I wanted to give props to Kylie and say thanks for the help on all the photo sessions recently.  I know she's helping because she wants to see the photography business succeed, but I think she also wants to see me come home with all my camera gear.  I have a tendency to leave a trail of lens caps, reflectors, light meters, and occasionally even cameras behind as I go and get into a session, so she keeps me and my gear organized while I'm on the job.  Thanks, sweetie. Here's a quick one from after we finished up our session tonight.  I'm pretty sure there were no less than 17 mosquitos on my when I took this.  Seriously.  Not kidding.

Wanted to give a shout out to my buddy, Brandon, and his shiny new fianceé, Stacey.  If you follow the blog, you may remember Brandon from earlier this summer when he got his GQ on for a little photo shoot.  Sorry ladies, this one's taken.  Stacey is such a sweetheart, and I couldn't be happier for these two.  Last night after blindfolding her, carrying her through some muddy terrain at the park they had their first date at (see shoes below), reciting a poem to her and getting down on one knee, Brandon asked for Stacey's hand in marriage.  Apparently feeling pretty confident she would say yes [grin], Brandon planned a little engagement party at my friend Jeff's house last night for after the big moment.  We didn't get their 'til late becasue of a photo shoot and a dinner we had to go to earlier in the evening, but I had my camera in the car from the earlier session and cranked it up to ISO 4000 to fire off a few quick images of the soon-to-be husband and wife. Congratualtions, Brandon & Stacey!

Exhale... ahhh.  I've been excited for Maureen and JC to come in and see their images since we met two Saturdays ago on a perfect fall day at the Frito Lay corporate campus in Frisco, TX. We had a lot of fun - and a lot of Kylie's homemade chocolate chip cookies - as we soaked in their memoirs and reminisced about the day, and now I can finally share their images with the blogosphere. Here are some of my favorites of Maureen, JC, RJ and little Cassidy.

Cassidy is so stinkin' adorable.  This image is timeless.

There's something about this image that I just can't get enough of.  Oh, that's right... Cassidy's big blue eyes and her over-the-shoulder vintage 1940 pose.

Umm, hello?  GAP ad?

And finally, here's a couple of fun 20x20 canvas storyboards of Cassidy and RJ... too fun.

The weather here in Ohio's been amazing, and the fall color has been even more amazinger.  Yes, amazinger.  It's great being back "home" and relaxing a bit, but I'm also doing just a little photography while I'm here.  Today I met up with Chris and Lindsay.  Chris graduated a year ahead of me back in HS, and it's been nearly that long since I last saw him, so it was fun catching up and capturing them. I've got my laptop with me, but I don't like editing on it because 1) it's slooow, 2) I don't think the display's properly calibrated, 3) it's slooow, 4) I alwas end up oversharpening my images on my laptop because I get lazy and don't zoom in as much as I should on the smaller screen, and 5) it's still slooow. That being said, a post isn't a post without an image, so here's just a couple from there session for now.  More to come...

And I can't forget to mention my rookie assistant, fantastic host, and long-time buddy, Michael (a.k.a Schrode).  He was great today, and best of all, I got back to their house with the same number of lens caps as when we started.  Oddly enough, I get excited about that.  This image below isn't fantastic, but I wanted to 1) give Schrode props, and 2) show a simple way to add light to an image on-location.  I usually bring a small soft box to add light when I need it, but it's a pain to travel on a plane with, so for this session, I just had Schrode point a Nikon SB-800 flash (in manual mode) into a silver reflector and I fired it remotely via a Pocket Wizard.

This past Saturday we met up with the Groffs for a little family photography fun in Frisco.  They're such a fun, relaxed family... truly a pleasure to photograph.  We met up for the session at the business campus where mom Cathy works, and lemme tell ya, this place was fantastic.  Seriously.  If my parents had taken me to a place like this when I was little for Take Your Sons & Daughters to Work Day, I might still be there.  I'm thinking about secretly vacationing there in the spring. I can't show you all the images yet, or else there'd be no surprises when they come in this weekend to view their photos.  No fun.  But, here's a little preview of what's to come... Beautiful Caitlyn and wild man, Josh... [Note: I believe I was literally eating leaves when this image was taken.]

The kiddos went all acoustic on us towards the end of the session.

Love this family "portrait".  This image in an instant tells a story about their personalities.

More to come...