Saguaro Shadows Photography

Great Photo Education Resource

2010-08-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

One of Saguaro Shadows Photography photographic education resources has been the DVD subscription service, Photovision

Photovision provides a Quarterly DVD that visits with professional photographers at work in their studios and in the field. The Photovision DVD's provide marketing and photography education from some of the best photographers in the business for a very affordable price.

Check out Photovision, and use the promo code PVFAN to subscribe for only $39.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

2010-08-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography now offers Wild Sorbet Frames to all our clients.

Wild Sorbet is "the original Shabby Chic Frame Company", providing unique custom frames with a hand finished appearance.

We're excited to be working with Wild Sorbet, and provides this unique and exciting frames to our clients.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

New Baby Plans

2010-07-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography now offers two baby plans for our parents with new infants.

Our First Year package provides sessions at 6 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year. The 1 year appointment is an all-day appointment which includes indoor and outdoor sessions. The First Year plan includes a photo book at the end of the year with the best images from all the sessions.

Our new plan is our Unlimited package. This provides the family an opportunity to book a session at anytime during the year, and as many sessions as they need. This provides complete coverage for the year, and can include sessions for Halloween, Christmas, or even just a new outfit.

The Unlimited plan also includes an upgraded photo book at the end of the year from basic package.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

Busy with Babies!

2010-06-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography is getting busy with babies!

Wedding bookings have been a little slow this Spring, but our family portrait and baby portrait business is picking up!

This 4 week old was one of the best little clients we've had. He was very sleepy and cooperative. We cranked out 8 different poses in 20 minutes, which is unusually fast!

When schedule an infant session, we always the parents to schedule the session when the baby is less than 6 weeks old. The younger, the better. We also advise them to pick a time when the baby would get ready for a nap. It's best if the baby is sleepy for the session, not hungry and cranky! We are always flexible when the appointment will take place to allow the parents some flexibility.

For this session, we planned in advance to do the entire shoot in black and white against a black background. We shared that vision with the parents, and they really liked it, too.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

2010-05-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows recently entered a new, exciting agreement. After our success with shooting a Middle School Musical, we were contacted by our local Middle School PTA to photograph their events.

The agreement we've worked out with the school is we will cover all the events we are able to, free of charge. We then make the prints available for sale on our website. For any print sales, we return a portion of the sales to the school as a fund raiser. The school administration and the PTA are both excited about the arrangement. In return, we receive free publicity with the students and parents of the school.

We've already lined up several shoots for the school in the last weeks of the year. This past week, we covered a student talent show. Quite a fun event to cover!

As this year comes to a close, and starting next year, we're really hoping this arrangement will lead to greater name recognition in the community, and more clients for portraits and other engagements.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

Pushing it to the limits

2010-04-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography recently volunteered to provide photographic coverage for a Middle School musical production. Originally the school asked us to provide cast photos for them to sell at the event. We also saw the opportunity to shoot during the rehearsals and performances. We knew we could provide much better images than family members could take under such conditions.

The lighting conditions were stressful for any camera. I doubt anything less than a D3/D3s/D700 could handle the extreme lighting conditions. Our initial setup was Auto ISO, with a minimum Shutter speed of 1/200 and Aperture Priority set at f/4 or f/5.6 most of the time. The lighting situation pretty much made this so the ISO was the only parameter varying. ISO was ranging from 500 clear to 3200, 5000, and even Hi2 at times.

The extreme contrast between light and dark made matrix metering totally unusable. Even with exposure compensation dialed in, the situation was constantly changing, and the matrix meter was often fooled. It wanted to make those black backgrounds of the set neutral gray, and was thus over exposing the actors by 2 stops or more. Since this was a real time, fast moving show, manual exposure was not a good option. Switching to Spot meter with a -0.7 compensation, and always metering on someone's face, rendered the best, consistent exposure results.

It was a pleasure to work with such talented young people, and a good chance for us to donate our services.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

Don't forget your own family!

2010-04-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when shooting weddings and other families, we forget to capture memories of our own families! Saguaro Shadows Photography took the weekend off and used some of the time to capture some formal portraits of our own family:

One trick to making self-portraits easier is to not relay on the camera's self timer. This only gives you one take, and you need to keep getting up to reset the camera and take another shot.

Instead, I took advantage of the interval timer within Nikon's Capture Control Pro. By connecting the camera to my laptop and running Capture Control Pro, I was able to set the interval time to take any number of pictures I wanted with a set interval between them. I found that shooting 5 images 8 seconds apart worked well. Gave my family enough time to reset between shots, if they realized they blinked or were looking away.

We also used the time to capture just images of our daughters:

And an updated shot of just Margaret and I to use on our webpage and facebook site:

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") our company blog, and on Facebook

Double Wedding Weekend!

2010-04-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography had a double wedding weekend! This was shot over 3 days with 2 weddings, and 1 rehearsal that included a baby dedication:

Working two weddings in one weekend took a little advanced planning. We had to make sure we understood the timing and details for both weddings, and keep all the family names straight! We also had to plan out the equipment carefully. Before we left for the first event, we made sure we had a plan for recharging all of our batteries, and offloading images onto our computer storage system. It even made planning our off-hours correctly to make sure we were going to have enough time to rest between events, and eat so we could keep our energy up!

The wedding on Sunday was a particularly fun event to photograph. A lovely bride in a wonderful location with lots of photographic locations:

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto"), and on Facebook

Death Valley Trip

2010-03-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography took a break for client photography and headed out to Death Valley National Park for a weekend.

The weather was nice, and we had good conditions most of the weekend. I really enjoyed the Sand Dunes:

Death Valley can be a challenging place to shoot, but there are photographic opportunities throughout the park.

Next up for us is a double-wedding weekend!

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto"), and on Facebook

Senior Session #2

2010-03-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography had another good senior session. Weather kept us indoors, but we took some great studio shots.

We had the senior bring several outfits, and we change backgrounds several times. This provided as many options as possible for her to choose from.

Next up for us is a double-wedding weekend!

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto"), and on Facebook

Senior Session

2010-02-22T18:33:00.001-08:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography took some nice Senior portraits this past weekend:

We use a local park in Tucson for many of our outdoor portraits. It offers a variety of good locations, and it does not look like Tucson. In this shot, you'll actually notice water in the background!

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto"), and on Facebook

Model Shoot

2010-02-15T19:31:00.001-08:00

Saguaro Shadows has been busy in February with several portrait sessions, and lining up 4 weddings in the coming year.

Most recently, we helped a young model with some shots for her portfolio:

This shot was taken in a local park, mid morning. A Lastolite diffuser was used to soften the harshness of the morning sun.

Please visit us on Twitter, ("shadowsphoto") and on Facebook

More babies!

2010-02-13T06:17:00.001-08:00

Saguaro Shadows has been busy with babies! Drove up to Phoenix area last weekend for a baby shoot on location. Since our great is pretty portable, we were able to setup in the clients home and get some nice shots.

Coming up in the next couple weeks we have Senior portraits, and some engagement sessions!

Baby Shoot

2010-01-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography had a nice day yesterday with a 2 week old baby shoot.

Babies are best when they are under 6 weeks and you can get them to sleep. Sometimes that takes patience! Yesterday, we were patient enough to get some nice shots:

We also got started on Twitter this week ("@shadowsphoto") and we're on Facebook. So please become a fan of Saguaro Shadows!

Applying New Knowledge

2010-01-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

After attending the PPA ImagingUSA convention last week, we came away with many new ideas for improving the services of our company, Saguaro Shadows Photography. This week we started implementing some of those ideas

We started with preparing some customer thank you cards, that also include a client referral program. Clients who provide referrals that bring us new clients will receive a gift card applicable to a future order! We're excited to start passing this out to some of our recent clients.

We also created some new sample products, including a custom wedding guest book, and small, affordable family album. In the coming weeks, we'll also be adding custom, silver, photo jewelry to our products!

Playing around with Lensbaby

2010-01-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

Bought a Lensbaby at the ImagingUSA convention in Nashville last week. Just got a chance to play around. Should come in handy for weddings to take a few (but not a lot), unconventional images of items like flowers, the rings, etc.

Here is one of my first attempts, using the Lensbaby double-element lens at f/2.8. It's pretty sharp in the center area, and very nice out of focus in the backgroud:

Welcome to Saguaro Shadows Photography!

2010-01-15T19:38:00.000-08:00

Saguaro Shadows Photography is the husband and wife team of Richard and Margaret Paul, based in Tucson, Arizona. We specialize in Wedding and Family Portrait photography.

In the coming weeks, we'll be posting about our upcoming photo shoots and experiences. I hope you'll join us for this journey!

First Blog!

2010-01-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Saguaro Shadows Photography blog!

This is my first blog, but in coming weeks, I'll be posting more about my photography. In the meantime, if you're a reader of my blog, and a Facebook member, please become a fan of Saguaro Shadows!