Katie & Jake

I'm so glad Katie and Jake asked me to photograph their special day. They are a beautiful, sweet young couple and are very much in love. They were married at Calvary Baptist Church in Winter Haven and the reception was at St. Pauls Church. As with most weddings, the day seems to get more stressful as the time gets closer to the moment of truth. Katie did a great job handling this and seemed to have some fun getting ready with her friends and just looked beautiful. Here are a few of the images.

More photo's from Katie & Jakes wedding

Ok, so Mitch, who I work with says to me on a Thursday that his photographer bailed out on him for his wedding on Saturday. Yup, in 2 days. He is begging me to photograph his wedding in 2 days. Fortunately I was able to make arrangements at work to allow me the day off and agree to shoot for him and Bonnie. The wedding is to take place at the very beautiful Honeymoon Island on Clearwater Beach, FL. When I arrive the winds are blasting a steady 30 mph with gusts to 40. This would have mixed sand with my camera equipment and been very scary. There is a wicked front moving in from Canada and it means business. The poor beach workers are trying desperately trying to put up a canopy, but no way was this going to happen. There is a great little picnic area just around the other side of the beach with wonderful palm trees, oaks and plenty of shrubs to block the wind. The day turned out just great and the wedding was a treat to shoot. Thanks to Mitch for not letting me say no...

A few months ago we were heading to a Memorial Service at a local cemetary. While en route we came across a wonderful abandoned building, which I immediatley thought would be an amazing spot to photograph. Several months later, I finaly found the time to take a couple of my daughters there for a photo shoot. Anna came with me 1st then Meghan when she came home from college for Christmas time. Broken concrete, shattered glass, paint ball wars, exposed insulation...it all makes for beautiful images.

Florida's Cow Camp

We recently went on a photo trip to Lake Kissimmee State Park. There is a place there called Cow Camp. It's a throw back to Florida of old where cattle roamed free and wireless internet was hard to come by. It's like stepping back to the 1800's. It's an awesome place for photo opportunities and I had a great time shooting with the lens baby and getting some great blurring effects.

Pirates of Penzance

Just finished photographing the theatre performance of Pirates of Penzance. This was performed by Harrison School for the Arts, in Lakeland Florida. This was just a great job by all the High School performers and the staff. It was wonderfully entertaining. If you missed it, I encourage you to try and catch other performances by this school as they do a top notch job.

Drops of reflections

So, I woke up this morning and had a hunger to photograph something. I grabbed my camera with the macro lens, a spray bottle filled with water and my tripod and trekked all the way to the backyard. The sun was still pretty low in the sky so I was able to get some soft light on these flowers. I needed a bit more light coming in from the side so I ran back inside and wrapped some aluminum foil around a piece of mail and used that to reflect a bit more light in from the other side of the sun and this was the resulting shot...ISO 400, 1/200 f/9...

Bok Tower Trip

Well, members of the Polk County Camera club made a trip to Beautiful Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Saturday April 19th. We spent the morning taking and working on some macro photography. The lens I used was a Canon 100mm Macro f/2.8 and my 40D. It was a perfect spring morning with most of the flowers in full bloom and it was hard not to find great subjects to photograph. Here is one of my favorite shots from the morning. I love the blurred background and muted colors in this shot.