Fav bridal ever!

I just had one of my most favorite bridals that I've ever done!! I love this imagery! I never really knew if I had a "style" or not, (a cohesive style that is the same throughout most of my images). You can look at a picture and KNOW if Richard Avedon took it or not. Or Jill Greenberg (awesome chick!!!), she has an unmistakable style.

I think that as a photographer, you are too close to your own work to really look at it objectively. It's like a mom with twins who thinks that they are super easy to tell apart, because she knows them so well. Anyway, so I think I'm actually starting to understand my style a little better. I've known what I like, but I never placed a cohesive theme to it: I like nature. I know the real "vogue" thing right now is to do all that super grungy stuff next to graffitti with a homeless dude in the background digging through the garbage, but I only do that occasionally. When the time, place, and subject are all screaming for that kind of look. But for the most part, I REALLY love the outdoors, and especially tall grass.

There is something organic about being shot in nature. Its like you attempt to take your humanity, and diguise yourself among the earth, from whence you came. I know that sounds all Kum Ba Yah, but you get the point. Oh, and I'm also obsessed with people "parts" and not just their face. You can make a portrait of a person with almost any part of their body, but I tend to gravitate towards their posture, their feet, and their shadow.

Anyways, here is the shoot that I'm in love with. Tell me what you think!!

Photographer nighmares

As I'm setting up my business here, I am making ends meet by assisting and second shooting for other photographers. It's a pretty common practice for photographers. There are a few photographers that I am a regular shooter for. One of them, named Tim, I had a gig with last Saturday night. While I was not personally hurt during this shoot, it did teach me a lot about what can go wrong in the business.

Tim had both his cameras stolen right before the ceremony. Not only were the pictures on there from the day (getting ready, formal portraits, family portraits...) but this was about $12,000 worth of equipment. The next day, my friend Gizela had both her computer, and her external hard drive crash. Backup, backup, backup.

All this goes to show that Murphy, and his laws are alive and well. The lessons I learned were 1) for sure, get everything insured, and write down allll serial codes off of the equipment. and 2) (as I said before) backup, backup, backup. I recommend the book "The DAM Book" by Peter Krogh, a very comprehensive book for keeping Murphey and his cronies from wreaking too much havoc. Just remember the 3-2-1 sysytem: have THREE copies of every file, on TWO different types of media (ie hardrive, CD, etc), and ONE of them offsite (in case of natural disaster, fire etc).

As for getting your gear stolen, I'm sure there are a hundred different ways to avoid this pitfall besides becoming a hunchback while carrying every piece of equipment you bring on your back. One of the easiest ways I suspect would be to hire some high school kid, to just chill next to your stuff the whole time. 50 bucks to do nothing but babysit inanimate objects... not too shabby. Other than that, leave me some comments. I'd love to hear what you do to PYA on shoots.