MudEyes

This wedding was pretty relaxed for us. We didn’t have to start super early so it was great to sleep in. The reception was at the Battle Creek Country Club and is also where they got ready. It was a pretty fun group of people which really makes our job easier!

{{I am going to start with a reception photo just because it is so great….and I took it! YAY!}}

{{Perfect for an october wedding! I thought this was really cute.}}

{{I loved this cool mirror}}

{{before the ceremony, the girls were having some fun in the nursery where they were waiting…}}

{{Little tiny chair in the nursery..haha she tried to fit into the little kid car, but that didn’t work as well}}

{{I was so excited that I got such a great walking out shot! It happens so fast so sometimes I just don’t have time to focus fast enough, but I was just soooo happy with this.}}

{{All the mens}}

{{and all the ladies… I was trying to get them to all do a fish face with the “fisheye” lens. They couldn’t quite pull it off, haha, but I think actually turned out much funnier}}

{{sunset, this was ryans…and he is really awesome}}

{{…and this is mine…I’m awesome in a different way. 🙂 }}

{{Gotta have a little dip kiss in a place like this}}

{{What a cute baby! His older brothers were dancin’ fools at the reception! So cute}}

{{sooo i’m not sure what this is called, but Ryan told me…and I forgot. Either way…its really funny.}}

{{hahah I don’t even know what to say about this….}}

{{Lights! I highly recommend having twinkly lights at your reception, this is what happens when they are out of focus so they give a really cool vibe in the photos.}}

{{hahhaah I love to take photos of people dancing. They make the craziest dancing faces!}}

Andddd thats all.

A few weeks ago we met with Ashley, her mom and future mother in law. They decided to go with us for their wedding and about 3 days later we did their engagement shoot. They live in georgia so finding time to get up here is difficult so it is great we were able to fit them in.

We did their shoot in downtown battle creek and had a great time, they were a fun couple to work with so I am really excited for their wedding next year!

{{I absolutely love this photo. We started the shoot at his parents house which is an amazing house at the battle creek golf course. I just love her face in this.}}

{{His parents requested they have a photo with the light post and the gay in it, and I think it turned out pretty well! Looks very october to me. 🙂 }}

{{Not much to say about this, but I think it’s lovely.}}

{{Her Ring! Gosh it is huge and magnificent. Sometimes when we take really close up photos we can see flaws and such in the diamond that close, but this thing is just flawless, well done john paul!}}

{{This is also her ring! We just finished up the shoot and were talking about albums and such for the wedding and Ryan noticed her ring sparkling all over his shirt. Amazing!!}}

{{This is the same spot we had some of our wedding photos taken and I think is it the greatest.}}

{{Something I am really excited for next year at their wedding is her hair. She works at a salon so I am sure her hair will be phenomenal! I love all the volume it has in this photo}}

{{A sweet red door and some fancy editing makes for one fabulous photo.}}

{{This is one of my favorite photos of the day! I Sooooo wish we would have had time to walk around the corner of this building on our wedding day to take a photo like this. I just love absolutely everything about it.}}

{{This is so cute, so I think it is a great ending. Keep an eye out next year for their wedding photos!}}

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This article is a comparison of 2 lenses that new people should consider when buying a DSLR whether it be a canon, nikon, or even a Pentax.

When I bought my first D200 I had read that the 50mm 1.8 was a lens every photographer should have. I didn’t know why, but I figured it was the same price as the 18-55 and they say it was a much better lens. I still have that lens but I bought a 1.4 to get a little more blur and a 2/3 stop speed advantage (at weddings you need all you can get!)

It took me a while to figure out why it was so much better. Maybe because I wasn’t used to the slow 18-55. I wondered, could it really be THAT much better in low light? I have done some test shots to show you just how much more you can do with a 50mm. For the particular test I will be using my 50mm f1.4, which has quickly become my favorite lens which I use for 80 or more percent of my shots.

These few shots were taken at dusk where I could demonstrate the low light possibilities

All these shots are streight from camera. That camera being a Nikon D700.
Also I am using the same lens insted of an actuall 18-55mm because I dont own one. but at 50mm or 55mm the maxium aperture is f5.6
So this test is only to show the low light capability where is would be identical.

You can see the only setting changed here is the aperture. The 1.4 has a 4(!!!) stop advantage! 1/60th is aguably the lowest shutter speed you would want to use without getting blur at 50mm. Therefore at this light and the 18-55, this shot would be impossible handheld without cranking up the ISO.

To get the correct exposure with the 18-55mm you would need to compensate with ISO, or a lower shutter speed. this next shot
demonstrates that.

Now you may be looking at these shots like ok, my camera goes up to 3200 iso. But keep in mind, unless you have the luxury of a full frame D700 your shots will bare a lot of grain, and lose a lot of detail and contrast. There is just no substitute for speed.

Also if you bring the shutter speed down to a quarter of a second, I don’t care who you are your image will be blurry unless you use a tripod as I am here.

So now you know how much speed matters. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, we can talk about sharpness! the 50mm lenses are up there with the sharpest lenses nikon makes. To even be close to the sharpness achieved by the 50mm you would need to stop down to f/8 which number one is very slow, and 2 you loose any background blur.

So to recap,

50mm pros

-4 stop speed advantage
-loads of backround blur wide open
-very sharp from f/2.0 and up
-better build quality and looks much cooler =)

50mm cons

-fixed focal length

18-55mm pros

-wide to telephoto range
-ummm good for.. stuff… sorry I got nothin’.

18-55mm cons

-4 stops slower the 50mm
-not sharp until f/8
-not enough background blur
-feels cheap

I guess really it depends on what you do. For me, I am a wedding photographer, that doesn’t like to use flash, and likes a lot of sharpness and blur. If you plan on shooting weddings at all don’t even bother with any cheap zoom lenses unless you plan on getting really good at flash.

If you buy one of these lenses, I can tell you they are at their best when you use them at f/2 and as close to your subject as you can stand. The blur creates a magical effect that will wow anyone if your composition is good.

post by: holly

This past saturday we had the privilege to do Kayli’s senior photos. She lives in grand rapids so we went there for something different since we do most everyone in kalamazoo.

First, I must say, this girl has quite the personality and it was awesome. She was just a joy to work with and I just so wish more people were spunky like that. I love people who are just so free spirited, it makes our job so much easier because she wasn’t really being “posed” she was making everything her own when we were downtown and it was just great.

Something to note is that I think when you see her photos below you will be able to see who she is and that is so important. With seniors, I know it is awkward and uncomfortable at first but I just encourage all of you who we have yet to shoot, to dig deep and forget we are there and that you are uncomfortable and just let loose and be yourself because it really will show in the photos, and thats what its all about, right?

First, she loves art and was telling us about this pieces of grafiti she loved so we went to it and found it was covered by a stupid fence. So, I thought it would be cool to put a page together with the quote on the grafiti for her. It has been a while since I have done pages, but gosh, I think this turned out great, i love it!

This was the beginning of the shoot and she was less comfortable here, haha. You have to have stuff for the parents though, so I think this is the most parent-y shot we have.

I put some cool textured in some of the photos I thought were cool and I just adore how this looks. It makes it kind of dark and interesting to me.

This is one of my favorite photos of the day. The cutout just worked so well and she just nailed it with her face. There are certain things about this pose that she did that made it work PERFECTLY. First, it is the eyes that sell it, and she just seemed to know what we were going for and her eyes just are captivating in it. Also, the lips being slightly apart makes that impact as well. It is hard to just “tell” people to do something like that you know, sometimes you just have feel the idea and go with it.

Another sweet sweet texture…and i love it on the this photo. I also have a thing for stripes..obviously. We have many upshots of her I feel like but this one felt different to me from what we do with other people. Where your arms and legs are really make the difference in a photo.

I love this because it shows something about her rather than just standing there smiling.

I have “regular” edits of these photos without the texture on them that I gave to her, but it just feels like this works so it gets in my favorites post. 🙂 It has mood and emotion and was just made for sepia! I love it!

This was part of the graffiti that had the fence obstructing us, but we made it work. 🙂 The fence kind of made a cool texture anyways.

I spotted this and it matched her sweatshirt so well I figured it was just destiny…and I really love how it turned out. Again, her face really sells it.

This is my favorite of my creative edits! It just turned out really cool and texturey… 🙂

Ryan was going to reject this one! When I saw it, I knew it would edit well so I saved it! 🙂

I love this, who says senior pictures have to sooooo serious all the time? I mean really, when your 17 years old, you shouldn’t be all that serious anyways.

Best fisheye face…ever. That is all that needs to be said.

She kept offering all these things she could do and we were like….go for it. So this happened, hah. Her tongue is sticking out too…haha. priceless.

An upshot with some sass!

This reminds me of the movie “house bunny” when she stands over the steam to try be all Marylyn monroe and freaks out cause its so hot.

Two very awesome poses! Who knew such a ridiculously awesome photo could happen on an old dumpster!

So this is the second time that day we tried the bubble picture. The gum we bought just was not the greatest even though it was BUBBLE tape. This is the best we could do. I am going to get a different kind of gum for the next time we try it with someone.

Ok so that is the end of the shoot! This was a big preview but I liked so many of them, haha. I spent like 5 hours editing her photos which is crazy longer than it usually takes, but there were just so many good photos!!

So the moral of this story… it is so much better to just let loose and be who you are rather than trying to fit the mold and just busting out a cheese smile in every photo. The end. 🙂

post by: ryan

So we have been really wanting a new long zoom lens, because the copy we have of an 80-200mm f/2.8 nikkor was heavy and didn’t focus very closely. (we also suspected it wasn’t as sharp as it should be) I have been researching an alternative that didnt cost me $1,700 (nikon 70-200 VR) While that is an amazing lens, we aren’t famous enough yet to afford it!

Anyway! We were close to Norman Camera, and we lost the cap to our fisheye, and wanted to order a new one, so we stopped in there to do it and I asked if they had any of the Tamerons in. They had been announced last winter, and I had my name on the list. Supposedly they got their first copy in the previous day (lucky for us!) So we traded the big beast in for a smaller big beast with an equally big name… ready? The new lens is the

Tameron SP AF 70-200mm F2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro whaaat a mouthful…

We will stick with “big zoomie”

We will be doing a review soon when I get a taste for it at this weekend’s wedding! Stay tuned, lets see if the slow auto focus bugs me. the macro should be good for a less close ring shot as it has a reproduction rate of 1:3 not 1:1 only of the 50mm reversed.

Seeya soon!

{post by: holly}

I haven’t really done any posts on all the seniors we have been doing. It feels like we have done…well, a lot. I like doing them, they are very different from weddings. First off, they are so much quicker to edit. Second, we get a lot of time to go to a bunch of places and it gives time for ryan to think and it helps stretch our creativity. The extra money helps out too! haha.

Since Ryan got full frame his photos have just been amazing. They make editing a lot easier and they are so sharp! I love it! I can’t wait till I get to upgrade too.

Anyways, this is Brittany and she is my favorite senior so far. I felt like she just made it easy on us and that is nice. Her photos turned out amazing, the best so far in my opinion.

{{This is my favorite of the day, I love these two together.}}

{{Doesn’t she look like Jennifer Aniston in this picture? I think so…its freaky. haha}}

{{I made her into one of the statues!}}

{{We do upshots with everyone but this one is kind of different and I like it. I like how her legs are crossed. Little details like that really make photos great}}

{{We did this for an engagement and to me…it is just not getting old. I think I really have a thing for the color yellow right now. I want to paint my dining room/office area yellow…real bad.}}

{{Ryan has really gotten better at fine tuning poses for people…but like I said, she made it easier. The feet are my favorite part of this. I love those shoes, especially with a dress!!}}

{{We were exploring a new part of downtown and came across this amazing door. When we walked passed it, I literally gasped, haha. Her dad was with us and opened it to see what was in there and turns out it is a ballet school…that was in progress at the time which was really funny.}}

{{Ok so I said at the beginning that the other set was my favorite. This is ALSO my favorite. I got that umbrella when I was at cedarville because the rain there was insane but I sacrificed dryness for its amazing pattern because that umbrella is super small and really worthless…but isn’t it the greatest for photos! Amazing!!}}

{{We had a ton of her, but this is the last one I am putting in here. She did serious so well}}

Ok no more procrastinating from me anymore…gotta go finish drying my hair. The new season of The Office airs tonight!!! YESS!!

Hope you enjoy the photos!

post by: holly

I guess it was bound to happen sometime. With all of this hurricane business the odds just were not in anyone’s favor for a wedding that was planned to be outdoors.

Danielle & Charlie got married in Grass Lake Michigan at this farm location. There were some pretty cool things on the property to work with if the weather would have just held out! Unfortunately, it was raining all day and since it was a farm, the ground was all muddy and dragging a wedding dress around in mud isn’t really ideal.

Because of the weather and the lack of buildings to shoot in (just 2 small buildings) we didn’t want to stress them out about not getting any good bride and groom photos so we offered to give them a free bride and groom session if they wanted to get all done up again, so that is what we will be doing soon. The weather is nobody’s fault so it is just about making the best of what you have to work with. So when we get those taken and edited I will put them up in a separate post.

The wedding was moved inside the first barn which was pretty small, but tall. It had three levels to it which was very different and made for a cool shot from up above.

Anyways, lets go back a day. We typically go to the rehersal to check things out and look for locations to do photos in the transition time of ceremony and reception. On our way there it was pouring rain like crazy. I am pretty certain we would have died if I was driving. Thankfully, Ryan always drives and we continue to live. I try to just keep my eyes closed because he scares me when he drives but then I get car sick so there is usually a lot of gasping from me. He thinks it’s funny…ugh…anyways…

We didn’t want to drive back and forth for the wedding the next day since it was kind of far away so we got a hotel. It was a motel 6 somewhere around jackson and man, from the outside it was one sketchy looking place. They didn’t even have internet! It was clean in the room though and didn’t smell so I was alright with it.

Since there was no internet, Ryan was playing with his camera and showing off how sweet it is at crazy high ISO. So we had some fun with that haha ryan calls this flubber… This is done with the D700 and 8 frames per second! also 6400 ISO.

annnyways, back to the wedding the next day…

{{They wore this really awesome plaid so I felt the red background was fitting. The plaid was something about his family, but I can’t specifically remember…but it was really cool, I liked it a lot.}}

{{Getting ready. She got all the girls bare minerals sets and was showing them how to use it, so they all took turns. It was kind of like a QVC moment.}}

{{Her dress was huge! We have had weddings with the big poofy dresses and such but none with a train like this one. It was amazing. It had more detail in the thread than with beads which was on a more sheer layer which I thought was different from a lot of the dresses we see.}}

{{The sash part was great as well, I just love the dresses that sit lower on the waist. I’m not gonna lie… seeing all the dresses and jewelry is one of the favorite parts about wedding photography.}}

{{They had a bagpiper at the ceremony! How amazing! I love when weddings have stuff that is different!}}

{{The flowers were pretty interesting, those stick…things were an interesting touch.}}

{{The brides parents during the ceremony.}}

{After the ceremony we found a place outside that was covered and took bridal party photos.}}

{{The bride}}

{{The Groom}}

{{I always get a little stressed out when its time for the bouquet toss because I shoot a ton of photos and just hope that my flash fired on the money shot. This time…it did! Yes! I love it}}

{{The cake smashing! YESS!! So many people do not smash these days and it is soooo boring. This is just the perfect shot too! I was so excited when I reviewed my pictures and saw this. Magical, simply magical.}}

{{Danielle dancing with her dad}}

{{The “other” Holly and Ryan! What are the odds?}}

{{Greatest tattoo ever, dr. suess!}}

{{This turned out so cool! Ryan is so creative. The DJ had a little colored ball thing and ryan made this awesomeness happen.}}

{{Bride and Groom Dancing. I am pretty sure I probably took this and it was one of my exposure mistakes but I really like it how its just a subtle outline of her…its kind of different.}}

{{They had a fireworks show at the end of the night too. We took quite a few shots of them but this was our favorite because its different and wonderfully out of focus.}}

That is the end of the night for us. We will be scheduling the bride and groom shoot soon so I will be sure to put that up as soon as possible!!

Also, if you want to see the full preview of all our weddings you can go to our weddings site at www.ryanrichardphoto.com and click on {wedding favorites} We put up about 40-60 of our favorites from each wedding.

I’ve decided to catch up on the blog one day at a time, so tomorrow will be the brammer wedding from back in August.

{post by: holly}

{Wedding, iPhone(s), smores, shoes, oh my!!}

Last weekend Ryan and I had the opportunity to have a bit of relaxation and to shoot his friend Sarah Toupin’s wedding in Traverse City.

On thursday we went up to Muskegon to go to the dentist (no cavities for either of us, what are the odds?!) and to visit my mom. On the way up, I caved and decided to switch to AT&T and let Ryan get an iPhone. I have been saying we can’t afford it for a while, but verizon doesn’t work in our apartment and well…we just love gadgets. So that day we went and god new phones. I got the LG Shine and well…compared to the iPhone, it wasn’t very exciting.

Friday morning we headed up to Traverse City, I slept most of the way. 🙂 The location of their wedding was beautiful! It was kind of indoor/outdoor because the walls were rolled up since the weather held out. Speaking of the weather, it was perfect!

We stayed in a Baymont where most everyone from the wedding seemed to stay as well. It was really nice! For the wedding before this, which I will be writing about later, we stayed at a pretty sketchy motel 6 so I just loved this place. I wish I would have taken photos. The sheets were so soft I could have stayed in bed all day!

{{For our website, I add my favorites…of the favorites that we put up a few days after the wedding on the main page of the site. I thought it would be cool to kind of “present” the new couple before there photos with something cool. This is my first one and I like it, I think I shall continue it.}}

{{Getting ready in the hotel room. The girl who did the girls hair was actually one of Ryan’s really good friends from Junior high, what are the odds. She did a great job!}}

{{I usually do most of the getting ready shots but since it was all happening in the same hotel and Ryan wasn’t doing anything he went instead of me. I was playing bejewelled on the new iPhone anyways so I was like…go ahead haha. I LOVE how the hairspray actually shows!}}

{{The Dress! I love how the fisheye worked with this door without making the dress look all crazy.}}

{{I just love how soft this is. Just because a dress doesn’t have a gigantic train doesn’t mean it can’t be just as beautiful. Love it!}}

{{and…finally, the bride! I know there seems to be a lot of black and white, but it just edited so beautifully that way so I couldn’t resist.}}

{{Ryan does a jumping shot with the guys at all our weddings and I think this could quite possibly be my favorite. The guy second from the left cracks me up!}}

{{Something I really enjoyed about this wedding is that it was not all that traditional. It was really laid back and fun. The guys all had these shoes and to me, thats just the best. Way to step outside the box!}}

{{This is one of my favorite photos of the day. She was also my favorite flower girl so far. This girl was so crazy! She was just so curious about everything around her and just seemed so full of joy…and probably sugar, haha. She was just the cutest. Ryan got this shot and I was so excited because I couldn’t get it from across the room. Another reason its good to have two photographers!!}}

{{I was in the back with the bride but I assume he was playing while she went down the isle.}}

{{and of course, the upshot! I think this one turned out pretty good, I really love the red brick.}}

{{Their cake topper. I didn’t edit a full photo of the cake yet, but it was pretty cool. It was a little mountain with a trail going up the side. They are very outdoorsy people so it was cool that they had a cake that fit who they are. Josh and Sarah were at our wedding and they said our cake inspired them to do something different! That makes me feel good, I live to inspire. }}

{{There were a couple amazing little trees with the red leaves on them which is just perfect for the ring shot.}}

{{Ryan does the coolest stuff. They had little christmas lights over the dance floor and he thought of doing this. I love it! I learned how to do it too, so thats exciting for me.}}

{{They were crazy dancers! I loved watching them, wonderful for photos.}}

{{They had a pretty cool band play, I wish I could remember their name. They were really interesting. I liked it a lot, it was very different than most weddings}}

{{Smores!! What a fantastic idea! They had a table FULL of chocolates and marshmellows and a fire pit. I stashed a couple of those hershey bars in my pocket for later. 🙂 It was cool to take photos of fire, I don’t think I have ever really done that before. I got some cool ones, but ryan didn’t pick those as a favorite. They will be on the pictage when its up though.}}

That is the end of the night for us! The day seemed to go by really fast to me but I was exhausted by the end of it! The following morning we drove around Traverse City to see what everyone always talks about and we didn’t find much mostly because we didn’t know what we were looking for, so thats too bad, haha.

We went back to muskegon and stayed at my parents again to break up the drive. I went shopping with my mom on sunday and she bought me these amazing shoes!! They can be found at TARGET I call them my mac shoes, and yes that does show what a dork I am. 🙂

We also got ME AN IPHONE TOO!! Ryan saw how disappointed I was by my stupid phone so I get one too, gosh I love him. So overall, it was a pretty great long weekend! We have a couple weeks until our next wedding so that will give me some time to catch up on everything and update you all with the last few weddings.

…ok on to editing backed up weddings!

{posted by: holly}

I love making photos more edgy when I edit. I think it is great how an editing style can change a photo so much and give it such a different feel.

I always love the photos I see with interesting textures in them yet I just didn’t know where people were getting those filters. Then I started thinking about what I already have and I have about 2gigs of digital scrapbooking supplies and the textured papers for scrapbooking work perfectly! In this photo are two different papers, one textured and one a pattern.

I get all my digital scrapbooking supples from www.designerdigitals.com they have a great selection and good prices!

Here is the original photo straight out of the camera:

The edit:

{posted by: ryan}

The wait is over!! Full frame for me!!!

I was told the D700 would be released on the 25th but no one seemed to think I would get it in time. I was really hope to get it this weekend so I pray and said I know you have already given me so much, but you did say you do not have because you do not ask. So I guess I am asking! It would be a nice birthday present!

Then I called Norman Camera in the morning to see if they had at least got a tracking number from nikon, but they didn’t seem too wise to the matter.

I was disappointed and went home. 15 minutes late I got a call and said they had one waiting for me! It was awesome!! I think maybe he didn’t let me have it then because I would have picked it up on the way, and Holly wouldn’t have gotten to see me all giddy =) They Said I was the first one in Kalamazoo to get one! (Same for my D300!)

God is awesome!!

This Camera isn’t too bad either by the way 😉

{Gizmo and Pete Stealing the D700}

{Full frame and it’s huuuge viewfinder}

The Next Day Holly and I desided to have a photo adventure in Kalamazoo’s Crane Park.

We tested out some macro and did a mini photoshoot!

{Fast FX Macro!}

{My idea-mule testing some senior ideas =) }

{Holly insisted I have an upshot of my own}

{This is one heck of a hand-me-down =) }

I am excited to post some high ISO shots. This thing can really perform at 6400! Even at 25,600 I can get usable images! This Camera is going to rock my world!

More to come!