Heather, on 4×5 film.

I’m going away to Colorado for a few days, and I’ve been stressing about what camera gear I’m bringing, and how I’m packing it. Tomorrow, I hope to be sizing up mountains and cool places to take pictures with my fellow photo friend Jamie. (And I will surely make too many “I’m Jamie and this is Jamie” jokes, too.)

So far, I think I’m *gasp* leaving my flashes behind. Why? Well, I don’t have any compact stands and I felt like being as spartan as possible with my gear. Heck, I was considering leaving my digital gear behind entirely, but decided it would be a little too silly. Nearly limitless shots, more lens options, instant feedback and knowing an x-ray won’t likely zap it into nothingness helps.

Despite my extreme preference of 120 film over 35mm, I’ve been on a serious 35mm kick again, so I’m going to try to focus on shooting as much as I can of that. Also, it would have been just a bit more painful to pack my Hasselblad. But it’ll get some serious use when I get back!

I’m flying back to West Texas to see an aunt I haven’t seen in forever, and I’ll be riding back to East Texas with my parents. I expect pictures on this trip, too. And I’m joining a friend’s birthday trip to San Antonio the next day, where I will continue to abuse the shutters on various cameras.

Anyway, I kind of want to post a daily shot and thought, or try some kind of creative way to capture my wandering. So you might want to keep any eye out here and see what I come up with.

Upon my return from all of this, I will have bridals, tons of shooting from my travels and a multitude of other stuff to share. The picture of Heather up top is just a preview!

Click here to see lots more of my phone photography!

Sometimes the best way to get rolling again is to just start. No big splashes, no events. Just pretend you never left.

In that spirit, I hope to have my blog rolling again with a few of these pictures I’ve snapped on my iPhone. They’re with Instagram, which I have largely preferred over Hipstamatic of late. However, I’m beginning to appreciate the brevity of a Hipstamatic exposure over one from Instagram.

Regardless, tools are still secondary to vision.

If I had one major complaint about camera phone photography, it seems that it has to be filtered to death as apology for its simplicity and crudeness. This has really been bugging me a lot lately (and no, my use of filters doesn’t make me a hypocrite, at least in my opinion).

I could actually go on from there to other issues, but I’ll save that for future posts. Until then, hello, and thanks for reading! I’ve evolved a lot since I had time to properly manage this blog, so hopefully I can use that positively and share something beneficial to you.

(Also, I’m still working on a massive portfolio update, so stay tuned for that!)

Before I explain the cool panoramic technique I mentioned in my last post, I thought I’d share some images from the entire engagement shoot with Amanda and Wesley. I’ll just let the photos speak for themselves, though I’ll add that a majority of these worked best when we kept it as simple as possible … even the panoramic shots that involved 15-20 images to make.

Enjoy!

See more here, and expect to see more of them as we work on Save The Date cards, bridals, their wedding and more!

This is an engagement portrait of Wesley and Amanda, rolling around the streets in Tyler, Texas. We had a great time, and hopefully it shows in the photos. There’ll be many more to come!

Camera nerd: This photo is actually a panoramic image. I’ll fill you in on how I did that soon, too!

This photo reminds me of Pete Turner … except I’m not nearly as good. But that’s ok, because very few are!

Check out his ground-breaking color work, and marvel at the year many of these images were taken. Here’s a link, in case you missed it on my links post a few entries back:

http://www.peteturner.com/

Until next time, have fun and create!