Sioux Falls wedding photography, family, children & senior pictures
Sioux Falls wedding photography | South Dakota family, senior, baby, children, engagement, wedding photographer | Serving Madison, Brookings, Watertown, Sioux Falls, Howard, Flandreau, Dell Rapids
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.
We like to get calls for weddings, but there’s one type of call we’d rather avoid: the one from a competing or new start up photographer trying to copy another photographer’s pricelist, work flow and style instead of just doing their own thing.
It even has it’s own term in the photography world: It’s called “being shopped”.
Now if you are a new photographer trying to set up your own studio, we will gladly point you into the direction of professional organizations that can cut years off your learning curve. There are great online resources to be found that can help you.
Many new photographers have been known to feel insulted when the long time pro does not take time to share everything that they’ve found out the hard way. Most of us that have been doing this a while value our free time and protect it and the truth is that we are trying to build our own businesses first.
One of the biggest problems is that it takes a long time to lay down enough knowledge as a base to learn the more advanced techniques. Time, experience and repetition are the best teachers. Directly copying someone is not a good shortcut to take. You want your peers to be your friends not your enemies.
Ahh…The joys of computer work. Here’s a couple of images from Katie and Bryan’s wedding earlier this month in Watertown SD for you to enjoy while we keep pounding away on the editing, retouching and album designs.
Ok, enough of the whining…back to the images.
We always like to do a short session between the ceremony and reception. Everyone is much more relaxed. The pressure is off and the party is ready to begin.
After we left Holy Redeemer Church, we met up with the bridal party at Riverside Park where we had all we need for some fun images: a cool bridge, some playground equipment and a shaded path.
Do you think that photographers are making a pile of money from taking pictures?
You might think so given the incredible influx of new studios springing up. The fact is that photography is just like every other business starting up out there: long hours, high risk of failure and not a very high return for time and money invested.
Why do we do it?
For ElizaBeth and myself, it was a matter of chasing a dream before we got too old to do it. We get to photograph great seniors like Mary Kate shown here and be a part of a couple’s wedding day. Each week we get to be at a big party. We also work huge hours 6 to 8 months of the year.
We are able to go to school programs, play nurse to the sick members of our family and take vacations when we want to. We have flexibility.
Now there are always wants and needs for new equipment for the business and obligations and responsibilities to the customer. We are not going to get rich but we will be able to more enjoy the life we have.
One advantage to being established as long as we have is that the big struggle is over and customers come without us marketing 24/7. We have a huge client base to get referrals from. Instead of spending all of that time and energy marketing, we can use that time to get better than ever before.
Education is never-ending when it comes to photography. There are always new techniques to learn: lighting, posing, photoshop, sets, sales…the list just goes on and on. The reason that we are good is because we work every day at getting just a little bit better.
A couple of images from yesterday…
We went to Tea, SD on Saturday to photograph Nathan and Jennifer’s wedding. The St. Nicholas Church is very new and modern with some very cool stained-glass windows.
After the ceremony we headed toward Seratoma Park in Sioux Falls for some more pictures with the whole wedding party. We had a little session in the Butterfly House with Nathan and Jennifer and then headed to he playground with the ever lively bridal party.
Right before heading to the Convention Center for the reception we explored the edge of the Outdoor Campus.
After we sent the wedding party back to the limo, we did captured a few more “dramatic” images of the couple on the edge of the tall grass.
These two pictures were the last two in their reception slideshow.
It’s a really sad thing to hear about: some brides find out too late that the photographer that they thought would be covering their wedding is now done, gone out of business and has disappeared into the night without notifying their clients.
This makes all photographers look bad.
It’s not surprising that businesses that don’t charge enough to cover their costs and basic expenses close their doors. Some photographers that charge next to nothing have incredible talent and do great work, BUT if they can’t get enough return to buy that new camera for backup or pay the lab bill, it doesn’t matter. Wedding photography is a business and to be in it for the long haul, you have to make money. The guy that promises you all of the images retouched on CD with copyright realease, all day coverage with multiple photographers, a 4×6 preview album, a wall portrait and multiple coffee table albums for the couple and their parents for next to nothing is deceiving his customers as well as himself.
The danger to the brides is that come their wedding day, economic pressures may have killed off their photographers business and they won’t find out until it is too late.
Longevity is a good way to judge your photographer as trustworthy. Anyone who has survived more than a few years will probably be around come next summer.
Photographers that belong to a professional organization like PPA (Professional Photographers of America) or WPPI are more serious about their craft and also have the resources and connections to call on in case something does come up.
Rachel and Dacey started school this week along with Rutland senior Kie-Lyn. While it seems way too early for school to start, it’s a welcome break from days with 4 and 5 appointments a day. We can now concentrate on getting orders out as well as designing wedding and senior albums.
Our cool news of the day is that we now have very fast internet thanks to ITC. For the last couple of years we’ve been hooked up with RDC in Egan. I can’t say enough good things about Rod Clark and his service. He has gone above and beyond the call of duty for us. ITC had fiber dug in last year and today we were on the install list. It took a great deal more time and effort than I thought it would to hook everything up and make it work. We even have cable TV now…and another bit of leverage to get the kids to do their chores.
You just know that some seniors are out there enjoying life full blast and not sitting on the bench. Zach is one of those guys. Whether it is hanging out with his friends at the lake or playing basketball, he does it with abandon.
We thought we’d share an image from Kendra & Jerae’s engagement session. Their wedding is coming up next month in Madison and we have so much work to do.
Taking all the pictures is easy. It’s the computer work that gets in the way of sleeping. In two more months the rush will be over and we can rest up, but for now the old saying goes “You have to make hay when the sun shines!”
We like it when seniors bring cool props. Of course not everyone brings a Corvette, but I’m not complaining.
Not only do seniors bring cars, but we also photographed them with jet skis, horses, dogs, cats and even a 4-H heifer in addition to the “normal” props related to sports.
Not all senior pictures are smiles. We try to capture a senior’s entire personality. Grandma may have to have a smile, but can do so much more.
While we tend to keep much of our personal lives to ourselves, we would like to thank everyone for their cards and sympathy at the passing of Grandpa Lloyd Smith.
Married for 65 years to his wife Beth, he loved and was loved by his family.
So many times we get caught up in the everyday rush of work. We need to remember to take time out for our family and friends…just like Grandpa Lloyd would.
It’s been a hard couple of weeks around here. We had to put a few things off and attend to family matters. Catching up is hard to do with a heavy heart.
When Heidi showed up for her senior session with the typical “little black dress”, we decided to have a bit of fun with it. We went places where you would not typically go: outside on the grass, in the CRP, on the playground and yes even in the corn field across the road.
We are starting to think so.
Teenagers generally get a bad rap from us cynical adults. I can truthfully say that all of our seniors are beautiful not only on the outside, but the inside as well. They are so optimistic about being a doctor, lawyer, nurse or even a mechanic.
When we photograph weddings, it makes our own marriage stronger. When we photograph seniors, it makes us look forward to tomorrow. Their attitude is contagious.
Hailey left us this summer for a job in Sioux Falls. Now that school has started again, we are happy to have her back in the studio for a few hours a week.
Caitie came with us yesterday to the All Occasions Bridal show at the Ramkota Exhibit Hall in SIoux Falls. You can see her in front of our booth and the BIG picture. Measuring 93 in x 70 in, the triple panel image is the largest we have ever printed.
Because of a death in our family, we had to scale back plans for our booth. Thanks to Val and Steve at Square One Productions, we were able to put together something at the last minute that still worked well.
Caitie’s last day was today. We wish her well in college.
Ok, I can tell the difference…Well, maybe I can’t. We spent yesterday editing and retouching the Melton twins’ images for their sales presentation last night.
We didn’t separate each girl’s images out, so they were all mixed together. Editing is not always easy, but this time is was very hard: Neither sister took a bad picture.
Bernard’s art print features a sunset that was a bit unusual: smoke from fires in Wyoming and Montana added a bit of haze to the sky that turned yellow as the sun set slowly into the western horizon.
This image comes from Drew and Jill’s reception slideshow of their first moments.
We usually pictures start 3 hours before the ceremony. Why so much time? We like things to be stress free. Nothing is worse than trying to jam 2 hours of pictures into 30 minutes. We allow you to enjoy your day and talk to your friends and family while we take the pictures. If someone is running late, we have enough cushion to work around the missing person and still get everything we want.
We start with your first moments together. The traditional ideal was that the groom would not see the bride until she walked down the aisle. In fantasy, this works perfectly. In reality, it’s not the perfect moment. When couples see each other for the first time all dressed up, there is a huge flood of emotion. There are things that they want to share with each other. They want to fill themselves with the moment. They want to kiss, hold hands, hug and say “I love you!” You aren’t able to do that in front of a church full of people. The opportunity to be alone together after the ceremony doesn’t come until the reception is over and the dance has ended.
The moment is gone forever. It can only be enjoyed once. We want to make sure that you remember your day as one filled with joy, family and friends, rather than a frantic sprint where everything is a blur.
On wedding days, most photographers would prefer overcast to bright sun except for the last hour or so when the clouds could go away.
There is nothing spectacular about the location of this image of Jill and Scott, but we still think it’s cool anyway. You can’t see the DSU housing complex hidden in the shadows or the gravel parking lot they are standing on.
The success of any image comes down to having a recipe and recognizing the time to use it. When you have only one chance to capture a moment, you do not have time to figure out how to use your camera. As photographers, we need to know what works and what doesn’t and when to tweak our recipe for better results.
Part of that recipe is in the post-processing of the image file. We want to enhance the the good stuff and minimize the bad. The closer you can get “in-camera”, the less time you spend on the computer perfecting each image.
Photoshop is not something learned overnight. After using it for over 12 years, I can tell you that there is always a new trick or technique to be learned. Anything that gives you more efficiency is a good thing. It might be a $1000 software program or the lastest, greatest computer hardware. When you enhance every image like we do, speed is everything. That additional speed can allow us faster turnaround times and most importantly, more time with our kids.
One of my pet peeves is people spending a great deal of money on portraits but not displaying any on the walls of their home. They may have Redlin or John Green art prints hanging proudly in frames, but the family pictures are stuck away in an upstairs hallway.
Your family is more important than anything else on Earth, yet so many of us will not show our family how much we love them by having a wall portrait in our living rooms. Photographers are no better than anyone else, but I resolved to show my family that they are important to me. We had our friends at Melby Photo in Brookings take our family picture almost 2 years ago. We had a big print made and Melbys helped us pick out an appropriate frame. All I had to do was put a nail in the living room wall and hang it.
BTW – A “big” print is NOT an 8×10. We had a 20×24 made and I think that next time it will be 30×40. The 20×24 is nice but it isn’t large enough to make the right statement.
I get enjoyment out of our family picture every time I enter the room. It reminds me about what’s really important in my life…and sometimes I need that.
Thank you to Melby Photo of Brookings for letting us use this image in our blog.
Here’s the closing image in last night’s reception slideshow.
We traveled to Montrose Saturday to photograph Jill And Drew’s wedding. We love to take pictures at St. Patricks for two reasons. It has wonderful stained-glass windows and best of all on a hot day like yesterday, air conditioning.
After the ceremony, we did a quick session at Falls Park and then went on to the Holiday Inn for the reception.
In addition to our featured senior, Taylor, we now have images of Marti, Chelsea and Breanne. We just added pictures of Breanne this morning. Galleries will be changing more frequently now.
When is the best time to get senior pictures done?
Almost anytime between now and the middle of October is pretty good for outdoor sessions. As it gets later in the year, the shorts and tank tops go away and are replaced with jeans and sweaters. We already have some fall color on the ground below one of our huge cottonwood trees.
Past mid-October, the percentage of great weather days goes down, but we can still do fun stuff outside. We just have to move a little quicker.
We’ve been blessed the last few weeks with light winds which makes taking pictures of girls with long hair much easier.
We are making family sessions more fun whenever we can.
After a more formal family session in the studio, we headed out with the Fiegen family to Lake Madison for a little tubing fun. Rachel & Dacey even got a chance to get into the act. We’d like to thank the Fiegen family for the great evening.
We think that their art poster turned out very cool.
Marti’s art poster was waiting for her tonight when she came with her parents tonight to view her images from her adventure session. Marti won her art poster at the Madison after-prom party.
Our present featured senior on our website is softball fanatic and Lincoln High senior Taylor. Right after her sales session, she was so excited and wanted to show her friends right away. Her favorites are on the website waiting for you to see.
We went to Russell’s farm to take his and Kindra’s engagement pictures.
We wandered the farmyard and ended up by the old silo, in front of the old hoghouse, the deck by the back door of the house and we even managed to find a little green grass.
