On Location Portraiture's Jpeg Blog

The Kidds

I photographed the Kidd family in the West End for a night shoot in December. I had photographed Chelsea Kidd's senior portraits a few months before.

   

   

The Hazeltons

I saw Travis and Ashley Hazelton again in December at the Hickory Street Annex! They are expecting their first child soon - Talon.

 

 

Thunder

Dallas Thunder is a basketball team composed of home-schooled teens in the Dallas area. I photographed them in December at Prairie Creek in Richardson.

 

Brandenburg Band

I photographed the Classical Center at Brandenburg Middle School's band again this year! We did two different group photos - one with a race car generously loaned by Young Chevrolet and another formal portrait in front of the school.

 

Aaron and Shauna in the West End

I photographed Shauna Crenshaw and Aaron Parker in the West End in December for a night shoot. Their wedding is a few weeks from now!

 

 

The Howells - A December Wedding

Bethany Widmer married Jeffrey Howell on December 3, 2010 at Zion Lutheran Church in Dallas. Their reception was at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison Airport - near where Jeffrey works with Hawker Beechcraft. They had an interesting zombie wedding cake!

 

 

  

  

  

The Blakes

The Blakes are another family I've photographed a bunch! I saw them again this November - and wow! - they've added to their family since I last saw them. We went to Lakeside Park for their portraits. Here are Leah Blake's senior portraits from a few years ago. 

 

  

The Trevinos

The Trevinos are a family I've photographed so many times I've lost count. I saw them all again this past November at Sandra Trevino's parents' residence at The Belmont in Allen, Texas. Here is a sampling of a few previous shoots with the Trevinos: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.... I'll also be posting new portraits of Austin Scogin (he's the little guy in the middle portrait below) at one year soon!

 

Annie at the Annex

I photographed Annie Williams at the Hickory Street Annex in November for her senior portraits. She's currently a senior at Highland Park High School.

 

 

Joel and Laura in Love

Last November, I photographed Joel Arredondo and Laura Buchanan at the Dallas Arboretum during the day and in the West End at night. Their wedding is in October of this year. I photographed Joel's sister's senior portraits in 2009.

 

 

 

Chris and Casey

Chris Rackard and Casey Martin's wedding is in May, but I photographed their engagement portraits last November in downtown Dallas during the day and the West End for a night shoot.

 

 

 

Jazzed about Corner Pocket

I've photographed the band Corner Pocket several times over the past few years. They had a concert at the City of Plano's Historic Courtyard Theater in November and asked me to document it.

 

 

 

 

Caroline and Andy at Maple Manor

Caroline Ivy married Andy Vandiver at the Maple Manor Hotel in Dallas, Texas on November 6, 2010. They had a Jewish ceremony. The Maple Manor is a great venue for weddings - it's always a joy to photograph there. The wedding and reception were beautiful and a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua Whitman

In early November, I travelled all the way to Wichita, Kansas to photograph Joshua Whitman's senior portraits. He's family (my cousin's son), but if you want me to travel outside DFW - please just ask!

We created Joshua's senior portraits at his home, at Wichita State University (his dad teaches there), and at a local park. Joshua is very interested in robotics - the first image has a contraption he built.

 

 

 

Charleigh

Just before Halloween, I photographed little Charleigh Murray with her parents, Ryan and Tifini, at their home in Garland. I had photographed Ryan and Tifini's engagement portraits a few years ago.

 

 

Melisa's Parents

In October, Melisa Greaves asked me to photograph her parents and family at Culpepper Steakhouse in Rockwall. Her parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary!

 

Post 500 - Taos

Wow - this is my 500th post to this blog!

In late September of last year, Erin and I took a vacation to New Mexico. We hadn't visited that part of the country before, and I wanted to check out the art scene in Santa Fe and Taos. The weather was fantastic (except for one night when there was a deluge of rain), and the atmosphere of the place is wonderful - I can see why there are so many artists in the area.

We wanted to see the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. Unfortunately, it was closed the one day we were there. On a whim, we stopped nearby in the Andrew Smith Gallery (the house in the first photo), which sells photographic prints. I've been to numerous photographic galleries (the Amon Carter Museum and Photographs Do Not Bend are two good galleries in DFW), but I have never seen a single place that even remotely comes close to the Andrew Smith Gallery. Just about every famous photographer has prints displayed in the gallery, and all of them are for sale. It even had one of my favorite Ansel Adams images, Moonrise.

I saw a painter who does fantastic work, B.C. Nowlin, represented at another gallery.

In Taos, we stayed at the Old Taos Guesthouse Bed and Breakfast. Tim and Leslie Reeves are wonderful hosts who have renovated and maintained a gorgeous adobe home. It's just outside the town of Taos -the view was spectacular and the setting very peaceful. You can tell Erin and Ibiki enjoyed it - all the remaining photos except the second to last image of the trees (photographed at Taos Ski Valley Resort) were created while we were relaxing at the Old Taos Guesthouse. The last image is a magpie - you don't see them here in Dallas.

A show of recent work from just artists living in Taos was impressive in scope and quality. There was one piece that fascinated me by Ken Draim - here is a video of it - and it introduced me to automata. Another Taos artist (also mixed media) whose work really struck me is Lynda Jasper-Vogel.

We had an adventure on the way back to Dallas. My phone routed us home to take New Mexico State Road 120. The road starts paved, then quickly becomes gravel, and then gets continually worse while climbing and descending the foothills. Some parts reduced to one car's length and are just dirt, holes, and boulders. The phone lost reception at mile 4 or so, and we were supposed to stay on that road for around 75 miles. But, after about 12 miles the road became a two-lane, well-paved highway past a wonderful view of savannahs and desert. My poor car probably aged a year, though.

You can see more images from our Taos trip on this previous post. The photos aren't watermarked, but please do respect my copyright on them. Thank you!

 

 

 

 

Art Project by Google

I'm not a huge fan of massive companies, but Google knocked my socks off this week.

They've developed a system for showing artwork from several art galleries all over the world. It's called Art Project, and a viewer can choose to view the gallery much as using the 'Street View' feature in Google Maps. But the real kicker is that each gallery has a number of artworks that are professionally scanned or photographed, and a viewer can choose to see them even at a minute level - for instance, you can see the individual brush strokes in Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night'. 

Each artwork has information about it, such as the size of the work, the artist, the history of the piece, and viewing notes. Some select artworks even have video features to watch. You can also create your own favorite 'Artwork Collection'. 

The system isn't perfect right now. The main difficulty I found was in navigating around the actual galleries - the system isn't even close to being as seamless as Street View. There are also only a handful of artworks per gallery that can be seen as professionally photographed and in detail. It'd be nice to get a thumbnail view of each piece in each gallery's main pulldown menu. I'd also like to see more galleries and a better search feature (you can search for images in each gallery - but there really should be a universal search for all galleries). 

But, I'm assuming this is the start of something beautiful, and I'm looking forward to visiting museums in places like Amsterdam and St. Petersburg - even if I can't make the flight there.

 

A Great Venue

The Hickory Street Annex hosted an open house for wedding vendors in October. It's an excellent venue for weddings and receptions!

 

 

The Morris Family - Go Rangers!

I met Glen and Leslie Morris and their children at Lakeside Park in late October. The Rangers had just made it into the World Series (woohoo!), so we did portraits with solid color clothes and then Rangers jerseys. I photographed their family portraits last year, too.