in the bigger one.


We had the Tiki lights burning and a fire in the chimenea. Man, I love the changing seasons!

Colorado Springs

Looks like we're going to make a trip up to Colorado Springs this year to get some great portraits while the Aspens are changing color. We have family there who have been spreading the word and have recruited enough customers for us to justify a trip up. It's been a few years since I've been up there so we're really looking forward to it. And the trees should provide a great backdrop for lots of great pictures for our portfolio, too!

If you know anyone up in CO Springs who might be interested in doing pictures with us while we're up there, please do pass along our info!

Then keep your eyes open for some great CO shots coming to the blog soon!

Having a Hard Day?

...Watch this video and smile!

Then, if you have time, check out this amazing video from Africa somewhere. Summary: Water buffalo herd walks into lion ambush, baby buffalo gets tackled by lions, crocodiles try to take baby buffalo from lions in a vicious tug of war, buffalo herd decides to come back for baby and attacks lions... and you have to see the ending! What a tough day for that little buffalo!! (SPOILER: it ends well, the baby buffalo lives) I had to put that in there, because if you're like Holly and I, what's the use of watching another sad story?! =) This is one of the most inspiring videos I've ever seen. Talk about a comeback!

The Music on our Website

It's funny, in the last week, I've heard from three or four different people that when they visit our site, they're brought to tears by the music we have playing. Thanks so much for letting us know that you like the music! Lots of people are asking who the artists are and what the song titles are, so I thought I'd fill you in on how to find out...

In the top right-hand side of our website (when the music is playing) there's an animated equalizer like you'd see on high-end stereo equipment. Here's what it looks like:
Mouse-over the equalizer and the music controls will appear. If you mouse over to the icon furthest on the left -- the circle with a little "i" in it, that's the "information" icon -- you'll see the song title and artist info appear! You can use those controls to skip and rewind songs that way, too.

Hey, if you have any music recommendations for our site, we're always looking for great new music to add! Please let us know... we'd love to hear from you, as always!

More Photos from Chris Wray's Session

This weekend I got text message from Chris Wray that he needed a few more retouched pictures for the big SXSW music festival. I guess he's going!? That's pretty cool! Here are some that I gave him. If you're a Chris Wray fan, keep an eye out for some of these photos on his website and/or his upcoming albums!

Love the sun flares in this picture

Is that not one of the coolest guitars ever? He's sponsored by the company who makes them.

Thanks for stopping by to check out the latest! Hope you're having a great weekend!

Landon & Jen's Enagement Session

It's terribly late again and I'm up trying to catch up on proofing and blogging from recent sessions. Blogging is typically one of the last things I do from a session, so it's like a little reward for me to be able to show you what we've been up to recently. =)

Here are several pictures from a really fun engagement session we did recently for Jen & Landon. Hopefully we'll be doing their wedding photography before too long! (hint, hint! =) I'll start out with my favorite from the evening.


I love the high-contrast colors in this photo, with the bright red brick walls. And the foreground adds to the interest of the composition, I think.


Here's a great shot of Landon saving Jen by outrunning the train. It's a lot of fun! Okay, there really wasn't a train coming. I've always been amused by footage of animals trying to outrun trains by running directly down the tracks away from the train, but I digress...


The sky was SO beautiful! It was nice to be able to capture a couple of fun shots with the sunset as pretty as it was.


Oh, before I forget, here are a couple of really interesting articles I read recently:

• An especially important one for you women to check out... How to survive a physical attack. Check out the videos, they're particularly helpful. The instructor in the videos is Tim Ferris, the particularly bright author of the book "The Four Hour Work-Week" (which I have yet to buy and read).
  
• Are you a late-night person (i.e. NOT an early morning person) ? Turns out, it may actually be hazardous to your health to force yourself to get up really early and exercise. Read more about a recent Japanese study on the subject here.

That's all for now... It feels awfully sleepy in here (1:40AM). More news and pictures coming soon!


EDITED 9/9/07: Just wanted to add a couple more faves from Jen & Landon's session!

Edgar & Tiffany's Engagement

If you're a regular on our blog, you already know that we love to shoot engagements - as they happen! And tonight, we had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with Edgar and Tiffany during which Edgar proposed to Tiffany!

Now, it was a little bit different than our incognito engagement sessions... Tiffany was expecting me to be there, just to get some great pictures together as a couple. Little did she know that Edgar had filled me in on his plan and he had a ring ready to bring out after playing Tiffany's favorite romantic song on his saxophone.

You should have seen her face! It was really great to be there and be able to capture the moments and expressions.

Here are two favorites from the session that I was able to retouch just quickly for the blog. I love the city skyline lights in the background of this shot. Showing off the new ring!



Oh, and we had some serious questions about my post from a few days ago... When I said I lost an eye in a serious bike accident, I was talking about the glass eye that I lost, not a real eye. I still have both eyes! And I even have a couple more glass eyes now, too, just for fun. My Mom's side of the family are all opticians and ophthalmologists, so we have fun with those. I even posted a picture of me wearing one of the glass eyes in the original post below (from 9/3/07) so check it out. Pretty freaky!

Well, it's late and everyone else is in bed, so it's time to check out for the night. Thanks for stopping by!

Flowers from the Rock

Here's a sight you don't see very often. I noticed this beautiful flower growing off the side of the porch today, from a crack between the sidewalk and the porch. When I first saw it, I had to look again to see if there was a pot or planter there since the flowers looked so good and healthy!


I took this picture with our Canon SD800IS (our point-and-shoot digital camera). Does a great job of capturing those moments that aren't big enough to get the big Pro SLR cameras out for.

Google Analytics and Destination Weddings

I love following our site stats. Google's Analytics program is just amazing and it emails reports to me every Monday on all of our sites. I was just amazed today to see all of the countries our visitors are from!


Here's the list from last week's visitors:

US (of course)
Canada
United Kingdom
Thailand
India
Ireland
Switzerland
Chile
Singapore
Australia

Okay, so I'm sure that's not a very big list of most big websites or for you well-known photographers out there, but it was really encouraging to me! Next step: let's book destination weddings in each of those countries. Well, maybe not India. India isn't on my list of countries to visit right now.

Seriously, though, all of our equipment is easily portable for destination weddings, so if you're planning one, keep us in mind. After the wedding, it's a lot easier to work with a local photographer (Prints Charming Photography) than it is to work with someone from out of state/country.

Just this week we booked our first destination wedding -- Seaside, Florida next June -- and we're super-excited! Can't wait to have great destination wedding pictures in our galleries.

Thinking about getting married out of state or out of the country? Talk to us about the many benefits of our wedding photography services!

Along those lines, keep us in mind for proposal photography (incognito engagement pictures) for when you decide to take a knee and ask her to marry you! There's nothing to compare with having pictures of that special moment. And just a few weeks ago I met a jeweler who can save you a ton of money on custom jewelry (i.e. diamonds, engagement rings, wedding bands and custom rings). I'd be happy to put you in touch with him if you're in the market for the best prices on custom jewelry. Just let us know!

Labor Day & We've Been Tagged

I read a fantastic blog post from Seth Godin's blog today and I thought I'd pass it along. It's a fairly long blog post, but it's great. Describes a lot of what we've been through in the last year with Prints Charming Photography, taking great leaps into the unknown and risking all to do what we enjoy doing... photography, of course.

On another note, we've been "tagged" by photographer Abby Smith of Duncan, Oklahoma, so it's our turn to post "8 things you may or may not know about us." Then we get to blog-tag eight other photographers in return. We've been putting this off for a few days and there just isn't ever going to be a convenient time to try to think up 8 things, so I'll try to knock them out now. =)

1. Holly and I lived in Australia back in 2001 and 2002 and got to tour around on a motorcycle and take some amazing pictures while we lived there.

2. I lost an eye in a terrible bike accident when I was about 15 years old. Okay, that's technically true, but I still have both of my real eyes. It was a glass eye I got from my grandfather who is an ophthalmologist and it matched my real eyes. I used to have a great time playing with it and freaking people out.

3. I've always been a bit mischievous like that. =)

4. In fact, my favorite teacher in HS sincerely told my parents that I was the most obnoxious, rambunctious student he ever had. Ouch. And that was from my favorite teacher!

5. I got my Advanced Open Water SCUBA certification diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Got specializations in Search & Recovery there, too. And I have a T-shirt and DVD to prove it. =)

6. I used to own and run my own apiary (honeybees) and bee-removal business. People will pay just about anything to have bees removed from their attics.

7. For about 6 years, I barbered in Chicago as a hobby while I worked days as a Purchasing Director.

8. Scrambled eggs and raw broccoli both make me gag.

This is terribly one-sided as Holly is busy working with the kids. She probably won't mind at all, but if she has anything to add, I'll follow up with another post on it.

Okay, now to tag 8 other photographers...

1. Trinnica Jones
2. Will Thornton
3. Rowan Gillson
4. Joy Jensen
5. Alyssa Welch
6. Matt Dunmore
7. Sara Quinnett
8. Stacy Young

Now it's time for our Labor Day feast from KFC. =) We're visiting Holly's family for the day. Gotta run!


EDITED 9/6/07:

Just had to add a picture of me with a glass eye just for fun. =)

Cool Things: iGoogle, "Signature of Divine"

So today I was just really enjoying the genius behind Google's homepage and blog reader. I regularly follow probably about 50 blogs and it's just awefully hard to keep up with them all if you have to actually visit the blogs regularly to check for new posts.

Here's a look at what my homepage looks like. As you can see, my Google Reader is empty because I just read the 10 new blog posts that were waiting for me after I got back from this afternoon's photo shoot and the OU/UNT football game.


I absolutely love when technology actually makes life more efficient. Much of what Google has to offer actually is worthwhile and I'm surprised it took me this long to use iGoogle as my homepage. My Yahoo home page is now officially retired. Thanks, Yahoo, it was a good, long run.

You may already know this song well, but it's really grown on me in the last couple of weeks. It's called "Signature of Divine" by Needtobreathe and you can listen to it here. It's awesome!

Holiday Weekends...

I love holiday weekends! I'm already stoked for football season starting up tomorrow and taking Monday off. What a great way to start September!

I'm also hopped up on caffeine since we had Holly's brothers over for dinner and to watch "Blades of Glory" (which explains why I'm still up instead of in bed like everyone else here!). Ever since I switched over to decaf coffee (or sometimes "half-caf"), I can tell that Dr. Pepper actually affects me more than it ever used to. Oh well, I'm putting that energy to good use, and I've developed a little framing action that I think I like for our blog pictures. Just gives them that little extra to make them look a bit more professional, being framed.

Here's an example from a shoot I did on Thursday night over at Expressions Church. They have teamed up with Providence Church (where we've been attending) and are hosting free Thursday night college events there at the church including pizza, drinks and other snacks! It seemed to be a huge hit and was a lot of fun despite that I had to leave before it was over.

There was great music...

...a great message...

...and lots and lots of pizza!

You can learn more about the weekly event at needalift.tv - it's a pretty cool website!

For you photographers out there... All of those pictures were shot available light at 3200 ISO, 1/15" handholding my new 1D MarkIII, without any Photoshop retouching or noise reduction at all. What a great camera! Hardly any digital noise even at that incredible film speed setting.