Minnesota Wedding Photographers (and babies too!)
You know you want it… (Why is it no one requests more images of engagement photographs or an awesome candid moment at a wedding… all I get is “Show me more puppies!!!”). Give the people what they want, I guess… Kona and Cooper snugglin’.
When we do wedding or engagment photographs, be cute like this statue.
Staying involved in the community through the Miss Fridley Scholarship program is fun… The girls are always so gracious and happy. A few images from the night:
From the four in this picture, a virtual cookie to the person who can guess who just won something…
And a quick shout out to my online stalker…
I shot with Jen Coleman today; a really fun wedding photographer friend of mine. Sara and Brian got married today at St. Mary’s church in downtown St. Paul. They were so unbelievably cool; the family, the bridal party, and all the guests were all extremely gracious. It was a downright pleasure to be a part of their day. Sara, in particular, was certainly one of the most emotive people I’ve ever met – good times, good times. Oh, and aviators… anyone with aviators automatically gets in two times the number of pictures they otherwise would. 🙂
A couple quick images I made before I head for a well-earned sleep:
I’ll probably post some more as I process them… we’ll see, gotta keep room for dog pictures! 😉
My parents, obviously jealous of my super awesome dog, Kona, decided they would also get a Brittany puppy.
…actually, we both decided about 6 months ago that we would and have just been waiting on finding a good non-puppy-mill breeder… The new happy family.
When not in his parents arms, Cooper seemed a bit unsure of his new surroundings, but from experience, I’m sure within a day or two, he’ll be happy as a… puppy. ZING!
In anticipation of continued puppy pictures, I am contemplating changing my site name to something along the lines of “puppies’R’us” instead of pretending to focus on wedding photography. Bah. 🙁
Some day I’ll get to posting more wedding, portrait and gear stuff… but that day is not today. And, really, probably not tomorrow either. Give me next week perhaps to get some more puppy out of my system. 😉
I’m having some color profile issues rear their ugly heads, so the lovely Love Sac that Kona is on for some of these pictures is being rendered as pure black. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to make the needed changes and still get this post up before I need to get on the road… I’ll edit when I get back, so just look at the doggie. 😉
p.s. Once a dog has gotten over his curiosity about the camera, it is suprisingly difficult to get them to look into the lens. I need a noise-clicker thing, those work magic.
Dog, photography, small puppy, small lens cap, image on photograhers blog… it seems right. I am now realizing this is the only image in this post that doesn’t include the Love Sac.
Do I really need a comment for this one? Best caption for this image wins a prize – comment below.
This was actually taken on day one of bringing him home. Colleen perhaps still had tears in her eyes. Originally thought it was a throw-away but it’s growing on me more and more.
Christa wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t include a picture of her. So here it is. 😉
Rest up little one, rest up… Big life ahead of you.
Another new backup body arrived. Significantly happy about this purchase.
Inside the box: 
Comes with everything you need other than the compact flash card. Happy suprise to me, it uses the same battery that the Nikon D80 does. I also managed to get in before the promotion on Capture NX ended – got a free version of the conversion software that produces the highest image quality possible (but is slow as molasses… oh the struggle…). Woot!
Picked it up with the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. Not really fast enough for truly critical low-light work, but great for scouting and such. It was really much more solidly built than I expected and, given decent light, produces images plenty good enough for walk-about, travel, and stock photography. With a 27-300 FOV equivalent, VR, good built quality per price, and high quality images – If you only had one body/lens combo for traveling the world – this is probably the combo you should have.
The D300 is very solidly built, though the buttons don’t quite have the authoritative and convincing feel that the D3 does, but at less than 1/3 the price… meh. The fact the controls, focus system, menus, file sizes, and other aspects are identical to the D3 makes it a natural pairing – allowing seamless transitions between the two to best utilize the wonders of FX and the benefits of DX-sized sensors. Once you break ISO 800, you really should be looking specifically at the D3… I’ll make a post sometime with more specific comparisons with regard to noise, FoV, DoF and all that fun gear-jazz that probably bores most of you. 😉
… for many reasons… The typical flowers:
.. have sprung up all over the neighborhood.
I feel like I should l live somewhere warmer, even though Minnesota is fantastic and I love the fact we have four truly different seasons, just because then I could see these Easter-pastel flowers during Easter-time; it’d be more appropriate. 😉
These flowers are certainly more MY real flower-based sign of spring. But I think, here in Minnesota, the TRUE sign of spring is this:
I have had quite a few complaints from people seeing the new puppy for the first time: “I didn’t realize he was so small” and “he looks bigger in the picture on your blog”.
So I made an image during breakfast while he lay at my feet for size comparison:
Sadly, he already seems to be getting bigger and his hair more coarse. 🙁
Colleen is really digging the ‘snuggle up and be cute and little’ phase… being that she is cute and little, I can relate. I’m trying not to take too many Kona pictures – I’d like the dog to bond with my face, not with a camera lens. 😉
