Engagement Portraits in the Snow + A Little Sledding

It has been such a great day!  I enjoyed my exciting and challenging drive home from Nashville (counting cars that ran off the interstate and nearly joining them), then after getting a little work accomplished, Cory and Addy picked up my family in their 4-Wheel Drive to do a little sledding and knock out some engagement portraits.  Cory and Addy will be married in just 5 more weeks.  We shot photos for about 15 minutes before I felt the need to protect my camera from the sleet.   Then we took turns on my brother Will's sleds while he buttered them up with cooking oil.... Christmas Vacation style!

Our location was a hill off of Kedron Road in Spring Hill with a Civil War Canon at the crest.  I have always thought it would be a great place to go sledding if we got the chance.  It really was fun but a ski lift would have been nice.

                                         

Since we didn't have long to shoot before the sleet caused mascara to run like Chariots of Fire, we booked a follow-up session.  Following are a couple of the shots!

Marina & Will - 15 Minutes

I got together with Marina and Will last weekend for engagement photos and we were able to shoot for only 15 minutes before we had to stop due to rain.  I usually spend 2 to 3 hours for engagement photos and get 200-300 images but this time I was only able to grab about 40 shots.  It was disappointing to have to call it quits but I didn't want to risk my equipment.  I had lots of great ideas for locations and we were only able to fit in one spot.  We plan to get together again in the summer to make up the rest of the shoot.  Hopefully they'll enjoy the few shots we were able to snag before the bottom fell out.  For now, I tried to make up for the lack of variety by offering a little more photoshop editing than usual.

Portrait Shoot for Erica

I met up with Erica this past weekend for a portrait shoot she booked around Thanksgiving. She is in her last year of Vet school in Knoxville but she was able to squeeze in a trip to Nashville to get some professional photos.  My afternoon appointment canceled so we had time to drive around North Nashville and just look for interesting spots on the side of the road.  I'm really happy with the way that they came out.  You would never know that it was about 20 degrees outside. I had to use a fast shutterspeed so her shivering didn't cause any blurs.  She would go warm up in her friend's car while I set up my lights... I just froze.  The results were worth braving the cold though.  These will make some great Facebook profile pics : )

Ross & Jill - December 19, 2009

Ross & Jill were married the weekend before Christmas in Centerville, TN.  It was my last wedding in 2009 and probably the first wedding I booked in 2009.  It was a long time in the planning and everything went off without a hitch except when the couple got hitched. 

Jill's mom created the black and white runner for the isle as well as the hanging you see in the background of the formal shots in the chapel.  It was a beautiful, candle lit ceremony after dark (basically the toughest photography situation you can have to deal with) but we captured it beautifully if I do say so myself.  Thank goodness for the 5D Mark ii's low noise high ISO setting.  We set up a red backdrop for shots of the guests.  My 2nd photographer, Twila, stopped the guests between the greeting line and the reception to do family portraits.  Once I discovered all of the Christmas lights at the reception, I went a little overboard with the blurry Christmas lights in the background shots.  I'm going to have to build myself a studio light like this.