Reserving your Wedding Date

Dear Future Brides and Grooms,

Weekly, I get couples contacting me about wedding availability. Often, I am booked a year in advance, but sometimes I do have dates open. My calendar is published on my website, but I appreciate the contact.

If you are the first person to contact me for a date, you get first dibs. Meaning if there is another couple looking at the date, I will let you know and give your first chance to get me your signed contract and the non-refundable deposit. The first couple has a week before I give the second couple the opportunity to secure their date. This is my least favorite part of my job because I would honestly like to capture them all, but I simply cannot be two places at once.

To be honest, I do not really know of a better way of doing this process. However, I do know that I want to be fair to my potential clients and fair to myself. Scheduling is so important in this business. It is also a major challenge that takes many hours of emails and paper work. So if you are a couple who is interested in any photographer, not just me, get them your deposit and contract. I try to get back to my email inquires within a day and I appreciate it when people get back to me in the same manner.

Many thanks –

James

{Judah} 1 Year Photos

So I have had two indoor shoots over the past two weeks. The first, I took my studio lighting equipment and set up in a clients home. This worked great for doing a simple family shoot, however, did not work so great for capturing a 11 month old. This second shoot, I took a whole different approach. I decided to use an off camera 580ex II with remote trigger TTL metering shot through a white scrim/reflector. A technique I have been using to get a softer look with my portraits. My lovely wife was the one having to hold both the flash and the scrim. To do it correctly they both need to be on a tri-pod. I tried to get as much natural light into the shot as possible. I did a manual white balance metering, which I happen to like, but only when my flash goes off. The interesting dilemma with manual white balance is that you have to re-shoot your 18% grey card every time you change lighting conditions. I am still working with how to use a grey card in post processing, but to be honest I prefer my own coloring to the cameras. Secondly, you have to shoot with a very large aperture, 1.2+. In my case 1.4 or 1.8- My ISO was between 50-1000 however, I did shoot most of these shots at 400 which is my preference for indoor lighting. I did struggle with a lot of grain in some of these photos, but you won't be able to tell. My post editing involved really reducing the clarity and boosting the sharpness. I applied various lighting effects to really open up my images and give them that creamy magazine effect.

Well enough about me... Judah was such trouper in his coat - wan't such a fan of his hats. As you can tell, he is quite in love with his mother and his stuffed bear. Would love to hear what you all think? Special thanks to Mrs. W. for making for a wonderful afternoon. Thank you!

My Personal Favorite!
















Wisconsin Child Photographer
Indoor Family Photographer
http://www.jamesstokesphotography.com/family

What it means to be a photographer...

Being a photographer, student, father, husband, youth group leader, employee, and son defiantly comes with its struggle for balance. I am learning,the hard way I might add, how short life can really be. My job as a photographer is to capture roughly 1/200th of a second of life. All the photographs you take in your life won't add up to a minute of existence and yet we [photographers] spend their whole lives cataloging these moments. So why do we do it? Often photographers will say it is their passion, but for me it is much more than that. It is a combination of artistic instinct, having had a camera in my hand from age 6 on, and the simple love for photographs. I must admit that I am a bit of tech-geek, and love all of the equipment that goes a long with it. I use to spend hours after school in the photo lab in high school, developing my final projects for Film. Later, I learned how to use Photoshop 7 and it became second nature to me. I found it amazing how you could manipulate reality and create a photograph that looks like how envisioned it. The world I see through the lens of my camera is always changing. I am always looking for ways to improve my art and convey a certain message in my photographs.

But possible the biggest thing that has really sculpted me as a photographer was my 35mm Pentax Program Plus. I feel in love with aperture, depth of field, ISO, and shutter speed. It has taken a while to reach the amount of Digital SLR equipment I need to feel comfortable shooting professionally. I currently have lens that span from 16-200mm. I so excited to begin shooting with what I like to call my 'story-telling lens' the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Autofocus Lens. Also, I recently got a new speedlight 580ExII and battery grip for my Canon 5d Mark II. This however, will add a great deal of weight to my camera load, so I have been working to insure I can withstand the 12 hour days! I am starting to get cabin fever and look forward shoot tomorrow.

I hope to have more of these posts as well in the new year. More of me just talking about what I do, why I do it, and what i use.

Children: Lesson in {Art}

There is a lot of time and effort that goes into editing one photograph. With the age of digital, photographers are given greater creative elasticity with their images. Some view this as the corruption of the digital era; personally I can appreciate both film and digital as being almost independent of one another. I must say that I miss how it felt to get a roll of film developed, but I don't miss opening that package of prints are realizing they were all blank. There is something to be said for the amount of stress that goes into photographing a subject. Often photographers are the mercy of the elements, we must adapt with what were are given and the limited amount of equipment we are able to carry on our back, or in my lucky case, my wife's back.


This photo is a picture of my cousin's son, who I had the pleasure of photographing on location in Emery County Utah this past July. There just so happened to have been no cloud clover that day, so it was very bright out that day. We improvised by using natural shade and a white scrim. This was naturally shot without a flash. As you can tell from the original jpg. the colors were very saturated. I desaturated the RAW file and opened up the shadows. The final two images were a combination of some face and eye touch ups with an overall sharpening action, subtle vignette, and a vintage coloring pallet.

I am going to blog more posts of this nature in the new year describing my workflow and editing process. Currently, I use overlays to add texture to my vintage images.

f/ 6.3 1/160 sec. natural light w/scrim diffusion ISO 400 +.3 exposure. 53 mm Focal Length.

Children {Art}

A photo does not have to be in perfect focus for it to be beautiful! Canon 5d Mark II

EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Lens