I’m in Vegas baby! Time to brush up my skills and hopefully learn lots of new things to help me be a better photographer. There is something to be said about becoming better at your craft. If you are washing dishes or are a CEO, you can always be better, brush up, and focus on your craft to enhance what you do. I am excited for what this week has to offer and what I can learn from it.

I am staying at the MGM Grand hotel thanks to WPPI who picked my video to win for their video contest. Went to a Plus class today with the great Kevin Kubota and was soaking in his great Hawaiian wisdom. If I get as many ideas and things to implement as I did today, my head will, undoubtedly, explode. Here’s to my head going Boom!

We shot a few photos with the class today and tomorrow we are going to work on them, but I thought I would post a few for you to see.

I was in Minneapolis this weekend and my sisters fiance was in from North Carolina.  They are getting married later this year and we went out to take a few photos while I was up there.  I will be shooting their wedding and it should be crazylotsoffun.

This was the first time I met Alex and… well… I am glad that I approve. He is a lil crazy and different, but who am I to speak? I am a lot crazy and different. These two fit well together and that makes me a happy brother. Here are just a few images that I shot.

Tom is one of the guys in the band and I had the pleasure of shooting his wedding as well as the wedding of his wifes sister… I kinda feel like a second cousin now. He gave me a call, we set up a time to shoot, and then we were off. I have quite a few more shots that I love, but here are two of my favorites.

I went to college with both of these folks and had a great time creating music with them. Marquel can pretty much sing any part in a choir and play anything on drums, keys, and probably lots of other instruments and Nic would bring down the house with her singing. Creating music is amazing, but creating amazing music is even better, which made it quite appropriate that they got married at Orchestra Hall.

I arrived in Minneapolis with my friend Paul Sparks to shoot their wedding and was super excited. The wedding was outside and in the morning it looked like the weather was not going to cooperate with us. Gladly, a few hours passed and the clouds moved along, taking their raindrops with them. The weather, other than being crazy windy, was perfect. Great light and a lovely location at Orchestra Hall made for some fantastic photos.

Marquell is from Milwaukee and Nicolene is from Jamacia, but they met and now live in Minneapolis. It was great seeing their family come together and have a great time at the wedding. Sooo… enough of me babbling… here are the photos:

So… I don’t normally make videos.  I have been experimenting a bit with it since I got the Canon 5d MK II, but I still have a lot to learn. Two days ago (Feb 4th) I stumbled upon a contest for the photography conference WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) and thought I would enter.

Jake and I just finished meeting with a soon to be bride and groom and were brainstorming all sorts of nonsense in the car ride home.  We finally were set on making a rap video.  Since neither of us have actually been to WPPI, it was hard thinking of reasons why we want to go back or be there… I spit off a few lyrics and we laughed pretty hard (Use to make crappy freestyle videos in college… long story).

I got home and was pumped. We were gonna get grillz, flava flave clocks, and bikes (Impalas are a lil out of my budget).  I looked at the site for the details and say this: “ends on February 5, 2010″

Holy crap!!! It is Feb 4th and this thing is due tomorrow! Screw all that biz… I gotta get to work on this. No grillz, no girls, and no bikes. That night I got to work on the lyrics.  Started writing and workin it out.  Also, looked online for a beat, since I didn’t really have a program or time to make one.  Found a beat from someplace like “freebeats.com” and decided to work with it. Polled twitter for a free music program and found Audacity, which worked for what I needed.  Finished up verse two then hit the sack… had a long day ahead of me.

Got up early in the morning and started to record the tracks. I don’t own a mic, so I had to record into my iPhone, email it to myself, put it into iTunes, converted it into an mp3, then put it into Audacity. Had to do it a lil ghetto because, well… that’s where I’m from. We just make things work.

From there my friend @kumays dropped by and helped me film for a bit.  He didn’t have a whole lot of time, but we shot for about an hour and got almost everything that we needed. Next I put the files on my comp, sorted through a whole lot of crap where I forgot the lyrics and spliced it all together.  I really don’t do video, so this was the most frustrating part.  Converting files, sorting through clips, trying to figure out how to put words on it… ugh. I need a teacher. I put everything together in a really old version of Vegas Movie Studio (kinda ironic), which was annoying.  It was super hard to do things that should be really easy. I think. I BS’ed my way through the program and finally got it uploaded to Youtube and to the contest page.

It was a lot of fun and lots of work, but the headache today was worth it. (Until they extended the contest until Feb 12th) Hopefully I will win, but if not, it was fun to put something out that was creative and different.

If you would like to be a model for me, please shoot me an email at simon (at) valophotography.com and I will put you into my model database.  I always give photos retouched photos to the people who model for me in exchange for their time.  I am also always looking for great locations to use: Office Buildings, Spa’s, Gyms, Coffee Shops, etc. so if you know of any of those, please let me know as well.  So until then, keep smiling with your eyes.

We met up at a place called Wolskie’s, which, if your from Milwaukee, you have probably seen their bumper stickers around town. From there we walked around Brady Street taking photos of places and people and ended at a place called the Nomad. There were lots of great photos taken and conversations had. If you shoot, want to shoot, or have fingers and a camera, you should come out to the next photo walk. To get more info, join flickr and then join the Cream City: Milwaukee group.

The setting: The Orpheum

The Orpheum was a really cool venue. Really dark… but really cool.  Lots of texture and lots of space. Those always make for fun photos.  Jake and I went up to Madison a few hours early from Milwaukee to shoot an engagement session for Nick and Dana who are getting married at the same place next year.  After the shoot we got some lunch then it was time to get our wedding shoes on. (I don’t really have wedding shoes, although I did wear pink and white chucks when shooting my cousins wedding)

There were lots of cool touches to the wedding that made it very personal and fun to shoot.  Sarah had her mother and grandmothers dress on display as well as their stories for people to check out.  The bouquets were made out of different herbs and smelled amazing.  After they said I Do and kissed, Sarah’s dad busted out a guitar and Kevin serenaded her on the steps of the stage.  It was a very warm and fun wedding to shoot even though it was chilly outside.  I am so glad that we got a chance to be a part of these two Hawks special day.

Shawn and Cassie’s wedding had all of their awesomeness infused into one giant day which has now turned into one giant blog post.  I loved everything from the Chuck Taylors that the grooms men wore to the Crazy Booth that is going to be tough to top in 2010.

The wedding was at the Eisner Museum in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward, which has tons of really great places to take photos.  After the ceremony we went running around the Third Ward taking tons of photos, tripping on things, and dropping bridesmaids. (Wasn’t as fatal as it sounds)  From there, the Ceremony rocked and the Crazy Booth was brought.  By the end of the night I was exhausted, but had such a fun time shooting and capturing an amazing party for two amazing people.  Congrats Shawn and Cassie.

(now on to the photos which is why you are looking at the blog anyways)

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