MudEyes

Maybe possibly out favorite couple that we will be shooting in the face at their wedding this year =) Hup and Steph are from Indy, but reside in SanFran. When they came back to visit we had to go have some fun!

Sidenote: Ryan caught the garder that I tossed and Steph caught the Bouquet that Holly tossed at OUR wedding!! Now THEY are getting married! Suckerrrrs

Ryan is a video genius and he re-posted this vid he took at our wedding and it’s pretty rock solid awesome. Check it out to get a taste of our sweet wedding and feast your eyes on this sweet-sweet preview picture!

It’s been a success!

Here’s some things that sold so you know

D700 and Grip

Things that are ‘sold’ that I am waiting on the money

70-200, the lens pouches, the legal form book, and gary fong

Have about 3 people basically ready to buy the fisheye

3 people very interested in the Sigma 50

And another interested in the Kenwood.

Other then that the rest is still here!

Thanks guys!

PS: watch out for those toilet monsters!

EVERYTHING MUST GO! SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!! WELL NOT EVERYTHING! WHY AM I STILL YELLING?????

IN ALL SERIOU…Sorry, in all seriousness, we have a buttload of stuff to sell and now we have some more motivation (as if we didn’t have enough)

The Image is Found announced a ‘shootshop’ the day after we arrive in LA this august so we decided we HAVE to go to… They are going over a lot of the stuff we need the most and also we basically want to BE them. They are way creative and awesome. They were kind enough to let me pay for one spot and give me another week to pay for our second spot (since they fill up in like a day)

Soooo here’s some great gear that we would love for you to have… I mean pay for. I am a photoshop novice and didn’t spend hours on this so go easy on me =)

First up are the biggins. I have been holding on to my D700 because I just love it and didn’t feel like giving it up for butt-cheap so here it is now for butt-cheap because I have to =( I am going to be pretty firm at $2,100 for this thing. It is in very nice shape and was used for about 6 months before we made the switch. It IS a US model, there is nothing at all wrong with it. This is the best Nikon option period. You can read my review side by side with my new camera the Canon 5D mark II here but seriously this camera rules… feels so much better in your hands then my camera.

It comes with everything you see… I dont have the screen protector but there is no scratches miraculously enough. I also dont have the strap but if I dont sell the one below and you need one I will throw it in. The battery still reads new. I charged it after every use to keep it happy. The sensor is pretty clean as far as I can see. This thing is spotless.

The fisheye is the last lens I have with it… It’s a DX lens but it still looks really great even with the reduced resolution. Pretty fishy fisheye and it was one of my favorites… it is a great lens. Pretty much flawless as far as I see. Never dropped. I am asking $525 for this one and I don’t have the cap. Lost it at a wedding. Adorama retails it at $700 so I think thats pretty fair. If you want one you can get the cap here. It comes with a soft case that I never took out of the bag.

My last Nikon item is the Battery grip for either a D300 or D700 This is a must with this camera if you are holding it for any amount of time. It feels great and matches up with the build quality of the D700. You can even get 8fps with this grip and the right batteries. It has a little bit of paint rubbed of exposing some metal but otherwise never dropped or anything. You can buy it new for $260 so how about $185.

Another biggin is our basically brand new Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L Telephoto zoom. It is just too expensive for us. We have too much to buy to make it worth it. But if you are in the market for one you know how great this lens is. For a zoom lens the sharpness doesnt get much better then this. The IS works amazingly at 1/20th of a second my shots are consistently sharp even at 200mm. This lens is also flawless and retails for $1,800. So I thought $1,400 would be very fair especially since we have used it about 2 times.

I wouldn’t be selling this if I didn’t have a second, nor would I if I didn’t want a TS-E so bad! So I am selling this amazing lens for $375 as it retails for $500. Again this Sigma is mint. We have used it since early this year and since we had 2 it stayed in the bag most of the time. We had no problem shooting this lens wide open for a whole wedding. I actually prefer this lens to the Canon version. Sharp focus every time unlike the canon. If you have a f/1.8 50, trust me this is worth an upgrade. you would have to shoot at f/3.5 to be as sharp as this lens, and you get a lot more background blur and speed. Check out all my images I have made with this one! flickr w/ 50mm

Since Holly and I bought the same computer right before we met we have always had 2. Now that we have a MacPro, iMac and 2 MacBook Pros, it might be time to trim down. This one is mine.

You can see the stats but it is a 2.16GHz dual with 2 gigs or RAM and 120gb HD. I used it for all my editing until we got the iMac about a year ago. Now if we do use it at all it’s when we travel. It shows signs of wear as you can see but really besides the battery needing to be replaced there’s not much wrong with it. Everything is cosmetic. It does not have any AppleCare and it runs with the Leopard OS. A new battery is like $100 bucks and I am asking $900 for this. Still runs very well and is completely capable (especially if you are upgrading from PC) 😉

Next I have an older surround sound system that I bought a few years ago. I didn’t use it a ton and the speakers sound great and the sub sounds well if you are fairly nice to it. I am not sure of the wattage and don’t have a box but it gets pa-ritty loud and sounds great with action movies and music. I am asking $75 for this.

Last is a few random items.

A neoprene strap $10
A couple Lens pouches you can strap to your belt. $8 (each)
Legal Forms $10
And a Gary Fong Lightsphere Cloud P2 or C2 it fits the bigger 580EX $30 and I will include a stofen or whatever flash diffuser.

Sooo hopefully you guys wanna give us all your moneys so we can go and learn how to get even better so that we can feed the fever for the Gaupers =)

Please email me at ryan@GAUPERphoto.com or call me at 269.929.8777

All items will have shipping tacked on if you arent local so we can work that out when you contact me. Thanks guys!!

Remember that ridiculously good looking couple we did engagements for a while back? I know we have a few of them but these guys were a ton of fun and their wedding at the Kalamazoo Country Club was no exception.

The full preview is up on the wedding website ( which we are working vigorously to update!) But since I know I am lazy, other people must be too so here’s a few favorite favorites…

The glowing chesticles:

She had many a’ faces =) but she knew how to pull of the serious face.

The guys were extra pimp in this wedding

And extra jumpy!

Not to be outdone…

Outdoor ceremonies are the best… lots of room to scurry about and get good angles.

Really been putting the fisheye to use lately!

We rented a tilty for a couple weeks, and decided that we MUST have one

Now thats a veil shot!

Cake mustaches for all!

Had to get a couple shots in the sunset… haven’t done much of this before but we are trying to get better at flash to get some different looks… went pretty well I think!

And one of my fav shots…

Next preview features even more craziness from Detroit!

Super busy after these 3 weddings in 2 weekends, but took some great video from the last wedding so thought I would share! Click right outside the play button to take you there and make it bigger!

As he walked in with a Miner out fit complete with hard hat, goggles and an antique lantern, I knew I was going to have to take some video of this as sometimes stills just dont capture the whole effect! The white balance was set very warm for flash so I didn’t have time to change it so I made the video black and white.

This little girl had some moves! I must have takes 150 shots of her trying to get that perfect one!

gangsta’s paradise….WEST SIYEEEED!!

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.

………………………………………………
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.
………………………………………………

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 =)