Renaissance! {New Braunfels photography}

For our first date, I took Lisa to Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival up in Waxahachie. This was back when we lived in Temple, and Waxahachie wasn't such a long drive. We've made ren fests an annual affair because of that, but since moving to New Braunfels a decade ago, most years we're only able to attend the larger Texas Renaissance Festival outside of Plantersville. This year, we packed up the kids and hit it opening weekend. This kind of outing gives us a chance to take photos for our own entertainment and to preserve family memories--not something we actually get to do all that often.

The weather was cool and overcast--so much so that it rained on us several times during our drive there. The place has changed quite a bit since my first visit back in 1987, but the changes from last year to this may be the biggest yet. The grounds are filled with shops various merchants maintain, traditionally ramshackle wooden cottage-styled places that wouldn't be out of place in an actual medieval village. During the off season, however, quite a bit of construction took place and more impressive, expansive and permanent-looking restaurants and attractions replaced a bunch of the more, ah, atmospheric buildings. That's progress I suppose, but I can't help but miss the dilapidated charm that's been supplanted by architectural precision. The guy in the stilt-equipped bat costume (above) was cool, though. We hadn't seen him before, so I'm guessing he was a new addition. There were quite a few new characters roaming around this year, along with some old favorites. Another new one was a baby dragon "hatching" from an egg (below). Monkey Girl and Fairy Girl loved it. Bug, on the other hand, wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Bug was having everything to do with the first face-painting booth he saw. It didn't take him long to pick out a scary spider design for his cheek, which Lisa, naturally, took the opportunity to photograph--and get in a self-portrait at the same time.

A little further on, a booth selling foam swords invited Bug to participate in a duel. For his opponent, he picked me. Mayhem ensued, as you can see in the photo. Afterward, Bug confessed he picked Dad because he thought I'd be the easiest to beat, but allowed I was "three inches better" than he'd expected. Not sure his rationale, but I'll take that as a compliment!

Here's a confession: I took along the 500mm mirror lens because I wanted to play with it some more, and I thought the joust would offer a prime opportunity. It really is a fun, light lens with a very long reach that I haven't gotten to use very much, simply because it's so long. It is also challenging to use, because it is a "slow" lens and is strictly manual focus. The heavy clouds worked against me, as this lens is at its best in bright, sunny conditions. I had to set the camera's shutter speed a little slower than I'd like, and the ISO a little higher. But as waited for the joust to begin, I watched a squirrel race across the arena, leap up on the retaining wall to grab a dropped piece of food, then race back the way he'd come. I got the following shot.

Not too shabby, considering how far away the squirrel was, and how quickly it was moving. Then the knights showed up in the arena to start the joust, and I had some more dynamic subjects. I have to say, keeping constantly moving targets in focus with a manual lens is quite challenging. The good news is that this is a skill that improves with practice. I had quite a few mis-focused shots, true, but far fewer than I had last month when I photographed the Texas State/Texas Tech football game. If nothing else, I learned first-hand that photographing jousts with a really big lens is a fun thing to do!

Lisa On Location Photography

When You Make Photography a Priority on your Wedding Day, It Shows {New Braunfels Wedding Photography}

Usually, it seems, there are always challenges at every wedding. Just about every single wedding, there's something that comes up that tests my skills, or causes me to think quick on the spot. Whether that's rain, malfunctioning equipment, uncooperative grooms, a minister that prohibits photography, a too dark dance hall, an "Uncle Bob" photographer that insists on blocking my shots, sweltering summer heat, you name it, it's popped up.

So imagine my surprise last weekend when everything fell into place perfectly for Holly and Kenneth's wedding, which I happened to shoot on my birthday. The weather was perfect. All my gear fell into my hands at exactly the right moment and performed exactly the way it was supposed to. Strobes fired when they were supposed to, and best of all, the bride and groom allowed plenty of time for photography and made it a top priority.

They made sure I had everything I needed, that I got the shots I wanted, that I had plenty of time for formal portraits.

That is exactly what it takes to get wedding photos that you'll want to frame and look at every day.

I sat down to edit Holly and Kenneth's photos today and I found myself in wonderful territory. I had too many good shots. Too many images that I wanted to display in my "Lisa's Favorites" gallery, which usually holds a couple of dozen images. I had to pick and choose between "lovely" and "lovelier", only to find "loveliest" a few shots down later.

What did Holly and Kenny do right -- aside from hiring me ;-) Well they decided a while back that photography was important to them. They talked over their vision with me. They explained about getting burned with their engagement session taken by another photographer in a different town. They were nervous about trusting someone after that experience. But then again, it also taught them just how important good photography was. Getting stuck with bad photographs does a lot to teach a couple about quality photography.

I'm so glad you two decided to trust me with your special day. Congratulations, and enjoy your wedding photos!

Lisa On Location Photography

The Party Ain't Over Until the Coyote Leaves

A lot of people, upon hearing that I am a wedding photographer, like to ask "so I bet you see a lot of crazy stuff?" Well, as a matter of fact I do. But I won't go into all that here. I will, however, go into one particular wedding that had it's fair share of crazy stuff. But crazy in a good way.

When Nikii first called me it was just a few short weeks until her wedding and she was just inquiring about availability and packages. I talked to her a while and then we hung up without booking. I didn't hear from her again until about a week before the wedding when she was ready to book if I was still available. I was and we did. She also booked her caterer and venue pretty last minute as well and sent all her invitations out the week before as well.

But Nikii proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can plan and arrange one heck of a wedding/party at the last minute. More than 150 loved ones showed up at Castle Avalon on that beautiful Sunday afternoon. And they were in for surprise after surprise. First came the bagpipe player. I love bagpipe music so I was thrilled to hear it coming from the balcony over the garden during the wedding and recessional.

The guests were then treated to a wonderful mariachi performance during the dinner -- which was quite tasty thanks to Fritz Catering.

But the highlight of the evening, at least for the Spurs fan in me, was the arrival of the Spurs Coyote just in time for dessert.

It was a surprise to the groom, who was celebrating his birthday that weekend. What a lovely birthday gift for a bride to give to her new husband.

Nikii pulled off an amazing party on short notice. I'm so glad she called me!

Lisa On Location Photography

How to take a great photo: Put your mouse over the image and right click {New Braunfels Photography}

I'm not being serious in that title. That's NOT the proper way to take a good image. Yet some "fauxtographers" seem to think that's all it takes to get a great portfolio to sell to clients. One of my images (that I know of) showed up on the site of another photographer recently. Take a look at it. If you've followed my work for a few years you'll recognize this image that I took of Morgan about two years ago. Here's a link to the full gallery.

Do you see why I'm feeling a little bit violated here?

Today was my day off. I haven't had a Saturday off in forever and with the busy fall wedding season getting started, I knew that I wouldn't have another Saturday off until mid November. So I made a cheesy little excursion to Wonder World in San Marcos to explore the caves and pet some deer. It was totally spontaneous and fun for the whole family.

On the way home I pulled out my iPhone to check my e-mail. There was a strange message from someone I didn't know telling me that at least one of my images was being used illegally and there was a link to the site. The e-mail came from another photographer. She used a web image search to find me to inform me that this other photographer was claiming my work as his own. I saw the image and gasped. I was floored. I'd heard of this happening to others but I never thought it would happen to me.

It turns out this photographer who'd contacted me had been researching these images all day. She'd found many of the images were taken by others. She found stock images from iStock, and images from other portrait and wedding photographers from around the world. She contacted each of them when she was able to track their origin. I was the first to respond, she tells me.

I'm curious as to where this will go. It appears that they've taken down all their galleries now.

No doubt they are now aware of how serious the situation is.

Now I'd like to get on my soapbox and preach a little to the choir. I know you all are hard working people. You train for your jobs. You spend countless hours learning your skill. You spend a whole heck of a lot of money on learning your career. There are others out there who don't want to take the same time and spend the same money you spent. They'd rather take the work you've done and claim it as their own.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, it's easy to snag the work of others, but also thanks to the internet, you will get caught.

Update: It appears that my image was used in advertising for them as well. Take a look at the screen shot my new friend captured on The Knot.

I wonder how many unsuspecting brides have hired these people thinking they are responsible for this image and all the other images you see below my image. If you look them up on the Knot now, you'll see they've removed all the images except one. So that's all they have? Shame on them!

Lisa On Location Photography

And now for something completely different {New Braunfels photographer}

Way back when, 20 years or so now, Lisa got her start in photojournalism photographing sports. She stalked the sidelines of Texas A&M football games, and later covered high school sports for various newspapers. She got pretty good at it. Keep in mind this was back in the days of film cameras, 36 shots to a roll, most of which she developed herself in the dark room. Pretty challenging stuff, even though many photographers made their living at it. I (being Jayme, Lisa's long-suffering sidekick) came to photography much later in life, after the digital revolution, and never had an opportunity to shoot sports. I played around with it a few years back, when I first got into photography, and while digital makes it a lot easier to start out, it's still an incredibly challenging art. The action moves so fast, you have to psyche yourself to shoot what's about to happen, and anticipate accordingly. If you wait until you see something interesting, you're going to miss it.

The Texas State University Bobcats hosted the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the newly-expanded Bobcat Stadium Saturday, in their first home game as a Division I-FBS team (that's Division I-A for old-school folks like me). Since I had to be on hand to deal with media if anything newsworthy happened off the field (the crowd of 30,000-plus being by far the largest ever to descend upon San Marcos) I decided to use the opportunity to practice my sports photography skills. Specifically, I saw it as an opportunity to try out my Canon FD 500mm f/8 reflex lens in the field. Lisa got me that old Canon mirror lens last Christmas, and I converted it to work on modern Canon cameras. The lens is manual-focus only, though, so even with some electronic enhancements, I expected it to be quite the challenge to shoot with.

You know what? I was right. A 500mm manual focus lens is very difficult to shoot action with. The fact that professional sports photographers 30 years ago used this kind of lens regularly is simply amazing to me. I suppose it's just a matter of practice, practice, practice until focusing become second nature, but still. Fortunately for me, digital is a great equalizer, and I was able to see what worked and what didn't immediately and adjust on the fly. I got several decent keepers, and threw away far, far more with missed focus and bad framing.

I can also assure you that a 500mm lens has a long reach. Which is great when you're shooting something far away, but once the action moves closer, it's challenging to make everything fit within the frame. Most of the images I'm sharing here were taken with the mirror lens, but the first, seventh and eighth were taken with traditional telephoto zooms. One way to identify photos taken with a mirror lens is to look for out-of-focus highlights that look like donuts. That's always a tell-tale sign.

It's fun to get out and try something outside of my comfort zone. I'm not anywhere close to making the cover of Sports Illustrated, but with enough practice I could get there. I could see my improvement from the start of the first quarter to the final seconds, and the journey is half the fun, right?

Lisa On Location Photography

Jonny and Krystle are Getting Hitched {New Braunfels wedding photography}

I see weddings almost every weekend and those are some of the most romantic moments in the lives of the happy couple. I am so honored to be a part of those moments. But every now and then I get to share in another special moment that's almost as exciting.

The proposal.

Jonny first contacted me while I was in the Dominican Republic for that destination wedding. His needs were a little more complex than my normal session. You see Jonny is from Houston, not New Braunfels, and he hasn't been here for years. So he didn't know where to pull all this off and needed my help. His plan was to take Krystle for a walk along a river after a romantic dinner during their vacation to New Braunfels, and somehow have her fish with a pole that had a ring tied to the end of the string. She needed to reel it in and find the ring, at which point he would drop to one knee and propose. Only she doesn't like to fish, and she really doesn't like to pose for photos for strangers.

That's where me and my sneaky assistant, Calista, had to get to work. I told him about a lovely romantic restaurant, the Huisache, that's just a few blocks away from the perfect quiet spot along the Comal River. We arranged the time when the sun would be at a perfect spot behind the trees. After he took her to dinner he'd suggest a walk along the river and Calista, sneaky little actress that she is, would approach them and beg them to allow her mom to photograph them fishing because she needed photos of people fishing for a science project she was working on. I would have a pole set up in a quiet picturesque part of the river. The pole would have a piece of costume jewelry ring tied to the end of it. He'd have the real ring in his pocket.

There was another little catch. We'd never met Jonny or Krystle and had just a some photographs on Facebook to go on in picking them out of the crowd of river goers along the river that evening.

Calista's got an eagle eye, however, and spotted them right away. She nailed her lines. But Krystle looked suspicious. "What kind of science project?" she asked her. Calista stuttered, "uh, about fish?" That's when I jumped in and asked her to reel that fish in. She didn't know how to fish, she told me, so Jonny showed her how. She reeled it in, saw the ring, Jonny dropped to his knee and swept her off her feet. She said yes.

They kissed, they hugged, they cuddled, they couldn't wait to update their Facebook relationship status. But they had to wait because I wasn't done with them yet. We stepped right into a little engagement session and fortunately, Krystle looked beautiful. "Aren't you glad I made you brush your hair before we got here," Jonny asked her. She was grateful and now it made sense that he'd be concerned about it when he wasn't usually.

Congratulations Jonny and Krystle. And thanks for calling me Jonny. It was fun to set up and fun to photograph. You two are so great together!

Lisa On Location Photography

I Shot a Wedding in my Bare Feet! {Destination Wedding Photography}

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know that I'm a whiner when it comes to shoes. The cute ones kill my feet. I have yet to find the perfect all day wedding shoes that don't look like granny shoes. Is it really that hard to be comfy and cute?

So last weekend was a welcome change for my feet. I was able to photograph the entire affair in my bare feet. Many of the bridal party opted for bare feet as well. I assure you there was nothing unprofessional about my behavior. You see, barefooted is the way to be in the Caribbean. For this grand affair I was flow to a gorgeous seaside resort in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

I was thrilled to photograph this wedding for this beautiful couple. I met the bride, Lana, when she took my photography class through the New Braunfels ISD community ed program. Photography is very important to her. That's why she opted to not use the generic resort photographer who came with her package. And I was thrilled to help her out! Who wouldn't love a trip to paradise for work?
The Paradisus Resort hosted the beautiful event. The ceremony took place right on the beach with a rain storm headed straight for us. We managed to get all the way through the ceremony and part of the way through the formal photo session before the rain hit. And I've never seen a bride handle rain so well. Lana wasn't the least bit annoyed by it and even agreed to stand out in it for a rain shot for me.

We were all a little disappointed that the reception was moved off of the beach and into one of their ball rooms, but the guests were in great spirits all evening.

I was impressed with how many of the couples friends and family made the trip to the Dominican Republic to celebrate with them. It's great to see so many of their loved ones enjoying a tropical vacation and celebrating their new lives together as husband and wife.

The day after the wedding the whole crew went together on a dune buggy adventure. Many of the guests stayed an extra day or two enjoying the spa, golf courses, and all you cam eat buffets the resort had to offer.

Unfortunately, we had to high tail it home. We had three little children anxiously awaiting our return from paradise with a bag full of cheap t-shirts, magnets, and obnoxious noise makers stamped with "Dominican Republic" only to sport a "made in china" label on the bottom.

But I'm game to go again to the next paradise wedding that should come my way. Anyone up for Jamaica?

Lisa On Location Photography