Sarah and Ronan were really nice and their families and friends were also really nice and they treated Nathan and I wonderfully-thanks y’all.  (Ha ha, my new found Texan language is now sneaking into my writing-”y’all”, that’s funny. Although I am told I need to use “all y’all” at some point. hmmm) And there I go again, getting distracted. So… Sarah and Ronan got married in the sweetest little church in Georgetown and I loved it. It wast truly lovely. Then, off to Angel Springs for their reception.  This ws my first time at Angel Springs and I thought it was quite lovely. The grass was green, there were beautiful places for photogaphy and by the time we got there, the lighting could not have been more perfect for us.

The highlights of the evening were cool. Sarah danced with her grandfather and honestly, he reminded me a little of my Dad (he would be 88 next month if he were still here) and it made me cry a little when I saw them dance together.  Her uncles were a lot of fun and I guess they have a tradition in their family where they have the “crazy uncle photo”.  Sarah and Ronan were so great to take photos of and Ronan kicked butt in a drum circle that night. I had never gone through a drum circle so that was cool. Their whole family is quite musical and in fact, her brother wrote and composed a piano piece that he played for them during the wedding ceremony.

Anyway, enjoy a few images of them.

If you want to see a little more of their wedding, feel free to look at this little slideshow-you can’t see it on phone but you can see it on a regular computer

Now that things are going to calm down a little, I plan on catching up on all the people that I want to blog about. there is no particular order but, I got a new tower and these are some of the newest photos and they are on the new tower so, she gets a blog first.

Meet Taylor: 9 years old. sweet.full of energy. total ham on camera. Taylor has discovered that she loves to be on camera and just wrapped up her first film! impressive? yah. Asked her to give me different emotions and she did it without even batting an eye, impressive? yah. I think you get the drift, I was very impressed with her. Taylor, her mom, her Dad, and I would love for her to get an agent-I hope she does. Taylor was made to act and to be on camera!

For the photographers out there, her headshot with the yellow shirt were done with the WESTCOTT spiderlites. I have been super impressed with them! I cannot believe how much I am loving these lights. For the other shots, I used my Profoto 600R lights and I always find those to be super dependable and beautiful, like always. Why two different types of lights? Not every photograph needs to be shot the same way with the same lights. I am so excited to have the new Westcott spiderlites in my studio. I plan on demonstrating those in November when I speak in Dallas as one of the pros on the Westcott 25 pros in 25 city tour.

Anyway, if you are an agent looking at this site and you want to talk to her parents, let me know and I can arrange a meet.

We did a fashion shoot for publication and then we did some sexy photos for them as well.  Montana was a riot! she kept me laughing the whole day and I just kept thinking how absolutely beautiful she was.  Montana is out there and fun and she really is the life of the party. TJ was very laid back and fun to work with. We cracked up a lot. It was nice to have them come into the studio for their fashion shoot and personal session.

I do want to give a shout out to my neighbor, Mike, who loaned us his plane to do part of the fashion shoot-that was super nice of him to do !  I wish I could show you the photos but I cannot yet.  I also want to give a shout out to Chuck, the owner of Keepers in Austin-as he provided all of TJ’s clothing. There was some really nice stuff and I really coveted the Versace and Jhane Barnes suit that he wore in one of the formal shots…mmm….Versace.  I would have loved to keep those and give them to my husband   Also, a shout out to The Garden room for providing all of Montana’s clothing for their shoot as well!   

Anyway, these photos are not with the clothes I mentioned since those are for magazine publication but, here are a couple of the shots from their sexy session and that I have permision to release on my blog… enjoy!

I thought I would put a blog out there on something that we all need. COLOR MANAGEMENT.  Several of my past students have written to ask me about why their prints are not coming out the way they think they should. Hmmm…

First, check the color temperature before you take the photograph. How?  Grey cards, expodiscs.. get proper color. This is referred to as white balancing…

Next comes the monitor..You need to do this. You should be doing this every few months to ensure you are getting proper color.  I have spoken to several people who are still using their monitor “as is” fom the day they bought it. You really need to create profiles in order to get proper color. I recommend the XRITE system, the Eye One works great.  I do tis every 3 months to to ensure that I am still A-OK on my monitor calibrations..

The next thing you should think about it the printer that you are printing on. If you are at a lab, you are most likely printing in SRGB. If the file you have edited is in Adobe RGB then you will have some color shifts. You should ensure that you are printing in the same color space as you are editing in.  If you are doing magazine work, convert it to CMYK.. don’t forget or your colors will look really ugly

Remember, the art of photography (in my opinion) is not just the eye that you use to capture but it is also the development of the piece and the printing of the piece-all three of these things still go hand in hand just like in the film days. the only difference is now, the development is not in a chemical darkroom but a digital one.  The final printed product needs to accurately reflect the art that you thought you created..

Cool site of the week: go to John Paul Caponigro’s site. He is a great photographer and he is also a leading expert on color science. awesome site www.johnpaulcaponigro.com

maria

WPPI=WOW. 

That was the best way for me to sum up my feelings. 14,000 photographers from around the world to compete, to educate others, to learn from others, to buy lots of stuff from the tradeshow. Holy cow, I don’t think I have ever been around so many photographers at once. This was my first year to go to WPPI and also my first year to compete.  Seven Maria Bernal originals proudly hung in the Awards of Excellence gallery and I am so excited. over 3500 prints and less than 1/3 “merited” and a few less than that were given awards of excellence.  Might I also mention that there are two levels of awards of excellence denoted by a white ribbon and a black ribbon (you love the white ribbons but you looooove the black ones). I got a black one and six white ones. That was cool.

After all the judging and they choose who did well enough that their prints should be given the honor to hang in the gallery, they go hang them. Wanna know what I thought was cool? Walking into the first gallery room to see my first print -right there, dead center, right under a Jerry Ghionis print. woh. Jerry is the number one wedding photographer in the world-total celebrity (I met him btw) and there is my print, right next to his. cool.

So, enough about the competition, I also got to go to two classes. One with Jerry Ghionis (he is from Australia and a cool dude) and one with John Paul Caponigro who is a genius on color and color theory and  I love his work. That was super cool.

Then… I got a chance to go to the tradeshow as well. HOLY COW!! if you wanted to buy something for your studio there was no way you would not find it there! INCREDIBLE–two HUGE rooms with booths everywhere. Of course, my sponsors were there…BWC, Profoto (the MAC group), Lowepro (my newest sponsor) and many many others. New albums, new props, new everything. left my wallet in the room (it was safer there). Had dinner with Zida (from Studio Z, the one who did my cards and who I just adore!)

Then…a HUUUUGE treat. I got to see GRACE ORMONDE in person. For those of you that know me, you know I love her and her magazine and if there is anyone that I ever wanted to meet it is her. well, I went to listen to Mike Colon  about his trip to Africa and the work they did there for their Thirst Relief  project which is awesome and there was Grace in all her Grace. wow, I so wanted to introduce myself and she was sitting a few seats away from me but I did not introduce myself. Oh well, maybe another day and one day…maybe I willl get to be in her magazine. that would be AAAMMMAAAAAZING.

Anyway, it was a great trip, I had a good time. I didn’t end up with a first place trophy on my first time but you know…I am pretty proud of having the honor or having 7 photos with an award of excellence on my first time and to know that my photos were hanging side by side with some of the top, most famous photographers in the world. pretty cool. I want to put the photos up but I cannot at this time. I have two other competitions coming up and I cannot risk any of the judges seeing them or they will not be able to judge them if they know that I am the maker of the prints… so stay tuned and I will share them soon

They both had such a good time. We photographed Danielle first. She had never had professional photos done before and I have to tell you, I thought her photos came out beautifully. She was so much fun to work with. She was fairly quiet and when the camera was pointed at her, a different side of her came out. I love seeing that. It surprised me a little and I am so happy that we were able to create something nice for her. Here is Danielle’s pageant headshot.

Leah, on the other hand, is sassy and I love it. We had such a good time. To keep the laughter going, she danced…I danced…Yes, I danced. Yes, it made her laugh-at me. ha ha. Anyway, she was full of joy and full of camera attitude and had such a good time.  I expected that she would be fun with the camera when she walked in the door. Big smile, cute laugh and ready to rumble.. ha ha. I love her headshot as well – I think it is gorgeous.

If you are thinking of entering a pageant, your headshot is VERY VERY important. You can never underestimate the importance of the headshot. It needs to be perfectly lit, it needs to transfer well into black and white, it needs to be printed to a tee.  Anyway…I want to wish both of these girls a lot of luck and I am sending my support along with you at the pageant! I would love to see you at Miss Texas Teen USA!

I love the phrase “lifestyle” photography, it is so posh.   It basically means that a photographer is going to photograph you with your lifestyle in mind.  Hmmm… Isn’t that exciting?  Your own personal photographer photographing you while you are just being you doing what you do, capturing your lifestyle. kinda cool right?

Weddings are so much fun. People, locations, details all come together to make one fine day. I think that details are so important for a wedding because even though it doesn’t seem like people care-they do. I walked around this wedding and I heard many people comment about things like..”look at the labels on their water bottles”, “look at the fine work on the cake and how the colors match everything so well”, “look at how all the details come together”.  I hear these things at almost every wedding that I go to.  No one ever really talks about the details to the bride and groom and I have had many brides ask me if I think people notice the small stuff-they do and they talk about it with each other.

I had the opportunity to photograph the wedding of Chuck and Karin this weekend. They were very nice. Chuck has two lovely daughters and it was so nice to see them all come together as a new family unit.  The girls had the cutest polka dot dresses!!  I loved how the girls were included in the actual ceremony. The ceremony and the reception were held at the Lakeway Hills Country Club.  I had not photographed a wedding there before and I have to say-it was gorgeous. The planner (Amber) was so sweet and I had a great time working with her. So, if you are a bride and you decide to go there, you will love her. OH!!! ha ha, also, randomly in the middle of the ceremony, a little 5 lb yorkie wearing a diaper showed up out of nowhere and started running around. It was so funny. He was panting and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth (on the side) and saying “hi” to everyone. I was looking around for an owner-NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. So, I run after the little guy, I pick him up and I take photographs with one arm while I am holding him in the other..holy cow, that was hilarious. Finally, one of the guests offered to hold him for me and then I took him back after the ceremony and gave him to Amber at the clubhouse and her folks found his owner! Thank goodness because I didn’t know what Chloe and Bentley were going to do if I brought them a new brother, ha!

AAAnywho…getting back to the details of the wedding..I was very impressed with the flowers, made by Inez Day and of course, who can be disappointed with a cake from Simon Lee Bakery. Holy cow, I looooove Simon Lee Bakery. I eat cake once a year (funny all the weddings I go to and I don’t eat cake at them). That once a year is MY BIRTHDAY and Simon Lee Bakery makes it. (White cake with fresh strawberries inside. Mmmmm, cake).

Anyway, here a few shots from that wedding…mostly details. By the way, the image of the couple under the tree was taken by my primary second shooter, Nathan. I loved it so I thought I would post it here. Enjoy!