Photographers look at the world differently than most people. Everything is looked at with varying degrees of potential. Mental formulas are calculated for every scene, every shot. Light & Shadow, Color, Texture, Composition, Perspective, Expression…It all comes into play in the span of a few minutes or even a few seconds.

For creating portraits, good photographers often start with a mental projection of the image they want to capture, they know the appropriate camera settings and lenses that it will require, they make the light work for them or they create it themselves, they bring in their experience and their view of the surroundings, add in the ideas for digitally editing/processing the image and they make it work for the end result of an awesome (hopefully!) photograph.

Wedding photographers have to do all of this rather quickly, with large numbers of people, while making sure everyone is having a good time. At least, that is what I try to do.

I am enjoying capturing weddings by myself, but for a few of my wedding packages, I offer a second photographer to come in for the day or a portion of the day. Logistically, it can be good to have two people in different places at once. Good teams can feed off each others ideas, sometimes even raising the creative bar. Sometimes though, the two photographers end up working the same scene. The results, while similar, can be awesomely different.

Take these two photos, for instance…

Neal’s Image

My Image

Neal Troester joined me on a wedding I shot earlier this year. He is one of the two awesomely talented guys with LemonLime Photography…yes, he cheated on his business partner, Eric, to come shoot with me.

Anyway, back to the photos, this is an example of the same direction, lighting, and nearly the same settings and lenses, but the final perspective and composition, although still straight on, is entirely different. I wanted the beams in the roof to be in my photo to lead your eye down to the folks and Neal wanted the reflective ground to be in his. Ends up, the results are stunning and I decided I like his version better. The key, though, is sometimes just changing your perspective only a few feet can make all the difference in the world.

Out of curiosity, which is YOUR favorite? Why? Why Not?

To all my incredible and patient wedding clients… a HUGE Thank you!

NINE Albums are currently being designed and the album proofs will be out very, very soon. Same with a bunch of DVDs…The new packaging is in and ready to ship very soon!

– John & Jessika, your proofs and blog post are almost ready (later today!)
– Tyler & Monica, your blog post is nearly there also later today!
– Michael & Amanda, your proofs and large blog post are going to be done tomorrow!
– Bob & Stacey, I am nearly done with your amazing wedding images and am getting them ready to show you on Monday or sooner!
– TJ & Krista, the windy photos look awesome…can’t wait to share them with you early next week!

It has only been a year since I took the plunge and jumped into this photography business with both feet running. I have learned a great deal and been mentored by some of the best. I count it a credit to God that I had the rare opportunity to meet some of the most influential and inspiring photographers I could have at one place. It was awesome to so quickly bond with them during the exercises and tasks at the Anti-workshop. If you can’t decide on a workshop to attend, I highly recommend it.

When I met these people, I literally only knew of three of them beforehand (Erin Vey by way of Flickr, Heather Cole by way of fellow Kansas Citian, and Fred Egan by way of blog-stalking). I ended up getting to know so many more rockstars in the industry, it is not even funny… I shot with ever-so-fabulous Jasmine Star on one exercise…with Jesh De Rox and our subject Jessica Claire on another (see below). I listened to Doug and Chenin and John and Dalisa. Got to know Jan Garcia and Ed Atrero and so many more.

Anyway, I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction into this new world of wedding photography. I hope I made a decent impression on these people, but I want them to know that they made a HUGE impression upon me. I look forward to making my mark and someday being counted as a mentor myself.

The above photos are a few photos from the Jessica Claire session, but edited with my lightroom presets and Doug Boutwell’s brand new Totally Rad Actions 2, the Revenge. Go buy them, they are totally rad and a bit genius.

If you are in the Kansas City area, you HAVE to attend the veryaltf Tour from the leg-en-dary John Michael Cooper and his lovely bride, Dalisa, (who we all know really wears the pants in the family…inside joke for Dalisa).

Free is good, right? Right. Quality Adobe Lightroom presets are good, right? Right. Well, that is what I’ve got for you. Quality free lightroom presets! Download them now!

The two new free presets are part of my new Steller Utility series (coming soon). Gray and Snap are great little ‘utility’ style presets that I use fairly regularly and I have a bunch of other things (including some actions and textures) that I am working on to put together a full Utility set. In the mean time, I hope all my photographer friends out there enjoy these little gems.

One of these presets (the Guru GreenGold) is part of a series that is included in the 52 Steller Lightroom Preset Pack. You can see samples of many of the presets and even purchase the set for only $40 at stellergear.com. Also, if you have questions on how to use them, install them, or whatnot, please read the readme.pdf included in the zip.

If you download these, please comment and tell me what you think! Let me know how you use them and shoot me links to the photos. I’d love to see them in action!

Smiles!

-dustin