April 2006 Archives
A goal I have is to add at least one image from each wedding I shoot to my web site. I have set up a separate category called “Recent Weddings” to place these images into. So if you are one of those few individuals that check my site every so often for new images to look at, this would be the best place to start. Additionally, it gives my most recent clients something to be excited about, and it shows potential clients the quality of work we are producing on a regualr basis.
I added this shot today from a wedding last Saturday shot at St. Paul’s in Houston. I have shot there a few times, and I have found this small little corner of the church to be very beautiful. In fact, my mother and father were married in this church.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
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Have you ever been to The Louvre in Paris? It’s a magical place. The Mona Lisa is housed there, and without a doubt it’s the biggest pull to the museum. If you have never seen the museum, you are sure to see parts of it on the big screen soon in The DaVinci Code.
The last time I was in Paris I was working. I had just shot a wedding three days earlier in Houston, and then I traveled with my clients to Paris during their honeymoon. Yes, their honeymoon. They brought their wedding dress and tuxedo, and I was commissioned to photograph the couple in both Paris and Versailles. Now, I know it sounds funny to have your photographer come with you on your honeymoon, but think about it for a second. The bride gets to wear her dress again, and you are more than likely going to end up with images that are out of this world, rather than a tourist shot.
There is a large courtyard at The Louvre, and on this courtyard are three glass pyramids. The largest is in the center, and is the entrance into the museum. Naturally the entrance is packed with people, so I decided to shoot in the back of the courtyard away from all of the tourists.
The courtyard is lined with these tall European lampposts, and they were calling my name. I had my couple just get comfortable on one of the posts, and I picked up my camera and started shooting. I wasn’t more than five shots into the session when I noticed something in my background. I peered from behind my camera to find four security guards headed my way! Yikes!
I started shooting like crazy. Closer and closer the security guards came. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a blank memory card for my camera, so if they asked for my “film” I could give them a blank card and keep my images. It was explained that professional photography was not allowed on the grounds, and that we were to leave….. now. They were actually very nice about the entire thing, and as it turns out, I was allowed to keep my images and I got the shot.
So, I handed my tripod and bag to the groom and we began walking out. I had the groom walk in front of us, I was second in line, and the Bride was third. I then put my camera on what I like to call idiot proof mode (a.k.a. automatic). The three of us had traveled from the other side of the planet to get shots in Paris, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by. Walking backwards, I held my camera chest high, aimed in the general direction of my bride, and held down the shutter release. The camera was happily clicking away, focusing on its own, and the three of us kept walking. By the time we were out of the courtyard I had filled up a 2 gig memory card with 100 14 mega pixel exposures.
I had no idea what I had on that card, but I was like a kid in a candy store! I had just gotten kicked out of The Louvre and I still had my images! I wanted the shoot to be over right there so I could look at what I had just captured. At that point though we still had about an hour of daylight left. We all jumped back into the limo that I had rented for the evening for my clients and I, and we were off to the next location that I had scouted out the day before.
Once the shoot was over I hurried back to my hotel room and I immediately began downloading my images onto my 12” Power Book. It was dificult, but I forced myself to back up all of the work before I began looking at the images.
Image after image was garbage. I had cut off her head, or the camera hadn’t focused quickly enough, or the composition was wrong because the focal length was set incorrectly. But then, I found it. One image that just sang out to me! It was perfect! My bride was smiling, the wind was blowing. The sky was beautiful and warm due to the setting sun. There was a tourist in the background, but a bit of Photoshop would fix that right up.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
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P.S. Are you serious about photography at your wedding? Is photography the most important item on your "to do list"? Are you going somewhere exotic on your honeymoon? Take a moment and try to envision what your pictures will look like when you return home. Will your images look as good as these?
I had some fun with my babies at home over the weekend. It seems that they are always good for a laugh. They are going to be so embaraseed when I pull these out at their wedding.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to bring my wife and kids into my studio. A dream come true. I can’t tell you how nervous I was! For me, a good amount was riding on this shoot, so I made sure to block off the entire morning. Toni has been urging me to do this shoot for some time (five months), and I have been thinking about it myself…. all the time.
People have been constantly asking to see pictures of my kids and I had none to show them. Bad daddy; bad. But being the photographer that I am, I can’t just show people a snap shot. The fact of the matter is, I have been reluctant to just sit my wife and kids down in the studio and start shooting away without a plan. I feel obligated to shoot what I would consider the pinnacle of photography. The best I can do, nothing less. That takes some thinking. Some planning. A vision of what I want the final image to look like before even taking the first shot. This meant that backgrounds needed to be purchased, a silk flower arangement had to be made for something interesting in the background. I had custom furniture made for the shot as well. I waited for a few weeks for the furniture to come in, and during that time I studied the work of other photographers.
I also knew going into this shoot that the final results would be on my site for the world to see by the end of the same day. And, by putting the portraits on my site I would be announcing a new product line. I knew that I wanted one shot with Toni and each of our kids, and then the three of them together. And I wanted to keep everything consistent by making them all in my Sepia style.
During my research, I found a wide range of examples, some good and some not so good, and some were almost just funny. But, the one thing that I found in common with most of them was that the primary mission of the photographer was just to get a good expression out of the baby. The most basic example of this was the shot that you could find over and over again on multiple web sites of the baby just sitting on a white background looking at the camera, with the photographer undoubtedly in the background doing his best to make the baby smile. Some of these were better than others, but I knew right off that I did not want to have my work categorized in the same light.
If you know my work, I just can’t allow myself to do the same thing that others are doing. How can you get recognition if you don’t develop your own style? Truly, I am not about portraits with big huge smiles. I think they can tend to look fake. I would much rather see a subtle, pleasant expression in a finished portrait.
Additional inspiration came from three of my favorite photographers. I have one other favorite, but a combination of these three styles seemed to get me closest to the vision I had in my head, and at the very least I knew it would give me a good starting point. But the final examples that I found, the ones that sang to me the most, did not come from a website at all. They came from my art history books.
What I wanted to create was a very classic looking Madonna and Child portrait. Iconic looking. Now I am not sure if I got there on my first attempt, but I am sure that over time I will refine the style to what I have in my head. You be the judge. Over 400 exposures were taken during this one hour portrait session, and I liked these three the best. They seem authentic. They are my favoirtes because they do not feel contrived or staged when I look at them, even though they were taken in my studio. These images can also be found at Solaris Studios under the section PORTRAIT PORTFOLIO.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
P.S. Are you a mother with a baby? Call me today and allow me to create a Mother and Child portrait for you... before your baby isn't a baby anymore. Come into my studio, and let me create a portrait that you will brighten your daily life and make your heart sing.
I was shooting at a high profile wedding a few weeks ago. For me, a high profile wedding is an event where I just know that the budget is well above average. At any rate, the ceremony had finished and all of the traditional family portraits had been taken in a very timely manner and now I had a few minutes alone with my couple to create one of my cinematic moments. In fact, the bride had actually been thinking of a specific image that she wanted me to create for her.
At this point, I need to jump back in time for a second. I had recently bought a new piece of camera equipment to solve a problem I had been having. During the traditional bouquet and garter toss I like to fire off a ton of shots to track the object flying through the air and then as some lucky participant catches the item. The problem I was having was that my flash was not recharging fast enough for me. So I finally broke down and bought a large external battery to attach to the flash to resolve the problem. The battery has a camera strap on it and I wear it over my shoulder, but since I wear a jacket to my weddings you can’t really see it.
Ok, back to the story. So the three of us are setting up this shot, and both sides of the family are still there and watching me. I have placed my bride and groom in the sceen, and I am behind my camera composing. My camera is on a tri-pod to minimize camera shake and to get the exact composition that I want. And remember the battery that is slung over my shoulder…. with a cable that is attached to my flash…. which is attached to my camera? As I am looking through my camera, I decide that I am not really happy with the way I have placed my bride and groom in the image, and instead of yelling through the church to tell them what I want, I have to go over there and place them in the correct position.
I was not more that 8 to 10 feet away from my camera when I stopped dead in my tracks. I had been waking briskly, and I felt the large tug on my shoulder, and suddenly everything was moving in super slow motion. I turned to see the cable fully stretched and pulling the tripod and camera over. I froze. Everything was being pulled over, and it was taking forever. Everyone was watching. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was just watch as my camera came crashing down. But it took forever! I just wanted it to be over.
I saw my camera bounce.
Cameras today are made of hard plastic, as opposed to older models that were made of metal. The flash hit the ground first, which shattered. The connection between the flash and the camera body had so much force applied to it that it ripped the flash right off of the camera body leaving four screws protruding out of the top of the camera.
The lens hit next, and plastic was in the air. The connection between the camera body and lens had some damage. The lens itself could no longer zoom in and out, and I wasn’t really sure if it could even focus properly anymore.
It was over. The camera had stopped moving. I took a deep breath, collected my broken pieces of equipment and didn’t say a word. I then noticed how quiet it was. Now I wasn’t sure if it was quiet because I was still in the church, or because everyone had just gasped out every last bit of air in their lungs, but I wasn’t going to look up to find out.
I picked up my camera and all of the little pieces of plastic that I could find back to my camera bag and found places to shove it all in there. Then, without missing a beat or looking up, I pulled out my extra camera body, lens, and flash and began assembling. My backup camera was up and running in less than 60 seconds after my first camera hit the floor.
Needless to say, I got the shot.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
P.S. I just got my camera back from the shop today, and I am a happy man.
Time is money. I mean that‘s what money is isn’t it? It is a symbol of time. It seems that I am learning this lesson over and over again recently. When you buy a head of lettuce at the grocery store, you are paying for the clerk that puts it on the shelf, the driver that takes it to the store, the worker that harvested it from the ground, and the farmer that tends to that ground, and I am sure that I am leaving a few people out. The point is that you are not really paying for that head of lettuce; you are paying for the time it took to bring that head of lettuce to your local grocery store.
Last night was a longer than usual wedding at 10 hours. My wife, being the amazing woman that she is, somehow found a way to let me sleep an additional 4 hours this Sunday morning. Thanks babe. She’s at the store right now, picking up some essentials that we need. When I say we, I now mean the four of us… our two children included.
What ever happened to that day of rest I heard about as a kid? Where did that day go for me? Is that day of rest there for you? We as a culture make all of these technological advances to give us more time, and what do we do with that time? We work more. Perhaps my day of rest is gone because I chose to be self-employed. It's a hard thing to be self employed. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
While Toni has been out, and I am sure she is glad to be out of the house, I have been taking care of the kids by myself. This is something that I don’t get to do very much as Toni has been at home doing the parenting while I have been at work. She is going back to work in about 2 weeks, but that is not the point.
The point is this. What is important? My uninterrupted Sunday’s are what have become important. I have been sitting here, on the floor, playing with my 5 month old twins, realizing that later this year I have weddings scheduled on Sundays. I really am having fun today, and I would hate to have to leave right now. But the wedding industry is against me on this one. Most venues and vendors actually give discounts for booking a Sunday wedding!
I am ambitious. It’s my nature as an individual and a business owner. But now I am starting to rethink. What is important?
My time, your time, everyone’s time is limited. Money, like time is spent. How are you spending yours? Am I willing to give up my Sundays with my family to photograph a wedding? The answer it seems is changing. But I, like everything it seems, can be bought. What is my price? Actually, I don’t think that is the right question. If money is a symbol of time and the creation of something, then what is the thing that I need that will make me sacrifice my Sundays with my family?
I am raising my price for a Sunday event. And for every Sunday that I work, I am going to deposit the extra money directly into my children’s savings account for college, or emergencies, or for what ever then may need, and really I don't know what they are going to need because I am new at this Dad thing. But those are things that they will need in the future. That's a cause, and a duty that will make me feel good about working on a Sunday. And if I have an assistant on that wedding, then hopefuly they will be able to do the same with the extra that they have earned as well. And hey, if I don’t book any weddings on a Sunday because my price is to high, then that’s ok too. How would you like to spend your Sundays?
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
Well, I had a good day today. I had an appointment today with an existing client. I’ll be shooting her wedding later this year. She came into the studio today with her mother to talk about booking her bridal and engagement portrait sessions, and the first thing she said when she sat down to talk was “I drink your brand of cool-aide.” Needless to say I had the biggest smile on my face for the rest of the day. Thanks Sara.
My second appointment was immediately after my first. They had come in to order their engagement portraits, which I created last Sunday. It is the couple featured in the blog Don’t Look at Me. I have to admit that I was a bit anxious when they first came in due to a phone message that she had left earlier in the week.
The message had said that we were still on for Thursday (today), and also included a little note that the images I had placed on my site “were causing a bit of a stir.” Now, not really knowing what this meant, I just sort of filled in the blanks in my head. I had assumed that the parents of the couple had seen the images and had not approved as they are a bit on the, shall we say, hot and heavy side. Well as it turns out, the couple absolutely loved them, and “the stir” was from their friends who loved the portraits as well. It turns out that the images actually caused a spike in traffic on my site according to my traffic report.
So all in all, it was a successful day. I booked an engagement and bridal session for an existing client that is going to let me have free artistic reign of both shoots, and my newly added images to my site get to stay up.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
Recently, I opened my first studio location after working out of my home for the past 7 years. It is located in The River Oaks Tower on the corner of Richmond and Kirby Dr. and I am having the time of my life with each new portrait session that walks through my door! Primarily, the sessions that are coming to me are for engagement sessions. That’s ok for now.
I am attempting to develop a unique style in Houston. A style that I can brand as my own in this market. The look is black on black, meaning black clothing on a black background. The finished prints are then converted into black and white, and are then further converted into a warm sepia tone. The final look of the portrait is something that draws the viewer right to the emotions of the subjects.
If it were up to me, the subjects would never be looking at the camera, only at each other. There are a few reasons for this, the first being that I get a bit uncomfortable when I hang a photograph and the subject is staring right back at me. I can’t look at an image like that for very long. The second thing that this does for my work is that it allows my subjects to relax a bit more. They are not so anxious if they are not staring right at the camera. They tend to be themselves more, avoiding the complaint of “that doesn’t even look like me.”
I usually start a portrait session off with some very basic, classic arrangements, and then progress into increasingly harder posing. But at some point, it always seems that my clients will have a few suggestions of their own. I think this happens at times because they feel relaxed with me, and this too could be because I do not have them looking at the camera.
Here are a few examples from an engagement shoot last week. From the moment you meet this couple, there is no question that they share a unique bond and the charisma to match.
Additional examples can be seen in the Studio Sepia section of Solaris Studios.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
If you have met me, and you have engaged me in a discussion about my studio, it is easily apparent that I am overly ambitious. At times it is hard for me to hold back my excitement about professional photography. It becomes difficult for me to distinguish between my dreams of achievements I wish to create through my style of photography, and thoughts that are just, well, to far out in left field to ever really happen. But no matter how crazy my ideas are, I keep them close at hand and always at the forefront of my mind. The fire is always burning bright.
Over time, many dreams have been packed away, deep in the forest of my mind, just waiting for their time to re-emerge. Recently, the floodgates have opened, and now I am thinking really hard about the future of my photography and my company.
The question that I am faced with is this. How big of a hammer can I swing? How big am I willing to take my business?
The birth of twins will make you re-evaluate your entire existence. My son and daughter are now almost five months old.
I just got back yesterday from a marketing consulting firm. In the next 6 months I will be launching a mass marketing campaign on the city of Houston based upon their recommendations.
In the past, my goals for the future of my company were rather vague. A blanket statement if you will. I wanted to be the most sought after wedding photographer in Houston. Truly, over time, I think I could have gotten to this place on my own merits. But now my dreams are becoming a bit more defined. Now I am focusing on what that looks like, and I want to accelerate the process. After all, I know I am not an ad writer. I need help with that. An agent if you will.
How do I plan to measure my success? Yes money is nice, but as an artist, recognition is what I am truly after. As an artist, you want people to know your style of work. Your wish is that people desire your individual style so deeply that they seek you out to furnish their homes with your work. And when the patron hangs your artwork on the walls of their home, you hope that they truly feel that it is the finest piece of artwork in their possession.
Now this may seem self-centered, but as an artist, shouldn’t this be what you are after? Shouldn’t this be your goal? I do not want to believe that an artist has to be dead before his or her work can be sold for profit. The only other option I see is taking photos for blackmail, but I don’t think that is going to work out. Ya, not so much.
I have found with the birth of my children, that my dreams are becoming more and more specific, and I am putting it in writing for the world to see so I can stay on track. I am at the beginning of a five year lease. I have an office space in The River Oaks Tower on the corner of Kirby and Richmond. A very nice location, but I have no signage on the street. I want and need signage on the street. At the end of my five-year lease I would like to begin the construction of my own studio, on my own land, close to the corners of Richmond and Kirby in Houston. I want a sign out front that would be worthy of The Las Vegas Strip! From there I want to open a second location in downtown Houston that would specialize in Executive Portraiture. My third location will only be open one month out of the year and it will be located in Brenham to take advantage of the annual bluebonnets. And my fourth and final location will be located in Galveston, for portraits taken on the beach. All of these locations will be on my own land, and in buildings that I build from the ground up.
That’s a big hammer to swing, and I am going to find out if I am the man for the job.
Aric
Houston Wedding Photographer
Contact Solaris Studios and book your wedding photographer today!
