MudEyes

So Holly and I went down to Dayton to visit with her friend Konrad, get her hair did, and while we are down there have a lead meeting with a potential wedding client! Being Valentines day I figured I would check out good ol’ Orbitz to see if there was any fancy hotels for a reasonable price. I found the DoubleTree down in Miamisville down near Dayton. Check out my romantical skillz!

I got in trouble the next day for eating her cooking =( good thing it wasn’t valentines day anymore!

The inside said, oh well spelling is for losers, wanna make out? 😉

While she was getting her hair done I went to the room and unpacked everything and made everything look nice for her arrival.

It was a pretty fancy place we enjoyed it!

That night we went to Cincinnati to meet up with our friends Brent and Katie. Katie designs all our albums and she is great at it. We thought we would show our appreciation but hooking them up with a free Valentines day shoot! It helped that they are a fun good looking couple 😉

Heres a few that i teased them with before we finished them all!

I had to scale a wall and hang off a fence to get this wonderful upshot!

We found some really cool places found earlier by Brent. Client’s suggestions never work out like this.

After some cool industrial shots we headed downtown for some urban/night shots.

We needed a break from the cold and stubbled into this banquet building location that begged for the fisheye!

We actually ended up spending our valentines Dinner with them at Steak N’ Shake and it was a great time !

On Sunday we had lunch with Holly’s friend Konrad from Cedarville, and then called up a couple friends to have a photo adventure in yellow springs! My friend from flickr Thor and Holly’s friend Cameron and his wife came along just to see what we could see and have some fun!

Cameron let me use his Canon 17-40mm f/4 and while I am not a zoom fan, using an ultra wide is fun!

Maybe I should try and make this a texture?

Thor letting me have some fun with the fisheye =)

We found a random washing machine that had a free sign on it… So of course I made Holly model on it for us =)

And finally Holly getting this AWEsome frozen leaf shot.

That night we stayed with Brent and Katie in Cincinnati. That morning we called up Holly’s friend Cornel to do a shoot with us just for fun. It turned out pretty great and we even got Katie to join in on the fun!

Taken by Holly in a fast food sign graveyard!

Playing with the focal length settings on my 580EX II

One of our greatest upshots!

Cornel and her red hot mini cooper.

The location we found turned out great! It was an old water treatment plant. Great colors! [taken by Holly]

Most all these shots taken wide open with the awesome Sigma 50mm f/1.4 HSM.

All in all we had a great time, got some great shots and we even got a big TV that Katie and Brent gave us that they weren’t using after they bought their new TV. But we have an old and busted 25 inch tv since we spend all our money on equipment!

BIG NEWS!

We set the dates for workshops in Kalamazoo[march 28th-29th], and possibility Dayton [April 3-4th]

check out this jackpot location we found in Dayton!

Here is some details.

The workshop is going to be geared toward beginner to Intermediate photographers and we are focusing on using “Prime”, or fixed focal lenses. I am going to be renting a variety of lenses like 35,50 and 85mm. Maybe even a fisheye!

Also we are going to talk about different lenses and what is best for your style. We will also be talking about exposure and some other technical issues new photographers face. We will be doing a good amount of shooting on some various models and talk about how to shoot in manual exposure mode.

The second day will be focused on editing and workflow along with some more shooting!

A DSLR is required and fixed focal length lenses are what we will be using so if you have one of two be sure to bring it! You will also be able to use anything I own and anything I rent for the workshop!

If you are interested I just need a half down deposit to hold your spot as there is only 10 spots available. The cost will be $250 for 2 days. Also please let me know what gear you are working with, and what kind of things you would like to learn about most.

Thanks I hope to see you there!!
ps heres a list of lenses I plan to rent

Canon 135mm f/2L,
Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro,
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4,
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II,
Canon EF 85mm f/1.8,
Canon EF 28mm f/1.8,
Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye,
Sigma 50mm f/1.4 HSM x 2,
Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF,
Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF,
Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF,
Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye,
Sigma 30mm f1.4 for Nikon DX,
Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM for Canon.

Please email me if you are interested! ryan@ryanrichardphoto.com

I already have 6 people interested for the Kalamazoo workshop so let me know soon! Thanks!!

2 comments

We are just getting back from our super cool weekend in Denver, where i shot a wedding a little east of Vail at the four star Westin Hotel we did lots of stuff in Denver which Holly wanted to write the post about but I wanted to show you some shots from the wedding.

I borrowed my dad’s Car to get me to the wedding which was a couple hours away and about 15 miles into the mountains i hear some loud grinding or tapping and lots of smoke! Of course! So I am stranded and my dad had to come swap me cars. I HATE being late but luckly I was only second shooting and it wasn’t a huge deal if I was 45 minutes late!!

Luckily my dad traded me this car for this mountain carving turbo rocket. =)

Anyway big thanks again to Jared Wilson who gave me the opportunity to second shoot with him at this awesome wedding. Here he is at work.

Here’s one of my first shots using the Canon 135mm f/2L I rented from borrowlenses.com I used it wide open pretty much all day and loved it.

These kids were suuuper cute so I had to take advantage of the glorious bokah that I used in the shot above.

My first assignment as a second shooter was to hang out in the lobby and take some candids of the family while they wait for the shuttles to take them to the ceremony location. Luckily there was a massive window with lots of light. The 135mm was perfect!

The whole guest list was either from Mexico or from Texas so I’m sure he had a lot of calls from people that couldn’t make it. Never thought of Colorado as a destination location but that’s exactly what it was!

This was a catholic wedding. Which was an HOUR long. but plenty of things going on the whole time.

I also rented a Canon 28mm f/1.8 which I was VERY impressed with, and I really enjoy the focal length! Here it is wide open.

Check out this church!

The Reception was back at the Westin and did not disappoint!

There was even a lounge, talk about setting the mood!! So chill.

In comes the new couple!

We Start things off with the first dance; thank you 135L!

Sweet band as well!

This is my first wedding with a real wedding planner and I have to say I wish I had a lot more, with all the sweet presentation and details they can bring to the table. I mean the bride and groom’s glasses had Diamonds in them! Diamonds!
Taken with the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro

After not eating for 9 hours this was really tough to look at =) Don’t worry they did feed all the vendors later on, and while it was a good meal it wasn’t this unfortunately!

I will leave you with this shot of the bride and groom. It was weird being a second shooter but I enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t enjoy it with a great looking couple, interesting venus, and a crazy family? I do miss the bride and groom money shots but I would love to shoot with Jared again!

Double R out 😉

3 comments

Hey everyone! This is Ryan, and I was just thinking about all the blogs I stalk and how impatient I am when they don’t put new posts on every few days! So I guess I can’t really talk since I am pretty bad at keeping this thing going strong. I have a lot of exposure avenues I use and its just hard to stop and take the time to make this thing look nice.

BUT! I have great news!
So Holly has been working for me full time since, well we got married last June. I, on the other hand, had a second job which I did scale back my hours to 3 days a week. I had planned on breaking ties with Mulder Glass this spring around the end of May when wedding season starts kicking in. But they have been slow and not using me all that much so I thought about it and decided to go full time a little early! So now I will be able to spend more time in Photography mode, and I hope to write in this blog much more frequently.

I have to thank God that he has really blessed our business after one profitable year to be able to have enough work sustain both of us for a whole year! I never thought I would have my own business, let alone one I love so much and can be so excited about! We are looking into all kinds of different avenues, such as hosting workshops, lots of networking and we are hoping to go overseas this fall to start working on the photo-books which have been our ultimate goal from the beginning.

We are also doing a 52 weeks self portrait challenge! All you people on flickr Know what I am talking about, but you basically take an interesting picture of yourself that depicts a common theme, or what you have been doing or feeling that week. Some people do a 365 but that would just be hard for how busy we will be. You can really think about your shots on a weekly basis instead of churn out a new one everyday.

So we are on week 6 of this so I will catch you up. I am hoping to post them every weekend on here, to get me more in the groove of blogging and being more constant.

Before I show you those I thought I would let you know what posts I plan on writing soon!

.New 35mm f/1.8 AF-s release by nikon that focuses with the D40/D60
.Lots of lens reviews! Canon: 28mm f/1.8, 135mm f/2, 70-200mm f/2.8IS, 100mm f/2.8 macro and the Sigma 50mm f/1.4HSM
.Facebook Marketing
.Spring workshop details!
.More technical lessons

Anyway, heres the first few 52’s!

Week [1/52] Off camera flash
We had a little fun getting used to the pair of Canon’s 580EX IIs using off camera flash. There’s a whole set of fun shots on my Facebook

Week [2/52] Big Fattys!
Obviously for my 5D vs D700 review!

Week [3/52] Saucy-Snow lumber-lady
Shot in a fancy hotel I got for like 90 bucks in Cleveland the night before an Engagement shoot
This shot was available light (lightbulb from a lamp shot with a Sigma 50mm @ f/1.4)
She bought the hat because we were shooting outside the next day and it was like 3ºF)

Week [4/52] Pretty Pack-Rat
This is Holly’s Massive jewelry collection all balled up =) Shot on our bed with another lamp

Week [5/52] Facebook Marketing!
Post about this to come… but to sum it up My business wouldn’t be the same without my iPhone and without Facebook!

And finally this week [6/52] We headed to Denver which you can prolly see from the above post and had some fun with an aspiring photographer Erika Jessop She is already and excellent Graphic Designer and an AWEsome artist! But she wanted to buy a big girl camera to upgrade from her kodak super zoom. Sooo I gave her a Canon 5D Mark II with a bunch of prime lenses to play with. We did a little walk around the block and had some fun! She’s actually really good!!

Thanks for reading guys! Please leave a comment so I can know you are there! =)

4 comments