The Grace Giving Foundation's Gala

This last weekend marked the 2nd annual Gala for the Grace Giving Foundation. It's organized at least in part by our friend (and family portrait customer =) Sommer B. We were honored to be able to help sponsor the event aimed at helping some truly needy families in the Edmond area. Edmond has at times earned kind of a snooty reputation, but there are needy families in Edmond, just like any other town.

The Gala event was held at Gaillardia and I couldn't resist sharing a shot of the outside of the clubhouse from later in the evening. I wish I'd have caught it just a little bit earlier with some color in the sky from the sunset, but dinner was too good so I didn't think of it. =)

A quick plug for the sponsors! Thanks for making it possible!

The food was wonderful and was served from a really impressively long set of tables.

Some fine music at the cocktail hour.

I liked the background of the setting sun in this shot.

Ever since I beat Guitar Hero on easy, I feel like I should know how to play one of these. One of the super-cool items that was donated as part of the silent auction.

I originally took this shot thinking how impressive it was to show how much money was being raised, but now looking at it, I can't tell whether it says $600 or $660. Maybe it was a ploy by the bidder to confuse people and seal the deal?

An impressive display of "shaker throwing" (I know there's a better name for this since it's so common, but I don't know what it is... anyone?) by Skip the bartender. Yes, the motion blur on the shaker is real. (No, I didn't add it in Photoshop.) Thanks for doing some cool tricks, Skip!

It was an awesome night to get away outside for a chat and a cigar. Of course, it's hard to shoot and enjoy a cigar, so I just enjoyed capturing the moment. It was just a little bit chilly, so the fire pit was really enjoyable.

With dinner out of the way, the fun came out! I got a few photos of the other band, too, but they didn't make the blog. Check out the other photos on our proofing site if you're looking for anything in particular.

These guys were the real deal! Scratching records and everything. They did so many different styles it was pretty impressive.

Some respectable dancing before things really got out of hand. Okay, I'm just joking. Nothing got out of hand despite the following photos' evidence to the contrary. =)

A little "Cotton-Eye Joe" action

A little Cha Cha Sliding...

And some karaoke!

I secretly envy people who can get up and sing in public, particularly non-professional singing I'm talking about. I sang in a barbershop quartet for a few months once and I always got really nervous before singing in front of anyone. Practice was really fun, but performing was terrifying! So, it was really fun to watch folks get up to sing with the band and help them sing a Kelly Clarkson song.

Sommer is going to kill me for this shot, but it was just way too good to not include... =) Here she is rocking the house!


What a fun evening! To see more pictures from the evening, click here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Colorado Family Portraits

First of all, let me tell you that I'll be single-handedly taking care of the two girls tomorrow and Saturday, so if any of you want to come over and play, that would be just great! I'm already bracing myself to get absolutely nothing done while they're awake... =) Oh well, memories will be made!

I was going to make some joke about Oklahoma City now having mountains, but I missed April Fools Day by about a month. With Al Gore's wonderful invention, the Internet, we get families from all over visiting our site. In the last few days, we actually had visitors from Ireland, Greece, Italy, France, Pakistan, China, Australia, Venezuela, Canada and Trinidad (hi, family! =)

Destination weddings are commonplace now and we're excited to have a few on our own calendar for this year, but how about destination portraits?

Holly has some family up in beautiful Colorado Springs who invited us up to do portraits for them and several other families. We figured that the trip would be worthwhile just to get the chance to visit and stay with family, but they though they could line up 5 sessions for us and that would have pretty much made the trip worthwhile financially as well. =) (have I already used up my smiley quota for this entire post??)

Here are some of our favorites from that week up in CO Springs... It's so nice to see pictures with mountains in them! =)















And finally, one of my favorite shots from 2007... I call this one, "Shooting a male model with wife and baby accessories."


Total eye-candy, Aaron & Shannon! You guys were too much fun. Thanks for showing us a great time up Colorado Springs!

Addie's Senior Pictures

We had the pleasure of meeting and photographing Addie's entire family the other day. What a great-looking bunch! We started off with a family shot or two and then moved on to the real purpose of the session: Addie's senior pictures!

I loved how the light came filtering through the trees in this spot.

The redbud trees sure are beautiful this time of year!

You all know by know that I love old loading docks. =)

Another old loading dock. Love the character of this one...

If you know Addie and are looking for the rest of her senior pictures, you can find them here.

Addie, it was a pleasure to help you with your senior pictures and to meet your beautiful family! Thanks for choosing us!

Guy & Scarlett's Wedding in Texas

We just got back from Texas where we photographed Guy & Scarlett's wedding at the TCU's Robert Carr Chapel and we just had to share a few photos from Saturday that jumped out at us as we downloaded and backed them up. =)

The grand getaway! I heard he has a Corvette engine in that Camaro.

After the big getaway, we met them at two nearby locations for some more photos together.

After the wedding, it's always much more relaxed and stress-free. =)

Congrats, Guy & Scarlett! We were honored to be there to capture the many special moments throughout the day. Have a wonderful honeymoon, and we look forward to working on your photos in the days ahead!

Happy Monday!

We're enjoying a bit of a personal day today since we spent the weekend shooting down in Texas. Most people dread Mondays, I suppose, but working on Saturdays have made Mondays a real delight. We try not to schedule anything work-related on those days if we can so it ends up being kind of a make-up day for rained out sessions.

Today's projects: buy a new GPS unit, set up the pool for the kids, and build a sandbox. Fun times!! I love the smell of the sun tan spray and it feels like summer is officially kicking off today for some reason.

I know, I should probably post pics of all of those things, but we're too busy getting things done. =)

Thanks for checking in on our latest news and we'll have some fun pics up soon from the wedding last weekend. (Very nice smokey burnout, Guy!!)

Aaron's Senior Pictures

Here are a few faves from Aaron's senior portrait session downtown...

We found this downed billboard that made for an interesting background

Got baby blues? =)

Loving the architectural backgrounds under bridges...

Matching the blue wall. =)

If you know Aaron, you can check out the rest of his session here. The password is his last name.

Thanks for stopping by... More to come soon!

Kye's Senior Portraits

I have just a few minutes to post some images, but probably not enough time to provide much witty dialog to go along with it. =)

Here are a few favorites from Kye's session.

I like the "noir" look of this one.

I couldn't believe Kye could do this in dress shoes! This is where 10 frames per second comes in handy. =)

Just walking downtown. Pretty cool sun flare.

Nice wheels!

If you know Kye, you can see the rest of his gallery here by typing in his last name as the password.

Well, thanks for stopping by for the latest news and images from Prints Charming Photography! More to come soon... With love, ~C&H

Brook & Kara-Kae's Wedding

We're a little bit behind in retouching since we lost 2 entire weeks when our gear was stolen, but I was going through a the images from Brook & Kara-Kae's wedding and was really excited to share two images right away. =)

After the wedding (yes, in the middle of the night!), the newlyweds and I headed downtown to get some fun, romantic shots together. Since they both live out of state, we didn't have a chance to do an engagement session together beforehand. Here are a couple of images we got from that "post-wedding" session. =) Check 'em out!

Shot details: 70-200 F2.8 IS lens @ 80mm, F2.8, 1/50 second at 1600 ISO, off-camera flash

Shot details: 70-200 F2.8 IS lens @ 70mm, F2.8, 1/15 second at 3200 ISO, no flash

The bottom photo looks like it was soft-focused, but it's not. We were all walking and the movement softened the entire photo just perfectly for that effect.

Thanks for stopping by!

Surviving the Weather

Oklahoma still feels like the frontier in at least one regard: the weather. It's untameable, unpredictable and full of awesome surprises. (Awesome in the true sense of the word.) After yesterday's day-long torrential downpour, today we're experiencing flash-flooding and high winds! (Higher winds than normal, that is =) Certainly keeps life exciting around here.

Today started out bright and early with a session over at St. Anthony hospital. I love working with the staff there... Always so friendly and nice!

This is Dr. Cassidy in one of their new radiology rooms.

And the new landscaping across the street from the main hospital! It's beautiful and I love the sound of the water.

That's it for now. It's nice to start getting caught up from the last couple of weeks of craziness. =) Slowly, but surely... Now it's time to wrap up and get headed to our engagement session this evening! I'm really excited about this one since it looks as if I'll be doing their destination wedding photography for them later this year on the beach at Destin, Florida. Can't wait to post some of those on our blog and as samples on our galleries!!

Okay, this is not a joke -- the wind is so strong, we're losing power around town! Ours just flickered off and I discovered by UPS backup system is not working as well as it should. I'm off to buy a better UPS (uninterruptible power supply). Take care!

Today's Bridal Session

For our first trip up to Guthrie's Scottish Rite Temple, we were deluged with rain. Kim and Mark were troopers, though, and smiled through it all. Here's one from this afternoon's session just to hold them over until we can get them all retouched!

The Follow-up Story

So on Thursday the news aired the follow-up story about how the equipment and photos were returned and recovered. It was really nice to be able to follow up with a happy ending, of course. In case you saw it, a lot of what we said about it being an answer to prayer and our best attempts to give our Heavenly Father the glory were pretty much all edited out, but it doesn't make it any less true. =)

Holly baked a cake for the Moore Police Department and they said they loved it. Her coconut creme cake is just out of this world. It's funny, I can totally see us being life-long friends with Holly & Clint now after going through this together. They were SO sweet and understanding and appreciative. I can't imagine how much harder this all would have been if they'd have reacted differently. I think God gave us all an extra measure of grace to deal with it while we were in the middle of it all.

Thanks again for all of your prayers and love and support! Just wanted to fill you in that we were able to do another news story about the good news.

And finally, here are a few favorites from our most recently posted portrait session! Not a lot has been done in the last couple of weeks while we dealt with insurance, detectives and personal efforts to find the gear, but we're back at retouching and photographing and hope to catch up soon!

Praising Him Even in the Storms

It's odd, during the last week, I didn't listen to any music at all. Couldn't enjoy it or get into it. I thought of this song a lot, though.

Now that the "storm" is over, I can enjoy music again and this song especially has a new depth of meaning to me. If you're not familiar with it, here it is.

It's not the official music video (couldn't find one if there is one), but I thought the imagery goes with it well.

Caution: tears may flow.

*THE* Wedding

Just because so many people have asked, we're posting one of our faves from the wedding that was stolen (and has been found!). Can you imagine if images like these were lost forever?!


Clint & Holly, you were so much fun to be with! We really can't wait to retouch the entire wedding! Unfortunately we're not a good 2 weeks behind due to the stolen equipment fiasco, so please be patient with us as we play a fierce game of catch-up! =)

It keeps coming...

Okay, one more update... After crunching the recovery software for hours last night (while we were sleeping), we were able to recover the several hundred photos that had been formatted off of the card by the bad guys!!! This is just a beautiful ending to a most stressful and trying week and I want to again thank everyone for their prayers and love and support through it all.

As icing on the cake, the detective called me this afternoon and told me I could come down to the station to pick up my 2nd camera bag, pistol and extra magazines! They had all miraculously been recovered as well just this morning. How unbelievable is that.

The detective told me in his years of service, it's probably the first time he's ever seen everything come back like this and he was pretty amazed. I attribute it all to a loving Heavenly Father who heard our earnest prayers and in His mercy saw fit to give this whole ordeal a very happy ending after all. He worked on the heart of the guy who called me yesterday and gave him the grace to do the right thing and return it even when he didn't have to and when it might have cost him dearly to do so. What a faith booster! I wouldn't want to relive any of these days, but now that it's all over I can start to see how it's been good for us.

It was also a good reminder to us that success is from God and despite our best efforts, all good things are from above. That's both humbling and reassuring at the same time to me and I hope I remember this for a good long time. No need to relearn these kinds of lessons on a frequent basis! =)

It's time to notify the media for a follow-up. I hope we can communicate everything to give God the glory. And I hope it doesn't take another entire week to deal with all of the media, new insurance issues and paperwork associated with having stolen property recovered! We're so far behind that it almost hurts. =)

I guess if you're in the habit now of praying for us, you could pray that we catch up and get everything organized again! We're going to be prayer-hogs now that we've seen the power of prayer. Thank you guys so much for loving and caring for us enough to follow the story, offer your help and (most importantly) pray for us!

Much love,
C&H

It's a Miracle!!!

What a day! Besides the fact that it's April Fool's day, we have had a really amazing day... I'm tempted to put this off until I'm not so tired and I have more time to really type everything out properly and think it all though, but I know a lot of you have been praying with us about this and I don't want to keep you hanging any longer than necessary!

It started bright and early (I know, a lot of you are already in shock! Yes, bright and early since I went to bed before 10PM last night. *gasp!*) with a phone call that I mentioned in my previous post, stirring great hopes that the equipment would be returned.

After a grueling day of waiting and working, 8PM finally came and I showed up at the guy's residence (along with backup, of course) to meet him and see the equipment. Turned out, to our great relief, that it was all ours and almost all of the equipment from both bags had been consolidated to just the larger, rolling bag. Most importantly, the memory cards were all present and accounted for!!!

We, of course, immediately downloaded them and backed them up. =) The newlyweds whose photos were on the cards were literally in tears (with us) as we explained that they were recovered.

Some of the equipment IS worse for the wear, so it's good we bought new gear immediately and didn't just wait for this to show back up. But seeing the rolling bag and gear again was like being reunited with a long lost friend. Seriously.

It feels like there was so much that we learned through all of this. The power of prayer first and foremost. We had so many friends, family members, etc. praying and we're certain that it made a difference in the heart of the guy who called us to turn in the gear. I'm sure that wasn't an easy call to make as he was risking so much (person $, possession of stolen goods, etc.), but his conscience told him it was the right thing to do.

Compassion! So many folks reached out in compassion and love as we grieved (literally) over the loss of the cards and equipment. It sounds silly to type it out, but it felt like we had lost a close family member and even if people couldn't help, just their hugs, love and support made a really huge impression on us. The people that gave us hugs, said how sorry they were and told us they were available to help if we needed it - those were the heroes of this past week for us. And the many photographers who offered for us to use equipment until we had our own again... just amazing.

We have shed more tears in this last week than probably in the previous 5 years combined. Many in desperation and helplessness, but lots also just from the love we've felt from you all. And now, literally tears of joy as we celebrate the return of the memory cards and photos!

We're so grateful that a loving Heavenly Father saw fit to write a happy ending to this trial. I would never chose to go through anything like this again, but we certainly feel stronger, better, more compassionate people for having been through it.

I know I'm forgetting a lot and I'm probably not wording everything like we'd talked about, but Hol's in bed and it's after 1AM, so I'm not firing on all cylinders. =) I'll have Holly read it over and I'm sure we'll think of more to add later, but in the mean time that's the long and short of it.

I'm running some rescue software on one of the memory cards which was formatted sometime after it was stolen and before it was returned to me. If you think of it, pray that we are able to recover all of those photos from that card. I feel like I'm really imposing on everyone now to keep on praying, but if you've made it this far reading this entire post, then you probably have time to pray with us about this! Mom, thanks for reading this whole thing and for praying. =) You're the best.

Trying not to get too excited

We got a call early this morning from a Mr. Smith. Seriously. And he said he has one of our bags, -- our larger rolling bag that contained the majority of our equipment and two of our memory cards.

It was an unusual call to say the least but he's offering to return the bag tonight after he gets off of work. Again it's just one of the bags and half of the memory cards, but it's still so hopeful and promising. We're just praying now that the other bag -- a smaller back-pack type sling bag -- makes it's way back to us, too, somehow.

I just wanted to keep everyone posted so you'd know how to continue to pray. Miracles do happen... I know it's a little early and we're trying hard not to get too excited, but we're hopeful.