Saturday, April 28, 2007

Storage Solutions

I’m pretty obsessive about my data. I have the negativess from my first wedding in 1998 still in storage. The idea of losing a single image scares the pants off of me.
 
Because of these things I have been a religious person for back ups in multiple places and media. The size of my archive is getting insane though. I am having to make a big change in how I handle things.
 
I have two of these
Fantom G-Force MegaDisk
s on the way. Very cool desktop RAID solution. Each is 1 Terabyte configured in a redundant RAID 1 so each one has a duplicate of itself internally on a second disk.
 
The first will hold old archived projects and the second will keep up with my present workflow.
 
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Along with these I will continue to do my regular DVD backups as well. Doing all this makes certain I am in good shape for the long run.
 
Because I’m uptight, I’m working on a 4th location for stored data. (yes, forth, the third is my online server for the lab) Soon I will be expanding my online server space to incorporate a full backup of all my files on a secure server in another part of the country.
 
Yes, I probably need therapy, but I don’t ever want to tell a client or myself I can’t print something because the file is gone.
 
(This year I started giving my wedding clients DVDs of the finished images this year as another level of protection.)

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Children's Musical


I have to say that my church is really cool. There is always something happening at
First.
Yes, we have our ups and downs like any group of people, but there is a lot of good stuff going on.

We fell in love with it our first Sunday about 12 years ago and have been up to our ears in it since then. Being involved is the very best way to have fun in a church. I don’t think I could just attend a church and be happy - it’s just not how I was raised.

This past weekend was our Children’s Ministry musical. I love to see these kids using their gifts. See what they did above in the slideshow.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Christina and Drew's Album Design


I released the predesign for Cristina and Drew this morning. As I said before this was a beautiful day. Their personalities were really evident all day in every little detail. I love the storytelling possibilities when I do an album design like this. I find that I am designing a bit in my head when I am shooting. It gives an extra level of involvement and expression for me. I love it.
 

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Christina and Drew's Wedding



Another beautiful wedding. Christian and Drew are such a sweet couple. I am always honored to be a part of such important days in people’s lives. I met them for the first time about a year ago and was so pleased to be included in their plans.
 
The slideshow above is available through i-Tunes as a pod-cast. If you would like to share these moments with friends, feel free to download it to your ipod and carry it wherever you go.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Mollie's Senior Portraits


I’ve been crazy lately between shooting, editing and trying to live a normal life and spend time playing baseball in the yard with my kids. I’ll catch you up on a few photographic highlights.

Senior portraits for me are an all day affair, or pretty close to that. I like to spend time with people. No clock running. No maximum number of poses or changes of clothes. It’s the kind of photography that I want to do.

Mollie and I spent a good portion of a day a week or so ago making some incredible senior portraits. After portraits at the house in a few outfits and with her violin we headed south to Bradenton to use my favorite beach (Coquina on the South end of Anna Maria Island) as a backdrop for some more images.

On the way we had to stop at one of my other favorite places, the shake pit for a bite to eat. If you are ever on Manatee avenue in Bradenton, FL, you need to pay them a visit....

You can visit the rest of her sitting online on my
.

Kyle's Senior Portraits

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I did something for Kyle that I don’t do very often. Do two sittings in one day. Luckily Kyle and Mollie have known each other for a hundred years (ok, maybe they haven’t been alive that long...) and they were willing to go tag team with me for the day. It was a lot of fun for me to bounce around a bit while shooting and by the end of the beach session they were both really adept at holding my reflector panel for me.

Just like Mollie’s portraits, you can see Kyle’s on my
.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Brandy and Derek's Wedding


I have been photographing weddings for a long time now. (Since 1989... Yikes, I think I’m getting old now...) There are some couples that still strike me as special. Brandy and Derek are one of those couples.

They are young and very much in love. Derek came home from serving in the military in Iraq and married his high school sweetheart. I love this kind of story.

To make the event even better, they chose Cross Creek Ranch for their wedding and reception. It is such a beautiful location with a warm country feel. It was the perfect backdrop for their love story.

Visit my online proofing page to view their entire wedding and engagement session.