Lauren and Don came up from SC to Waxhaw for their engagement session. They are two really happy, fun-loving people! Don is from Australia (cool accent and all!), so naturally I had to tell him that those guys “down under” sure know a thing or two about wedding photography! They are constantly winning wedding album of the year, year after year, at WPPI in Vegas. So, I am honored to shoot Lauren and Don’s wedding that is coming up in May!

They actually picked a photographer that provided them a not so great experience for the bridal and engagement sessions, so they were looking for something a little more artistic and fun this time around! I really tried to get them some cool stuff to make up for the first bad experience!

Hope you guys find some images you love from your engagement session with me!

I love these black and whites right outside the alley way…

We made the most out of downtown Waxhaw, then headed out to an old abandoned farmhouse!

The rusted barn is really popping! This ended up being one of my favorite sets…

After hitting up the wooden barn, we checked out the tracks!

We were rushing to get just a few shots on the train tracks so we would have enough daylight to go to one more spot…I hadn’t ever shot here before, so I wanted to try ending on something a little different…

The field was cool, but whats coming up might even top these…

I think it worked! The last location was really cool! I loved the shots we were able to get…the angle/perspective was really kicking for those silhouettes, the sun was setting right behind them. Lauren and Don were so fun, and such troopers!

Props to Don for going through two engagement sessions all in the quest for some great photos! Hope you guys found what you were looking for here!

I can’t wait for the bridal and wedding!

A few weeks ago I posted a flyer for a FREE couples engagement shoot, and the response was awesome! Thanks to everyone who applied, we wished we could have worked with everyone, but Katie & Ryan were the winners, and they were amazing to work with! Many, many thanks to Katie and Ryan for being so much fun!

The idea behind the shoot was to go to the South Carolina State Fair and shoot some video and a few still images. My buddy Ash Little who is from Columbia helped film everything, we came up with the idea once we realized we both had the same weekend off from shooting any weddings, and wanted to do something a little different. Neither one of us are videographers, but thought it would be cool to play with the video mode of the 5d Mark ii and push it to the limit!

Hope everyone enjoys the movie, it was a lot of fun to make, let us know if you like what we did with our day off!

Fun music thanks to The Dandy Warhols

This bridal session isn’t vintage in style, it is vintage because I waited SOOO long to post it! I was waiting and waiting for the wedding day to come so that I could post some of these amazing images, but once the date came and passed, I was on to other things (like trying to chase around our 19 month old, or hold/feed/change our 4 month old!), so I almost forgot about blogging about Niki’s bridal session!

Washington, DC was a fun FUN city to shoot in, there was sooo much to see, and much to my surprise, no one bothered us about taking photos ANYWHERE we went! Although we did have an FBI escort…that’s just how we roll… Actually it was my wife’s dad who came along…they live in DC, and he works for the FBI. Because he loves photography, (and because I begged him to help me navigate around the city) he came along and even helped me take some photos! The reason I mentioned not being bothered about taking photos anywhere in DC is that here in Charlotte it is very common to get stopped and harassed by the police or random rent-a-cop when taking photos uptown. Here you are photographing a bridal party when boom, sneaky pete shows up asking why you are shooting towards the Wachovia building…ummm…first I am obviously taking photos with just the water fountain in the background and second, yes, this entire wedding is a ploy for us to get some photos of the very interesting Charlotte bank buildings…riiiiggghhhhttt….wedding photography terrorists are running a muck, watch out!

If you like these photos, just wait until you see their album design…my sample albums are pretty darn jealous…after I got in Niki & Jonah’s album I have been waiting for the right excuse to order another one just like it to show off at meetings!