Family fun day: Family portraits at Longwood Gardens.

This was a real special day for everyone. Brian's folks live real long way away. The kind of far that being in California for a wedding warranted flying to Philadelphia because they were this close... so while here he reached out to me to do some nice but not too formal portraits of the three of them at Longwood Gardens. Because of their short timeframe the day to shoot fell on what has gone down as the hottest day of the summer and these three trekked all over in suits and such! They were awesome! Well enough of my chit chat, check out the pics! 

Flowers, butterflies, and my Olyumpus OM-D E5.

Ahhh, symbolism...

As my wife will attest, I can't stop gushing over my new Olympus camera. I've been shooting heavy/cumbersome DSLRs with their giant lenses for a long long time now and often feel the joy of shooting casually has been killed by the logistics of hauling gear to and fro. Since the moment I pulled the OM-D E5 out of the box it's never been more than a few feet from me. I have a renewed joy for the artistic expression of photography, and that my friends makes my heart swell! Don't get me wrong, I wake up every day feeling like the luckiest guy in the world getting to make a living with what I do, but more and more I just wasn't wanting to haul around 10lbs+ of camera and lens when spending the day kicking around and that's when most of my favorite images are found...   

 Anyway, in addition to being the only camera I brought with me to Canada I've also been gradually incorporating it into my professional work shooting in concert with my Canon on several portrait assignments, a wedding, some product shots, and most recently exclusively on a two page expose on The Golden Nugget for Bucks Life-MainLine magazines. I'll post more on that when it's published. In the mean time know that I am totally impressed with it's performance and fully intend to make the switch to mirrorless completely in the coming months.... anyone want some secondhand Canon gear? ;) 

About these images: Shot with the Olympus OM-D E5 with the 17mm 1.8 lens. Note the detail in seeing the butterfly's hair in a number of these images... all handheld. 

Mike+Tanna: Philadelphia City Hall.

So an architect and an anesthesiologist walk into a bar... sounds like the beginning of a joke but in actuality it's the beginning of a beautiful life together! 

Mike first reached out to me because he said he and Tanna liked the way I use Philadelphia as a background in many of my portraits. The two were (have) moved south and wanted to capture the feel of the city they both love on their wedding day. I joined the two of them and their parents at City Hall on... you guessed it, a crazy hot day... and from there we hit a few fun spots around town. For those that have never been, City Hall is not(!) air conditioned by the way. Anyway, a neat coincidence is that Mike wanted to stop into McGillin's, where he had worked for a number of years, to say hello to his friends. I had photographed the owners of McGillin's for the last issue of Bucks Life Magazine and will be back to update their images for their website in a few days in fact... in any event, it was a fun walking in and seeing the expression on Chris jr.'s face when he saw I was photographing Mike and Tanna.

I had a lot of fun on this and I think you can tell they did too. We'll be doing more when they return for their "official" reception at one of my favorite locations, the Lowes Philadelphia, next spring. In the mean time, congratulations you two! Can't wait to do more in the spring. 

On a side note to my photographer brethren I'd like to point out that a good portion of these images were shot on a mirrorless micro four thirds camera... it was my first shoot with the amazing Olympus OM-D E5 but it hasn't been my last since and I am very strongly thinking of going totally mirrorless... more posts and images on that to follow soon.

Details to follow: