I haven't really been updating my blog recently so first off let me apologize.  Things have been super busy and busy is good!

 I shot Tim and Jaimee's wedding Friday night at a beautiful venue in downtown Mesa called Regency Gardens.  Small venue but big enough to celebrate their special day with family and friends!  Super fun wedding to shoot and I am so lucky to have shared the day with the booth of them.  Jaimee was a beautiful bride and Tim looked sharp in his attire!  For the ceremony and reception and used a couple Hensel Strobes to give a little punch into the frame and the outcome was pretty sweet!  During the reception I had to place myself in front of the light but behind the subjects to give them a little bit of a rim light and accent the details. I had them triggered by a remote as well as had a speed light onto of my camera for that fill.  I'm still in the post process stage so stay tuned for the final results.  

This past Sunday I had a pool party photoshoot in the middle of day....not ideal but with the everyones schedule it had to be then.  It had to be at least 110 degrees outside and it hurt that everyone was in the pool while I was on the cool deck shooting.  I didn't mind that much because the photos came out great!  I had my Hensel's out there and had them on full power, one had a 43" shoot through umbrella to broaden the light and then had another with a standard 7" reflector for a little bit of fill.  To warm up the scene I used a gold/silver reflector aimed at my subjects.  Not a huge production but I had a party to work with so I had to have the party goers get involved. Pretty cool to have them get excited about what we were doing!  

Later that night, after rehydrating and cooling down, we headed out to Talking Sticks Resort in Scottsdale for the second pool party....311 and the resort pool!  Amazing show at an amazing location!  This was my third time shooting them and by far the coolest.  In typical 311 fashion they had a ton of blue and pink lights which actually work out for black and whites!  Kind of a pain in the ass to shoot because the lights are constantly change but shooting in manual and RAW is always crucial.  You often her people say to shoot JPEG but in my opinion shoot RAW because the images have all of the information stored so you can pull out the detail in all the ranges.  I never shoot JPEG unless I am uploading on site, ex. all day festivals, then you have to get a perfect exposure "in camera."  The reason we shoot JPEG at festivals is because they will upload quicker and take up way less space due to the information stored on each file.  

Today I'm just catching up on some post processing and I'm a little bummed out that the Men's National team was eliminated yesterday in the World Cup.  They had a great run but there's always next time.....

CM