If you follow our blog at all you will recall our Virtual Easter Egg Hunt from back in April. The morning after the the hunt was announced I got a phone call from Dave:

Dave-”Are you sure you hid all your eggs?”
Me-”Ya, I triple checked it…”
Dave-”Well Tressa Heath has been emailing me saying she has looked every where and they are not all there.”
Me-”That’s no good… let me pull up the page… ya they are all there Dave, I can send you the Posts and image numbers.”
Dave-”No, No I’m sure its fine. I think she just really wants to win…”

Well Tressa was not only first to enter, but by a stroke of Karma was the the drawing’s Big Winner! Here are a few images from her winning session.

-Michael

When Tami and Andrew said they were open to anything for their engagement session I don’t think they, let alone myself, saw us going to this place with it. I justified the headgear as playing off of the fact that they are getting married on Halloween eve, but lets be honest… it just sounded like so much fun!

Fun is a primary goal here at the studio. When you are having fun taking the picture it almost always shows up in the end result. Not only were we laughing the whole time shooting, but I was giggling long after into the rest of the week. Finally I owe a big thank you to the people at Midwest Rentals for hooking me up with such crazy headgear. They truly do rent just about anything. The knight helmet named “pig face” was my favorite hat. What is yours?

-Michael

I have been wanting to do a project in HDR for a long time now, so when Kyle Burke of 838 sign co. came to me with this truck shoot, it sounded like the perfect candidate. Being the owner of a sign shop, Kyle is always looking for ways to stand out and grab attention. An HDR image will get you attention for sure, so I knew he would like the results.

What HDR does is combine images from multiple exposures to more accurately represent what the human eye sees. This particular image combined 12 different exposures into one 16bit file (as apposed to the standard 8bit). The result is a photo that looks like you can almost step into it. To give some context a standard full-size RAW file from our cameras are 27MB while this HDR image is 88MB. The web resolution you are seeing simply does not do the image quality justice!

The results are way better then my expectations, and I look forward to doing more HDR projects in the future.

-Michael Dick

Spring is here in a big way! I have had some serious studio fever from the winter. So when I went outside with Molly for her senior portraits I really tried to play up the sun in a big way, with a lot of warm glow and lens flair. While it felt great to be shooting outdoors again, what I will probably remember most from Molly’s shoot will be the bubbles.

Molly is into bubbles and brought some of her bubble tools with her. We got a few of the shots I was looking for this way, but Molly had a vision! After many ridiculous-looking (but fun!) attempts it was decided hand-blown bubbles were not cutting it. To rectify the situation, we took a small trip to the store and picked up a few totally professional, completely not little child’s toy, “Super Miracle Bubbles”  bubble guns for the bargain price of $3. Best $3 I ever spent.

-Michael

Danielle and Michael brought so much creativity with them. They had so many wonderful ideas for the shoot that all I had to do was make them work in photos. From diner, to snow, to Starbucks.

They actually met for the first time at a Starbucks and wanted to capture some of that in the shoot. Unfortunately Starbucks has a strict no photography policy. Lucky for us, I saw a shot in my head using a sign outside as we were walking up. With the help of some studio lights and some understanding pedestrians, we made it work. Hope you enjoy viewing them half as much as we enjoyed creating them.

-Michael Dick

I have known Angela only briefly but I have come to respect and admire her. She is the Branch Manager of Old National Bank on county road 350 south in Lafayette, a part time florist, volunteers with the YWCA and other organizations, and still finds time to raise 2 well behaved boys.

-Michael Dick

I hope this is helpful for some brides-to-be out there. Take a look at Melissa and Elias’ wedding album as I discuss some of the highlights of the design and approach to their photography. Enjoy!