Engagement Photography - Sniper Style!

When Sam called me at the last minute with the idea of having us secretly photograph his proposal to Leslie on Valentines Day, I was really excited to see that we could fit it in on the calendar. Engagement sessions are a common thing, but I was loving the idea of being incognito and sniping from hidden locations while he proposed.

I was in place before they arrived, so I was able to see when they pulled up. Sam later told me that here he was remarking how amazing it was that just one quarter got him an entire hour of parking. =)


On my way to the gardens, I swung by Sam's office to pick up some roses that he had for the occassion. I had the roses placed in just the right spot before they got there, so I could cover it from my hideout.

It was perfect! Leslie didn't even see the roses until they were right up on them. Needless to say, she was totally surprised...

But not as surprised as she would be when he dropped to one knee!

I love the emotion in these shots. You can see that she can hardly contain herself.




By this time, Leslie knew I was there, so they walked over to share the exciting news and moment.

You can see the rest of the proofs here.

All in all, it was a great time and Sam and Leslie will have awesome pictures to remember one of the best days of their lives! It's such an awesome idea, I wish I'd have done this when I proposed to my own sweet Holly Ann. Maybe this will give some other happy couples an idea to do this for themselves. We'd be delighted to be your photographers!

Along Those Same Lines...

Along with my last post on great groomsmen gifts, I've been thinking it would be a lot of fun to photograph the groomsmen all getting their shoes shined and getting haircuts and shaves. Why should the girls have all of the fun "getting ready" pictures?

We have an office over at 50 Penn Place and there's a kind old gentleman there named Curtis who runs "Curtis Shoe Shine." It's like something you'd see in an old black and white movie. The last few times I've had my shoes shined there, I've thought what a cool thing it would be to do as a group of groomsmen before the wedding. I guess a lot of groomsmen these days are wearing rented tuxedo shoes, so it may not be a good fit for everyone, but I still say it would be a really cool thing to do in the right situation and if you had time to. I can picture a group of guys in tuxes with cigars (unlit - it's indoors) all hanging around the shoe shine laughing and having a great time before going on to the church.

I think there are still a couple of old-school barbershops in Edmond that offer shaves along with a haircut. Maybe this wouldn't be a great idea on the day of the wedding, now that I think of it. Last time I checked, they were using huge razor blades to shave people and a nick with one of those could prove a problem if it's just a few hours before your wedding. So, maybe the day before, taking the group of groomsmen to the barbershop for haircuts and shaves would be fun.

Unless, of course, you have a bunch of totally metro groomsmen who go to beauty salons for their "cut-and-color." =) Still, I think it would be fun with the right group and it would certainly make for some awesome photography, documenting the day.

The Coolest Groomsmen Gifts

I have been really impressed at the class acts that so many of our grooms are. I guess I'm always surprised at grooms who are so with it and put together that they think to get nice gifts for the guys in their wedding party. Here are two of the coolest gifts I can think of from last year.

Personalized collar stays made from silver, gold or brass. Pretty impressive! No more messing with trying to get the right bend in those cheap plastic collar stays that come with your shirts. I still don't have a set of these, but I'll have it on my list for next Christmas. =)Personalized cuff links are really classy, too. Holly bought me a nice set for my last birthday and I've really been enjoying them.
One of the really cool things about buying nice gifts for your wedding party is that your friends will enjoy them for years and always remember what a class act you were at your wedding.

Newborn Baby Storie

Well, just thought I'd share a couple of cute pictures we took of our new little baby Storie recently. When she sleeps (during the day) she lets us take pictures in all kinds of surroundings and situations. Here she is looking cute and tiny as can be on our Mac PowerBook.

Steve Jobs, have your people talk to my people about using this for Apple's advertising.

Gary Fong, Davy Knapp and... Me?

Today goes down in history as one of those special moments for us. We had a user today subscribe to our Xanga blog today. I should preface that by telling you that we don't really use Xanga since we publish our own blog (using Blogger) on our website...

Anyway, I was curious since we have never blogged on Xanga, so I checked the user's other subscriptions and - check it out - we're on their short list with Gary Fong and my friend Davy Knapp! Wow, what a group to be in. I'd be honored, except that it must have been a mistake since we don't blog on Xanga.

I just had to get a screen capture of it and post about it, though. I promise to do that any time I see my name next to Gary Fong's. =) Or Davy Knapp's for that matter. They're both great photographers. In fact, we hired Davy Knapp to do our own wedding photography and he did an amazing job... and that was four years ago yesterday.

New Website Coming Soon!

You've got to love New Year's Resolutions... I mean, a lot of people make resolutions and never stick to them, but here's one person who really is serious about her resolution to blog every day. Kailee, from BluDomain resolved to blog every day or websites would go on sale for half price. =) Here's her original blog about it.

If you're not familiar with BluDomain, they have a host of flash templates specially designed for creatives like photographers. Their sites can work for artists in other fields as well, and I'm actually working with them now to build one for my Mom's painting website (AllisonSangree.com) and it's going to be really awesome.

Anyway, turns out I checked their blog on a day that Kailee missed blogging. She posted on her blog that she's going to honor the deal she promised for that day, so we immediately contacted them for a contract! They say we should have it going in the next 2 weeks, but I'm going to venture that it will more likely be a month before it's up and running. These things tend to take longer than expected, as you probably know.

It's going to be sweet, though. I just took their sample from their website and put our logo on it and here's what it looks like. Pretty cool, huh?


I like that it's not a HUGE change from what we had, since we like the simple, elegant designs with black backgrounds to make the images pop. These photos are just the samples from their website. We'll try to come up with some better ones that we actually took ourselves. =)

So, that's the excitement around Prints Charming Photography today. Well, that and the fact that it's our 4th wedding anniversary today. No big plans, though. We just might sleep the day away. With a newborn in the house, that's what we most look forward to these days. =)

Free Online Wedding Maps

Here's one really great wedding resource to bookmark and use! Check it out... A free online mapping program that you can use to be sure your family, guests (and photographers!) know how to find all of the significant venues for your rehearsal, dinners, wedding, reception, etc.


Click on the sample map above or go to weddingmapper.com to setup your own wedding map. It looks like they've done a great job of making the entire process simple easy and painless.

There are so many great advancements today for modern brides to use in planning and coordinating their weddings... It's an awesome age to be wedding photographers!

Credit to Rodolfo, LA wedding photographer, for the tip on this great site.

Coffee Taste Matcher

I tried this the other day and thought it was pretty cool. Do you ever go into Starbucks and look at all of their brews and blends and wonder which ones you might like? I mean, I've tried at least 7 or 8 different coffee beans/blends/brews there and some I love and some I don't like so much. The thing is, when I go, I'm usually wanting some good coffee, so I'm a little hesitant to try something new, despite the fact that I'd love to try more of their coffees.

Well, they now have a 7-question coffee taste-matcher quiz that nailed my favorites right off the bat. The cool thing about it, is that it gives you several "Sure thing" coffees that you're sure to like, and then several that you could try if you're feeling daring or adventurous. A few of us tried the quiz and all of us got different coffee recommendations based on how we answered our questions. Pretty neat!

If you're wondering, my favorites are Verona, Italian and Yukon. Did you know that French Roast is their strongest, boldest and darkest coffee? French Roast... the coffee I always saw my parents drinking when I was a kid. I guess kids can do that to you. =)

Here are two of my favorite Starbucks memories. When I lived in Australia, this was one of the few places I could go and actually feel like I was back in the good old USA.


This Starbucks is right in downtown Melbourne (both pics are the same store), and when I was there, it was the largest Starbucks in the world with two levels for seating and four or five registers if I remember correctly. Even still, the line would be out the door and down the street oftentimes. And that's with at least three coffee shops within just one or two blocks of this location.


In Australia, you can park bikes on the sidewalk and you can ride between the lanes at stoplights to get right up to the front. What a great place to ride! Pictured above with me is my good friend Dave Frederick, who also happens to now live in Oklahoma. What are the odds?

Sorry about the poor quality of these photos. This was from one of my first digital cameras, so it's about 6 years old and was only a 1.8 mega pixel camera. Just thought it would be a fun memory to share. Funny to think that I was shooting on just a 16MB memory card and I thought that was big. Our memory cards now are 4GB and we're thinking about going up to 8GB already. =)

Edmond Chamber Awards Banquet

On Friday night, the Edmond Chamber of Commerce held their annual awards banquet in the ballroom at UCO. It was a great facility for the event and I was amazed at how well attended it was despite the fact that it was a make-up date due to inclement weather in past weeks.

UCO has such a cool logo covering the wall at the entrance to the Nigh Center, that I couldn't resist getting a shot of it.



The invocation. I know it's simple and basic, but I really like this picture.


Citizen of the year


Ambassador of the year and Volunteer of the year.


The Chairman's Award


Small Business of the Year: McAlister, McAlister, McKinnis & Tuggle


The staff at McAlister, McAlister, McKinnis & Tuggle


Band of the year. Okay, not really, but they were really good. Check out the trumpeter's face, giving it his all!


It was a great atmosphere... Everyone was excited about the awards and the direction of the Chamber. And the food was great! Thanks, Chamber, for saving a spot for me at the dinner table.

I know what you're thinking... "Why didn't Prints Charming Photography get any awards?!" I'll answer that for you. It seems that we weren't even in the running due to some technicality (i.e. not being chamber members until January, 2007). We'll keep you posted for next year, but thanks for your strong support. =)

Edmond Senior Community Foundation's Art Auction

I'm honored to serve on the Board of the Edmond Senior Community Foundation. This year's art auction benefiting the ESCF was held at Oak Tree, a beautiful venue for this kind of event. I've photographed wedding receptions at Oak Tree and the photos are always gorgeous. They have a great, wide entryway that's just awesome.

Paintings were lined up along the walls and on tables and on the floor from wall to wall across a couple hundred feet of space. The middle, larger painting below is by one of my favorite artists, Vittriano. We have a big canvas in our living room of his painting "The Singing Butler" which is likely the most popular painting of our era. I'm sure you'd recognize it if you saw it.


Oak Tree knows how to put out a tasty spread and the staff are always great.


Did you know that Mickey Mantle was an Oklahoman? I should have realized this, considering that his statue is downtown by the ballpark and that we have a nice restaurant after his name by the ballpark downtown, too. There was some cool baseball memorabilia auctioned off, too, including this baseball signed by the legend himself. I think that's cool and I'm not even a baseball fan.


I've only been to a few auctions, but it's always a lot of fun. This lady got into a bit of a bidding war with a couple of others for a Thomas Kinkade painting. It started out slow and got going pretty well before it was over. Auctions are pretty exciting. It's fun to see everyone laughing and smiling and having a great time while buying wonderful art and supporting a great cause.


Nathan Gunn came to support the ESCF Art Auction by bringing and donating one of his awesome paintings. I couldn't stay to see how much it went for, but I'm sure it was a good amount. This picture doesn't do it justice (that's hard for a photographer to say, but I'll admit it =). Nathan, you have the whole art thing down, my friend. Even the look. Check out more if his impressive work at NathanGunnArt.com, including his recent painting of Adrian Peterson, star OU Football running back.


My brother-in-law, Levi Heard, helped with the auction since he also serves on the Board of the ESCF. I like how this shot captures most of the room, and even the action of Levi getting the next painting ready. It's a photograph, actually, of the Beatles, I believe. There was so much cool art there.





I had a newborn (our newest, little baby "Storie") waiting at home for me, so I wasn't able to stick around to see this one auctioned, but it looked amazing.


Here again is the infamous Nathan Gunn with his arm candy. =) As you can see, everyone had a great time. I didn't even realize it, but it turns out that Nathan Gunn is a good friend of one of my brothers-in-law, Titus. I think they have Bible studies together on a regular basis.


More good times being had.


Just recently, it seems that Blogger changed some setting, so now I can only upload 2 photos at a time. Anybody know how to work around that so I can upload 5 at a time again, or even more? This 2 at a time business is wasting a lot of time!