MudEyes

Just thought this would be interesting to you guys who shoot with 2 bodies is all I could see it being good for prolly not single body users… I actually thought of this a while back… I was going to use a lanyard but this is a much better idea… maybe we will get it if I find a good deal on a used 5D for a second.

post by: Holly

It has been a while since I have posted anything since i’ve been in an editing wonderland and will be until…oh..october 🙂 but this felt worthy of my time to write about.

Kalamazoo had its first MWEP meeting last night. I wasn’t sure what time it was earlier in the day so I was searching around for a website to fill me in and I just started reading through some of the things on their site and came across the greatest little article they had re-posted from Seth Godin’s Blog. Now, it has made it’s way here. 🙂 I have personally never heard of Seth Godin but after reading this I have bookmarked his blog in hopes to find things more like this.

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How to be remarkable

1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin. In fact, it’s practically a requirement. People in first place, those considered the best in the world, these are the folks that get what they want. Rock stars have groupies because they’re stars, not because they’re good looking.

5. Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn’t always matter which edge, more that you’re at (or beyond) the edge.

6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don’t. So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway. Your goal isn’t to please everyone. Your goal is to please those that actually speak up, spread the word, buy new things or hire the talented.

7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. Roger Bannister was remarkable. The next guy, the guy who broke Bannister’s record wasn’t. He was just faster … but it doesn’t matter.

8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems. They keep the masses in line by threatening them (us) with all manner of horrible outcomes if we dare to step out of line. But who loses their jobs at the mass layoffs? Who has trouble finding a new gig? Not the remarkable minority, that’s for sure.

9. If you put it on a T-shirt, would people wear it? No use being remarkable at something that people don’t care about. Not ALL people, mind you, just a few. A few people insanely focused on what you do is far far better than thousands of people who might be mildly interested, right?

10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. While you might be remarkable for a time, if you don’t reinvest and reinvent, you won’t be for long. Instead of resting on your laurels, you must commit to being remarkable again quite soon.
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I feel this way but I am never able to put it into words as well as he has. I have a way of looking at life as kind of a series of things I commit to. If I have committed to something, It just has every part of me and letting up will never be an option….thats just the way it is. With time, I feel like things in this life will naturally lose their excitement and we fall into a rut but being committed to something really keeps me pushing forward.

“Being noticed is not being remarkable”, gosh what a great way to put that. I want people to know us because we try to be quality people doing quality work to the best of our ability. I think Ryan would agree with me that we are just not the kind of people to run down the street naked, to flow with his analogy. 🙂

I love pushing to be different and edgy. Average isn’t enough for me and it never really has been. In college I didn’t have as much downtime or fun as most probably do, but working my butt off to do quality, interesting work was always worth it. Looking back, I am proud to know that I made it through. I struggled a lot in college because I don’t pick things up or learn like most people do so to have conquered that I think gives me confidence to get through everything else for the rest of my life.

Pushing to be remarkable is often harder than being content with where you are…but isn’t it worth it? It is hard to stay on top of daily tasks while trying to amp up creativity and discover new things but I have found its harder for me personally to be content where I am because I know there is always more interesting things out there we could be doing…and I want our little business to be a part of that. I think being remarkable also means being organized.

I truly believe God made Ryan and I to do this. Out of all the things we have done in our lives and struggled with along the way, photography pops up and within a couple years, it’s changed us. We view the world and life differently and its integrated into pretty much everything we do and a lot of what we think about. So if this is the one big thing God gifted us to do, then I want to live up to that gift and never stop pushing boundaries to be remarkable. To be an extremist. To be a little weird but always relatable.

So thanks Seth Godin, this was really inspiring for me today. 🙂 I hope this finds some other people needing some inspiration to keep pushing today. Our culture always wants to tell everyone we are the greatest to inspire us, but perhaps that just breeds mediocrity? How will we ever know what our best really is if we think we are already there?…

Amanda contacted us about doing a session so that she could give pictures to her boyfriend Adam which happened to be a good friend of mine!

Adam moved up to Grand Rapids so I just assumed she lived up there and said I wouldn’t mind coming up to do the session there so she wouldn’t have to drive and because GR has some great places to shoot…

She ended up being from kalamazoo, so I felt kind of stupid for making her drive all the way up there but it was worth it =)

We started over on Hall street so if you recognize this dumpster, sorry for invading your turf! =)

Amanda was my first subject using the Jay-Shift method

I actually shot this texture that day!

She did serious very well, but she was all about having fun as well

Pretty soon it was magic hour which happened to be around 8:15

Golden!

Found this awesomely unstable bridge and after a verbal liability agreement we got a couple great shots!

Well done Amanda, you made it easy and fun!

Meghan and Nick came all the way up from FL to do some engagement photos and for Nick to come to Kalamazoo for the first time…They were really excited and I was excited to give them some great images.

Mission accomplished =)

Ridiculously sweet rusty wall!

The weather got a little crazy so we had to improvise…

Nothing wrong with that!

Holly puttin’ in work son!

One of my favorites yet!

We even used my dad’s garage to have some saucy times =)

I hope you guys are as pleased as we were, thanks for making the trip!!

When we met Bre and Mike in Battle Creek they brought along both parents and Bre’s best friend who also came to the lead meeting. Normally that would worry me because our couples really need to be focused on each other and not worry about everyone around but they did juuust fine

A mini rainbow even came out for us!

I was loving the 135mm f/2L on this shoot

Even managed to get an up-shot with it!

Bre was a pro!

Even their dog Bear tagged along!

I am pretty pumped about their wedding… Their family was really a pleasure on the shoot and I think it was great they came along for the event. I love tight family =)

A while ago Jarrett emailed me about doing a shoot with him and his girlfriend with their two dogs for her birthday. We normally haven’t done things like that in the past but it sounded really fun! I know pets can be difficult to capture sometimes so i just had to shoot shoot shoot! It ended up working out really well and we had a great time doing it.

Not to mention they are a great looking couple

The fisheye worked really well when I was lucky enough to get close

I like to think these dogs had a lot of fun too =)

We could let this glorious light go by without some good couple shots

We have been having some good luck with nature but it has to be in the exact right time of day… but hey, when it’s good, it’s great!

This last wedding was a crazy one! Lots of personality and lots of fun in a unique venue, and getting ready in the swanky Westin Hotel downtown. Sooo fancy MC Hammer had to come see whats up! We got him to take a picture with us… I didn’t even know it was him until he walked away… I just thought they wanted to snap a shot with someone.

HAMMER! I had your tapes when I was 8 years old!!!

Yeah he is way 2 legit 2 quit still =)

I have been loving this tilt/shift trick that Jay Eads showed me

Great Bride and groom!

I about pooped when I saw the vision in my head for what I wanted to do with this neon… It was scrumtrillecent

Holly really brought the awesome color out of this one… who knew a rainy night would be so sweet!!

More to come soon!

Thanks to my Buddy Nick for telling PJ and Maggie about us when PJ was wanting some engagement pictures. The day before when PJ was confirming the session he said, “she said yes so we are all set!” That made me laugh =)

We had a ton of fun!

One of the first shots we did ended up #1 (!!!!!!!!) on explore for Holly!! Explore is basically the best pictures on flickr. They choose 500 out of hundreds of thousands each day and she was lucky enough to be number 1!! I have only gotten up to like 20 something so it’s quite the big deal! Great work wife 😉

Maggie was a natural

PJ did pretty well too =)

They had the looove

We don’t do nature much but this is the time of year to do it!!

Unfortunately we are booked for their wedding which will be in Memphis but we really want them to have good wedding photography so let me know if you would be interested! They are a great couple that would make it very easy on you!

This was one of our very favorite weddings and I don’t have a ton of time to spend on a long blog post because we still have 2 weddings to edit before the serious wedding season roles around THIS weekend! So here is a few new shots of this wedding… I dont have a password on their full preview that you can see here

Amazing couple… Had the love for SURE

Super fun bride =)

Super fun DAY!

It happens to the best of us.

We are hoping to get this wedding done real soon and I will let everyone know, because it’s a good one!!

As you may have noticed for some reason I have kinda been on a cars and bikes kick lately. I have always been a serious motor-head at heart and I always love looking at the mags. with their awesome images of all these sweet cars!

So one of my buddies was telling me about getting a new Kawi 636 and I thought that would be really awesome to do some cool photos with that. So I did! I am thinking about starting to offer motor sessions but I am still feeling out the session prices and what would be good to offer so any feedback would be appreciated!

Here is some of my favorite images I have gotten to date:

And now that we have all the equipment we “need” (not want) We could finally afford to get a nice reliable car that would help us to look somewhat reputable when we have clients follow us to locations. Not to mention something that would get us to all these out of state weddings! So here she is our new[to us] Honda Accord LX! up to 35mpg on the highway and I have yet to get under 29 even all city driving. So we are very pleased =)

Of course I had to take a couple fancy shots today after a bath.

Hope you enjoyed them! Please let me know if you know of anyone that would be interested in this sort of thing, I can’t wait to do more!

Gauper out.