Holiday Photo Booth

This year, West of Main Photography was invited back to photograph a local law firm’s holiday party for a second year. We love repeat customers, so we set up the photobooth and captured the good times! This was a great opportunity for us to see how we’ve grown over the past year. Not only do the photos look better than last year, the event was a lot more casual for us because we’re more laid back in our photographic workflow. As we grow as photographers, it’s nice to be able to compare our current work to that from our recent past.

If you were at the party, check out the gallery and feel free to download any photos you like. If you want a larger file, for print, email us at info@westofmainphotography.com and we’ll send it to you.

Maternity / family session

Our family is changing and growing fast. Avery gets bigger and smarter every day, and her new litte brother is making his official debut very soon! As our elder brother and sister-in-law, Jordan and Jenny have taught us so much about marriage and starting a family, without even trying. They’re good at working together and make it look easy, even when it’s not. We are  fortunate to have them as a role model couple that shares so many of our own interests that we can watch and learn from. Their own family unit is blossoming beautifully, and it’s a great pleasure to be a part of it.

While learning from Jordan and Jenny and moving through our everyday business as a married couple with two dog-ters, we’ve come to see that family is so much in life.  And “family” doesn’t just apply to those who share your DNA (or your species, for that matter). It’s funny how your outlook on family changes as you grow up; as a kid and teenager your family tends to overwhelm until you’ve settled into adulthood, and then at some point a thirst for closeness and family sets in. It’s human. It’s wonderful. It’s… natural.

Capturing the beauty of family is important to us, and not just our own family, but other families’ togetherness that is often so fun to witness.

Photographing families is not always easy. There are multiple, moving elements and you’ve got to capture the height of each moment as it’s experienced in unison. It’s not like shooting a still that you can move around and take hours until the shot is perfect. You have to be spot-on with camera settings, timing, and being in the moment. Photographic success during a family session is obvious; it can’t be faked or edited over. That’s why there’s so much pressure in the beginning, and so much satisfaction later. Thanks for reading!

DIY

Lately we’ve been, honestly, lazy about maintaining our site and blogging about what we’re doing and shooting. It’s okay, because we still have a lot going on and are still growing up as photographers, homeowners, married people, travellers, farmers, and more (!). We’ve essentially come to the conclusion that we’re still too enthusiastic about a large number of our interests to devote all of our time to any one of them yet.

We want to promise ourselves and you that we’ll do a better job of communicating what we’re doing, since that’s what a blog is really all about. So here’s the first step — this is a post to play catch-up and show some of the highlights of what we’ve been up to from the last post up until right now.

To sum it all up, we’ve been the picture of DIY lately, meaning we’ve been figuring out lots of things as we go along and doing it all ourselves. Together. Because, as they say, two heads are better than one. And so are two lenses, two rakes, two suitcases, two bowls of  ice cream… you get the point.

It seems like there’s a huge wave of weddings moving along right now, doesn’t it? We’re thrilled to see so many of our friends in love and ready to spend their entire lives together. One of us gets all weepy when it comes to this stuff; we won’t tell you who. So we’re excitedly awaiting the first wedding we’re contracted to shoot for friends and fellow Supper Clubbers, Sam and Mike. That’s not until October. In the mean time, we’ll be at a few weddings as attendants, paying closer attention than ever to everything that’s going on and figuring out how to capture it best with our cameras.

That’s where we stand on the photography business, but we’re still shooting so much more than just what people are asking us to. Actually, we’re shooting a ton for ourselves to document the progress of our home projects, mainly a blooming vegetable garden and bathroom renovation that started small and blew up into what would fill an entire episode of This Old House.

Our dedication to DIY, or doing it ourselves, comes from a few places. First, we’re geeky and like to know how things work. The world is awesome, and we want to know what makes it go ’round. Second, we support small businesses, and may even become a real one ourselves some day. You can’t be a small business if you don’t know how to do it all yourself, or at least be comfortable with trying. And third, there’s a deep satisfaction that comes with doing all of your own work; it’s hard to explain, but if you’ve felt this then you know what we’re talking about. We don’t want to just do this-n-that, we also want to feel good about it (and want you to feel good about it, too). Doing your own work tends to produce a higher quality product, too, because you care about the end result.  

 

 

 

Finally, we want to give you a heads-up. We’re not just cleaning house in our literal house — our site will be undergoing some major changes soon, so if you check back and everything looks different, don’t fret! The changes we make should make this area more useful to you and us. Let’s toast to change, eh?

Winter Fest 2010

Here at West of Main Photography, one of our passions is adventure, especially adventure in the great outdoors. Although inspiring, the outside world isn’t just something that inspires us to take beautiful photos. We got to know each other (and fell in love) in college throughout a series of hiking and backpacking trips, so romping around in the mountains is really a special treat for us when we get a chance. This most recent trip was extra special for a number of reasons, among those the foot of untreaden snow on the trail, and our two dog-children walking the entire 20 miles with us. As Georgia natives, we’re pretty unfamiliar with snow, so the thick white blanket over the mountains never got old (except when it got in our shoes and made our socks soggy).

While summer camping trips are easier, we really appreciate the challenges associated with cold weather camping. The most obvious hurdle is the cold. The mercury dropped into the low teens during the nights on this trip, so we had to be prepared for the possibly life-ending freeze. As a hard-core gear junkie, Robby made sure that both of us had enough clothing, sleeping gear, and fire starters to stay warm. As you can see in the photo above, Christy is well bundled while holding our Jack Russell Winnie in her dog blanket. Below, is our campfire on the first night. Although the area was covered with as much as 12 inches of snow in places, we lucked out and found a large tree fall that had many dry branches above the snow blanket.

As mentioned above, we hiked with our two dogs: Charlie, the black mix (she’s a mutt) and Winnie, the Jack Russell. They both love being outside as much as we do and were obviously in their element out on the Appalachain Trail. We were worried that the snow might be too much for them, but both dogs played in the snow with the vigor and enthusiasm of Alaskan Huskies. Below are several images of our pups (children) from this trip.

As you can see in these images, Winnie was chest deep in the snow at times. This might seem like it would bother her, but she just wouldn’t stay out of the snow.  At times, we weren’t sure if we had a Jack Russell or an antelope, as she was bounding through the snow at incredible speed, hopping after some intruder that was of course unknown to us. In the following few photos, you can see our companions on this trip, Norm and Andrea. Norm is a good friend who we’re happy to see has rekindled his love of the outdoors. In fact, he already has seven hundred future trips planned!

The remaining photos in this blog are what we’d label as travel or nature photography. They’re the photos we’re planning to print and hang on our walls at home. If you are particularly moved by any of them and would like to purchase a high quality print or the high-res digital file, please contact us at info@westofmainphotography.com. Or, if you’re that guy, you can right click and steal the low-res watermarked version that WordPress does a poor job of protecting (but we don’t like that guy). The two panoramas are much larger than they appear on this page. They can be printed at 10″x30″ and matted and framed for an impressive wall piece.

Thanks for checking out West of Main Photography. We look forward to a great 2011 filled with family, friends, and fantastic photography.