First of all, sorry for the delay in the posts. It's just been an insane few weeks. Family stuff, busy at work, you name it. Anyway, looking to change all that shortly.
Here's a shot of the sky outside my house the other night. This is straight from camera, no color correction at all. Just a slight crop to cut out a power line (damn things). My wife couldn't believe this was right outside the house.
It was.

In Memory...

My grandfather, Lenny L. Nielsen, died on Thursday.

I miss the beach. It's been too long.

My friend Shelby got married a couple Saturday's ago, and I did the photography for their wedding. These are some of my favorite photos so far. I love them all, but especially the photo of the tent at night — I think it came out really cool and it's very different from anything I've done before. Enjoy.

A couple more photos before I leave for NYC. The top one is a self-portrait in the garage — nothing special, just working with the timer.

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. I've been really busy at the day job, and haven't had much time for anything else. That will change soon. I'm leave for NYC on sunday — work-related, but I'll be able to squeeze in some good stuff. I'll catch the NYC premiere of One California Day, and I'll be able to check out Mollusk NYC. Those are definitely the highlights. I was going to try and squeeze in a day trip to Montauk, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

As far as the blog goes, you may start to see a lot more surfing-related content here. We'll see how it starts to flow.

This is what it's all about. 16th Street, Cocoa Beach, FL.

I made it to the beach yesterday. Finally. It's only been two weeks, but it felt like forever. It was an extremely busy two weeks, so I needed this. The waves were good: 4-5 feet, a little choppy, but not bad. Better than a lot of Florida days. I need a new board — it was hard to paddle into some of the waves. It's sad when you realize you've outgrown your shortboard. But even a few pounds makes a difference on a 5'11". Time to move up to a 6'1".

Anyway, I was able to take some new photos. I love the light in October. Enjoy.

I've posted more photos from Brenda's wedding on the Anthem Studios blog, here.

I shot a wedding saturday with Michael. I have some great images I'm working up right now. Here is the first. I'll post the rest on the Anthem Studios blog so I don't clutter this one up with weddings. We'll see.

The Present

I am awed by Thomas Campbell's new movie, "The Present".

Click on the title to check it out.

Inspiring.

So back to the kids. Here is Bridget on a log bench at Cocoa Beach.

Another shot from Cocoa Beach. This one is actually of something other than the kids! I have been wanting to try more landscape shots, and this is a start.

Well we went to Cocoa today. The waves were blown out and choppy, the wind was onshore, and it wasn't that great. I waited around for the light to get good to start taking some photos, and then 10 or 15 minutes into it, it started to rain.

This is the first shot I've worked up.

More to come.

Sorry for the delay in posts (although I don't think anyone's reading this as of yet). I haven't shot much lately, just busy with life and work (design work, not photography work). I'm going to Cocoa Beach Friday. Definitely going to be a good day for photos if the storm passes. There will be some new posts after that for sure.
Then next weekend (the 29th) I have a wedding to shoot in Dade City. I'll post some of my favorites from that shoot as well. The week after that is a Bridal Show in Tampa. Hopefully we can book some more weddings.
Then I may be in SF, NYC, or ATL for a week in the middle of October. I will definitely take some photos wherever I go.
Anyway, just an update. There will definitely be some new work soon.

I think this is the first black and white I've posted here. I don't do many black & whites. For weddings, yes, but not for personal work. This photo, however, seemed to lend itself to black and white, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Another shot from Bethune in New Smyrna, this time of bridget against the wall under the boardwalk.

I like this shot of Andie near Bethune Park in New Smynra. I love the sand here – it's got such a nice texture and good color. Sometimes it's almost orange. I like how clean it is in this shot. All the imperfections and footsteps smoothed out by the sea.
I'm not really crazy about the little dress Andie's wearing, but she just woke up from the ride over to this beach, and didn't want to be changed. Then she ran down to the water and a wave came in got her completely soaked. This shot was taken right after that.

This is Bridget at Bethune Park in New Smyrna Beach.

We went to New Smyrna Beach on Wednesday. Here's one of my favorite shots. More to come...

Another shot from the beach that I really liked. This time with no people. There's more I want to do with this shot, I just haven't figured it out yet...

This is the second image from the kite series. I wish i had used a wider aperture to get more focus. I was trying to get the fastest shutter speed possibile, so I shot it at 800 with F1.4. I could have slowed down to 1/500th and still caught the action and gotten better focus.

Oh well. That's the whole point: to learn.

Andie wanted to fly her kite last night. This is the first from those images.

This was shot yesterday afternoon in the living room, with only the light from the window.

Here is another shot from the Cocoa Beach session.

This is another of my favorites.

Sorry it's been so long since any new posts. I've been really busy lately and the blog has sort of gotten away from me.
But I took the day off today and took the family to the beach. This is one of my favorite shots of the day, taken at dusk.

Bridget fell asleep in the house tonight covered in baby powder. This is with available light at ISO 1600,

Sorry for the delay. I'll be posting more photos soon.

Here is a new shot of Bridget and a couple new shots of Andie to make up for the few days I missed. I got the new Canon 30D on Monday, but I've been too busy on other work to start really working with it. These shots are from this afternoon — even though it was raining I had to do something. The shot of Bridget is inside with just the available kitchen light.

Another shot from New Smyrna Beach.

Another vintage treatment.

My brother fly fishing near Smokemont, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina.

One for Sunday. I have mixed feelings about this one, but I'll post it to get some feedback.

Andie at the beach. This one makes me especially proud because she's really been getting into surfing lately (you may not be able to tell, but she's hanging onto a surfboard). I've surfed since I was around 14, so it's been a big part of my life. Andie is into it now. Anytime I'm watching a surf film or looking at surf photos, she comes over and is 100% interested. We took the kids to see Surf's Up (surfing penguins) and she's hooked. I love it.

Andie at Disney. She's ALWAYS happy at disney.

Alright, so I've done it already. About 5 days in and I already missed a day. We were out of town all day until late, and by the time we got the kids in bed I forgot all about it. I hope I can do better in the future.

In the meantime, I'll catch up with two photos.

This is a shot of my daughter Andie I took in October. I waited for the afternoon light to get low and warm enough to get some good lighting scenarios. This is the result. Andie's always been really good about posing, or at least staying in one area.

Just a little technical update:

All of these current images have been shot with a Canon 10D and Canon's 50mm F/1.4 lens. It's been great so far. Right now I'm waiting for the Canon 30D. A small step forward. I'd love to have the 5D one day, but all in due time.

I try to shoot with natural light whenever possible. When shooting children sometimes it can be hard to get them to turn just the right way to get the best shot, but you just have to be patient and take lots of captures. The 10D has been great for that — there's really no lag time between shots, at least not where I've been able to notice it.

Post-processing is all done in Adobe Photoshop, but soon we'll also be getting Apple's Aperture to help with workflow and RAW conversion. More on that in a couple weeks.

This is Bridget at New Smyrna beach, taunting the seagulls.

Welcome! I just wanted a place to upload some of my personal photography projects, and hopefully get some feedback. You can see the wedding photography I shoot with my brother over at www.anthemstudios.com. It's just the two of us that make up Anthem Studios. We've been shooting photography (professionally) in some form or another for the past 3 years. This is more of a personal project. Family, kids, vacation, etc.

I'm going to try to be good about updating this blog almost everyday.

I hope it all goes well.

Thanks,
Mark