Political Photography

Photographing political figures and new candidates running for office is a really huge business in almost any market. Campaigns spend big money to have the best PR available. Today was a first for us: taking pictures of the incumbent DA, Wes Lane for his campaign.

In just 45-minutes of actual shooting time, we got about 160 really good, usable images for their promotional use. They needed the photos ASAP, so I came back to our home office and cranked them out right away for them and burned them all to a couple of CDs. Here are a few of my favorites:

Availability Now, and Looking 6 Months Ahead

The weather has broken, school is back in session and our schedule is filling up quickly. If you plan to book a session with us before Christmas, now is definitely the time to call! Looking at the calendar today, it looks like we're booked 3-4 weeks out right now.

As many of you already know, we are expecting a new baby girl in our family around the end of January. We'll be booking portrait sessions right up until mid-January and will be taking off until probably mid-March. Holly and I work together as a team for all of our family, senior, engagement and bridal sessions, and we think Holly should be ready to get back into the swing of things by mid-March.

During that time, I will still be doing wedding photography, commercial photography and any other special projects that don't require Holly's artistic direction or posing. =)

Harp Family Portraits

The Harp family heard about us from friends out in Choctaw, where Holly used to go to church with her family while they lived out there. We still have a lot of friends in Choctaw and drive out to visit some Sunday nights.

Heather and her kids were a lot of fun to meet and get to know while we were shooting. I think we have dozens of the cutest candid shots of her little girl smelling flowers and sitting all grown-up on the bench with legs crossed and really working the poses. =)

Here are some that I liked best, but more can be seen on the proof page:

Click on any of the above pictures to see the rest of the proofs.
Thanks for reading!

Nikki & Marty's Engagement

It's not every day that CPAs come out of their offices to be photographed, but since Nikki & Marty are getting married soon they gave us a call and we met them downtown for an engagement session.

I'm sure we've had customers before who are CPA's but I don't think I know any other couples where both of them are CPA's. Despite any stereotypes about accountants, we all had a good time. We tooled around Bricktown and found some unique spots for their engagement photos.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Click on any of the above pictures to see the rest of the proofs.
Thanks for reading!

Maples Family Portraits

The Maples family came back to us for portraits again this year and we were really happy to hear from them. (It's always a joy and pleasure to know that customers were happy with our photography last time and that they plan to use us again. =)

Well, their newest addition was a great sport and put up with almost a full hour session! It was mainly a family session, but we got several cute candid photos of the kids. Here's one of our favorites:

Click on the picture to see the rest of the proofs.

Thanks for reading!

Concours de Elegance [car show]

I think this weekend was our busiest ever. We had weddings on Friday and Saturday and a special event shoot on Sunday afternoon at the Governor's Mansion. Senior photography is picking up again and our weeks are booking up quickly.

The Concours de Elegance is mainly a car show but also features an art gallery and wine tasting. The purpose of the event was to raise funds for the St. Anthony Hospital Foundation, and I was hired by St. Anthony's to photograph the event. It was a pleasure!

There were a lot of really beautiful antique cars, racing cars, custom/modified cars, new cars and even concept cars there. Here are a handful of my favorites. Hope you enjoy!

Check out this sky! What a great day to be outside...

The trophy table.

Trophies and awards.

Wine tasting courtesy of our own Oklahoma vineyards!

Oil painting the day away.

This old Benz was originally owned by Carey Grant, if I remember correctly.

Ever heard a real racecar rev up close? Man, this beauty was REALLY loud. This was Bill Elliott's race car that broke every NASCAR speed record (before restrictor plates).

This beauty was re-skinned with hand-made polished aluminum body panels. A really breath-taking roadster.

This has to be the most ornate, delicate hood ornament I've ever seen. Check it out!

This is the cleanest engine bay I've ever seen. It won the "Engineering Excellence" award.

Buffed to a very nice shine!

This is the car that won "Best of Show."

This old car won "Best in Class." I just love all the chrome. It actually looks like the old black car (the judge) in the movie "Cars," doesn't it?

Click on any of the images above to see larger versions of the pictures. You can see a lot more in the larger pictures.

Thanks for reading!

Mercy Golf Classic

This week I had the privilege and opportunity to help the Mercy Foundation with the Mercy Golf Classic at the Quail Creek Country Club. I was actually looking foward to driving around another professional photographer for the day, but as it turned out, there was no other photographer there and I got to be the professional photographer. =)

We had a beautiful day with some heavy dew first thing in the morning and crisp 60-degree temps. It wasn't long before the sun warmed things up and burned off the dew. We had several hours of really calm, nice weather and I had a lot of fun being driven around the course and taking pictures of every foursome on the course.

I didn't retouch any of these pictures. At all. Here are a few of my favorites:

Nobody had any fun at all, as you can see. =)

It was a "scramble" so they played the best ball every time.

Okay, this is my favorite shot of the day. Check it out... you can clearly see the ball and the tee both flying through the air!

It was a picture-perfect day! What a beautiful course to play on, too.

Just in case you've never been there... =) And there's a trick to not getting yourself in the reflection.

This was a very long putt. As you can see from the other guys watching, they were intently leaning and watching in hopes that he'd sink the ball.

I'm not even sure who this is, but man, he sure could hit that ball. You couldn't even see where it landed... Way off the back of the practice range. Sorry it's a bit overexposed -- I didn't retouch any of these pictures since I took so many.

The food was great!

One of the many happy foursomes. Looks like a nice day to be outside, eh?

What a professional pose! Okay, Levi, I got the picture. You can stand up now. =)

Crippled Squirrels Football Club :: Game Pictures

As you may already know, I enjoy sports. Earlier this Summer, I joined the respected "Crippled Squirrels Football Club" and even played in a couple of games before breaking a rib or two. Since I had to sit out this last weekend, I decided to bring the camera and get some pictures of the action.

Sports photography would be a lot of fun to get into, although we haven't had much request for anything like that in the past. If you have a team or family member in sports and you want some great photographic coverage for any events, let us know!

The lighting was really low, so I had to use some really high-speed "film" resulting in more grain than usual (I'm apologizing ahead of time in case you happen to notice it =). Here are a few of the highlights.

Here's Josh (our goalie) with another amazing save.

Great action shot of the other goalie trying in vain to stop the ball. GOAL!

Getting around the defence...

Another save

Celebrating a goal

Going for a shot

I love the guy's pose on defence

Josh really is a great goalie

Battle scars after the game (Leg model: Josh Wells)

They Become Friends...

People ask us all the time, "So do you take pictures of friends, mainly?" How funny! How do we give that impression so consistently? Is it because we become friends during the photo sessions and then afterwards when we post the proofs we have so many nice things to say about how we enjoyed our time with our customers who are now friends? That may be it.

Looking over our list of recent shoots, six of the thirty-nine listed were friends before we did the session.

I guess when I hear questions like that, I'm concerned that potential customers get the wrong impression and think we are only working with friends. That would certainly not be good for business! =)

Did you have a similar impression? We'd love to hear about it so we can be sure to give the right impression!

Thanks for reading!

Bryant Family Portraits

The Bryant family have a new baby boy and wanted some great pictures of him. So we all met at the gardens and I told the little guy joke after joke until he couldn't stand it any longer. Turns out he has a great sense of humor.

Holly pointed out that she really liked how this picture shows a subtle difference between boys and girls. She looks so dainty and delicate and dreamy, while he looks like he's moments away from jumping right in. =)

I love how the sun filters through the trees on the left.

Cheesecake Factory Ribbon-Cutting

If you've never before eaten at The Cheesecake Factory, you're in for a treat! Oklahoma City has finally landed our very own! It's opening this week, right next to Penn Square Mall off of NW Expressway.

As an active member of the Oklahoma City (and Edmond) Chamber of Commerce, we get to attend grand openings and ribbon-cuttings regularly. It's always a great opportunity to capture the excitement of a new business opening in our great city. This week was no disappointment!

I used to eat at The Cheesecake Factory in Chicago all the time when I lived there but this one even exceeded all of my expectations based on my experiences and memories. I think it will impress most patrons as the coolest restaurant in the city and no matter what you order off the menu, it's all really good. (No, I wasn't paid to say any of this.)

Here are a few images from The Cheesecake Factory this week.

It's a very impressive building!VP Harold flew in from LA to host the event. He was very nice and hospitable.

Chris is the manager there. He's a really nice guy -- don't let the giant shears fool you.
This is what it's all about folks. Cheesecake!!
The atmosphere is really cool.

Their dessert menu is about as big as some restaurant entree menus.
The grand entryway. The view from where I sat for lunch.

Click on a picture to see the entire proof page of 80 images. My goal is to sell these images to the businesses for their use, since I've never yet seen a professional photographer at one of these grand openings. It's a great deal for the business owner since there's no up front, out of pocket expense to them.

Thanks for reading!

Morgan's Senior Pictures

Morgan was a lot of fun to get to know. Her personality was outgoing and she was comfortable enough to let it show during our session, which always makes for better pictures. These pictures are from her "garden session" but we'll be doing another session to capture her passion: Golf! We're already anticipating the fun of getting some really cool shots of Morgan swinging, putting, etc.

Without further ado, here are a few of our favorites:

Commercial/Hospital Photography

It's been a year now that I've been doing St. Anthony Hospital's commercial photography. It's been a delight to work with such nice people and quality facility. They're in the process of opening a new surgery center and I was delighted to be asked to take photos of the new surgery rooms and the dedication service. Here are a couple of images that I thought were particularly interesting.

Nathan's Baby Pictures

We had the great pleasure of working again with Mike & Sara, this time to get some fun pictures of their new little bundle of joy! Since moving to the Canon 5D (from Nikon, previously) we're much more confident working indoors and in lower-light situations. This "upgrade" in equipment was just what was needed to facilitate this shoot in Nathan's nursery at their home.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Click on any of the pictures to see the rest of the proofs on the original proof page.

Thanks for reading... I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Heather & Casey's Engagement

We had a lot of fun doing an engagement session with Heather & Casey. Some of our best customers drive 2 or more hours coming all the way from Altus, OK! Heather and Casey didn't disappoint us in our opinion of Altus folks and by the end of the shoot we felt like we had become good friends. Here's my favorite picture from the shoot...


Click on the picture to go to the official proof page and see the rest of the proofs! There's a funny one in there by special request -- the last proof: a "Captain Morgan" special. =)

B&W Clouds and Moon

For as long as I can remember, I've had a fascination with B&W photography of clouds and landscapes. A few days ago, we had a beautiful sunset with a sliver of a moon shining through the brightly-colored clouds. Regardless of the beautiful colors, I love the way B&W photograpy enhances the contrast of the clouds, moon and darkening sky. Hope you enjoy!

Click on the picture for a larger image!