Rachel Henderson Photography Blog » Wedding Photography in Holland Michigan MI, plus lots of Winfield and Harriet

This June our ‘86 mazda Pickup bit the dust. Last Saturday our ‘95 Stratus started billowing smoke and died on the side of the freeway. Facing a $1200 (and likely more) repair on a car with 190,000 miles we decided to retire Silvia, our Stratus.

My brother-in-law, Jason, mentioned that there is a new kind of Hybrid that we should look into. Something about half-car/half-horse? While we didn’t find exactly what he had described we found a reasonable solution. Better than a Hybrid, it doesn’t take gas. Powered by string cheese and spaghetti Win peddles us anywhere we want to go. Really, it’s a great mode of transportation.

Yesterday our friend Matt married his best friend Dana, and I had the privilege of photographing their wedding. I’m not joking when I say that I cried a half a dozen times yesterday. Matt and Dana have the kind of relationship that reminds me of everything good. There are some relationships that call any cynic to task and theirs is one. They are both totally taken with each other, best friends, sweet, kind and passionate. It was my honor to record it.

Here are a couple of my favorites from Matt and Dana’s wedding.

This is Christy’s image from our shoot-off. I think that it matchs my “full time mom and part time photographer” brand. I’m shooting her big fat 135mm 2.0L lens. It’s a long heavy lens that has little grace for hand shake. I had a lot of blurry images from shooting like this.

Yes, it’s November.  No, Harriet isn’t wearing socks.

Yesterday the kids and I spent the morning with Christy Pacanowski. She’d a fantastic portrait and family photographer in Zeeland. She has 3 kids that Win and Harriet love playing with. 2 weeks ago she shot some images of me with my camera. Yesterday was her turn to be in the hot seat. She put the “hot” in hot seat. She sooo rocked it! We had a great time. We were having a blast finding the best light around her house while our kids (during their nap-time by the way) crawled and played at our feet. Some things are worth skipping a nap for. For this first picture of Christy in the street I was holding Harriet and shooting one-handed. Her shots of me are a little comical.

…when I have Winfield to help?

Win was in our living room playing with one of our reading lights. I thought that I would play with the light a little too.

This is great example of how the dynamic range of a camera is much smaller than the human eye. When I shot these pictures I could see plenty of things on our living room. The light was dim, but I could see. WInfield was really close to the light so he was really bright. The camera can only see either him or the living room, but not both at the same time. My eyes could see both. When taking pictures avoid high contrast situations (unless you know what you are doing). This is one of the reasons that shade is much easier to take pictures in than sun is.