I had the pleasure this week to create these images of Malina for her upcoming wedding. The session was a lot of fun, and we got some incredible images. This first one is one of my favorites. I really love her profile and expression in this, and how the light shapes and sets of her dress.
And in the same set, a relaxed and beautiful smile.
While shooting in b&w, I also created this detail series of Malina’s dress.
We did a series of images in the studio and outside in the studio gardens for variety, including full-lengths, mid-lengths, close-ups, and couple portraits, and with a variety of backgrounds. One of my favorite sets was on the fashion gray. I finished these with some of my custom edges.
We mixed the bridal session with a Pre-Wedding session to include some images of the groom. These two were great together and were very photogenic.
This series is great, particularly because of Malina’s genuine expressions.
And some of just the groom alone.And here is one of my favorites from outside in the studio gardens. Their expressions are perfect, the leaning and relaxed pose is wonderful, and the background looks so good. Right now the outdoor studio gardens are green and looking great. It is a great time to book and shoot outside.
This was such a fun shoot and this couple was a joy to work with. I really hope that they have a great wedding and a wonderful future together.
If you’d like some fantastic bridals or a pre-wedding session, give me a call and let’s create something wonderful. 801-728-3317.
Warm weather is here, the studio gardens are green, and it’s time again too book your summer family portraits and get the best availability.
One reason families sometimes put off getting portraits, is that they want to wait for the ”perfect” time. They think that later they will look better, look younger, or then if they wait longer at least everyone will be married, but then they wait until everyone has their children, and then wait until everyone is home from school, …and the reasons keep on going.
But the truth is that now is really the best time. Families change and loved ones pass, and sometimes it’s too late to get a full updated family portrait. We all know that there is no perfect time, so let’s capture your family right now as it is currently. And if your worry is how you will look, remember that I will light and position you in such a way that you will love the results.
Here is large extended family group, created right here in the outdoor gardens. I work to position and light everyone in just the right way so that the overall image has emotional impact.
During the portrait session, I will also photograph smaller groups. For this session here, that meant that I photographed each individual family as well as a group portrait of the grand children. This way, every group has a new updated portrait if they’d like, but these images will also look great as a series of prints or as a wall grouping.
Here are all the grand children together…
…as well as the original family…
…and just parents.
One of my favorite things about being a photographer is creating family heirlooms and works of art that will be enjoyed for decades. I work hard to mix technical excellence with emotion and great lighting so that you look great and love your new wall pieces.
Now is the time to book your family portrait. Give me a call at 801-728-3317. It’s always such an honor to be able to create something like this for people, and I’d love to create something wonderful for you.
Last night, KUTV started posting on Facebook some of the recent images I created for them of their news anchors, like this image of the morning team, Mary Nickles and Ron Bird. I thought this shoot would make a nice blog post today because I love creating great portraits and making people look great. Every shoot is different, but sometimes I create images that people can use for their business.
A shoot like this adds extra levels of difficulty, both technically (moving, setting up, and shooting in multiple locations quickly, while nailing color and lighting), as well as creatively (quickly getting strong yet believable poses that flatter, along with great expressions that draw you in).
A newsroom is a face-paced place to be with people coming and going, having only a short time for a portrait, and individual portraits are shot at different times of day and in different locations, as people can come. I have to be quick, mobile and adaptable, and fast with my setups.
So with these extra layers of difficulty, I am extra pleased with the results of this shoot.
There were a lot more images, but here are just a few of the highlights from KUTV’s favorite images. See what you think and see how many people you recognize from the news, morning, afternoon and evening.
Every team had group and individual images created in four different locations, some being in the studio and some being outside. This gives them a great mix of images to use for different purposes.
If you need some great portraits for work or business, give me a call. I’d love to create something fantastic for you too. 801-728-3317.
Sophie and Jeff had a beautiful wedding, and it is now up on my website. They got married in the Draper LDS temple and had their reception at the Garden Place at Heritage Park in Salt Lake City during the fall.
I’ve created this show for their DVD, which includes some of the best images set to music.
Their wedding was one of my favorites. The love between these two was very apparent, and their family and friends all showed their excitement for the marriage of these two. The strong emotions on that day made for a great set of images that made it hard to narrow down in creating their heirloom album design. On top of that, the couple was very attractive and the locations and weather were all wonderful.
You can view their entire wedding album design on my main website and see every page. Here are some of the pages below, shown as double-page spreads.
I hope you love their wedding video above, and check out their entire wedding at BryCox.com > Portfolio > Weddings > Wedding Albums > Draper.
Sometime soon I’d like to do a workshop for people who want to photograph scenics in Utah. In thinking about this, I thought I’d post some images I created while exploring and scouting locations for Adobe’s event that I posted about previously. While exploring, I shot some really fun scenics and wanted to post them here. They really get me excited for warmer weather and for doing a workshop sometime soon here in the beautiful state of Utah.
While I was driving, the time of day was perfect, the sun was setting and these meadows and aspens really glowed with the low angled light. Plus it was fire season, so there was a lot of smoke in the air which added to the dramatic look of the setting sun.
This black and white was particularly fun and probably one of my favorites from the day. I’d really like to make this up large and have it in my home.
And this last image shows a real teepee off in the distance, used by a rancher. The warm smokey air in this image really makes it for me.
It’s amazing the kind of scenery we have here in Utah and it was a fun adventure looking for routes and places to visit. Again, I hope to workshop here in Utah sometime soon, specifically on travel photography and scenics. If you’re interested in coming, let me know.
This summer, some friends and contacts of mine from Adobe’s California office had some meetings in Park City. They invited me along as a local tour guide and helper on their creative day of shooting, and had events scheduled that ended at the Heber Valley Railroad (aka Heber Creeper).
Here are some of my images from that day. I started out using one of my Lens Babies as I photographed the train yard.
The colors were so vivid that day, and the selective blur was a great look I thought for the train cars. With older and nostalgic train cars, I thought an older lens look would match perfectly.
They had lined up this model too, who came in this authentic conductor’s outfit. I think he was my favorite subject to photograph, and I created images with both a selective focus…
…and a normal lens. His outfit and expression were perfect. I really liked balancing the converging lines in the background with him.
Here are some abstracts from an area of the train yard that is normally closed to the public, but with special permission we were able to walk around and explore. It’s hard to explain how fun it is to crawl around in areas like this and just shoot photographs for fun.
It’s always fun to get away and create new images just for the sake of being creative, and it was fun being with photographer friends from Adobe. They really had a fun night planned and I am grateful I could be apart of it.
Usually I post my favorite client images of the week, but today my favorite images are personal portraits of my dad that we created yesterday with his saxophone. It was a really fun shoot which ended with my folks and I getting some delicious Chinese take-out.
My dad is a musician which is why I grew up as a musician, and learned to play the saxophone as well. These images are for his new website which we’re completely redesigning for him. For the new look, we needed new updated photos of him. Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.
I really like how these look. His smile is genuine and inviting, and just looking at them makes me hear his sax in my head.
I also took a series of him playing his sax and with those, I made up this collage.
These images really make me excited for his new website. When I get it designed and up online, I’ll for sure let you all know. We’ll have music clips up where you can hear him play.
If you need some cool portraits that you can use for commercial purposes, let me know. I’d love to create them for you. 801-728-3317
Ashley just did a fun mix of studio bridal portraits, including color and b&w, classic and edgy, close-ups and full length. Here are some of our favorites.
We did some in my white “lipstick” chair on a dark background to draw attention to Ashley’s white dress, and we situated her in such a way to really show off her fun shoes. This also shows one of the variations in how she may or may not wear her veil.
Next, is one of my favorites from the high-key, light-on-light set up. I used a fashion style of lighting to really make her eyes pop, and along with her great expression, fun veil, and Edgy-Edge finish, this image really sings. I think it’s probably my favorite from the entire shoot. It’s really a killer print up close.
And of course no bridal session is complete without a beautiful classic full-length. For this one we used very directional lighting for more extreme shadows to create more drama in the image. This really shows her entire dress and will be an image that she loves for years to come.
I also created these collages, the first showing some of my favorites from the high-key fashion set up…
…and the second collage designed as a square to show off all of the various details, from her jewelry to her veil to her dress. I love creating these collages because they can show various images, moods, and textures all in one framed wall piece. And this particular design really shows a lot of personality I think.
It’s amazing how many people are going for beautiful studio portraits right now, breaking away from the look of cheap photographers who are photographing in alleys.
And because I have an indoor studio, now is a great time to make your appointment for bridals and take advantage of some promos going on. Give me a call at 801-728-3317 and let’s create some dream portraits for you.
It was announced that Google Maps is now doing street views inside some of Utah’s most historic and prominent buildings, and one of which is the old Hotel Utah, now called the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. At the very top of that building overlooking the Salt Lake Temple, is the Roof Restaurant which has chosen to decorate with my artwork.
In this view now available on Google, you can see some of my pieces on the walls.
There are also some of my large stretched canvases there too, but the Google view does not allow you to see them because of the chosen angles.
If you’d like to see these and more art images, they are available to view and buy at BryCoxART.com. And if you’re looking for a nice dinner with a great view, the Roof is the perfect place.
Warm weather is coming and people are calling and thinking about outdoor family portraits. And though I can photograph families inside at any time of year, the subject of talking about families made me want to post family portraits that I didn’t get a change to post during the crazy Christmas rush.
Today’s posting is Ryan Shupe’s family. We did this grouping in the mountains near his home. With any outdoor group portrait, I pack in and set up a lot of gear and lighting equipment so that each subject is lit perfectly.
There is a push caused by new photographers to use “natural” light, but what that really means is haphazard lighting without any control. The truth is that controlled lighting should look natural, help create depth, and make people look amazing.
So after the standing group, I did a close sitting grouping. I always like to do a few different groupings of families so that people have choices. They really loved this close, black and white one.
And of course, some cute pics of the children. I was able to get all the children looking at me and smiling except the tiny baby. But she still looks cute and the overall image has a lot of personality.
Then we did some images of just the boys. And though I had other options from this grouping, their favorite was the one with the smallest boy laughing and falling down.
And one of just the girls…
Then just the little boys…
…and just the little girls. I got a great smile on the baby in this image.
And then some individual of each child. These are great for wall groupings or album pages. You’ll notice a lot of personality in each child’s portraits and looking back on these in years to come will make them even more valuable.
Family portraits are always a joy to create, and I’m always honored to be able to create them. I feel they are really invaluable in years to come and that’s it’s important that they are done just right.
Give me a call to set up your appointment. 801-728-3317
While in Canada and Banff, I took a number of images on my point-and-shoot camera and iPhone. Part of being creative I think, is just taking photographs everywhere, and using any and all tools, including small cameras.
Many times I’ve looked back on my life and have found that I have beautiful images of the places I’ve been, but no images of myself. As we get older, we wish we had images of ourselves at certain times, so I’ve made it a goal to try and include myself in more photos, even if I don’t like them at the time. It’s always good to have photos to look back on.
I particularly love my point-and-shoot, because it is a professional version with full manual controls, dials instead of menus, and it captures in RAW so I can edit it or convert images to black and white with more clarity. I have it rigged with an extendable stick so that I can get photographs of myself when I go places, without having to rely on strangers for focus and composition.
Below is a panorama created with the new iPhone 5. It does a fast job of panos, and in this image you can see my main camera around my neck and my point-and-shoot camera on an extendable stick in my hand.
The rest are some iPhone images of my trip. I like shooting for fun with the iPhone, because it’s a challenge. There are no controls, so you have to think differently when using it — you have to think around the fact that you can’t control some things, yet you still have to make the image artistic and work.
These first two images (above and below) are me flying out of the inversion and bad weather of Utah and seeing some blue sky again.
This is me flying into Calgary. I dragged the exposure for motion blur.
While shooting scenics in Banff, I shot some on my iPhone as well. I really like this image in black and white.
Here is some close-up details of frost on some grass coming out of the frozen lake.
My friend Cam took me to see the Banff Springs Hotel, and inside was this old ad.
Here it is from the outside.
And finally, as I was leaving Calgary very early in the morning, I found myself alone in the airport. I really liked the lines in this image, along with the 70′s looking multi-colored chairs.
Once on board, the flight was delayed due to a storm. I took this looking out the window of my airplane, waiting for takeoff.
Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed seeing these images. Make sure you check out the previous post (part 1) to see the scenics I took while there.
After speaking at the Alberta Professional Photographer’s Convention this month in Calgary, I took a free day to go to Banff. Here are some of the images I created that day.
I was taken there by a long-time photographer friend of mine, named Cam Colclough, that I met over 10 years ago in Oregon when we were both speaking at the same convention. We’ve stayed friends ever since, and he was kind enough to take me on a tour of some of his favorite places in Banff.
And here are some of the images I created in this area. I really loved the slanted mountains and awesome clouds in the background. It helped give me some contrast and directional light on the mountains, so I worked to create a variety of images by changing the foreground. A good foreground helps create depth, especially when there’s great depth created naturally by the lighting.
I was lucky to shoot these when I did, because right soon after, the weather changed dramatically, everything became foggy and overcast, and shooting scenics was no longer an option.
I really like all four of these scenics for different reasons, but I am having a hard time deciding which one is really the best. Which are your favorites? I’m curious as to what others are drawn to and why.
As part of my Banff Part 2 post coming up, I’ll show a completely different set of images — fun images I created solely on my iPhone and point-and-shoot camera.
And here is one of my favorites from outside in the studio gardens. Their expressions are perfect, the leaning and relaxed pose is wonderful, and the background looks so good. Right now the outdoor studio gardens are green and looking great. It is a great time to book and shoot outside.
