Brooke & Josh

Across the river in Bullhead City, AZ was a combination of such a superb day, beautiful location and ultra sweet couple that led us to break a personal record on total frames shot at a single wedding.  Dalisa and I, both clicking away, wanting to take advantage of as much of the surroundings as possible.  I absolutely love to shoot in new places.  When a place is new to me, it’s like a playground with everything to be explored and it makes us even that more excited to shoot.

21 x 2.  April 23.  I am now 42 years old or twice as old as a 21 year old.  If anything, my birthday is a day that I use to count how long I have been a photographer.  I was 20 years old when I made the firm decision to leave behind the world of data processing to follow my passion for photography. good or bad.  Now 22 years later I am still chasing that passion and I am still so happy to shoot, it’s not a job or career for me, it’s just what I am. I love being an image maker.
With 22 down, it’s time to look forward to my 23rd year and beyond.  AltF, Inc. has enjoyed much success over the past few years and we hope to continue as we move forward.  The last couple of years we have been happy to add teaching to our photography with the past DWF conventions, the Antiworkshops with the Boutwells, and also with our upcoming summer tour VeryAltF.
some updates:
Coming soon will be a cool announcement about “something” we will have the privilege to be a part of for 2009.
The VeryAltf tour is shaping up very nicely and we are still trying to decide whether we will be able to fit in a stop for the southwest. Also starting May 1st, the early bird price for the VeryAltf workshop will end and there will be a small price increase after that.  If you want to get in before the price goes up, you will have until the end of this month.
Another announcement - coming soon is a personal project with family portraits that I have had in my head since January when I was inspired by David Williams. More on that later.
It has been our Anti-Bridals and conceptual images that have pretty much put us on the map so to speak, and although we actually don’t shoot them very often (maybe once a year) we will be planning several for our veryaltf tour.  Lets see how many ideas I can squeeze out over a 32 day period.
Speaking of our anti-bridals, ophelia in particular.  Shakespeare was also born (died to) on April 23rd.   Ironic since I’m fascinated with his characters, not just Ophelia but there are several more Shakespeare inspired anti-bridals that are still in my head and will eventually make their way out in front of my camera.   BTW.. a hidden fact, for 2 years now we have had a few of our anti-bridal images available as limited edition, signed and matted prints (x/250) there isn’t and hasn’t been a public link to them but they can be found here.
So stay tuned for some new stuff, cool announcements, and hopefully another kick ass 22 years of work.

Unruli

Katie & Mike’s wedding is coming up next month - so we warmed up with a little engagement session.

After a few new locations and a couple of good laughs, we got some great images and a sense for this happy couples personality.

Rosilyn Unplugged

Last month Ros turned 13.  a week or so ago with the crown graphic in one hand, tripod in the other, we set out for  a 3/4 mile walk out into the desert.  I had 10 Polaroids that i had saved for just this shoot.  i set up the tripod, mounted the camera, focused and composed the frame.  My right hand holding the first Polaroid sheet while my left goes to pick up the….. pick up the… pick up the film holder?  forgot it. hmmm.  pull the camera off the tripod, fold the tripod up.  Ros still in pose tilts her head just a little to the right, i took that as a question, “i left the Polaroid holder at home” i said.   the only reaction, just a little smile.  we walk back 3/4’s of mile.   I grab the holder.  We walk back out 3/4’s of mile to the same spot. i set up slowly and patiently. It was a nice quiet walk with a strong breeze. I’m glad i forgot the holder the first time around.

Dead Cows On Sale

Well these two should look familiar.  This is the 4th time i have photographed Lauren and Bryan, if you remember they were also our models at boneyard for the antiworkshop shoot.  Arden, Bryan’s 13 year old daughter, has that serious Christina Ricci look, watch out.

Laurel & Jared

Long Beach meets Seattle Meets Downtown Las Vegas.  The cool part of my career is that we get to meet fabulous couples, share drinks and get to know them all while doing what we do best.  I love to shoot engagement sessions, its the best kind of warm up for the big day..

Mac Pro

My slow conversion to Macs is now complete with the addition of a mac pro workstation. 8 cores 32gigs of ram (just kidding on the ram i’d have to auction off the kids to afford that. 2gigs currently) Before you congratulate me and welcome me to the “Cult of  Apple” let me just say that i’m not a mac convert but rather a windows defector. I am in exile while vista rules the windows world of MS. But i do have to say, that despite crashing this uncrashable machine the second day and watching as the mac pro, while working with adobe software, cries like a baby asking for much more ram, i do like the machine.   It’s pretty. Open it up and you’ll see the best designed Personal Computer ever made.  Where did all of the cords go.. wish my office could be like that.  So clean inside, so utopian, so proprietary, so THX-1138.  Think i’ll go watch that one again.  Who knows, i’m starting to like the machine, maybe shortly i’ll be droning how beautiful everything apple is soon.  Off to buy a black turtle neck and some blue jeans. 

Jen & Billy

Downtown Las Vegas. Yes i know downtown can be a little ruff around the edges, but it has so much damn character!  The following image will pretty much sum up what kind of time we had with this cool couple.