Crista and Charles in Love | Rhode Island Photography

When I first announced that I wanted to try a few couples shoots, my friend Crista from Crista Acosta Photography down in CT contacted me about a session for her and her husband, Charles.  At first it started off jokingly, but then when I responded that I would LOVE to shoot them, she got serious 😉  Thank GOODNESS for that because not only did I finally get to meet Charles after hearing about him for, oh, about two years but I got to photograph a truly beautiful couple in one of the most gorgeous locations I have ever shot in.  (Though I freely admit, all three of my couples are gorgeous!)  Crista and Charles had just celebrated ten years of being together a few days earlier and have been married for three of those years with two incredibly gorgeous little boys to show for it as well as one beautiful little girl.

We met this past week at Harkness Memorial State Park in Waterford, CT for a beauuuutiful evening light session.  I want to only shoot in the evening.  And at this park!  Hahaha.  Okay, seriously, though – I could have spent all evening shooting there.  And the light?  Well, the light just gets SO gorgeous if you are willing to wait it out and stay a little longer.  We did gardens, buildings and then finished on the beach.  And thank goodness Crista is also a photographer because we shared a brain.  She knew exactly what I was talking about, she saw places the same way I did, they were down for anything (including laying in the sand and posing outside of a bathroom) and she had ideas of her own that were just brought to life beautifully.  I had a DELICIOUSLY wonderful time with them (minus the bug in my salad at the restaurant with them – not so delicious).

And if you want chemistry?  These two have got it.  In spades.  They embody everything I was hoping for when I started doing this.  Two people with no real special reason other than to celebrate in photographs how much they love each other and what an absolutely AMAZING life they have made together. 🙂

Ten on Tuesday | Rhode Island Photography

1.  I announced it on Facebook but I have officially booked my summer travels!!  I am going to three fabulous cities – one each month as it turns out.  I do have special sessions and pricing available during these session dates.  The dates and locations are as follows, to book a session while I am in town or for more information just contact me!!  And if you want me to come to your city, just email me.  I LOVE traveling!!

2.  June 25-28 I will be in Philadelphia.  It is primarily to do two newborn sessions for former clients, but I have opened three spots for family sessions.  Only three spots.

3.  July 4-7 I will be in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Again, primarily for a newborn session but I will be glad to consider family sessions as well.  I will take sessions in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Asheboro.  I also would consider sessions in Raleigh and Charlotte.

4. August 6-9 I will be in the gorgeous city of Chicago!!  Since I am not pregnant this trip, I hope to have a bit more fun than I did last time!  I am (yes, again) going primarily for a newborn shoot but will make up to four additional sessions available in the main Chicago area.  Since I don’t know the geography, I mean not having to travel outside of the city 😉

5.  I hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend!  We were off to NYC to celebrate my mommy’s birthday (I won’t tell how old she was 😉 )  We spent Saturday and Sunday there, and drove back Sunday night.  We got to visit some family I hadn’t seen in, oh, 22 years, and take in a game at Yankees Stadium.  Before the locals start an uprising, it was my sister’s plan to see the Yankees – she is the fan, I promise.  I will say though, the stadium IS quite beautiful.  The game was quite fun even though it was about 95 degrees and we were in direct sun the ENTIRE TIME.  My sunblock, sadly, did not hold up too well for me.  Ah well.

6.  A hint of what is coming tomorrow…

7.  I am booking LOTS of newborns again recently.  I think Rhode Island is having a baby boom!  So expect to see some on here.  I LOVE my newborns 🙂

8.  A hint of what is coming Thursday 🙂

9.  Tonight is Nolan’s end of the year concert at his school.  I cannot wait to see their little program!  He has told me that they are singing songs and that we “have to clap after each song.”  I certainly will 😀  I will also be taking pictures.  And video.  And figuring out if, in fact, I *can* survive the school concerts.  For someone who used to perform constantly, I have told Matt time and time again that i absolutely dread the school concerts.  The off key singing, the horrible instrument performances, etc.  I don’t even watch American Idol <gasp> because I just cringe watching people who are anything less than perfectly on key and talented.   But I have a feeling since it’s my kid, that will change 🙂  I’ll let you know.

10.  Jane Goodall pictures will be up later this week.  I hope!!  🙂  The Institute has everything they need from me and I believe they should have archived the shots by now so hopefully I can share soon here.

Love, love love | Rhode Island Photography

Ahhhh love.  One of my favorite CDs (and where the title comes from) is called Love, Love, Love by a pretty unknown artist named Jess Penner.  (Soon I’ll be using one of her songs on my website yippee!)  One of the lyrics in the title song says

what I have for you is love love love
all I have for you is love
there’s nothing I can do
no, I can’t go back
to anything less than that

I couldn’t help but think of those lyrics when I was shooting Jane and Brian’s session last weekend.  I first met Jane through Twitter and a mutual friend.  She was this tiny cute little thing who was going through a not so happy divorce.  Though we were not close, I continued to follow her and read her writing (she is one of the three ladies on momgenerations.com and her writing is beautiful).  I read as she got more and more involved in running and as she met this great guy name Brian.  I followed as she moved to NYC to start a new chapter of her life, only to move back a few months later because she realized her home was here – with her family and with her Brian.  And Brian?  Well he waited for her, the entire time.

Sometimes, you never know where or when you are going to find love.  I am so, so happy that Jane found hers 🙂  So when I was looking for a couple to shoot, I chose to ask Jane if they would like to do it because I loved their story.

You don’t have to be married.  You don’t have to be engaged (and NO they are not engaged to any of Jane’s friends who saw this, it was not a secret thing that they weren’t telling anyone!).  You just have to have someone who lights up your life and makes you smile the way these two make each other smile.  I am so happy that they agreed to shoot with me because I had SO MUCH FUN.  I neeeed more people to sign up for these.  While I do love my itty bitty babies, there is something about this that just *gets* me.  Maybe it is my harlequin-romance-reading inner 13 year old.  The emotion is just wonderful.  Hmmm maybe I should look into weddings more, after all 😉  So Brian and Jane, thank you for indulging me.  For climbing into reeds, standing in weeds, sitting on rocks and leaning on walls.  For being willing to show everyone YOUR love, love, love.

Before & After | Rhode Island Photography

I often have people ask me how I achieved a certain shot.  Now I will be honest – some shots take a lot more work in the editing than others!   But I thought I would do a little before and after of an easier one to show you what I did for a shot.  I’ll try and do this a little more often.  It’s fun!  🙂

For the first, shot, a picture of Jane and Brian whose GORGEOUS couples session I shot Saturday evening out at Colt State Park.  The technical details:

6:05 pm, D700 with my Tamron 90mm lens

ISO 100, f/3.2, 1/500

Behind them was open air fields with the bay and sky.  I wanted that gorgeous golden sunlight that was surrounding them.  In terms of composition I positioned myself so that they were in the bottom corner of my frame and the sun was in the top right corner. I wanted a lot of what is called negative space in the shot (part of the frame that doesn’t really have any detail) to give it the feeling of peeking in on a moment between the two of them.  I shot more into the sun because again, I wanted that flarey-goldeny-glow.  It wasn’t directly behind them, but it was to the side and behind them.  I didn’t want any details behind them other than the tree to give the shot some quiet intimacy.  Their positioning was all them.  All I did was tell Brian to sit on the wall 😉  It’s just about waiting for the right moments that you see.

On the left is the SOOC (straight out of the camera) version, on the right, the finished version.  What I did is below the photo.  Honestly, when I opened the file, I didn’t want to touch it at all because I loved it.  I loved the haze, the everything.  But I decided it needed just a little bit of “finishing” to it.

In my RAW window, I brought down exposure -.10, recovered a little bit of detail and brought down the brightness by about 15.  I could have adjusted the white balance there but I chose to save it for photoshop.

Then I brought it into photoshop.  I ran my normal workflow action which uses levels to bring up midtones and bring down shadows, then a screen layer at 30% to brighten it up a little along with a slight defog to give it a little more clarity.  It also runs a vignette around the edge of the photo.  Once that was done, I used a color balance layer to add some warmth to it.  I added yellow, a little bit of red and a smidge of magenta.  Did a very slight s-curve, ran an unsharp mask and done!  Less than two minutes of editing from start to finish.

Mine on Monday | Rhode Island Family photography

A few shots from last week.  We took the kids to the Pawtucket Red Sox baseball game.

Our grand plan was that we would get to see Stephen Strasburg pitch for the Syracuse Chiefs (he’s the newest phenom to be coming up – people say he’s the best pitcher possibly to ever come into the major leagues).  Matt researched the rotation, plotted it out and bought the tickets.  Of course, when we got there, no Stephen Strasburg – they had changed the rotation.  Ah well.  We still had a great afternoon. It was Layne’s first game and although she had NO idea where she was or what was going on she seemed to like the action and the colors and the clapping.  However, she did NOT like the loud cheering and kept giving the people around us the stinkeye.  I caught this REALLY cool shot during the game.  I was using the camera to get the players but decided to use the macro feature to try and take a photo of Nolan’s eye.  I had NO idea what I would see in there when I got it home 🙂  The detail is amazing if you really take the time to look!!

Jacoby Ellsbury was rehabbing with the PawSox, much to the delight of all women between the ages of about 12 and 50 (don’t really understand it, he’s okay).  LOTS of loud cheering.  Here’s his at bat.

Then it was off to a regular rest of the week.  I did take some time to take advantage of the gorgeous light in Layne’s room and get her after her nap 🙂  I love these, but my favorite is the first.  I love her little teeth!!!

That’s it for today.  Check back tomorrow for a before and after example!!



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