Katie Ponozzo and Kristen Brooke, models at the Bruneau Sand Dunes, by Mike Reid-All Outdoor Photography.

Bruneau Sand Dunes SE of Boise. Now I can imagine this would be a photographers paradise at 7 in the morning or night....but at 11:00 in the midday on a bright sunny day with no clouds it is the worst possible conditions.
Flat light and no shadows except below their feet. I have never worked so hard on a gallery in processing.

Ok so all the complaining out of the way......what a great shoot this turned out to be.
Katie and Kristen are sweethearts, we had an excellent makeup artist on the shoot Amber Coats. Who by the way would make an excellent photographers assistant..she had some great ideas.

This shoot was a collaboration with Albert Diskson another photographer from Boise. He set the whole thing up...many thanks to Albert.

I did this entire shoot with no lights, no reflectors. D700 and the 24-70. Because the light was so flat. I shot them a lot with their backs to the sun...their faces would have been a mess of shadows and ruined every shot. In an effort to get some depth into the shots I took them to the top of the dune where mercifully halfway through the shoot we did get some wispy clouds in the background.

I shot Katie first as she had to leave...as Albert was shooting Kristin. Then we got them together in the frame for a few shots....which turned out to be my favorites of the day. Katie and Kristen and their outfits were a perfect contrast....yeah we meant to do that :).
Katie brunette dark genie outfit, Kristen blonde white genie outfit.
If you have been following me you know Katie is an amazing dancer...this is my first shoot with Kristen who is a fitness model...who turned out to be a graceful jumper and poser....lucky me.

Anyway if you like this kind of stuff DO check out the gallery as there are a lot of cool shots there:
http://alloutdoor.smugmug.com/Other/Katie-n-Kristen/17864348_2Cjn6H#1366333540_7B35HZc

Katie Ponozzo, desert genie at the Bruneau Sand Dunes. By Mike Reid-All Outdoor Photography.

Love this shot of Katie in her genie costume. Tough midday light so I turned her face away from the sun so I wouldn't have to fight all the shadows. Took quite a bit of processing to get to this look....you all know how midday light looks SOOC, not good.

D700  24-70 natural light.

 I will be posting more from this shoot later.

Katie Ponozzo dance portraits by the Boise River Greenbelt, by Mike Reid-All Outdoor Photography.

Great dance portrait shoot by the Boise River and Greenbelt with Katie Ponozzo, a beautiful Boise contemporary dancer. A bit late in the day but there were just enough thin clouds to take the edge off the sunlight. Most of the shots are on an old bridge over the Boise river.

Katie is so easy to shoot, I pick the background and the light and I put Katie in position then I shoot whatever she does. She obviously doesn't need any coaching from me :).

Used the Nikon D700 with the 24-70 and the Nikon D3 with the 70-200.
Used an SB800 with a 42" softbox for the D700 shots.

The D3 shots are all natural light, they are easy to spot as they are the ones with the major telephoto bokeh effect. I love to shoot portraits at, or as close as I can get to 200mm.

Katie and I have shot together a few times now and there are a few in this bunch that are some of my favorite shots we have created in our collaboration.

Thanks again Katie, great stuff!

Her entire gallery is here: http://alloutdoor.smugmug.com/Other/Katie-River-Dance/17799490_rxjnQW#1360407898_LtZ7S6K

Palina and Steve's engagement portraits at The Bishop's House and The Old Penitentiary in Boise, by All Outdoor Photography.

Palina and Steve, what a great couple. These two are so into each other, one of those couples that was meant to be together.
We started off slow but once they got into the flow of it and realized it was going to be fun we took a record number of pictures...and so many good ones. I didn't use any lights at this shoot and my photo count increased dramatically because of it. I didn't realize how disruptive using lights was until I didn't use any.

Of course the lights create such a different look, not better, but different.

All with the Nikon D3 and the 70-200 at 2.8 or 4.
Pretty straight forward shoot really. They were both comfortable in front of the camera, great sports and by the end we had one of my favorite engagement galleries.
Steve said the photo shoot experience felt like more of a date, and he really enjoyed the shoot, which makes sense because it sure looks like they are having fun in the pictures.

Check out the entire gallery to really get a feel for it: http://alloutdoor.smugmug.com/Engagement-galleries/Palina-and-SteveBoise/17663472_KBndGq#1346993045_PkJRWfg

Bachelorette party with Lindsay and friends. By AO Boudoir Boise Portrait Photography, Mike Reid.

Lindsay thought it would be fun to combine a bachelorette party with a boudoir shoot....she was right. 5 girls in the room, lots of hair and makeup being done and outfits flying around the room. Everybody had a lot of fun and what a great idea it turned out to be.
Took about 2 hours to shoot everybody and when not shooting the girls went back to the party or watched each other.
As you can imagine for me it all moved really fast and the shoot was over so fast.
Almost all with natural window light until the pillow fight and then for the bathtub shots there was no window in there.
Shot with the d700 24-70 2.8 mostly and a few with the d3 and the 85 1.4. The room was very small so needed the wider angle for the most part.

Here is the link to the gallery with lots of fun shots...don't miss the sneak attack pillow fight at the end:
http://aoboudoirboise.smugmug.com/Other/Lindsay-bachelorette-party/17162410_bk6qPB#1300859935_v5n9SFj

Breanna in Freak Alley, downtown Boise.

This photoshoot was so much fun. My assistant Cheyanne's good friend Breanna was recruited for a photo shoot just to get out and have some fun.

Obviously very attractive...started off kind of shy and nervous. So we took some time and laughed and messed around until Breanna started getting comfortable.
It was quite a busy day downtown and there were several points where there would be 5-10 people standing around watching our photo shoot, it was a little weird but kind of fun also.

Most of these are with the d700 and the 70-200 and using the softbox.

There are lots more at her gallery here:
http://alloutdoor.smugmug.com/Portrait-galleries/Breanna/16962117_bxh4nk#1282696096_jGTHqXg

Emphasis on portraits, moving away from weddings.

Well I toyed with this a bit last winter and have finally decided.
After 2010 we will only be doing weddings for a few client referrals and for people we already know.
Pricing will be on a case by case basis.

For me photography is about creating not recording...I find with weddings I am not allowed the time to be creative unless the couple I am working with is really into the photography like I am :)
Since that is seldom the case I usually come away from the experience with a feeling of what might have been.

We are only doing a few weddings this year since I actually decided to do this last winter, then second guessed myself this spring when tax time came around.

This will free me up to do a lot more creative projects and to branch out into more creative outlets for my portrait photography.