Congratulations Kelli and Anthony

Kelli and Anthony had a beautiful ceremony in Wabash, Indiana. It was really great to share their special day with them. They also put together one of the most organized and focused wedding parties I've ever seen. We had about 45 minutes extra at the end of the day that we ended up using to take some extra outdoor shots of Kelli and Anthony. That's really a great thing, but I probably won't get that opportunity again any time soon. All in all it was a great day to be a photographer, and from what I could see it was pretty good for the newlyweds as well! Congratulations you two!

Online Proofing

I'm very pleased to be able to offer a brand new online proofing service to all of my clients. I've always offered online proofing, but there has never been any way to place the order through the web. The days of writing your order down on a scratch pad and emailing me a list of pictures are over. You can now view your images, choose the sizes of enlargements you want to buy, place the order, and pay by credit card! This is pretty much an all in one package for all of my clients. If you would like to see a recent shoot of yours in the new system give me a call and I can set it up. I've uploaded every shoot for April and May already, just visit http://buckportraitstudio.com/preview to see yours.

Formal Wedding Portraits

Very few brides can fully appreciate the stress they'll be under when their big day arrives. The emotions present run the gamut from elation to fear. A great way to make the bride and groom feel at ease while posing for portraits is to make sure the sanctuary is cleared out. Only those people who will be appearing in portraits should be present. This allows the subjects to relax and not feel like their putting on a show for family and friends. This also keeps interaction between the subjects and their guests. A bride being talked to by someone in the first row tends to be looking at the first row instead of the camera. If possible ask the ushers to not allow guests back into the sanctuary during the after ceremony portrait session.

We generally shoot larger groups first, so we get your entire family first, allowing them to head to the reception when their shots are finished. Then we shoot the entire wedding party releasing first the ushers, then groomsmen and bridesmaids, then finally the best man and matron of honor. By the time we're ready to shoot just the bride and groom, few people are left to distract the bride and groom from looking great in their portraits.

Senior Portraits

We had a blast out at Crooked Creek Trails with Ashlie and her horse Diamond this week. We took a walk into the woods to a great spot where a creek turns almost 300 degrees around, there were tons of great spots to pose and we got some unique shots for her senior portraits. I have to say I was very surprised out just how much horses blink, his eyes were closed in quite a few of the shots. He wouldn't smile either, I tried "Say cheese!," and when that didn't work I tried to get him to say "Hay," but that didn't work either!

Party Portraits

We were recently hired to provide formal portraits to the guests at couple of parties and I have to say I was very pleased with how the whole process went. Being able to get lots of combinations, mother and father with kids, mother and father with grand kids, grandpa with son, grandma with nieces, 4 generation portraits, and on and on and on. I never really considered how rare it is to get these types of shots for a family and I really enjoyed it. We proofed the shots on a laptop and there seemed to be a lot of people buying other people's poses. It was all one huge extended family so being able to see sibling's family shots was really great for everyone. I have to tell you this is one area of photography I probably never would have thought about, but the opportunity to take some truly once in a lifetime portraits is just too much to ignore. If you have a family reunion coming up please give us a call, we charge a flat fee of $90 to cover an event and we have some really great package deals in addition to our super low price of $10 per unit.

Approach to Weddings

My typical approach to photographing a wedding involves arriving several hours before the ceremony starts. The trend towards true photojournalistic coverage of a wedding may be catching on, but I still love to do formal portraits of the bride and groom. It's classic portraiture and the few times a bride has said they don't want it, they've always regretted it. The groom and his party usually go first, about 2 hours before the ceremony, we do several poses, including a few of just the groom and best man, then we do a large number of groom only poses. We usually can finish 100 to 200 exposures in about 30 minutes.

After that, the groom goes and hides and the bride arrives about an hour and a half before the ceremony. We spent 30 minutes or so on fun bridesmaid poses, and get a few of the maid of honor and the bride. Then we spend 30 minutes getting lots of shots of the bride, her hair, her train, her flowers, and any other detail that needs to be captured. We do about 200-300 exposures in about an hour leaving 30 minutes before the ceremony starts.

The ceremony is captured unobtrusively, I don't use flash, I don't go to the front of the church. I may walk down the middle aisle a few steps, but most shots will be from the balcony and from the back row of the church. Since flash is not used, slow shutter speeds will be required and that means a tripod. There is no good way to move a large tripod around a church during a wedding, so I don't do it.

After the ceremony, formals for both sides are taken. We start with the largest parties first. Poses with grandparents are done, then siblings, then parents, then just the wedding party. This allows us to release people to the reception fast instead of making them sit around watching portraits being taken. Finally it's just the bride and groom, we spend 15-20 minutes getting semi-posed portraits of the bride and groom interacting as husband and wife for the first time.

When we arrive at the reception it's back to photojournalism. I capture the events of the evening as they unfold. I keep my eyes open looking for interesting exchanges between guests and the wedding party, and I document the details of the room.

After all of this I generally deliver between 800 and 1000 images to the bride and groom.

Congratulations Natalie and Brad!

Natalie and Brad Spark's wedding was beautiful. The weather was simply superb and everything was so eloquent, it was real joy to be a part of their day. This is exactly the kind of wedding that is perfect to start the season off with. I'm looking forward to all of the rest of my weddings this year, each one has it's own unique flavor and I can't wait to capture the beauty of each one. Congratulations again to Natalie and Brad Sparks.

Next best thing...

I had planned an outdoor portrait for a toddler this weekend. We were going to try a few different poses around my garden, it's nice and green, and a few flowers have bloomed so there would be some color, but about an hour before they arrived, we found ourselves in the middle of a blizzard. I couldn't see the road from my window, and by the time they arrived there was an inch of snow on the ground. Cold and drizzly is one thing, but white out conditions in April? That's hard to accept. Of course we moved this shoot into the studio, and we used a beach chair to remind us how warm it should be right now. This crazy Indiana weather...

What happened?

Where did spring go? Sorry to everyone that has been wanting outdoor portraits the last couple of weeks. This whole season sort of blew up in our faces didn't it? Let's just hope this passes FAST because my first outdoor wedding is next weekend!

Carousel Portraits

There have been quite a few requests about getting portraits taken on the Denzel Carousel at Riverside park. I did some investigating and found out everything I could.

First and foremost the carousel cannot be running for portraits unless the facility has been rented which costs $60 an hour. In this situation the subject would have to be belted to the horse and the photographer would have to be sitting on a bench on the carousel or standing outside the rail.

If the facility has not be rented they simply ask for a small donation and portraits can be taken any time between 8am and 3pm during the week. The carousel is closed to the public at these times and we can use each animal for posing without worrying about interfering with other people's enjoyment.

So for anyone wondering if the carousel allows portraits to be taken, the answer is yes, I'm excited to try it out, the animals are so colorful it almost guarantees an amazing portrait. Give us a call at our studio if you'd like to get your portrait taken on the carousel.

Portrait No Man's Land

Well, we're in sort of a bad time of the year. It's so beautiful everyone wants to get an outdoor portrait taken, but around here outdoors just doesn't look that great. The trees are barren, the ground is muddy, the grass is pale, and pretty much every body of water is swirling mud. The worst part is there is nothing anyone can do about it! Don't worry everyone, I'm seeing lots of buds coming up all over the place, the parks should all be full of gorgeous spring flowers in a few weeks. If you are interested in scheduling an outdoor portrait give us a call at our studio.

Senior Portrait Locations

Here are a few more locations around Cass County that make great spots for outdoor portraits.

Wabash River Railroad Bridge
Nothing says senior portrait better than a huge rusty train bridge. It's got a great rustic look plus a great river view. There are endless posing possibilities here.

Berry Patch
Not the most exciting place, but it has a very large wooden bridge and plenty of benches throughout. It's part of Logansport High School so a portrait here captures a little part of the experience of LHS. There is also easy access to the baseball diamonds and tennis courts for students who played these sports.

Downtown Logan
Tons of alleys with brick walls, bars on windows, fire escapes, and even some graffiti. It's easy to spend hours on end wandering the alleys looking for cool photo ops.

And of course there are hundred more locations just give us a call and we can give you some more ideas and listen to ideas you have for your own portraits.

CVS Bunny Shoot!

Thanks to everyone who came down to CVS for our live bunny photo shoot. We had a wonderful time and every seemed to be very happy with their portraits. We ended up taking just over 800 images, so I would guess we probably had around 400 kids come through. 400 kids in 14 hours worth of shooting is a pretty fast pace, I'm glad it's over, the bunnies get to take some well deserved time off. We don't have anything specific planned yet, but we will probably be doing a one day photo shoot around Independence Day. I'll post more details as soon as things are finalized.

Availability Update

We have 3 more weekends available for weddings for the 2007 season. Give us a call if you are interested in seeing some of our sample albums.

We also have plenty of openings during the week for senior portraits. Schedule a session in spring to take full advantage of the colors and the cool temperatures!

CVS Live Bunny Shoot

We'll be taking children's portraits at CVS on 3rd Street on March 17th and 18th. These portraits always turn out really cute so come on down between the hours of 9am and 5pm on Saturday, and 12pm and 5pm on Sunday. We'll have a small package you can get printed while you wait, package details are available by contacting CVS at 574.739.1162, just ask for the photo department.

Brrrr!

We had a fun time doing outdoor winter portraits last weekend. Kelli and Anthony will be getting married this spring and wanted a winter portrait taken. We planned this a month ago and didn't know if we'd have snow or not. There did end up being snow, and icicles and even the lake was frozen over which made a wonderful backdrop. It was cold, there were a few shots where Kelli looked like her teeth were chattering a little bit, but the rest of the shots turned out great, and we had a blast taking them.

Exciting New Year!

Well the new year is off to a fast start. We've booked a lot of weddings for the rest of the year, but we've also got quite a few new projects coming up in early spring including an live Easter bunny shoot at CVS. I'll post more information about that as the date grows closer. I'm looking forward to a very exciting wedding season and can't wait to get back into the swing of designing albums.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful time this Holiday season. We had a great time visiting with family and friends which was the perfect end to a great year. We had a ton of fun photographing each and every one of our clients, and we look forward to serving you all again in the upcoming year.

For anyone interested in booking us for a wedding this year please be aware we generally are fully booked for the entire year by the end of January. As of right now, we have already booked about half of the season. We have a few weekends in June, July, and August left, but they will go fast so call us today. There are are still plenty of openings for off season dates, April, October, November, etc.

Availability Update!

We currently have no openings for portrait sessions until the first of next year. We apologize in advance to anyone still wanting Christmas portraits taken, but we are completely booked.

We still have plenty of openings for weddings next summer. Please call soon though, we generally book our entire wedding season in January.

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful 2 day photo shoot at CVS Logansport this year. We ended up with about 700 images, so we probably had about 200 kids come through for portraits. The lines were always short though and most customers were walking out of the store with portraits in hand in about 20 minutes or so. This was our last public photo shoot of the year, we'll probably arrange an easter shoot with live bunnies. I'll post details as soon as I have them. Have a Merry Christmas everyone.