Kyle Hepp

July 26, 2009

This was such a fun session to shoot, in part because we are good friends with Sarah and Pipe, in part because they are hilarious together, and in part because Sarah herself is really interested in photography, so she had scoped out the neighborhood for cool places so we had a ton of good backdrops to work with.

Just looking at these pictures makes me miss my Santiago friends! But, right now I’m really enjoying catching up with old friends…and I know soon enough we’ll be back in Chile….and photographing Sarah and Pipe’s wedding!

S. put me on his shoulders so I could get the photo below. Thanks honey, for being the world’s greatest second shooter/stool!

Thank you for dressing to match the neighborhood, Sarah

Always have to shoot a couple half face shots, that’s just how I roll.

Big thanks to R. Restaurante for allowing us to come inside and take these pictures. The old bar was so cool looking that I was dying to shoot in front of it but didn’t have high hopes when we went in to ask the waiter since most 99% of all places say no. But, I promised the waiter a link and lots of gringo eyes viewing his website so in the end they succumbed to my bribery. I’m hard to resist.

Seba took this photo and I freaking love it.

And these last couple shots are my favorites. Normally when I’m going through photos I find a clear cut favorite shot that I fall in love with. But this time, I couldn’t choose. So they all win.

J’adore. Dang, I need to learn how to say that in the plural so I can say J’adore them both…anyone speak French?

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July 25, 2009

This vacation has been fun so far, but I have to admit, I’m exhausted! I’ve only been home long enough to download my photos onto the computer, grab a new memory card and run out the door again. Speaking of running out the door, I’m off to my friend’s bachelorette party now!

This morning we were went to an art fair in Saugatuck, MI to meet a friend of my mom’s (who sometimes stops by the blog, hi Julie!)

We didn’t take many exciting pictures of the actual fair but just carried our camera around with our new lenses all day so we could play.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend so far!

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July 24, 2009

Holy hell, I just made the biggest impulse buy of my life! We were planning on purchasing only the 35mm 1.4L OR the 50mm 1.2L. Guess who got both.

Plus, a bunch of stuff that we’ve been ordering over the past couple months and shipping to my mom’s house has all arrived, so we opened everything up and laid it out on the table to assess. And holy hell again, we now have a LOT of gear:

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not actually a gear head at all. I hear people say you need a good camera and good lenses before you start shooting weddings, but my first couple of weddings that I did with a Canon Rebel XT (a $400 dollar camera) and a 50mm 1.8 lens (a $50 dollar lens) I am just as proud of as the ones I’ve done with my Canon 5d Mark II (a $3,000 dollar camera) and a 50mm 1.4  (a $400 dollar lens). Now, hopefully I’ve improved as a photographer in composition and technique, and of course having better equipment makes my job much easier. But, I’m not advocating running out and buying yourself a load of gear in hopes that that will help you have a successful business. I genuinely don’t think that how expensive your camera is has anything to do with how good you are at shooting weddings.

That being said, I am unbelievably excited to use my new lenses and equipment to hopefully be able to create lots of amazing images. Just for fun, I took another picture of the same set up with my new 24mm tilt shift. LOVE.

For those of you who are gear heads, here’s a list of what we’re now shooting with.

2 5d Mark II camera bodies
1 40d as a backup camera body
Backup batteries
1 50mm 1.2L
1 50mm 1.4
1 24mm tilt shift
1 20mm 2.8
1 35mm 1.4
1 85mm 1.8
1 17-40mm 4.0L
1 580ex flash
1 540ez flash
Cactus wireless triggers/receivers
Hot shoe to pc adapter
2 Manfrotto tripods
Manfrotto superclamp
1 umbrella
10 4 gb CF cards
2 8 gb CF cards

Also included in the photo:

My new HP computer, which is already enabling to post process photos at a much quicker pace.
3 external hard drives where we back up all client photos.
200 Moo business cards
1 Sandisk card reader
1 new iPod Touch because my last one got smashed when I got smashed in the accident:

Eeeeeeeeeeejole, that’s a lot of expensive crap. Our running total of money spent on the business is now up to $15k but I think (thank goodness!!!), we’re about done spending. Sure, there will always be repairs and equipment replacement that we’ll have to do, but the major investment is hopefully done. By the end of this summer we will hopefully have paid off everything we have (or basically paid our personal account back with our business money) and hopefully next year we can start to make a profit. What I’m saying here is, people, pleeeeeeeeeease keep hiring me!

It always makes me laugh when people in Chile say things like, “Wow, you must make a lot of money charging those prices!” Ummmm….yeaaaaaaaaaaaah right Those people clearly aren’t photographers who know how much decent equipment will run you!

And for those of you who aren’t photographers, here are a couple pictures of Chicago that S. snapped while he was out on an architectural tour of the city by boat (I was shopping for a dress for my friend’s wedding next week, WOOHOO!!!).

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