Shelley Westover

Word of mouth advertising is a lovely thing.

A previous client recommended Sam’s baby portrait prowess to some friends and, due to Sam’s recent bought of the plague, I had the pleasure of doing the shoot. This is how I met Luke.

Luke just turned 1 year old, loves to stick out his tongue, and decided to show off for the camera with a new trick — standing on his head.

To see more pictures of Luke and his family, check out his gallery on our website.

Shelley and I were invited by our good friends Henry and Arlene Winkleman (of the Boston Camera Club) to see a Red Sox game from really great seats!  We took them up on it, of course, and went to the game- they were playing the Kansas City Royals.  Unfortunately, Henry and Arlene couldn’t make it themselves, but we had a great time anyway.  The seats were at the back of a field box, about 60 feet away from home plate, along the first base line.  Sweeeet!  Of course we brought our cameras.

Great shot, huh?  I thought of a few names for this blog.  ”Are you kidding me?”  ”Even great seats are not without complications” and “Seriously?” came to mind.

The conditions were really perfect (almost).  The lighting was strong and even, we were close to the players, there were no (fixed) obstructions to our view.  And I did get a lot of photos I’m happy with, I was just also foiled by vendors, batters on deck, and enthusiastic fans.  Lots of fly balls came whizzing over our heads, which certainly keeps you on your toes.  We watched a hapless videographer get nailed by a fly that knocked his headset off.  Ouch!  And did you know that there are beer vendors in the field boxes?  Not that we partook, but still pretty cool. Well, it would be better if they were all shorter, so they would stop getting in my shot, but other than that, pretty cool.  We had a great time, though, and the Sox won!  Whoohooo!

See more of our photos here

Polo Photography

Quite some time ago, on the way to a wedding, Shelley and I drove by the Myopia Polo Club in South Hamilton, MA.  It’s the oldest polo club in the country.  This last weekend, we finally made the trip back up there to take some pictures.  It was definitely a learning experience, and we’ll have to go back to test out some other techniques, but I think I got some interesting shots.

The challenges were the speed of the horses, requiring rapid refocusing and a faster shutter speed than I would have thought.  The background was also a problem.  If the players were across from you, there were cars in the background.  If they were down at the end, with trees in the background, they were very far away.  I’m wondering how it would be with a tripod, though with the speed of movement, that might slow me down too much.  Anyway, I am looking forward to returning to try some more.

The rest of my photos are here.

Yesterday I shared a sneak peek from a family photo shoot with Trevor.

As promised, I have more photos of this little cutie to share:

Trevor is turning 9 months old this Friday and he is not at all shy (sometimes a little distracted – but not shy). Click here to see more photos of Trevor’s family.

Thank you Pamela, Tom, and Trevor – it was so much fun working with you.

I was lucky enough to have a photo date with this handsome little man this morning.

More to come soon!

I do not speak a word of German… well, I guess that isn’t entirely true. I know that ‘nein’ means ‘no’ and I did listen to Rammstein’s Du Hast in high school so I know a few (very few!) German words. I definitely don’t know enough to be able to edit a video in German… except, that isn’t true either.

Last year, I got the opportunity to help a colleague film a group of German medical students that were creating a video for their program’s final project presentation. I manned a camera, they spoke German and directed themselves (I may have made a few ‘stand here’ comments), and then a few weeks later I got to see the final edited project. You can check it out on their program’s website.

This year, a new group of German medical students were looking to create a similar video. Only this time, they also requested that the video also be edited. I was asked to work on the project again and, since I wasn’t available for one of the days of shooting, I was tasked to do the majority of editing.

Did I mention that the video is in German?

With the help of both German and English versions of the script and a late-night meeting with a few of the doctors-to-be to choose the good takes (they provided German beer – it was a good evening!), I was able to piece together what I think (and what they tell me) is a pretty good video.

So take a look – don’t worry, it has english subtitles.

The group invited me to attend their final presentation and a reception to follow. Unfortunately, it was on my way to the presentation when I broke my toe and couldn’t make it. I’m so sorry to have missed it and am happy to hear that the video was well received. I want to thank my colleague, Marlon, and our fantastic clients, Katharina, Helen, Daniel, Steffen, Ludwig, and Stefan, for including me in such a cool project!

Our friend Mariel asked us to photograph a fundraising gala for the Bethany Hill School.  This took place at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Wellesley on May 3, 2012.  We had a great time shooting the event, and found the attendees very tolerant of the two of us always taking their pictures.  We got a nice mix of posed, candid, and artistic photos.

Check out all of our photos from the evening at our website.

Thank you, Mariel, for inviting us to help out- we got some great experience out of it, and are looking forward to doing more events like it!

We recently had the pleasure of photographing a surprise wedding reception and evening of dancing on the Charles River.

By far, the biggest challenge was the extreme changes in light conditions throughout the night. Direct sunlight, sunset and shadows, darkness with flood lights – it seemed like three entirely different photo shoots wrapped into one.

Challenging as it was, I think that we came up with some beautiful shots of the happy couple and the dancers. Check out all of our photos from the evening at our website.

Thank you Anna, Kevin (surprise!), and Joe for inviting us to take part in such a fun event!