Behind Again... I Blame Hurricane Ian This Time!

Well... I was on a roll with the blog but now I have fallen behind again! I blame Hurricane Ian!

The Category 4+ eyewall of Hurricane Ian hit our city, North Port, for many, many hours. The massive wind destruction was only part of the problem here though. We also had horrible flooding throughout our city. You couldn't navigate the roads for several weeks. Bridges were washed out, etc. The school I teach at (5 minutes from our house) had water damage in almost every classroom. My students' and coworkers' homes flooded. Most of the flooding occurred in places that are NOT flood zones so most people didn't have flood insurance. Things are starting to look a little more normal every day but it has been a LONG road. The city has collected over 2 million cubic yards of yard waste! Driving around our city you can definitely still see the effects of the hurricane even though it was almost 3 months ago. 

Having said all that, we were VERY lucky. Our home held up to the storm quite well - we lost a few roof shingles and our property did NOT flood, even though most streets around us were under water. We lost a LOT of big, beautiful trees. And our fence was demolished which is not making our dog a happy camper at the moment. (Looking forward to the rebuild in February!) But in general we did ok and we were very thankful for our new house with the latest hurricane codes and shutters. 

We were without power for a while and without internet for longer. Luckily all this happened during a slow time for our business so we didn't have to cancel too many sessions. But the cleanup around our yard and home has taken up a lot of our free time and I have fallen behind on the blog once again and also missed my usual holiday card post... oops! 

Here is a drone video showing the damage at our house - my next several posts should be me catching up on the blog!

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Venice Wedding Photographer - Jen and Ryan

Jen and Ryan at Sarasota National, November 2016

I finally got caught up on Beach Portrait blog posts... and now I am trying to catch up on Weddings! Jen and Ryan's wedding at Sarasota National was back in November of last year, whoops!

Thanks to Josh Grant at Sarasota National, Allan Z at Beach Breeze Weddings, and DJ Jorge Rodriguez for being a great team to work with!

Here are a few of our favorite photos from their big day!

-Allyson

   

   

Like what you see here? Find out more about our Wedding Photography Collections and contact us today to reserve your date!

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North Port Family Portraits at Blue Ridge Park - The Ropers

We took these photos of our friends, the Ropers, at Blue Ridge Park in North Port. (Their daughter calls it "The Blue Park.")

Here are some of our (and their) favorites:

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Just for fun... Our friends' daughter at "The Blue Park"

Every so often we have some great personal photos that I want to share here on the blog, but never seem to get around to sharing... hopefully I can keep doing this more often in the coming months! Enjoy!

A great photo location fell into our laps the other day with the help of one of our favorite kids. We were babysitting our friends' daughter and took her to Blue Ridge Park in North Port to play on the playground (she calls it "the blue park," because every piece of playground equipment there is blue). A year or so ago, all the brush was cleared away down by a canal and a floating dock was added, which has given the park a whole new look and feel. 

We went down to the dock and she started picking spots and poses for photos. Turns out, she had some great ideas (maybe she can come work for us someday)! As we snapped some shots with the 5D mkiii and 70-200mm f/2.8 (obviously not planned since none of us were exactly dressed for photos), we realized that the floating dock was actually a great spot for photos, with the water and green spaces around it. We'll definitely be returning to this spot with proper lighting and clothing someday soon!

Here are a few of our favorites, including a couple of her playing on the playground:

 

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Even More Holiday Photos - Our Friends, the Ropers - Off Camera Flash

This is part of a series of posts containing 2013 Holiday Photos of us, our family, and friends - We've been holding off posting these until we were sure everybody's holiday cards went out! Enjoy!

We've featured Ropers on our blog before, and we take photos with them or of them all the time. For their holiday cards this year, they wanted pictures that featured the canal behind their new house. They also wanted to try to include their pug, who is under 2 years old and still very much a puppy. She's a bit hard to keep in one spot, so that part didn't exactly work out well, haha... (she always gets exceptionally hyper when she sees us, so I am sure that didn't help)...

Jason's been dying to test out some off-camera flash techniques that we hope to use on beach portraits in the new year (hopefully I can get him to write a more technical blog post on that soon after some more experimenting), so we carted a light stand, three flashes, plus all of our other usual gear to their backyard to get it all set up. 

Then, we found out that they wanted the photos directly beside the canal, which is at the bottom of a slope, covered in pine needles and plants. Setting up the light stands and other equipment on a hill was a bit of a challenge, but we managed. We got some nice shots and were able to see how the additional lighting worked as well.

Here are some of our favorites from their session: 

In these two photos, you can clearly see the difference between using a light behind the subject and not using one. 

 

Using an additional flash from the side in addition to the on-camera flash also helps with making the subjects pop out of the background and look less "flat." The light behind the subjects lights up dark hair, etc and simulates the sun shining behind them. We still have some work to do with this (hopefully on level ground), but it went very, very well for a first attempt.

Bonus photos:

Their daughter at Lights in Bloom at Selby Gardens and visiting Santa Claus at the "North Pole" (Florida Railroad Museum).

 

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