Sunday evening I drove up to the University of Washington campus for a wonderful photo shoot with Kyle and Holly. Right out of the gate two things became really obvious. First…they were a little nervous. Second…they were so so fun. Their smiles and laughter came so easily. They were both warm and personable. And lets be honest: how eager are most of us to subject ourselves to two hours of shooting. About 3 minuets into the shoot we were having such a good time. They looked great and I got amazing images. I will post more of these in the future, but I wanted to put up a sample shot.
Kyle and Holly – thanks so much for making the evening so fun! Cheers to you two!
I had a fantastic time today with a very adventurous couple. As usual, once I have had a chance to really work through these I will post more, but I had to put this shot up now!!! Matt and Kelly, it was so great to spend the evening with you guys. Thanks for braving the rain! Congrats.
I just finished a fantastic day!!! This morning, after a failed attempt yesterday, we decided to take Ainsley to the beach. Those of you in the Pacific Northwest will know how nice a day we had, but for all of you out of state, today was perfect Seattle weather. It was around 65-ish, tiny breeze on the water, big blue sky and amazing cloud formations. After the beach we came home, and I drove up north the Edmonds for a shoot with Jesse and Lauren. We had such a good time. We tooled around the beach for a while, which was great fun. Then we rode the ferry to Kingston. And yes…we got ice cream over there. I have so many shots I want to share here, but I have other work that needs to come first. You’ll have to content yourself with this shot until later. Thanks Jesse and Lauren!
Something that I have thought about posting here for a while is a small piece about the albums that I make for wedding and engagement clients.
First of all, let me flesh out the difference between these and photo-books. A photo-book is essentially a thinner coffee table style book. These are a nice feature to a wedding package, but they are not my favorite to make. In fact, I’ve stopped offering them because I would rather spend the time working on designing albums. An album (at least the ones I offer) is thicker, uses quality paper, and is more of a finished product. These are keepsakes that you bring out and look through on your anniversary. These are the books you show your kids when they start asking questions about what your lives were like before they were around. I think these are the perfect compliment to wedding done in digital, because while you have the images on disk, many people leave off printing the images for when they have some spare time. Sarah and I never got around to doing that with ours, and it’ll be 7 year in May. Having something right out of the gate to hold in your hand is such a nice perk.
Unlike loose prints, the album tells a story. I try to design these with that purpose in mind. The albums that I use are made from “spreads” where I design the layout of the two pages. Unlike a traditional book with a gap or page break in the center, these are all one image, and only have a slight crease in the middle. This allows me to show the images at various sizes and to use more or less of the total page width to best fit the images for display. When I make the pages, I am starting fresh on each page, which allows me to really think about how to best show off the images on that page; because I don’t work off a template I am free to design specifically for the images at hand. One other element that I particularly like about the books that I am offering is the paper, which is watercolor. I remember when I first heard of fine art photographers printing on watercolor and thinking to myself how lame that sounded. It seemed like an attempt to merely do what was “artsy.” Don’t get me started on that. When I began using these books, I took a chance on the art watercolor, just to see how I liked it. Honestly, I was blown away. A lot of my images have a vintage-muted color look to them and the paper seems to perfectly work with that editing style. At the last wedding show I was at people kept commenting on how much they loved the albums, and one of the key factors was because the pages weren’t the typical high gloss material. Love it!! (several new books will be displayed at the Tacoma wedding show this weekend, for anyone who wants to see one in person)
Speaking of love, I have a confession…I love making these things. I know a lot of photographers hate doing these, not because of a lack of creativity, but because of the time drain. Yeah, they take some time. But…SO. WORTH. IT. Seriously, when I get a book back from the printer I am always a bit giddy (did I just type that out?), and can’t wait to share it. Having something beautiful and at a size worthy of display, right there in your hand is thrilling. Its much like the first time you print something bigger than 11×14. I remember the first time I printed an image at 16×24. I think my face melted off. It was like that the first time I got a book back. Anyway…enough gushing over the books. I hope you found this little window into my thinking on the albums to be helpful.
Cheers
Marc and Zanna are such a fun couple to hang out with, and really, even though I just spent two hours with them “working,” it was such a pleasant time, that it was easy to forget that this is what I do for a living. These two are so chill and easy going that it was almost too easy to work with them. I’d say, “let’s go check out that spot,” and they’d say, “sure, that looks cool.” Then I would say, “let’s go climb up that building and see what we can find, ” and they were like, “cool, that would rock!” (no…we didn’t climb any buildings…though we really wanted to!)
Really they were such a kick in the pants. We spent a lot of time laughing, and they were fantastic sports about posing and running around. In fact, we walked through parts of Tacoma that I had never been in search of some cool cobblestone roadways at their suggestion. Now, first off, there are some really cool old messed up buildings in Tacoma. Second off, when you see the same car drive by several times in the middle of the day in a rather empty part of town you begin to wonder if they are looking to sell you something. Definitely not where you want to be at night, but some really cool places to shoot on a warm sunny Sunday! This is a two part post because I have too many images I’d like to share from the day to do it in just one. 
What a crazy year this has been, no? I know for myself, and for Joshua Mahar Photography, it has been a wild time. One of those wild times was spending a few hours shooting with David and Linnea on their engagement session. We met down in the greater point defiance area down on the water. It was one of our random nice days where we had some sunshine and some cool clouds later in the evening. We had met only about two weeks before for the first time, and suddenly here we were out shooting! Talk about a quick turn around. They were enthusiastic in there love for each other, something that is so obvious in the images. This was one of those shoots that I couldn’t help smiling as I worked through the images. I still drop into a grin as I look over these and remember how much fun we had. Thanks so much you two for making the day so fun!
This is my all time favorite shot from their session.
This is a shot right from the start, and with no prompting at all they were off, laughing and teasing and just being in love.
This is one of my favorites from the series: so fun.
What you need to know about this image is that they made these outfits for the other. Perfect for an engagement shoot.
They brought a box of props. Seriously…we had a good time
Meet Nate and Jamie. We went out shooting in Tacoma a few days back: it was cold and rainy…until right before we started shooting. Then it was beautiful, though still really really cold. We stopped in for coffee about halfway through just to warm up. Nate and Jamie are such fun and humorous people. Nate especially likes to say most anything to see if you will buy it. The one thing that was so neat with these two is how little I needed to do to coax them to interact. No sooner had I said, “lets get started,” then they were posing and smiling and hugging etc all on their own accord. They were so great to work with. I will have more of their pictures up soon!
Cheers
