Madison SD area wedding photography, family, children & senior pictures
South Dakota family, senior, baby, children, engagement, wedding photographer | Serving Madison, Brookings, Watertown, Sioux Falls, Howard, Flandreau, Dell Rapids
Wishing you all the best this Holiday Season.
We’ve had an incredible 2007 thanks to you, our customers. Our business has grown and prospered. The holiday rush is almost over.
There is still time to get your New Year’s cards done and mailed out this January. Call us for an appointment.
Keep checking the blog for our New Year’s specials…”Playtime” is coming back.
We took the camera outside for Allen’s family session on Saturday. We had a natural “Winter Wonderland” complete with falling snow, brisk winds and cold temps.
Chantel and Shannon were good sports through it all.
Imajen is celebrating her first birthday this week. She came down from Brookings with Mom and Grandma last Friday for her Birthday Club session.
Bobbi came in for her sale last week.
We had some fun at sunset.
Bobbi seems to be involved in everything
Jesse is intense about sports. Football is over for this Chester Area High School senior, but basketball is ready to begin.
It would be nice if someone could wave a magic wand and “poof” everything would be done instantly…
ElizaBeth is finishing up the designs on our remaining senior and wedding albums so that we can get everything out before Christmas. After the design is completed on wedding albums (like this one from Jeff & Nicole’s album), the album page images are placed on our website for approval. Most albums print as is or just with minor changes.
Briella came in for her 6 month pictures as part of our Baby Plan.
Mom and Dad joined in for a family picture just in time for Christmas.
This morning’s baby session was Macy. She was all dressed up for Christmas.
Wow do the babies grow up fast. It seems just like yesterday that we did Macy’s newborn pictures.
Yes, there is still time to schedule your family session and get your pictures and cards back in time for Christmas.
We are in the midst of the Christmas rush now with cards and wall portraits. ElizaBeth is finishing up designing the wedding and senior albums.
Megan and Nathan had a glorious wedding day. Saturday was full of sunshine and blue skies and Friday’s wind was gone.
First Lutheran in Sioux Falls is a beautiful church. It’s full of tall stained glass windows and a huge organ in the balcony.
We started out with Nathan and Megan with their first moments in the church foyer.
We went outside for a few pictures and then headed inside.
First Lutheran’s front entrance is the perfect place for a silhouette.
Pat Gustaf and his staff did an incredible job of decorating the church for the ceremony.
We did a quick fun session with the couple and the whole bridal party at Falls Park.
On the way back to the limo, Dacey had Megan and Nathan turn around and captured this image of the tower and street lights decorated for Christmas.
All of these images were part of the reception slideshow.
It’s crunch time at the studio. We’ve framed everything that needs framing. We’re cranking out the albums on the computer. Thanksgiving is almost here.
I thought I’d give you a taste of one of our senior albums. This is a two page spread of Zach’s Rave Book.
We love this time of year and being busy. This year’s Christmas deadline isn’t Thanksgiving or even the first of December. We can push it until the week before Christmas. If we can get you in the studio and photographed by the 17th, we should be able to fill your order. Any later than that, we can try, but it might not get delivered in time for Christmas.
So what do we like the best about the holidays?
When everyone has their orders and we can spend time with our wonderful kids. The pressure is off.
And we get to sleep in…
Here’s a fun composite wallet. Mark just finished up his high school football career playing for the Flandreau Fliers.
We’ve made a couple of changes in the way we do our engagement sessions.
As part of our wedding packages, we used to give a complimentary engagement session and one 5×7. No more. The 5×7 is going away. We are now doing 16×20 signature mats instead of the 5×7.
How’s that for cool.
There is only one condition on the 16×20 signature mat: you MUST put it out for the guests to sign.
Why?
We had several couples buy a signature mat print, only to decide at the last minute that it was too nice for the guests to write on.
We’ve known Mitch a very long time. As a senior in Rutland, Mitch literally stands head and shoulders above everyone else.
We went to Mitch’s farm for the first part of his session and then finished up with a few more in the studio.
Mitch has a distinctive style all his own. In other words, he doesn’t conform to the status quo.
Jack is turning 1 yr old next week.
Wow, does time fly and the little ones change so fast.
Now we really haven’t promoted our Baby Plan and Birthday Club, but that dosn’t mean we aren’t busy having fun with little ones.
You have to have patience with babies. We don’t just allow 15 minutes and herd you through here like cattle. No, we take our time and let the kids get comfortable first and then we can take pictures.
You get to pick out your images right away, saving huge amounts of time and gas. Now if we didn’t quite get what you wanted the first time, we can easily take a few more without having to schedule a new appointement. The longer the kids are here, the more they seem to like it. Our studio is big enough that they can run and play and still be in plain sight.
Now Jack was happy enough when he came this morning but the smiles and giggles took a while to come out. ElizaBeth started playing peekaboo with Jack and before long we had big grins. We kept Jack leaning over the end of the couch and brought one of our lights over to him.
Like most 1 yr olds, Jack is still working on getting this walking thing mastered so we dug out a box for him to lean against to keep his balance and make him feel more secure.
Katy is Shane’s little sister, but she is more like her mother than her siblings. What does that mean? Shane is like Tom Cruise on the movie Top Gun: he isn’t happy unless he is going Mach 2 with his hair on fire. Katy is more subdued.
Kari came to us from Sioux Falls for her Adventure Session. We had another beautiful day for outside pictures.
We started in the studio, did a few in Rutland and then hopped in our cars and traveled north to some formal gardens.
We went to Rob’s farm for the first part of his senior session.
The weather was a little uncertain that day: we had calm and brisk winds, clouds and sunshine, changing every few minutes.
Rob’s girlfriend Kendra, a Black Studios senior from last year, got in on a few.
Mom really wanted Rob to have one in a suit. While casual dress seems to be the trend in senior pictures lately, we still like doing the more traditional look of a suit of formal dress.
What can we say about Hailey? This Rutland High School senior pushes hard at her studies. Hailey has been great help to us in the studio. And she loves shoes!
Many of our seniors come from Sioux Falls. It’s really only 45 minutes from the north edge of Sioux Falls to our studio in Rutland.
We don’t have to worry about traffic, stop lights or parking. It’s very quiet here: the loudest sound in the evening is the hum of the street light.
We are going to be posting an image or two of seniors that we just did not have time to blog about earlier. Here’s an image of Brittany.
We didn’t think that the rain would ever stop this week. We had to dodge showers in between senior sessions. It’s funny how just a little sunshine can brighten your mood.
We are still playing catch up on computer work and still have many senior sessions in the next few weeks, but do not despair: Although your yearbook deadline can seem very close, we can still get you in AND get the yearbook image submitted in plenty of time.
We’ve been waiting to finish the belltower for a few years now. We should’ve had it done when we shingled the main part of the church, but hindsight is always 20/20.
We found a willing contractor finally and through the assistance of a 50 ft. lift, we were able to get the belltower painted and the roof edges shingled.
It’s quite the dramatic change in looks.
There’s still three louvers to put in and some tinwork to repair where the bell used to sit, but the hard part is over.
Mike helped the contractor put in the new louvers yesterday. Lumber dimensions have changed slightly since 1892. The new boards we slightly thicker, so a little beveling had to be done…40 ft off the ground and Mike is scared of heights.
So the belltower looks great but the tin on the steeple now looks a little sad. That will have to wait for another day.
Here’s a couple from Megan’s senior session.
Old school black and whites are making a comeback. The cool thing is that now we don’t have to mess with those nasty darkroom chemicals or worry about polluting the environment. It does help to have darkroom experience though when it comes to visualizing the final image and working with it in the computer.
We’ve added Tara as one of our new galleries on our main website.
This fall season has been a very full one for us. We are thankful to be able to photograph so many outstanding young men and women.
We still have a few openings in the next few weeks for senior sessions. We can still easily make any yearbook deadlines that you may have.
Alyssa came out with her family tonight to pick out her senior portraits with a little help from her friend Chantel.
Not all grooms are into wedding pictures. A typical wedding has the emphasis on the bride. The big white dress and the flowers seem to get all the attention.
Mike pleasantly surprised us. He took some of the best groom pictures right off the bat even though he was a little nervous before the wedding.
We are going to be running a very limited studio schedule this long Labor Day weekend. We’ll get back to you on Tuesday morning if you leave a message on the machine.
On most Friday nights, you will find us at a football game. We cover local sports for the newspaper just for the fun of it. If we get a chance to photograph some of our seniors in action, we include those action shots into their senior albums.
We also print up our best sports shots into big poster prints. Parents just love being able to have one or two really good prints to remember their son’s or daughter’s athletic career….The kids love it even more.
Nine-man football fields are notoriously dark. We use big lenses designed especially for low-light, but we are still limited to the first half. As darkness falls, we use slower shutter speeds and pan the camera with the action. If we are lucky, we can keep the players face tack sharp with lots of motion blur as in this image of Rob, one of our seniors from Rutland.
Just to show you a little closer view of Rob, I zoomed in to show all of the detail you can’t see in the image above.
Football gives lots of opportunites for great pictures, BUT it also can be dangerous: When you are out on the sidelines, you can suffer grievous injury if you do not pay attention to your surroundings. You always have to be aware of people around you at the start of a play. When the offense runs a sweep, the sidelines are where the play will end – usually where my feet were standing 5 seconds before. Braxton almost got me twice tonight.
Prairie Village west of Madison held their Steam Threshing Jamboree last weekend. Minneapolis Moline held their summer convention and were the featured tractor.
The ultimate Minneapolis Moline is an ULDX. They made only 150 of these tractors that could double as a car after the fieldwork was done. Top speed was 40 mph.
I have to admit to being an IH fan. All of our tractors were red growing up. The owner of this early 50′s Super M is a little naughty…he must be a trucker.
