Wanamaker Photography

I’m a sucker for puppies. That’s how I wound up with two dogs of my own, Dixie and Daisy!

Recently, my sister’s dog had 10 puppies and I had the privledge of watching their personalities grow during the first couple of weeks of their lives. My sister kept one of the puppies and named him Gunner. He was very calm during the shoot and even took a nap while he was here. Here are some really cute photos of him playing …

These images were captured with our Canon EOS 20D, a 28-105mm lens and our Alien Bee’s lighting system.

This past week, Loretta photographed Baby Brady for the start of his First Year Package. During the session, Mikayla (his older sister) became Loretta’s new assistant. She loved holding one of our little white reflectors while Loretta grabbed some absolutely adorable images of Brady.

However, the moment Loretta took out our blue and purple mats, Mikayla decided that she wanted to switch jobs and become a model instead!

Using the Mark III, the image was captured at F5.6 at 1/125 with ISO 160. She had one Alien Bees 800 light with a large soft box set off to the right of our assistant/model at 1/8 power.

My first post…how exciting!! Chris keeps me so busy that I don’t have time to blog really. So now he made me stop what I was doing to post my first blog. Today was my exciting day with Baby Brady. I took the information I learned at Jack Reznicki’s lighting and digital photography training camp yesterday in Philadelphia and applied it today. It is amazing how easy it is to compose an image just by utilizing your surroundings. 

Baby Brady was so well behaved, I wish I have 10 kids like him. He was very mellow and only complained of the flash with small little grunts. For a 6-week old, he was very strong and able to hold his head up pretty well. I tried hard to get the traditional “First Year” session poses and succeeded! These images were taken with our Mark III and a 28-105mm lens lit with one Alien Bees 800 light and one white reflector held by Baby Brady’s big sister, Mikayla. She was such a great “assistant” and so excited to help.

Enjoy the photos!

This last picture will make anyone smile!

For the past couple of years, we have been attending a few of the many Irish Dance Feis events in the area. While photography of the actual dance is expressly forbidden (unless we have specific permission from the top), we attend these events to provide basic portrait photography of the dancers.

On Sunday, we attended the 2008 Garden State Feis in Scotch Plains NJ where people from all over the area, including one visitor from Virginia, came to compete. This was our second year attending this event and while last year was good … this year was great!

This time, we decided to offer on-site printing with the option to order some of our Feis specific products to be mailed out after the fact. The orders were coming in so fast that at one point, we were nearly six customers deep and trying to keep our heads on straight. Why were we so busy without action shots you ask?!

It has to do with the dresses. Each one is handcrafted, expertly detailed, brightly colored and extremely expensive. They can range in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars … and that is for the pre-owned ones. Because the parents of the dancers are so heavily involved in the culture, each time their child gets a new dress, they find it necessary to get new pictures. And like most sports, when the dancer places very well, the parents always want a shot with the trophy.

 Here are a couple of the dresses …

Overall, the best part of attending these events are the parents. Regardless of whether they are a new or returning customer, each and everyone of them are a pleasure to deal with. We even have a few customers who visit us at each Feis event and get new pictures each time … even if they don’t have a new dress! I guess that says a lot for the type of service that we can provide!

Here are a couple more shots of dresses we photographed …

Before the Eldred vs. John A Coleman Basketball game got underway, the player introductions were held in the middle of the court and this was one shot that I was able to capture as the team came together. I had a few others, but the focus point was somewhere behind them … so I had a nice sharp wall and fuzzy players!

This image was shot using our Mark III with a 70-200mm lense zoomed to about 150mm. We used an off camera flash, wirelessly triggered with the camera set to F3.5 at 1/200th with the ISO at 400.