I am heading out of town bright and early in the am to help out with a workshop with my good friends over at SuperShoots.com. More on that in future posts. This post is in honor of the first anniversary of Matt & Amanda which will be coming up this weekend while I am away. I hope you remember Matt! Don’t blow this one 😉 Hard to believe it has been a year. I haven’t posted anything yet about Matt and Amanda. They are great friends and shooting their wedding was an honor and a blast. Matt and Amanda’s story will be featured in the upcoming Premier Bride Magazine and Amanda will also be featured in my ad. Thanks to you guys for trusting me as your photographer and for your friendship. So, with that, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! I wish you many, many more. Thanks also to Allan Mueller for second shooting with me.
Last weekend Brooke, Harper, and I had the privilege of attending Joey and Rory‘s Annual Bib and Buckle Festival held near their home in Columbia, TN (just south of Nashville) at one of their neighbor’s farms. Rory is famous for his bib overalls and Joey sports a mean belt buckle, thus the name. The family-fun style event drew 800 or so fans from all over the country along with a number distinguished guests and musicians, including Naomi Judd. The incredible food is prepared by Marci Jo’s, a restaurant started and operated by Joey (that’s the “Jo”) and Rory’s sister Marci. Look it up and make a point to stop by if you’re ever “in that neck of the woods” as we say down south. Joey and Rory’s daughter and aspiring musician, Heidi Feek, performed and then Joey and Rory performed a full concert including a number of special guests, including the incredible Bradley Walker and Wynn Varble. Just an incredible evening spent visiting with dear friends and making some new ones too. Here’s a little slide show of some pix from the evening and our all to brief of a visit with Joey and Rory.
Just following up with “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say. The Country Music People article is out now. Here’s the opening spread to the article and a link to larger versions of scans of the pages in print. One of the pix is not mine. Hope you can tell which one that would be 😉
OK. After some confusion due to my jumping the gun, we’ve got editors approval to post. This sort of thing is exciting news for a photographer!
I just received a preview copy of the June edition of Country Music People magazine. The edition will feature an article about a fantastic country music act, Joey and Rory, and my work will be on the cover and accompany the article. I have photographed Joey and Rory for over a year now and a variety of the images we’ve shot over that time will be in the article. I shot the cover image during the making of their latest video (Play the Song), their latest release off of their debut album, The Life of A Song. The video is in regular rotation on CMT and GAC along with their first release, Cheater Cheater.
There is a long back story to how I came to meet and work with Joey and Rory that touches on many of my fundamental beliefs about life and my photography. I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say that I am grateful to know and count among my friends these incredibly talented artists and truly authentic people! They are simply the best.
I’ll post the full article when I receive it but for now, here’s a preview of the cover . . .
Our friends, Liz and Dean, put on the best kickoff to summer party every year around the Memorial Day weekend. This year was no exception. 100 pounds of mudbugs, picture perfect weather, good friends, a few drinks, and some great out of town guests too. What else could you ask for. I did my normal thing, shooting lots of picks, in between batches of bugs. Here’s s a few shots from the evening and a slideshow of images too. The full gallery can be seen here:
Hey everyone. I’m just over a week returned from teaching a Location People workshop in beautiful, sunny Savannah, GA and finally getting over the sleep depravation. More on the workshop in future posts. I traveled down a few days early to scout and spend some time with my friend and mentor Craig Tanner ( see The Mindful Eye). We had a great time catching up and discussing our latest creative endeavors. Craig is always an inspiration and source of creative energy for me and for that I am truly grateful. He has litterally changed my life as both a photographer and just a human being on this planet.
The latest installment of Craig’s inspiration for me came in the form of watching him bring to fruition one of his long time creative pursuits, which was to take the next step with his music and actually begin performing live. Craig had already taken the major first step and performed at a few open mic’s. I believe this was to be his third. I watched Craig prepare and practice for a few days and was able to witness him put many of the same principles he teaches photographers in overcoming their fears in photographing people or approaching strangeers into practice to this end. He was clearly nervous and anxious. Ultimately though, he just did it. He stepped over the edge and took that step. He prepared, practiced, and the performed . . . adminarbly well too I might add. Craig is quite a good musician and will no doubt continue to excel at this endeavor to the extent he desires. Moreover though, the process and privildge of watching Craig put into practice so many of the things he has taught me was both affirming and ultimately inspirational. If you’re out there and sitting on a dream, follow Craig’s lead, and take the next step!
Here are a few pix and a video slideshow set to one the song’s Craig performed (sorry about the poor audio quality!):
Spent a little time this last weekend on “the other side” of the camera for a change and just had a blast. I think I have over 20,000 images of my daughter now (that’s not an exaggeration) and I’m in something like 2 of them (well that may be a slight exaggeration . . . but you get the picture). So, we had my friend and fellow photographer, Jessi Ringer, come out to the house bright and early on Saturday am for a little “day in the life photo shoot” with me and my girls.
Jessi did an amazing job keeping up with our little bundle of pure energy and adrenaline. We put Jessi though the paces with a wide array of inside and outside activities including playing dinosaurs and froggies, birdie flying, coffee cafe, red bud pie making, hiking, biking, climbing trees, gardening, jumping in water puddles, gymnastics, and super jumping . . . and this all in two hours or so! Here are some of Jessi’s picks:
Well, I’ve been away for a while. I knew this would inevitably happen. I would get busy and get behind and ultimately come face to face with the fact that I’m a busy guy and committing to routine blog posting is just that . . . a commitment (and who among us needs another one of those blasted things). Well I’m going to forge ahead this time and just get back to it. So what if there are a few gaps here and there. Who cares. I’m not going to beat myself up over it. What I can post is simply what I can post and so be it. I am going to try to make a dent in my backlog this coming week though and do several posts . . . maybe even a marathon day with several posts. We’ll see. Anyway, I’ve a compulsion to “check boxes” and there must be 25 blog ideas on my little blog backlog. That’s a lot of boxes just ripe for the taking! 😉
So anyway, I’m back with a fun post this week. My friend and fellow photographer Jessi Ringer introduced me to the incredibly talented, Quinn Peyser, who does these amazing little works of art she calls Doodles! Well I had to have one. Shhh, don’t tell anyone but this one is going to be a surprise for my wife for Mother’s Day! Fellow photog’s out there (or anyone really) please go check out her work. They are great and extremely affordable. Quinn can draw her inspiration from anything including your photos.
In my case, I asked her to Doodle my daughter, Harper, based on her 3rd Birthday Photo Shoot pix. Here is a link to the original images and below is what she came up with. Pretty cool huh?
Hey Everyone! We had a beautiful weekend here in TN so we decided to head out to a local state park and feed some ducks. My wife, Brooke, ran some ungodly distance (training for a marathon) whilst I “watched” our 3 year old daughter, Harper, and snapped a few photos. Just family snapshots really but much fun behind each of these.
If you’re going to lay on the ground all the time, so will I . . .
Many of you know that I am a contributor on a wonderful web site called The Mindful Eye (TMELive.com). Make no mistake, TME is Craig Tanner’s baby and I am simply honoered to add a small contribution from time to time. I strongly encourage you to check out the site. In particular, take a look at Craig’s Daily Critique features. Craig has a gift for critiquing the work of others and doing so in a way that is informative, inspirational and uplifting to those listening to the critique as well as the original artist.
That said, I wanted to embed a link to a recent Art of Lighting piece that I contributed to the site. This is a uTube version of the piece. You can see this piece and my other contributions here.
Bryan Allen Photo Blog 