We’re back!  And I’m going through the photos from the trip now, so you’ll see them show up over the next few weeks…

First off, I want to introduce you to Arlo!  His parents are good friends of ours, but this is our first time meeting this young man.  Seriously, we can’t handle the adorableness.

Liz and I are on the verge of leaving Chicago (NEXT WEEK!), but we still managed to squeeze in some last rounds of portraits.

Jeremy and Julie are an awesome couple who won a photoshoot with us last winter, as part of an auction to raise money for a local neighborhood missionary I work with.  We haven’t been able to find time to shoot all year, until we realized this was our last chance!

It deserves to be mentioned that Liz shot the majority of the portraits.  Liz did some amazing work with the digital camera, while I went very slowly and shot a few rolls with the medium format Yashica and barely touched the DSLR.  As you look below, the square images are from the Yashica, rectangle from the digital.

Enjoy… I’m going to bed so I can get up and pack up my house in the morning!

Were you getting worried that this site was becoming all talk and no pictures?

Every summer, our church hosts a 3-week-long Vacation Bible school program for elementary-aged kids in the neighborhood.  We always bring in outside groups on service trips to help with the 40 or so campers who are part of our program, so we are used to having volunteers come from far, far away.

Rwanda, however, easily beats them all.

Joshua and his sister Sandrine just graduated high school, and decided to come visit Chicago for three weeks to help out with our VBS program.  They have connections with a family in our church, learned about the program, and thought this would be a nice way to spend their summer.  That makes them seem a little crazy, but they are brilliant, outgoing people who are excellent with kids.  It was a giant blessing to have them help out.

You’ll notice here that Joshua also has another skill – modeling.  He doesn’t do it professionally, but I don’t know why not.  He sure enjoys playing for the camera!

If we’re lucky I’ll have some portraits of Sandrine for you as well, when they come back to the States for college.  Cross your fingers, it would be worth the wait.

For now – meet Joshua.

Hey there! Looking back through my previous posts, I’ve come to realize I don’t do NEARLY a good enough job updating you all on recent shoots… sorry!

Last fall, we had our first real Trash the Dress session, with volunteer models Jess and Andrew (see their wedding photos here). It was a blast, and they were up for just about anything (including wading in a lovely disgusting pool of slimy water). I never managed to get the images post here, but but you check out the full gallery on Facebook. Remember, my Facebook page is almost always likely to be updated quicker, and more frequently, than the blog…

During the shoot, Liz spent some time playing around with our fun medium format Holga and the flashes. They came out looking great, but half of the film took forever to process because Miller’s, where I was getting my film developed, had stopped processing true black and white film. Grr…

All that to say, Liz took some sweet black and white shots that day, and I want to show them off! And, of course, check out the rest of them here.

Every now and then, it’s good to forget about jobs and just shoot for fun. I get to do that when I go on trips and vacations. Another way I do that is to find a model, a sweet place to shoot nearby, and come up with something awesome together. That’s what happened a couple weeks ago with Solace, and I can say I’m really happy with the results. So, enjoy! You can also visit my Flickr or Facebook page to see more.

Rivers is my next door neighbor. His parents are good friends of mine. He is named after the leader singer for Weezer. He is also now 18 months old. Sounds like the perfect time for some portraits!

It’s always great doing a laid-back shoot with people you know (and like). We took Rivers to the park, and basically let him run around and do his thing while my wife and I photographed it. It works SO much better than trying to set them up in a studio for a formal portrait – especially with a kid that young. At the park, he’s having fun, enjoying himself, hanging out with his parents, and having a grand ole time. Even better, we had fun, too!

Also, I need to give props where they are due. The first 7 photos were taken by my wife, who is a fine photographer in her own right. While she was rocking out our normal camera, I was using a Nikon EM, a sweet film camera from 1979. Using film is a great way to get the creative juices flowing, and those photos turned out well, too! The last 3 here were on the film camera. This is a toy I’ll have to play with more…

So, on Saturday we were supposed to have a Trash the Dress session at a forest preserve north of Chicago. Three other photographers and I were up early, doing some scouting, getting our gear ready, and then headed to the restaurant where we were supposed to meet our model. Then we waited for her.

And waited.

And waited… for about an hour and a half.

Turns out that while driving down from Wisconsin, she got into an accident with an SUV, spent the day in the ER, and lost her phone in the process. Yes, she’s fine, thank God.

However, we didn’t know about any of this until she was finally able to get a hold of me that evening.

So, what do 4 photographers do with no model? Improvise! We headed back to the forest preserve, got out our gear, and just took turns modeling for each other. All things considered, I think we got some fun shots. Here are a few of mine:

A few weeks ago we grabbed some Josh and Cindy, some good friends of ours, and took them down to Lincoln Park for a couple hours of portraits. When Josh got a new job and they had to leave our church, we offered them this chance to get pictures of them looking cute and in love. Thankfully for me, they are so in love that it’s pretty easy to get pictures like that for them. Anyway, enjoy!

And, just a heads-up, I’m shooting my first-ever Trash the Dress shoot this weekend… keep watching for them to show up!

Back in May, just Wheaton College (my alma mater) was gearing up for finals week and summer, my wife and I had a almost-graduated friend in for dinner and some portraits. Unfortunately, this summer has been so busy with church work and some weddings that it wasn’t until these past couple of weeks that I had a chance to process her images. These photos was just for fun, and they were! Thanks to my extremely patient model, too.