Shannon and Tom are the type of people you wish you could hang out with. Spunky, full of energy, creative, and exciting are just a few ways to describe them and their friends. Tom and friends fence and swash buckle for fun as a part of the SCA, while Shannon takes charge of a room and has a vibrant energy that infects all of those around her.
Congratulations to Shannon and Tom! Your wedding was a blast, and I’m very grateful to have been a part of it!
Well, here is my first wedding. Out of 1200 photos taken, 227 which were delivered, here is the wedding whittled down to just 48 in an attempt to tell Spencer & Nichole’s story.
Nichole originally asked me to be the photographer at her wedding and I initially told her no because I had no experience shooting weddings and I feared I would mess up recording her special day. What if I was horrible? What if I missed all the moments she wanted to remember? What if she hated my photographic style? What if I what I did was no better than a monkey with a point and shoot? So she took my no and went and found a professional wedding photographer to shoot her wedding instead.
Then I started thinking… why not? I contacted Nichole back and asked her if she wouldn’t mind me shooting beside the paid photographer at no cost to her, as a way for me to get practice. She of course told me that would be great and invited me to come shoot her wedding after all. The pressure was off and I could shoot her wedding with no worries about how bad I may be, or how much I may mess it up, and it felt good — this is the outcome of that first wedding, and I’ll be honest, I think I did a fairly good job for my first time. I’m no Ryan Brenizer, but not many people are.
What do you think? Would you hire me? Since this one I’ve got another, and have a third scheduled for this coming Saturday. Should I feel good after that one as well, I’ll likely be adding weddings to my packages. Guess I’ll need new business cards…
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Senior year of high school for some can be the end of a hellish nightmare, while for others it’s a swan song of what they feel was the best four years of their life, and for the rest it’s somewhere in between. I don’t know what it’s going to be for Dakota, but from what I do know about this guy, he’s got a great life ahead of him. He has a very supportive mom, whom he obviously loves; he’s got great ideas about what he wants to do with his life after high school; and he’s got opportunities already coming his way that he’s considering trying on. According to his mom he’s a very artistic kid with talent and desire — and based on the tattoo on his forearm, he will be relentless in his endeavors.
I just hope that I did right by him with these photos, as these are what he’ll be looking back on in 10 years when his high school reunion comes around and he’s showing his girlfriend or wife what he was like way back when. I hope that when they look at these photos that instead of going, “Wow, I was a dork” or “Look how young I was” that he thinks, “I was a handsome kid” or “that guy knew where he was going.”
Ok, so I don’t know what he’s going to say or think when he looks back on these shots, but I just hope I’ve helped create a memory that long lasts as a positive one when he thinks about life in 2010/11.
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Zinfandel Photography has just made the jump to the sophisticated age of accepting credit cards! I received my Square card reader today and am very excited! I can now accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American express. I can accept debit cards, credit cards and gift cards with the aforementioned companies logos.
And the best part is, I can now accept these payments from anywhere. Want to make your payment at the location of the photo shoot? No problem! Welcome to the digital age.
So, speaking of the digital age… I’m very excited for this upcoming month of photography. I’m shooting two boudoir sessions and two weddings within the next month, and have a senior portraits session, a Hollywood Glamour session and a wedding that I’ve already shot that all still need to be upload! I’ve been a little slow on getting posts up, and I apologize for that, but keep an eye out as I’ll be getting them up soon(ish)!
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Have you seen this video yet? If not, watch it. I’ll wait.
Watched it? Ok, good.
I have mixed feelings on this video, and I wanted to share them here. Initially I watch this and think that it perfectly represents why our culture is so messed up when it comes to defining beauty. We see impossibly thin girls on magazine covers, women with perfect skin and no blemishes, not a wrinkle or pimple in sight, and we wish we (men included) could all look like that, or think that every woman should look like that. The reality though is that as humans we don’t and the sooner that as a society we realize this, the sooner we will evolve. There is another video in the series that tackles how young girls are bombarded with with advertisements and media telling them they need to be “younger, smaller, lighter, firmer, tighter, softer” which I recommend you watch as well. You can see all three videos in the series at the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
Why am I bringing this all up on my photography blog? Well, it’s simple really: I aim to capture your beauty for all to see and I would like to encourage you to think about how you want to feel about yourself rather than what the media tells you to feel about yourself.
This brings me to my secondary reaction to the video above. What I do is take a woman who may not feel very sexy, and I help transform her into something she never knew she could become, much like what that video does for that girl before all of the Photoshop changes made. What’s added? Some make up, hair styling, and proper lighting. That’s all. Nothing more.
I very strongly believe that all women, whatever age or size, can feel sexy. It’s not about how thin you are, how pretty you are, how flawless you are… the things that make you think that you are not perfect, are what make you perfect. My philosophy when shooting a boudoir session is to see the beauty in you that you refuse to see in yourself, and showing it to you. Do you have a significant other who thinks you are beautiful? Let me show you what they see. Do you simply have a low self image? Let me change that. Let me show you the sexy, confident, beautiful version of yourself that you didn’t realize was there.
And I’m not limiting this article to women… men, you know you have self confidence issues as well. While most men wouldn’t want to partake in a boudoir session, an Old Hollywood style glamour shoot can do wonders for your self esteem. Throw on a suit, don a fedora, and look up at the camera!
To summarize and conclude though, I would like all of you, men and women, to do me a favor: the next time you feel a little less attractive or have a little less confidence, stop, take a breath, think of this video are realize that you are strong enough, you are beautiful enough, you are sexy enough, you are smart enough — to do whatever it is you desire to do.
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