A LIST BEACH DAY

First I want to offer my congrats to Gary Fong and his new bride, Melissa. After watching their video, all I can say is Wow!

I took the kids to the beach today, school starts on Tuesday and we havent been all summer, and even though the water is toxic I like them to swim in the big lake at least once a year. So today was it. The winds really picked up and out of nowhere the wind surfers appeared and I got a few cute shots of them. It was pretty funny, when they saw me shooting they came closer to shore, they must have thought I was from the paper. although I did email a few in. anyway, the birds were out of control but I got a couple really close ups, check out the one I shot right into the sun. I hope you enjoy!

A LIST KIDS

These are the precious children of our youth pastor and his fabulous wife. There is a dilemma so I SO SO need your help! With the contemporary theme so hot right now, these are the designs, but which one is the best visual? The wall color is off white and there will be no frame, they will be mounted on a gallery mount!

A LIST GRASSHPPER

would you believe me if i told you that these are unedited pictures? everyone edits the shit out of their pictures nowadays that no one knows if they are real or fake.

okay i cropped them..BUT thats it. no color correction at ALL. for truth i stopped all that 2 shoots ago...why..cause i want to be different. well real. I have to admit i was sucked in to the whole make your pictures look fake with all the blowouts etc. and i did it for like 2 years, Jessica Strickland has beautiful pictures, but they are all fake, the skin tones are totally manipulated, however they are done very well and if my kids were getting married i would so totally hire her she can shoot manually and i'm certain by looking at her pictures she manipulates her light and camera. The point is, i just want to see real photography come back! how many people shooting out there actually shoot on fully manual? i do always! there is a simple way to prove it. its called meta data. PS keeps a record of every single time you edit a photo it also shows at what F-stop and what shutter speed the pic was taken at along with whether or not the flash fired, what lens you used and what camera, what white balance and what iso speed/ asa for real photographers. i have been reading a post on Gary Fong's Website   about a bride looking for a photographer. i saw the websites of the ones she liked. hmmm anyway it really has made me think about the pretenders as we call them out there. what has been great for the camera industry has really hurt the photography industry. just as the pictures below illustrate, they are technically so awesome that you DONT know if they are edited. They arent, as a matter or fact, the slideshow i posted the other day with elizabeth and michael is unedited as well, except for the ones in B&W, sepia or the B&W with color. So tell the truth do YOU know to operate a camera? Could you pull off a whole session without faking it?

This photo was taken at: 1/200s at f/5.6, ISO 100 focal length 102.0mm no flash, spot metering mode, white balance...ahhh the manipulation, i choose cloudy even though it was sunny, why, well i wanted my background to be black! light manipulation do you know how to? i also manipulate the whitebalnce by going +3 and adding a +2 to contrast and +2 to saturation and hard on my sharpness (camera settings)

The settings are the same

Changed my settings and got this. 1/400s at f/5.6 ISO 100 spot metering, white balance was on sunny, no flash see the difference?

By the way there is quite the controversy at my house as to whether this is in fact a grasshopper...Is it?

A LIST LGS

Cute logo for Mr. Gary Fong...think he will like it?

A LIST ENGAGMENT SESSION

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  21 years and counting. Elizabeth and Michael are the true Cinderella Story! They have loved each other since they were 10 years old! Their parents have been best friends since before they were born and NOW the dream has become a reality!

YOU ABSOLUTLY HAVE TO WATCH THIS SLIDESHOW

I have NEVER before captured anything like this, mainly because I have NEVER before witnessed anything like these 2 fabulous people!

  well....

i went to my yearly tigers game and although the seats were good they werent as super fab as they were last year. ofcourse i got my favorite tiger, ordonez like a zillion times. he is so hot! we went with a couple of my husbands customers, kim and chris. i have known kim for many years, he works for consumers energy but it was my extreme pleasure to meet chris. he works for nextel/sprint. omg...this dude is super freaky! he was a total blast and for any single women that arent psycho he is totally available and would be a great catch! he lives in travese city, mi and i suspect is totally metro..very cool..anyway chris is the one in the hat, the younger one in the hat..lol

my kids are going to the game on monday, i am sooo having them get his signature on this picture. they sell them for like $150 and they arent even this good, what a cute smile..

they were signing a lot of autographs...

this is chris

i think he remembered me from last year, see he is smiling at me...lmao he wants me i know it...

here is chris again

um this was a weird dude in front of us..

ADDITION Chris sent me this to add...hmmmm

While trying to create a totally cool and unique page for my next wedding album I was listening to itunes and I started playing around with the controls and saw a new view i could have. When I chose the "cover flow view" I saw the coolest effect and a light went off in my head! What a great album page, for the beginning of the book. So I got to work and here is the first page for Jennifer and Dan's album. I actually have 40 pages complete but there are a few more and now this one. Let me know what you think!!

Okay here it is...finally...Brooke and Peter...

 If you want to be irreplaceable you must be different..mademoiselle Coco Chanel

Every now and then one will find a neighbor that is more than just the wave as you pass by. The neighbor will be wise, friendly, kind to animals, an educator of the past and just a decent human being. We are blessed to know Al and to have him as a neighbor.