DGN Photography in Columbus, Ohio – newborn, maternity, baby, child, family, wedding photographer, senior pictures

I took a little trip down to Virginia Beach earlier this week to shoot my cousin Nathan’s wedding.  We almost didn’t make it because Northwest stranded us overnight in Detroit, and then our flight was delayed the next day, as well. We barely made it in time, but we made it!  I flew with my mom and my daughter Vivi (who had fun no matter where we were).

The wedding was a lot of fun, and the group was really into having some fun wedding pictures taken.  The ceremony was at a little park with a Japanese garden, and then the reception was in a hall on the naval base.

We’re getting ready to take a little vacation up to Put-in-Bay for a week, so I proofed the pictures as quickly as I could to get them online before we go.

So instead of a sneak peek, here are all the wedding photographs:

http://www.dgnphoto.net/proofs/feick

Filed under: wedding photographer in Columbus, Ohio.  Wedding photography in Central Ohio.

This maternity session was fun, because we started the session in their backyard, which is something different for me.  They even had a hammock, which sparked the idea of wearing some brighter colors.

Anyway, here are a few for the sneak peek!

Pregnancy photography in Columbus, Ohio

I had the pleasure of photographing this family today, and the weather at Inniswoods was gorgeous.   I took a different route through the park than I usually take, in search of the illusive brick wall with a hole in it… and I still did not find it.   I’ve been to Inniswoods enough times that I should’ve found it by now, but alas…  we did see the albino squirrel, which was near the stone bridge.

These were some neat pots that I previously hadn’t seen. (the baby thought the stones were nummy)

This one I had to include in the sneak peek.  It just makes you go awwwww…

This last one was something I’ve had on my brain for awhile, I’ve been thinking that I wanted to photograph a family looking over the edge of the bridge.  I think they were seeing frogs down there. (if the baby could talk, I think she’d be saying ‘I see one!’)

I had a lot of good ones from this photo session, I can’t wait to show the rest!

I had a session this evening with Ashley who will be a senior this next school year.  We went up to Inniswoods, which was lovely as usual.  Ashley insisted at the beginning that she was not photogenic.  I think that we proved her wrong, here!  The most memorable moment was when we were having Ashley pose at the little treehouse, and a couple guys with cameras  came by, tried to sweet talk Ashley and take pictures of her.  Unfortunately for them, she had her big sister and mom to guard her, so they went their merry ways.

Here are a few pictures for their sneak peek.  I promised a little one tonight, so here it is!

Maylie got a camera upgrade from her dollar store film camera with no film… My sister gave her a very very old digital camera, and Maylie was thrilled beyond belief.  She started to get the hang of framing people’s faces in the picture instead of cutting them off.  She was chattering about how she is going to be my TWIN because we both have cameras, so she can take pictures too!

And then, the same day it was given to her, she accidently dropped it on hardwood floor and broke the lens.  The camera now only says “system error” if you try to press the shutter.  She was devastated.  I feel bad for her. (I’ll probably get her another cheap one for her birthday… next January)

But, here she is, happily taking pictures for that short time that she had her very own digital camera:

I had my first wedding as the official wedding photographer yesterday.  I really had a lot of fun!

Aside from having the darkest church on this planet, the wedding was simply beautiful. Their wedding colors were brown and sky blue, and they had 5 bridesmaids, 5 groomsmen, and 2 flower girls (Matt & Melissa’s daughters).  The blog doesn’t really do this picture justice, since the images show so small, but here is the formal shot of the whole wedding party:

After the ceremony, we had 20 minutes to shoot the formal pictures before the next wedding came in, so we had to skedaddle out of there real quick.  Then the reception was in the church’s multipurpose room, so it was a short little walk over there.  We took a few moments when the reception started to die down to get outside for a few bride & groom shots, like this one by their decorated car:

So I don’t overwhelm the blog with pictures, I’ll just post a couple more for the time being…

I thought it was cute that they were tying all the balloon bouquets together for this little girl to take home.  It reminded me of my cousin’s wedding where there were a lot of little heart soap favors left over, so my daughter collected a huge bag of the soaps.  In fact, we still have a big bag of little heart soaps, which we encourage the kids to use (or should I say ‘play with’) instead of dumping a brand new bottle of Bath & Body works hand soap down the drain in order to fill the bottle up with water…. yeah, my dear boy did that last week… but I digress…)

Melissa decided her shoes weren’t for dancing in, but I thought they made for a nice photo op.

I’ve got tons more pictures, I’ll probably do a few more sneak peeks before it’s all said and done.

I was linked to this web site today called Professional Child Photographer . com and it really struck a chord with me.  I go around in circles a lot of times with friends and family about why I do things the way that I do them when it comes to working my photography business.

Basically, my goal is to give people everything of the highest quality that I can give them (ok, there are some limits). Anyone can snap a bunch of ‘pics’ … I am practicing all the time with my camera, studying photography in books and online, I go into a situation and analyze what direction and quality the light is, where would be the best placement of things, how to pose people so they look their best, and I work my camera in manual mode so that I get the results that I want.  With good looking photos to start with, I then enhance them in Photoshop and use my artistic eye as well as lots of learning and practice to get the effect I’m going after.

So if you want a good explanation of why custom photography is expensive, please read that article.  It will be very enlightening!

We interrupt the photo book review series to bring you a sneak peek from a family portrait session from last weekend.  This was an extended family session, up at Inniswoods park, with 13 people (5 children).  Whew!  The flowering shrubberies were gorgeous this time of year!

And then we broke out for some smaller family group photos:

The little girl was just the cutest thing ever.  I asked her if she saw the puppy dog in my camera (lens), and she thought that idea was rather amusing.

A while ago, I tried out Blurb to make a book. This was when they just had dust jackets, but now they  have image wraps.  Their novel idea is to not charge per page, so they charge one price for 0-40 and another for 41-80 (and more, but I can’t see any of my books having more pages than that).  This book that I made has 61 pages, because I wasn’t paying per page.

I’m not a huge fan of the dust cover, but it does look nice. (Provided no one rips it). If I try another Blurb book, it will definitely be their image wrap.  Underneath the dust cover, the cover is plain black.  I had no idea what to write for the inside of the dust cover, so I just babbled about Maylie there.

Their templates with words are a bit more geared towards and actual book that is about something, not really for a photo album with captions.  And the layout wasn’t the best for what I wanted it for, but that was my own fault, I certainly could’ve designed my own pages.

The pages are definitely thinner than Shutterfly or Winkflash, but it’s an acceptable thickness.  The binding looks like it’s stitched instead of glued, and the cover easily opens all the way, so I don’t foresee it coming apart.

As you can see, the layout is kind of so-so for showing off your pictures.  At least with the amount of text I wanted to write in the book.  (I got the idea to write stories about the child in the book, anecdotes and things they’ve said, as well as milestones…)

The print quality for the photos is ok.  I’d say it’s on par with Shutterfly and Winkflash.  The text in the book is crisp and clear, but I didn’t have any full page spreads that I created, all the text was typed into their editor.  I’d say it’s an OK book.  I didn’t have problems creating it, and it’s put together fine.  I would order from them again (at least now that they have a custom cover instead of the dust cover).

Pricing (10×8 hardcover): (dust jacket) 0-40 pages – $29.95,  (imagewrap) $31.95. 41-80 pages (dust jacket) – $35.95, (imagewrap) $37.95.  I think they give you a good bang for the buck there.   I do like the size of shutterfly’s books better (it’s a little bit bigger and longer), but an 80 page book for less than $40 is pretty good.

Ok, now this has got to be the ugliest photo book ever.  I’m regretting even making it, I thought I’d be able to customize the cover, and then their customizations only had ugly templates.  And after I’d spent the time to design all the pages, I didn’t want to scrap them and go with a different company.  And I had an awesome coupon for Winkflash.

So anyway… don’t get a photo book there, even if you have a good coupon.  I’ll tell you why.

They don’t give a good preview of what the finished page will look like if you use their text and template.  I stupidly thought, “Well, we’ll see what it looks like afterwards, maybe it’ll be OK”.  No… no… it’s not ok.  That right there was the most attractive looking cover I could come up with, and that’s saying a lot. Their templates are hideous, and you don’t have the option to design your own cover.  You can put the title under the picture (in only one font choice, and only one size), and that’s about it.  And I paid a premium for it! I should’ve gone with the plain cover.

The cover is a plasticky material, slightly puffy.  In the binding you can see that the pages are stapled together for the binding.  Which I suppose is better than the glue in the Shutterfly book that’s coming apart, but for the price I’d expect something a bit better than staples.

That is one of the pages I designed. (I did use their template a couple times in the book… and they look the same as the cover for the most part, very uninteresting and IMHO pretty ugly).  If you’re going to design each and every page, it’s not so bad (other than the cover).

However, their java software was VERY painful to use.  If you upload all the pages all at once, you won’t have a problem.  But if you want to upload 4 at a time, design 4 more, upload 4 more… then the software will not update a folder with the new images.  You have to create a new folder for each upload, and go back and select it every time (at least on my Mac, I don’t know if IE on a PC would be different).  If you go back and select a catch-all folder, it won’t see the new images.  It took a lot of futzing around to complete the silly book.

And then there’s the printing.  I created each page to spec, and the text on the pages isn’t crisp, it’s grainy (more noticeable in the small text).  I create printed stuff all the time, and the text isn’t grainy, but it’s grainy in this book.   On the pages with their templates, that text is crisp, but then I’m pretty sure it’s not printed from a jpg either since they don’t give you a good preview of those pages.

I think the printing is better in the Shutterfly book.  The photos are a bit grainy too (you can see a dotted effect from the printing, so the photos are slightly fuzzy when on the monitor they were sharp).  If you’re just casually flipping through someone’s photo book you probably wouldn’t notice that, but I’m looking closely at the pages because I’m reviewing the books.

The pages are slightly shiny (nice) and they feel slightly thicker than Shutterfly’s pages (nice).  But other than that, I give this book a big thumbs down.  There are scads of other photo book companies out there, for a timeless memento, there’s no point in wasting your time with this place.  Poor Maylie has to suffer with a horridly ugly book for all eternity, don’t do that to your kids.

Pricing: 30.95 for up to 20 pages in a 10×8 book, 50c per additional page. $6.99 to ship the first book.  For a plain cover, it’s $18.95 for up to 20 pages, 50c each additional page, $6.99 to ship the first book.