Fall Portraits

As fall is ending I thought it would be great to get the last of the portraits I have to do with the fall color. The crazy thing was that, because of travel and schedules, I had to do it all in the same day! Even so, I love these! I have always loved taking photos of nature as well as people and have argued that the best nature shot has a person enjoying the scenery in the frame... at this time of year, Wisconsin makes it really, really easy to do that.

Arboratum Burn

One of my most visited places for photographs here in Wisconsin is the UW Arboratum. Take a look at their website for more info but basically it is a wildlife refuge/preserve that has many regions to represent all the native vegetation areas of all Wisconsin. Every so often the UW Arboretum burns its grasslands. I have heard of them doing this but have never seen it. lo and behold, I was out to take photos one day and I noticed that there was smoke coming from the arboretum, I got really excited and changed my plans to go and take a look. Like with most photography, the closer I got, the better my images got; I talked with one of the crew members, followed him around but was soon told to get back to the main road. It was a blast, esp since I think I got some images that capture the feel of the event.

Jon and Mary

UW Football

I guess we are true Wisconsinites now! We have been to our first Badger Football Game.
Oh it was a slaughter, Northern Illinois University lost one of their own men on the kickoff (a bad enough knee injury to bring out the paramedics, ouch) and 4 downs later Wisconsin scored the first of many, ending in a 44-3 victory. But that wasn’t the best part, watching all these crazy people in red (you get “booed” if you don’t wear red) singing songs, executing complicated cheers, a multi-speed - multi-direction “wave” and much more…it was a lot of fun. Hope some of the photos let you know what you missed!! Thanks to Kristen for the great tickets!!

Fall Colors

So living in the Midwest does have its advantages to California. We actually have color on the trees out here, and lots of it. It is really hard to drive because I am not only looking at all the trees instead of the road but I also want to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures. My newest thing is to look for large amounts of contrast and backlighting.

I hope you enjoy these pics.

Technical: I used several different lenses for many of these shots, depending on what I took with me or what shoot I was on. One thing I have come to appreciate more though is the use of my telephoto zoom. I used to use this lense different, but lately I have loved to use it for leaves on trees... or in other words, things that are fairly close to me instead of things far away. I have been experimenting more with it and utilizing the compression effects and out of focus look I can so easily get with it. There was a time I almost sold this thing too. I think it was Galen Rowell that stated the most used lenses in his lineup are a light, fixed wide angle and a telephoto zoom.

Hot sticky and Sexy Pizza?

I got back from Texas this last week from shooting a Documentary there for InterVarsity. We followed around a staff worker for a week as he advertised InterVarsity, gave out free burgers and popsicles, and held a discussion about sex and pizza. It was this last event that made the paper, along with a photo that happens to contain me getting cover shots of the actual pizza. Check it out here. If you actually read the article, keep in mind that both Nick and Carlos were misquoted [Nick didn’t give bible verses for every question but facilitated a discussion about biblical principles and Carlos didn’t say anything about loosing people since last year.] Anyway, it was a lot of fun, it was really HOTand sticky (in the 90’s and 100’s plus extreme humidity!!) and we shot a lot of film (over 24 hours for a 4 minute video.)

So what does this have to do with Photography? After most interviews we conducted with video I snuck in some portraits shown above. It was actually really neat because I could utilize the lighting from the video lights and make really fast portraits. All shots were done with a wide angle zoom. Photo of me on bottom credit to Becky Cheung

4 down, 4 to go.

These last couple weddings have gone by so fast. I feel like I could write a book on how much fun they were all to shoot. But that would bore you all to tears. Instead here is a teaser of the photos I have taken up to now. 4 weddings down, 4 to go. Posted in this set are 2 weddings, and 3 portrait sessions. Add this to the Melissa and Garrick wedding below and the wedding I did video for and I am half way through this season. Wow, that went fast!

Have fun looking.