Chelsea came over last weekend for the indoor portion of her senior portrait session. I wanted to keep the studio shots simple and straightforward, looking for natural expressions and casual comfort.

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I’ve been in South Florida for most of my life and have been shooting weddings here for several years, but until now have never been to the beautiful Deering Estate in south Miami. While the weather wasn\’t so cooperative, the grounds and buildings were quite nice. The difference between the heat-plus-near-rain outside and the cool interiors actually managed to fog up some lenses during shooting. Kelsey and Jonathan held up well to the schedule and location adjustments and hosted a wonderful outside ceremony.

As part of our series of photographer exchanges (see San Francisco Treat and Kelly and David), I had the honor of having Evan Baines from Nashville join me in shooting this wedding. It\’s a pleasure having a gifted photographer you can trust help you out – we\’ll have to do it again.

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Blog post titles seem to just beg for puns, don’t they? This past weekend, I had the pleasure of shooting for Sam Hassas in San Francisco, CA. We have sort of a photographer’s exchange thing going, the sofa-surfing second-shooter program. A couple weeks from now, Evan Baines will be on his way to shoot for me. Like any other skill, getting better as a photographer means practicing. The problem with weddings, is well, you never have the opportunity to practice. Weddings are a one-shot deal. I may work in a new lens or a lighting technique during a wedding to try out, but I can’t get too far from what I know will work during the job – at least for any length of time.

A traditional second-shooter is always under the beck and call of the primary. Anything the primary photographer needs or wants, that’s the second’s job. But when experienced and co-professional photographers shoot together, the second photographer is under a much looser set of contraints than usual. Doing a second-shooter gig is almost a vacation. Go ahead, spend thirty minutes trying out a new ring shot idea. Try a crazy new lens. Go way far out and get super wide shots. Sounds fun, right?

Sam’s wedding was fun – and the groom had the shortest name ever, 2 letters each first and last , Tu Le. His bride Stacy was beautiful and very easy to photograph. Sam gave me some quality bride-time (something else the second-shooter usually misses out on) and I hope I gave him some good shots in return. Here are a few of my favorites. If you’d like to see more, just hit the edit gallery linked at the bottom.

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