Thursday, February 28, 2008

Our Big Sexy Valentine....

This weekend kicks off our busy wedding season, and we hope to be seeing these guys more often. We attended Big Sexy Food's Valentine's dinner and wine pairing last week at their own venue. What a sexy dinner it was! With appetizers like goat cheese bruschetta followed with a main course of duck confit with guava cola bar-b-que, what's not to love?

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Great atmosphere......
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The "5" course menu....
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Some Cumin seared scallops made an appearance....
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Everyone got to participate in the wine pairing...
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We snuck into the kitchen for some behind the scenes action...
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Now that's a pork chop!
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And how about a chocolate brownie with chocolatte mousse and a piece of dark chocolate for dessert?
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The moderator of the evening and owner of the California vineyard and winery was happy to sign some bottles.....
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The always sexy owners from left to right John, Jack, and Chris....
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Sunday, February 24, 2008

We did for "I DO" Alabama Edition

We are pleased this week that our photos of the very talented Danielle Flowers Atkinson of Bliss Event Group was featured in I Do for Brides magazine. It's always great to see your photos in print, and this is definitely no exception. We are extremely happy for Danielle that her wedding was chosen. You can pick this magazine up in Barnes and Nobles and probably a few other places if you are a border state with Alabama. Congrats Danielle! See her original blog post from August HERE

I tried to get them to use this for the main photo, but they kept insisting on using one of Danielle by herself.... go figure!
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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Before and After

Now that we are giving image discs with many of our packages, I have been wanting to give an example of what we mean when we say color corrected, but not enhanced. Digital photography is a lot different than the old days of film. Digital cameras have to use their brain or sensor to interpret all of the colors it sees. It is not a perfect system, which is why most say it is actually a lot more time consuming than film. In the old days, print labs would develop and color correct the proofs at the time of processing. All of the proofs would come back pretty and ready for delivery to the customer. With digital, it's up to us to make sure there are no strange tints or mis-intepretation of colors by the camera. Now, with all that being said, when we deliver to you CD of images, they are color corrected, but not enhanced proofs. We take them out of the camera, get the colors close to how the eye actually saw them, and that's it. When we design an album or process an order, this is when we actually go in and digitally enhance those photos. While you can take your disc and run yourself or grandma prints at Wal-Mart all day long, we still encourage you to order through us if you want the highest quality for your re-prints.

Our first example is the very cute couple of Jim and Mary. This was a gloomy afternoon and while the photo looks pretty good, it could use some zest.....

This is the photo straight out of the camera....
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This is straight out of the camera with a little bit of color correction like you would see on your image disc... we made it look a little less blue and that beautiful dress a little more white.....
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This is after enhancement....we popped the colors a bit and lightened the couple to really make them stand out from the background. We also took out the condo on the right which was a tad distracting......
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This is the beautiful Mary again.... a typical black and white portrait that looks pretty good straight out of camera.
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But I like this better.... We touched up the area under her eyes, popped the contrast, and gave it a warm sepia tone.
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What a gorgeous church right?! This is strictly preference, but it is a tad bit yellow for me.
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Here it is with a little of that yellow tint removed and the guests lightenend a little to make them stand out. We also burned the edges to draw your attention to the center of the photo....
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Before - Notice the skin is a little red
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After - A nice skin tone and the brighter colors slightly muted to make our couple stand out more...
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Proof:
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Enhanced:
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Proof:
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Enhanced:
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A nice shot of Melissa and her ladies.....
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A little pop of the colors again really adds a nice look to this photo...
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A nice bouquet shot that could use a little sprucing up...
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Now that's better!
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This one looks pretty good as is....
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But it can always be cleaned up and sharpened a little...
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And finally the beautiful Christine trying to stay modest with Joe....
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But we can brighten her and polish the skin a little for the ultimate album photo....
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Chelsea & Todd E-Session

We did an e-session recently with this cute couple.... Chelsea was in town from Colorado for a couple of days to visit Todd who is stationed here for flight training school. We knew when we drove up they were going to make it easy for us and we just let them be themsleves. These were all made walking the streets of Pensacola.

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Chelsea loved this creepy old house so we had to use it.....
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Friday, February 15, 2008

Jenna & Jared on the Beach

We met Jenna and Jared on the beach today for their E-session. The weather was perfect and the water & sky were absolutely gorgeous. We had a great time and I think they did too after they warmed up! Jenna's "big" sister, Lindsay, was on our blog a few months back for her E-session. Yep. That's right. 2 sisters...2 fiances...2 weddings...2 months apart. You would think their mom would be going crazy. She is totally loving it and having a great time. Wes and I are so excited to see all the great details for these weddings! Maybe Jenna & Jared will meet us back at the beach for a wet session when it warms up a bit...you'll just have to wait and see.

A nice, sweet portrait.
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Can anyone guess what colors the wedding will be??!?!
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They only had to jump 4 or 5 times to get the good one!!
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I told you the sky and water were gorgeous! Jenna and Jared aren't so bad either!
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