Hannah McKinzie Fitness Model

I had worked with Hannah McKinzie about a year ago. Recently she approached me saying that she had a Fitness Competition coming up and asked if we could do a photo shoot prior to that. So Hannah and I went to the Provo River Falls. Part of the photo shoot was to get some nice head shots, another part of it was to show off her fitness, and another part was simply to have some fun.

Shortly after these pictures were taken, Hannah took 2nd place overall in her Fitness Competition and from there was moving on to national championships.

These are some of my favorites from the photo session:

Trash the Dress / Suit at the Grotto

I love the idea of Trash the Dress (using your wedding dress in ways you might not have dared prior to The Big Day). Read more about it here.

Carolina Castillo had arranged a male model / groom to be with her for a Trash the Dress AND Suit style photo session. I really wanted to do this and was looking forward to it. And then on the morning of the shoot, we found out that the male model had to cancel. So we quickly began the search for another model to step in and help out.

With no male models available at such short notice, I asked a co-worker, Tyler Willey, if he'd be willing to wear a suit and get wet and ... hold a pretty girl in his arms doing it. I don't think it took even a split second for him to think about it. He said yes. And off we went. Less than an hour later he met Carolina for the first time. And less than an hour after that, we were shooting the following pictures.

I had a lot of fun and they say they did too. Check out the pictures and let me know what you think.











As an interesting side-note:  Tyler and Carolina later got engaged (the proposal) and married.

Trash the Dress - Laura at the Grotto

The idea for Trashing the Dress has been around awhile, and I've blogged about it before, and still the opportunities for doing this seem few and far between.

I LOVE the idea!

In my mind, it's not really about ruining (trashing) the dress, but is more about using it in ways that you might not have dared to use it prior to your wedding day. What else are you going to do with your wedding dress? Hang it in the closet for 20 years and hope that your daughter (who thinks it looks old fashioned) will want to wear it?

Why not put it to greater use and make wonderful memories with it by doing a Trash the Dress photo session?

A little about this latest photo session:

Laura isn't married (though she tells me she came close). This isn't Laura's wedding dress (though she does have one hanging in her closet). This wasn't even a "planned" Trash the Dress session! I had asked Laura to show me around the Grotto and she just happened to have a wedding dress sitting in the trunk of her car. Are models always this prepared?!? Laura was fantastic!

With no warning, no time to put on makeup or get herself ready, we ran off to the Grotto for some quick pictures. And here is a sampling of what we brought back:











All of the above pictures are pretty much unedited with only some minor tweaking done in Lightroom. But for this last image I wanted to show something a little different. It came to my mind that I might like something of a fantasy look. So I gave the background something of a painted look, see what you think:



Thanks Laura! I had a great time, and really appreciate you showing me around the Grotto and letting me capture some awesome images at the same time.