Wedding: Chris and Rita

Last weekend we second shot Chris and Rita's wedding out on the beach at Sand Key Park. Coincidentally, this was the exact same spot that Charlie and Leslie's wedding took place later that weekend. Our photographer friend, Shem with Blue Lane Photography, was so nice to let us come along. The ceremony was held a couple hours before sunset and the weather was beautiful.

Chris and Rita were such a sweet couple and you could tell they had been looking forward to this day. There wasn't a moment during the day when they didn't have a smile on their face.

Morey and Hector of Florida Wedding Services created a beautiful atmosphere full of bright colors and stark whites for the ceremony. They transformed a wide open public beach into an intimate setting of close friends and family that truly felt secluded from the rest of the world. The decorations were wonderful with a formal, yet relaxed beach feel.




A couple shots of the beautiful Rita who was absolutely stunning.





Chris and Rita taking a stroll on the beach after being announced as husband and wife. They finally got a chance to spend a moment alone... minus the 3 photographers following them from a distance =)





Of course we had to get a shot of Shem in action.



This is one of our favorites from the day. It really captures the love and happiness that these two share together.



Thanks to Shem, for letting us photograph Chris and Rita's wedding with her. Also, thanks to Chris and Rita for being awesome subjects and letting us capture all the moments of their day. We had a great time! For more pictures from the day, check out Shem's blog.

Wedding: Leslie and Charlie

This weekend we shot Leslie and Charlie's wedding at Sand Key Park, which is a beautiful beach just south of Clearwater Beach. The original plan was to have it on Saturday but we got rained out. Luckily, Easter Sunday couldn't have been a more beautiful day!

Leslie and Charlie are Tennessee Volunteer fans just like Chris and me, so we had an instant bond. =)

Here are a few of our favorite shots from the day.



I love this shot of Leslie as she is about to receive her wedding band.



Their first walk on the beach as husband and wife.



And the beautiful view overlooking the water.



Thank you guys for allowing us to document your special day. Go Vols!

WPPI was a blast!

Ok it's definitely time that I catch up on blogging. The past week was a whirlwind of fun. I was so lucky to be able to make it out to Vegas for the WPPI convention which draws a ton of really talented photographers from all over. I was so grateful to be able to meet so many of them from around the country! Thanks so much to Armin who brought me as his guest =) He introduced me to a great group of photographers he knows from DC at the Pictage party on Monday night. There was also a photo booth that was a great addition to the party! This was just the beginning of the night.

Kenny Kim ended up with the majority of the pictures from the photo booth, so check his blog for them. Hopefully he will post them soon.

Earlier in the day we lucky enough to run into Becker at the trade show. I just had to get a picture sporting our "[b]log stalker" shirt. It was so cool that he was able to get them made in time for WPPI! I am borrowing these photos from Armin's blog since he took more pictures than I did. =)

Becker posted another one on his blog too! =) Then the three of us outside the Paris hotel after Becker took our headshots. Becker will be posting the headshots soon on his [b] school blog.

It seemed like a lot of people had flight issues on their way out to Vegas, whether it was getting stuck at a layover or luggage not making it. But after travel issues, I finally got a chance to meet up with Mary Beth Tyson who is a really talented photographer from Florida. I had so much fun hanging out with her and her super cool group of friends and fellow wedding photographers: Kimberly Jarman, Amy Martin, Jennifer Bowen, and JT. It was great meeting you guys! Sadly between all of us, we didn't get a group shot. But here is one Armin took of me, Mary Beth, and Amy at lunch.

The 4 days out in Vegas were jam packed with fun and new friends. What an amazing experience!

The other thing that blows me away about Vegas is the buffet lines... you have to get right back in line after you finish one meal so you can eat the next time you're hungry... if you've been, you know what I'm talking about...

[b]log stalking, WPPI, and Lindsay & Travis

Lindsay and Travis are in town visiting so I haven't been able to keep up the blog as much as I hoped, but I wanted to give you guys a quick pic that Chris snagged at Clearwater Beach last night to hold you over.

This weekend is WPPI and I can't wait to meet everyone, especially [b]ecker who will be sporting my T-shirt idea! So be sure to check out his blog post!

Main Website Server Operating System Switch

We are moving our erinchris.com website over to a Linux server from a Windows server over the next couple of days so there may be some downtime on the main page. We will still be blogging, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up.

Engagment: Quinn and Geoff

This has been a busy week between unpacking from our trip last weekend, editing photos, and blogging. This was our last photo shoot while up in the DC area.

Quinn and Geoff got engaged shortly after midnight on New Years Eve up in Washington, DC. 2007 was filled with hard times for Quinn and her family, and had mentioned to Geoff that she would rather wait and start the new year off right. Meanwhile, Geoff had bought a ring back in October and was anxiously waiting for the first possible moment to ask Quinn to spend the rest of her life with him. Shortly before midnight they took a walk down by the White House and found a spot to spend a few quiet moments together. Geoff did all he could to hold off until midnight, despite the really cold weather, and as soon as the new year had arrived he bent down on one knee and asked Quinn to marry him.

Even a few months later, the weather was pretty nippy for their engagement photo session in Old Town Alexandria. We got some really great photos of these two before the sun went down and the winds picked up. Here are some of our favorites.

Quinn has the most beautiful bright blue eyes! (And there is no enhancement here.)

These guys were up for climbing on rail cars and loading docks for us. Thanks for being so open minded, hehe =)

The gorgeous ring!

And this street sign was just perfect! (I think Geoff would agree.)

Thanks for braving the cold with us! Best of luck with the rest of your wedding planning!

Video: Armin School

This is a quick little note I just had to add when I saw Armin's latest post today.

He posted a video of our photoshoot this weekend with Lindsay and Travis. Check it out on his BLOG! Special thanks to Noah Hayes for video taping the whole outing!

Portraits: Lindsay and Travis

Day 2 continued...
Armin's shoot was earlier in the morning on Saturday, then we met Lindsay and Travis later that afternoon. They had a little trouble navigating to meet us because of the St. Patrick's Day parade that was going on downtown. They ended up finding us without too many detours. Armin stayed mostly in the background for this shoot to give us any suggestions, and took a few pictures of his own.



However, poor Travis had been battling the flu that's been going around, but thankfully he got a little better before coming out for the shoot. We met them out at the water and took a few pictures there before walking around for some shaded pictures. Here is some of that rim lighting that I'm now obsessed with!



I just love the way these two look at each other. You can tell how much they're in love, and it just radiates. It made it really easy to take pictures of them as well.





Travis got really excited about the whole process and he started picking out great places for photos.



So if you read Armin's post, you probably realized that we don't mind bending a few minor laws (trespassing) to get our shots. We absolutely loved this green/blue bench here, but the person's house it was in front of had a boring backdrop. So Chris and Travis just borrowed it for a little while. They moved it a little bit down the road for a better look. Don't worry, we returned it to its rightful place. They pretty much look like models don't they?





Then we came back around to this awesome yellow wall and had to stop for a few more shots here.





Here is Lindsay workin' the model pose and Travis being his handsome self =)



And this last one shows just how cute these two are. Thank you guys so much for being so awesome to work with and really getting into it!



We had one more shoot from this past Saturday to wrap up our busy day of shooting. That'll be coming up in the next post. This was a true engagement shoot and we're so happy we were able to capture some great shots for this fun couple!

Portraits: Armin

Day 2.

While Day 1 was mostly learning, Day 2 Chris and I were running the show. We had 3 photo shoots for the day in the very colorful Old Town Alexandria area. We went through the shoots the way we normally would, but had Armin give us some feedback on different ideas to get our subjects interacting together and make them more comfortable in front of a camera as well as being our local tour guide =). Before we got into the couple's shoots that we had planned later in the afternoon, we did a photo shoot for Armin himself. He hasn't spent much time on the other side of the camera, so he presented this as a challenge for us to capture a variety of shots for him.

Since Armin was our wedding photographer, the bar was set really high to get some great shots. It did help that Armin knew the area super well. He had some ideas of places he'd always wanted to take photos, so we embraced them! Now I know how Jasmine Star must've felt when she was asked to take photos for her mentor and wedding photographer, David Jay.

The goal was to capture the many styles of Armin DeFiesta. In our experience, he has three main photography modes:

Rockstar, (the second one was some cool shot and post-processing by Chris that Armin envisioned at lunch, so props to them for a super cool shot!)





Focused/Serious,





and Fun and Easy Going.





And possibly enlightened from above...? (This was just too funny to leave out.)



Here is Chris in action. I had to document this, because it surely doesn't happen often where the student is taking pictures of the teacher. Chris is sporting the Boda Dry Lens Bag... just for you Armin =)



Thanks Armin for allowing us the honor of photographing you! We really enjoyed it and just love how the pictures turned out =)

Check out Armin's blog for a few more pics from the day. Even though he beat us to the punch with his slideshow of Lindsay and Travis, we have a lot of awesome pics of those two that we'll be posting tomorrow. So keep your eye out for them!

Armin School - Part 1

This weekend Chris and I went up to the Washington DC area to attend Armin's photography mentoring program, which doesn't have an official name yet, although Chris likes to call it "The Fiesta School." We arrived Thursday night and were in for a huge temperature shock when we got outside of the airport. We were no longer in the comfort of our mild Florida weather, but instead were greeted by temperatures in the 20s with a lot of wind.

Friday morning we began day 1 of our mentoring session. The first day was geared toward techniques and not as much about getting the perfect picture. On Day 2 we really focused on getting the shots. Expect a lot of good stuff from the next few posts! We started out meeting up in Fairfax with Armin and our beautiful model Maggie. Maggie sure was a trooper considering it was 28 degrees when we parked. We began with a little coffee and then headed out to our first lesson. We started off going over the basics with Armin so he could be sure we already had a grasp of core lighting and background concepts. We started off with a simple, but fun background to ease into things.

Next it was time to work with some more advanced lighting techniques including "rim lighting". Maggie's beautiful red hair just looked so pretty in the sun. After this lesson, I think rim lighting became one of my favorite techniques. Keep an eye out for it in later posts from the weekend.

Here is Armin deep in thought explaining the rim light technique.

We found these great columns which provided great shade for controlled lighting and still allowed us to create some cool compositions. And of course, we were still able to catch some light and bring out the red sparkle in Maggie's hair.

The next lesson was "how to shoot the bride and groom as they're walking down the aisle". Except in this instance Maggie was our bride and the aisle was a long straight sidewalk next to the road. It was probably close to 29 degrees at this point with the wind whipping around.

I know it looks like I'm eating my fist, but it was just so cold I couldn't feel my hands so I was trying to warm them up. Feel free to leave a comment making fun of me. =)

Lucky girl had a nice warm jacket that turned out to make super cute pictures!

Originally we had planned on Maggie wearing a few different outfits. After hearing the weather forecast, it became a simple change of winter jacket. The Victoria Secret jacket must've inspired Maggie to bring out her wild side. Chris found a cute light pole to take pictures of Maggie on and she seemed a little too comfortable spinning around it and posing for us. =)

Here are a couple more from the day that we squeezed in before hurrying inside to thaw. This was just a sun flare artsy shot that created a faded look that we liked.

This was just a sun flare artsy shot that created a faded look that we liked.

Thanks so much Maggie, for braving the cold for us! And thanks Armin for all the great tips and for sharing your knowledge with us! Check out some more pictures from the day on Armin's blog.