great way to end the week, or great start to the weekend

   Just finished up with a rehearsal dinner for my new found friends Jordan Difani and Ann Weizer! I am so pumped for the wedding tomorrow.  I am second shooting for Maura and I absolutely can not wait for my first wedding!! The rehearsal was great and everything went as smooth as could be. We headed out to Jordan's parent's house for the dinner. Their place was incredible. It was a very intimate setting with some delicious food, some extremely heart-felt toasts, and some awesome dance moves. I've never seen that many white people dance so good! I had the great opportunity to have a real heart-to-heart with the groom and we are planning for a double dinner date with our brides sometime after their honeymoon! Can't wait.  What a great way to end a very stressful week and to start an awesome weekend. I am so happy for this couple tomorrow. I know that God will work wonders through you two. Bless you both!!

Check 'em out:

how cool?

tasty food! I would know!

awesome moment between brothers

what a beautiful couple

cheers!!

look at my swag

cute

not quite sure what to put here...

until next time
Ryan

a season of renewal

Hello friends,
  Well not a lot to talk about, other than rain!! These past few days have been crazy! Fayetteville has seen more rain these past few days then it has in over 80 years. With that being said, I haven't really had a chance to go out and get my photography on! So, I will talk about this weird season of renewal that I am going through. I like to think that God uses the things of this world to help us better understand the things of the spiritual. About a month ago my camera crapped out on me and I had Bedford's fix it, then a few days ago I break the screen on my phone and had to get a replacement and then two days ago our computer starts messing up! I went to Megabytes today and to my great relief it will be fixed for free!! What has been happening is the keys are all going crazy and the trackpad is about finished. this is what hap/p/ens when I use the p//////// key! It just gives me tons of ////////////. I have a white macbook and the guys at megabyte told me that since the edges are cracking, like most white macs are, then it is a manufactures defect and I am getting a completely new top case and trackpad! So great news. I also got my camera back from bedfords today and Thursday my new phone will arrive. So that is where I am at! Just keeping my eyes open to see what all this might mean.

here are some shots I got lately:

love my little man!

that's what cabin fever will do to you!

lovely bride

sister shoot

unedited

until next time

Ryan

beautiful weather - beautiful bride

I now have two bridal shoots under my belt and I am addicted! Today I shot for Maura at the super trendy northstar building here in Fayetteville. We couldn't have asked for better weather! I know that most people would not think that shooting right before a thunderstorm would be good but it was fantastic. Absolutely no shadows, the wind was blowing in our favor, and the clouds were big and fluffy with a sweet grey and blue sky behind them! I know that it is weird that I look at those things, but I do! To bad I can't post any of the shots of the bride but I did get Maura to do a little modeling for me so I could post up a photo of the day. I also wanted to be able to blog where we were shooting and get a couple of shots of the building!

enjoy:

picture-of-the-day

until next time
Ryan

comme ci comme ça

By this point I am just counting down the days to graduation and going through the motions!

Molly and I got our Volvo back today and I second shot for Maura at a senior shoot she had. It was a lot of fun. Not your typical senior shoot! We got to climb hay bails and ride 4 wheelers!

Other than that it's been a pretty average couple of days.

what I've been up to the past couple days:

until next time
Ryan

family

What a full weekend! Molly had her concert that she directed for the Mashburn singer's on Saturday night at the uark ballroom! They were great and I got to be one of the photographers for the concert too! Before that I was helping Maura out with her client Colby Baker for her bridal portraits. They are so good! Can't show them yet... :) Then yesterday Molly and I went to Oklahoma for my grandfather's 80th birthday and I had a family shoot for my old friend Kristina Kerr and her gorgeous family! Today has proven that this will be a very busy week. I am so pumped about graduating in less than a month!! I really have to focus and push through for this last stretch, can't check out early!

enjoy these shots from the weekend:

love these two

daddy and Zoey

daddy and Kaylee

I loved that she was the only one looking back!

until next time

Ryan

p.s. I was just looking online and saw this incredible giveaway by Crave Photography! It's an all expense  paid 2 day trip to Utah to learn everything from editing (in a major way) to shooting! check this out... Crave Photography

God's good graces

My process to becoming a professional photographer is proving to have it's ups and downs. I don't mean that business has been up and down. It has been a consistent incline. (which will not always be the case) but sometimes it is hard when it feels that I put some much into this without seeing direct benefits. I understand the importance of apprenticeship,  and I see that the experience I am gaining from Maura by shooting for her and learning from her, is so incredibly valuable because of its long-lasting affects. It seems that I have a few very good and potentially profitable things in the near future, but I can't quite reach them. "God give me the confidence to constantly strive to follow you"! I do strive to be successful! This plays into many areas of my life. Successful with my relationship with the Lord, my relationship with my wife, friends, and my business!! I have been very blessed lately to have a few shoots of my own, and I have more coming up so these will definitely help with my dilemma. I pray constantly that I am doing what God wants me to be doing. It's funny because when I started with photography, I felt such peace! I was ecstatic to actually be good at something and love it 200%!! Then money comes into play and seems to completely reverse that. Maybe that constant battle is a way of the Lord showing me that I am on the right track. I pray that above all other things, I am doing what is pleasing to the Lord, and that what I am doing reflects Christ in all ways!

wow, sorry for this to be such a strange post. It's just a little different than normal but today has been a little different day than normal. I had two shoots that I was lined up to do but one got rescheduled because of the weather and the other one just fell through. So no photos to put up but I still wanted to be consistent and post monday-wednesday-friday. Even though this week I posted tuesday-thursday-friday, but whatever!

until next time
Ryan

10 fingers... 11 toes?

wow... posting a blog monday-wednesday-friday is tough! How does Dale do it every single day!? I'm starting to feel like it is a job and I should definitely be getting paid for it!

I had the great opportunity to do a family shoot for my friends and their little boy yesterday at Wilson Park. Preston and Leslie McCormack are old friends of mine. They lead a community group that my wife and I used to attend and are now moving to Little Rock so Preston can go to medical school!! Dr. Preston! I wanted them to be able to have some good pictures of their little boy in Fayetteville before they moved, which is Sunday. It was such a chill photo shoot. We just walked around the park for a while talking. I forgot for a while that I was supposed to be snapping pics because I was so caught up with just hanging out!

oh... you may be wondering about the title to the blog post. their boy, Silas has 11 toes?! I guess it wasn't that hard to figure out, ha! Well I should really be getting back to doing my taxes! I know that it is Thursday and this is taking place of Wednesday's blog post, but I will post tomorrow as well. I have a shoot tomorrow with Maura in Eureka Springs! It's gonna be cold.......

Here are some shots from yesterday:
enjoy!

until next time
Ryan

exhausted.

It's not even wedding season yet and I'm already getting little to no sleep because of shoots and editing! Bring it on!! I am so incredibly excited about all these weddings this summer.

Well this weekend was nuts! I had two senior shoots in Tulsa that I did solo and they went great! Molly and Jenna rode with me into Tulsa because after the shoots we picked their two older sisters up from the airport because they all ran the hogeye marathon relay together! so fun!! We ended up staying in Tulsa until about midnight before I drove us all home. I've made the drive to and from Tulsa plenty of times, but running on only 4 hours of sleep and being in the sun all day shooting, is really draining! I drove back and it felt like I was driving for days!!

The next morning we all got up (fairly) early and I did a sister shoot for Molly and her sisters at the farmer's market! It was really nice and they turned out great! Immediately after I had to work one of the booths for the hogeye. I took photos for it and left from there to go straight to Rogers. I met Maura there and we hopped in the car with Iain and Corrie and headed out to Eureka. This shoot was beyond words incredible!!! That couple was so much fun. One of the best things I am learning about being a photographer is the awesome opportunity I have to really gain some new relationships with people. And not just being acquaintances but really becoming friends. It really shows up in the photos if we are all genuine with one another. I especially like doing engagement shoots because of the journey I get to see unfolding before me of their transition to the wedding day. By the time the wedding comes around, I know that we will be more like friends with awesome cameras rather than their photographers! 

Now I have the week to recoup and get some editing done (oh yeah, and do school work). I am happy to announce that I have a family shoot tomorrow with my good friends and their new baby boy!! Just booked that about 10 minutes ago as I was writing this up!!

hope you enjoy the pics.

until next time

Ryan