Wedding Details

I love to hunt for and record the small details of weddings. Many of these things would be forgotten if not photographed. I use these detail images in the wedding album layouts to give a complete flavor of the wedding day.

Favorite Cake images

Here are some of my favorite wedding cakes from the past year.

More Favorite Images from 2008

Thanks to Lindsy and Ethan for a great wedding and
some truly great images.



Matt and Leanne's wedding was a blast.

The Mohawk River CC sure does it right!

Keri and Brian's Wedding at The Glen Sander's Mansion
was one of the most rewarding events I've ever covered.
The bride and groom had great ideas and allowed me to
have fun and be creative and the images are amazing!



















Thanks to Keri and Brian

Spring Weddings

Thanks to Aimee and Jeff, Haley and Keith and Robyn and Austin for some great images in the past few weeks.

St James Gate

I recently had the opportunity to photograph the Irish band St. James Gate for their First CD titled "The Road to Clare". For more info about the band and performance dates go to www.saintjamesgate.com



Band members are Bill Connelly, Rick Russo, Robert Daly and Cassidy Buckley

New Albums ....more choices

I have just added 2 new albums to my wedding packages

The first one is a Large Format 10x13 Coffee table style Flush mount album. It is the same leather cover style as the 10x10 and 5x5 albums I have offered for the past 3 years. It is made by Tapperell Loomis and you can have your name and wedding date embossed in gold on the cover. This is a large album and quite spectacular to view. It opens up more design options as I am no longer constrained by the square 10x10 format of my standard album. It is an option in many of my packages. It comes standard with 10 pages/ 20 sides and can be upgraded to 15 pages/ 30 sides.

The second album is an 8x10 Flush mount album that I am now offered with my Engagements sittings and includes 10 8x10 prints flush mounted the same as the 10x10 and 10x13 albums. It also has the same leather cover, so all your albums will match.

Pro versus Amateur

What constitutes a good photographer?

How many times have I heard "wow, that's a fancy camera ... you must be really good." Well, my camera has very little to do with being good. The ready and affordable availability of automatic cameras has led to the widespread misconception that becoming a great photographer is simple to achieve. Simply pointing and shooting a camera is not sufficient to develop the knowledge of all aspects of photography that makes the difference between the casual snapshot shooter and the experienced professional.


* Some couples today have decided not to trust their wedding pictures to a wedding professional but to a friend or relative with a fancy camera?

* You really should learn what the differences are besides cost.

* First, think about whether your friend really knows how to photograph a wedding.

* Does your friend with the fancy camera have a developed style or are they a snapshot shooter? Ask to see some portraits they have done.
* Does your friend with the fancy camera scout out the church and reception site for great locations and lighting issues?
* Do they know anything about lighting? Lighting is the key element in every image. Lighting is also the most complicated and difficult aspect of photography to learn and master. I know professional that don't fully understand lighting.

* Does your friend with the fancy camera have 25 years experience and knowledge and have the ability to handle problems when they happen? Trust me... problems will happen. A novice photographer cannot handle unusual situations and may not even be aware when unusual conditions are happening.
* How do you know what kind of quality your friend with the fancy camera will deliver to you? Do they know how to process the images in photoshop to produce the highest image quality? Or will they drop off the memory card at Walmart for processing.
* A fancy camera does not make a photographer good. Experience and knowledge makes a photographer good. The best photographers have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of excellence.
* Some other things to think about are: Does your friend with the fancy camera have backup equipment if something breaks?
* Do they have insurance if they hurt someone? That's a big no-no to not have insurance. I do not know a single novice photographer that carries a 2 milliion dollar liability policy.
* Can your friend with the fancy camera give you images like those above?
* As you can see there are many reason for hiring a pro vs. your friend with the fancy camera. These are just a few reasons.
* There are alot of wannabes with fancy cameras just waiting to mess up your magic moments.
* Professional wedding photography is expensive... and worth every penny.

Time to get going again

I've been so busy I had almost forgotten about this blog. I have had a great Summer and Fall with weddings and some incredible engagement sessions. I did not have time for my annual Fall Foliage expedition but did do some local shooting of Fall images. In June I started working for Living Resources and this Fall I have been assisting with teaching a photography class for adults with developmental disabilities. It has been great fun to work with such talented people.

Thanks to Aimee and Jeff for the great images from their

engagement session. The lighting was magical at this spot in the woods with all the leaves on the ground.

I thought in this post I would talk about how to get better exposures with your digital camera.

I am now 4 years into the digital revolution and have not shot a role of film since. There are a few things film still does better than digital, but the differences are so small for my type of photography that the benefits for digital far outweigh those differences. I have found that the biggest difference was the way digital captures the exposure. I found it to be very similar to shooting slide film. With Slide film you had to be quite exact in your exposure to get a good print. With film you could be off by several f-stops and the lab could usually still give you a decent print. Digital requires you to be fairly precise with your exposures. The beauty of digital is that the camera tells you instantly if you nailed the exposure or if you need to make an adjustment. It's called a Histograph. If you have never used this feature on your digital camera, it is worth the effort to break out your manual and read up on how to use this great tool.

The histograph maps out for you in a graph all the different colors in your image and how much exposure was recorded for each. The graph looks like a mountain range inside a rectangular box. The mountain peaks to the left side have recorded the darker colors and as you move to the right it shows the colors as they get lighter with pure white being the peak at the far right. The most helpful info is on the far left and right. If the peaks are climbing the sides of the box then you have under or over exposed your image. You would need to make an adjustment to your shutter speed or f-stop to obtain the correct exposure. With film we hoped we had the camera set correctly and relied on the lab to fix our mistakes. With digital it is harder to fix mistakes after image capture. But, with the histograph you know you made a mistake and can fix and re-shoot the image in most cases.

The wedding party image was taken on the State Capital steps. Dan and Lauren loved it so much they had a 16x20 canvas made from it. It is one of my favorites from this summer.

Thanks to Keri and Brian for the image to the right from their

engagement session. I had a lot of fun shooting this session.We must have walked several miles to find just the right spots.

The Evil RED EYE

I seem to get asked at almost every photo shoot or wedding I do..."Do you fix the Red Eye in the pictures"? Well....no, I do not have to fix Red Eye as it has never been in a picture I've taken. Few people understand what Red Eye is and how to avoid it. Red Eye is the end result of amateur equipment being used in a low lit room. In a darkened room, your pupils are dilated (wide open) to let in more light. When the flash goes off the light is reflected off the retina in the eye and that reflection is recorded by the lens. The retina just happens to be red. Hence, Red Eye. The best way to avoid red eye is to raise you flash about a foot or more above the camera lens. In doing this the angle of the flash reflection off the retina does not go directly back into the lens. Flash brackets are available that will raise your flash above the lens. If your flash is built into your camera then you can set your flash to a Red Eye Reduction mode. In this mode the flash fires a few short burst of light to cause your eye pupil to close down. This allows less light in to your retina. The biggest problem with this mode is that the pre-flash usually causes your subject to react and can ruin the image. Today, many of the photo editing programs have a Red Eye fix. I prefer to avoid having to fix every image and just put my flash on a bracket.