Vanessa and Lee in Pike Place Market

Finally!  Vanessa and Lee's Pike Place Market adventures are completed! Enjoy.

Vanessa and Lee: Seattle Engagement Session Preview

Vanessa, Lee, Mindy and I had a great time pushing our way through Pike Place Market and Kerry Park in Seattle on Sunday.  Beautiful weather and awesome people - even working on no sleep!  Here are a couple from our session.  More are on the way!

Planning Ahead

It's been a while since I showed the difference a little Photoshop TLC can make.

Here's a frame from Julie and Randy's engagement session last month.  The idea was nice, but the execution took some planning ahead. As much as I like getting the image right in camera, I knew as I set up this shot that it was going to take some work on the computer to bring about my vision.

As you look at the proof image (top), you'll notice that Julie and Randy are underexposed and the sky is way blown out.  Normally, I would just expose for the subject and let the background go, but the sky was just so striking that day that I had to include it in this shot.  Without using flash (which I avoided in this shot for a number of technical and aesthetic reasons) there is no way to properly expose for both the subjects and the background, since they are both so different in brightness.

To make sure I captured both the sky and the couple how I wanted to, I decided to bracket the image, which means that I took a series of exposures with different shutter speeds and then combined the best parts of them in Photoshop.

Add a little cropping, toning, a slight vignette, and a couple secret moves in Photoshop, and BAM: Julie and Randy get a unique and striking final image.

Pacific Coast Weddings Cover

It's wedding show season!  If you're heading out to any shows this year, keep your eyes open for the Pacific Coast Weddings booth.  They decided to put an image from Alesha and Adam's wedding on the cover of their annual resource guide.  It has a number of vendors' information, and tips and schedules for planning your wedding, so be sure to check it out.

Julie and Randy: Engagement Session

Mindy and I had so much fun on this engagement session!  We can not WAIT for the wedding.  The night before their session, Julie and Randy got in at about 2am from the airport, so I was thinking we might need to go a bit easy on them, but these two have so much energy together, it's amazing.  They were up for anything, and the whole session was filled with smiles and funny stories.  It was so great to see them interact with each other.  Hope you guys love these!