I met Leigh after she and Dave had been dating only a few months. You could see it in their eyes – you just knew that they were going to make it. It was obvious their love had no bounds… And that neither distance or circumstance would ever keep them apart again.

When my phone beeped last February and revealed a photo of a shiny ring and the text “We’re engaged!”, I have to admit that I wasn’t overly surprised. My husband and I did a happy dance (I did, he smiled) and then shortly after I squealed when she messaged me about engagement pictures. I knew I had the perfect idea for them… One that I have been keeping in my back pocket for a while.

For Leigh and Dave’s engagement session we aimed to capture the essence of their traveling spirits as well as their spunk, so we headed somewhere they were very familiar with – the airport. We are incredibly grateful to my parents for helping us out with this photo shoot – my father in particular. His plane was the model for it and he came out early on the weekend to drag it around the tarmac for us. When we were discussing concepts we had both thought of a travel theme and then we came to find out Dave had been trained on the same type of plane that we used for the photos, a Piper Cherokee Arrow, which made this session extra cool to all of us.

As we got ready to start shooting the storm clouds swirled around us, threatening to open up at any moment. We worked quickly and kept our fingers crossed that the weather would hold. Fortunately it did, and just as we wrapped up the clouds rained down upon us. Fortunately during the shoot the stormy skies gave us some neat colors for the photos and helped keep us cool as well.

Without further ado, here are some of our favorite pictures from their session. Enjoy!

Like what you see? Tell a friend! We’re www.luftcreative.com

Like what you see? Tell a friend! We’re www.luftcreative.com

Josh has not made any excuses. Over the past year he has undergone an amazing transformation – not only physically, but I have to think mentally as well. He’s a good friend that I’ve known for a while and over the past several years I’ve watched him try several different diets. But then sometime last year he decided to do it right. He started working out and eating well. Really well. He got a trainer and started running several miles a day in addition to strength training. As he shed the weight you could see him stand up taller. He challenged himself even further by entering a men’s physique competition last weekend. Although he didn’t place in the competition, his friends couldn’t be prouder. We find his commitment to health inspiring and are awed by all that he’s achieved.

Just before his competition we arranged a photo shoot for him. We were imagining something like you would see in Men’s Health or Outside Magazine (my favorite!) – filled with harsh lighting and testosterone. Fortunately Patrick was there to keep me from being toooo awkward when it was time to do the shirtless photos (something I knew I wanted to do, but was still blushing terribly about). Photographing athletes is something that I plan on starting to do more of; this September I’m heading out to Wyoming to work with adventure athletes from North Face in a Nikon-sponsored workshop, so I figured this a good opportunity to get my feet wet with a good friend and take some pictures to celebrate his fitness journey. He’s also inspired me to work out harder. I’m pretty sure there’s no way I can get down to 7% body fat, but at least I know it’s time to stop with all the excuses.

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“Dancing in the moonlight
Everybody’s feeling warm and bright
It’s such a fine and natural sight
Everybody’s dancing in the moonlight

We like our fun and we never fight
You can’t dance and stay uptight
It’s a supernatural delight
Everybody was dancing in the moonlight”

Their wedding was about more than just dancing though… (but oh how much fun the dancing was!). Their elegant Watersound Beach Club wedding was about celebrating their love with those that care about them most. We could tell when we first talked to them that they were so excited about their wedding they could hardly contain themselves. Sure enough, on the day of their nuptials they were unable to wipe the smiles off their faces. The moment their pastor announced them legally wed they burst out with joy and waved to the crowd. They danced all night long and took turns singing duets to one another under a gorgeous supermoon while their family looked on lovingly.

Congratulations, Britney and John. We wish you all many years of happiness, smiles, and dancing by the moonlight!

Here are just some of the amazing people that helped make this day happen:

Wedding Venue | Watersound Beach Club

Wedding Gown | Alyne Bridal from Carriage House Weddings

Shoes | Jimmy Choo

Florals/Event Designer | Nouveau Flowers

Hairstyling | Ashlin Bennett

Makeup | Jill Van Otten Cosmetics

Cake Designer |  Cakes by Tanis

Music | The Atlanta Pleasure Band

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Here are some of the difficulties that we instantly ran into during the shoot:

• Light was quickly retreating so focusing was extremely difficult without shining a flashlight or even a cell phone at our subject’s faces using manual focus.
• We wanted to bring out some of the vivid colors in the sky without underexposing our subjects so we needed to fill the shadows using strobes without killing the ambient light.
• The bridge needed some fill light but we didn’t want to take too much away from our subjects.
• Adding a high-key feel from Holly’s car headlights while using a strobe to prevent a silhouette.
• I wanted freakin’ laser beams. In order to do this, we needed our subjects to pose extremely still during our long exposures. We relied on our strobes to freeze motion but required stillness to prevent ghosting. Outside movement from cars created light streaks in the background.

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This past weekend I had the opportunity to photograph a family that I have known for years. Her father was part of our tightly-knit undergrad class, and I photographed her newborn photos just under two years ago.  Now their little girl loves tromping around in fields in pink cowgirl boots, picking flowers, and riding around on her tricycle.  What made this so much fun for me though was seeing my college friends with their little girl – loving and playing on a little person that was just like a miniature version of them.  Hanging out with them it didn’t seem like we were so grown-up at all. As the sun set it was easy to forget about paying bills and taking baths and pretend that bedtime will never, ever happen…

Like what you see? Tell a friend! We’re www.luftcreative.com

Like what you see? Tell a friend! We’re www.luftcreative.com

Like what you see? Tell a friend! We’re www.luftcreative.com!

When I was pregnant I had all these ideas for how I would raise my daughter and what kind of mother I would be. I took the breastfeeding courses and childbirth courses and all those fun courses that scare you and make you giggle at really inappropriate times (or was that just me?). I read every book out there and KNEW exactly how things would go down from that moment on until my daughter went to college. Boy, was I wrong! Pregnancy and motherhood have taken me for a fun-filled, love-filled, joyful ride that I never would have scripted. And everytime I see a first-time mother I am reminded of this and can’t help but ask them their most ridiculous stories (I love funny stories!)

Recently we had the joy of photographing one of our wedding graduates, Carla and Frank, who are now expecting their first child. I couldn’t resist asking all about the childbirth course (which made Patrick cringe) – “Soooo…. how did that go?” I seriously almost fell down laughing when they said that the instructor asked them to blow into a bag to simulate contractions (I think I have this correct?). I was imagining a room full of mommies blowing into a bag and was just tickled beyond words.

Becoming a parent is one of the most amazing things in the world. But it can also be a bit terrifying at times, like when they send you home from the hospital (“You’re going to leave me alone with this little person?”) or your child is up all night with a 104 fever. Something tells me that the love, trust, and sense of humor shared by Carla and Frank will serve to strengthen their relationship as they share many sleepless nights together. And that they will act with grace together as a family, no matter what life throws at them…

p.s. – We’d love to hear your funny pregnancy/parenting stories. Just comment on this blog with your true stories and whoever makes us laugh the hardest will win a little something special!

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In respect to Zack’s work, I didn’t mimic his concept completely but took bits and pieces to see if things would work well together using one speedlite. After some time and a lot of irrelevant web surfing/lurking, this is the end result! Yes, part of my workflow involves lurking. Try it out, you’ll probably lose around 30% efficiency.

Since the staff works at the Civic Center, I wanted to add a “spot light” effect around them to sort of emphasize the theater’s environment and also their field of work. Could I have done this with our available lighting systems we had on hand? Totally, dude. But hey, I can dig a challenge!

To give you an idea of what we had to do during this experiment, I boosted the exposure in this photo by 3 stops to lift the shadows. As you can see, I am handsomely placing the speedlite in the correct area while Holly hits the shutter. Each person and each column was individually lit and merged together in post.

Here’s the rest of the staff in their individual frame. These are just jpeg conversions straight from RAW but you can get an idea of their placement. As you can see the actual composition is stationary while each subject sat in a specific spot which would then be masked in. Of course, someone fudged their seat placement and I had to change things around to get the end result!

Not much to see here besides each column was also individually lit to add a bit of pop in the background. These were also masked in at a lower opacity so they wouldn’t pull away from the focal point.

This is the base photo that basically pieces everything together. Every image besides this was masked out and brought into this background image. After a lot of masking, retouching and dodging and burning, things finally started to take shape!

After a bit of undoing and deleting, this is the final result! I wasn’t 100% positive that this would work out seamlessly but it beats 0% for not trying at all. It’s a good feeling finding inspiration and actually executing the concept! Mad props to Zack Arias for the idea. I’ll go back to lurking now.