Brian & Lilac's Engagement Shoot

Yesterday was a beautiful day for an evening engagement shoot and it was truly a pleasure to work with Brian and Lilac. We mixed the urbaness of Beacon Hill with the Charles River Park in downtown Boston. It was a great night to be out. Here are a few highlights from the shoot.

New Site Launch

I'm excited to announce that my new site has just launched. Darrenpellegrino.com. Here I'll be displaying some of my personal work, artistic images as well as travel and cultural images. It will also be a resource for potential clients outside of the wedding industry to get a taste of my style of photography. Of course, brides and grooms are welcome to check it out as well. I'll continue to add new galleries but for now you'll find Images from Cape Town, South Africa, Mozambique, Arizona and of course my home area of New England. The site here at shuttervisionstudio.com will remain the place to find information on wedding and portrait photography. There are still some openings for 2009 weddings so feel free to drop me an email to check availability and pricing. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think of the new website.

Spring Fever

Spring is in the air here in New England and the wedding season is almost ready to kick off. It's been a cold snowy Winter but hopefully it's over. When Spring hits I always want to get out and shoot more photographs. The Tulips haven't quite bloomed yet but here are a few shots from past years Tulips. These are my personal favorites and the technique is really simple to do. Both of these images were shot in the light of day but with a fast shutter speed to almost black out the background and a flash on high speed sync to illuminate the beautiful flower. It's a fun photography technique. Give it a try.

KISS Wedding Book Arrival

Well, I'm happy to say that my sample KISS Wedding Book arrived on Friday in "Forbidden Green" with a black and white paisley print case. As you may or may not know, these books are made by hand of the finest quality genuine leather. I'm psyched about the quality and value as well as the overall simplicity of the ordering process. I think my wedding photography clients here in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are really going to like these, check that, LOVE these new albums. I'm really excited to offer them to my brides and grooms this coming wedding season and I can't wait to show off my new sample album so here's an advance look. Check out these pics and let me know what you think.

Album Layouts 3 of 3

Well here's the final round of album layouts for my new sample KISS Wedding Book. I think the photography is stunning, the books are of amazing quality and the layouts really enhance the imagery. My clients here in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are going to love them. Stay tuned for images of the actual Album as soon as it arrives. I hope you enjoyed a peek inside the new sample album. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Pages 17 & 18


Pages 19 & 20


Pages 21 & 22


Pages 23 & 24


Pages 25 & 26


Pages 27 & 28

Album Layouts 2 of 3 Designed in Lightroom

Here are a few more album layouts from my new KISS Wedding Book. I mentioned in the previous post that the layouts were created in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It's really simple. Lightroom does not yet have a module for album design but if you're listening (or reading ) Adobe, this would be a great feature for the next release. I'm still hoping. Anyway, the work around is simple but obviously has it's limitations. The idea is to use Lightroom's print module but instead of printing to a printer, you print to a file. The print module allows you to create a custom page size (10x20) set your margins (for cut lines) and choose your image(s) for the layout. The page size and cut line margins will be available from your album company and once you've created a layout you can save a template for future albums and just drop in the images. It's pretty slick. There's also options for print sharpening and color management depending on your needs. The limitations quickly become apparent when the layouts become more complex so I've found that you can create 2 or 3 different layouts (layers) and combine them in Photoshop. This saves time by not designing in PS because you can use the templates created in Lightroom. It's a great system if you like simple, elegant layouts that really drawn attention to the photography rather than the graphic design and in my opinion you don't want an overly complex layout design to detract from the beautiful imagery.

Pages 9 & 10


Pages 11 & 12


Pages 13 & 14


Pages 15 & 16

Album Layouts 1 of 3

I'm really excited about working with KISS Wedding Books this year and I'm still awaiting my sample album to show to my clients so I wanted to post a few of the image layouts for the album. They are all 2 page spreads with no gap and they were designed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In a future post I'll describe how I created the layouts in Lightroom but for now enjoy the layouts. I think the quality of these books will really enhance my photography and give my clients a beautiful memory of their special day.

Pages 1 & 2


Pages 3 & 4


Pages 5 & 6

Pages 7 & 8

Moyo at Spier

Spier is located in the heart of Stellenbosch, about 30 minutes outside of Cape Town. Some have called the region the "Napa Valley" of South Africa. The winery itself is a must see for many reasons from tastings to wine making to playing with the domesticated Cheetahs. Those are for another day. For now I wanted to highlight the amazing restaurant called Moyo. Moyo is unlike any other restaurant. It's modeled after a nomadic African village and offers a wide variety of flavors from all over the continent. This is a "must eat" for anyone traveling to South Africa.

Cape Town South Africa

A few weeks ago I wrote about "The Children of Mozambique" feature that was published in the online travel and culture magazine pology.com. It featured 6 portraits from my 2008 trip to Mozambique and South Africa. I think the images of these children are truly inspiring but there where soooo many amazing images from this journey. So while it's still off season for wedding and engagement photography here in Massachusetts I wanted to share some images from Africa. To kick things off, I'll take you to Cape Town South Africa. Here are a few images from Hout Bay. Hout Bay is one of the most beautiful and popular places on the Cape Peninsula and a highlight of any visit to Cape Town. It's a center for the local fishing industry. After a visit to the harbor there's amazingly beautiful road along the coast traveling south. I highly recommend a visit to Cape Town. Everyone I know that has been there has said the same thing, "It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Enjoy!

KISS Wedding Books

Well, I'm kicking off the new wedding photography season with a new offering for my clients. KISS Wedding Books. Up 'til now I have offered a more economical choice of wedding albums for my clients, a hardcover coffee table style album. These are attractive and a great alternative for brides on a budget. This year I decided it's time to offer something stylishly high end. Therefore, this year I'll be "Kissing" my clients. I hope you figured out I'm not being literal here. The Kiss Wedding Books are classy but trendy. They come in fun colors and claim to be the simplest of wedding books. I just ordered my first sample album in "Forbidden Green". Gotta love the color names. They also have "Passion Pink" and "Voluptuous Black". That gives you an idea of their marketing plan. Anyway, I'm looking forward to showing the sample album to my clients, I think they're going to love them. Here is picture of one of their albums. Feel free to check them out at kissweddingbooks.com.

Photoshop World Boston 2009

Most photographers from Massachusetts or Southern New Hampshire probably already know but just in case they've been living on another planet, Photoshop World 2009 is coming to Boston March 25-27 at the Hynes Convention Center. For more information click here. Until February 20th you can save $100 bucks off the registration. That's pretty good considering the regular price is $599 or $699 depending on whether your a NAPP member or not. All of the big names in photoshop as well as some big names in the photography world will be there such as Scott Kelby from the photoshop insider, Matt Kloskowski from Lightroom Killer Tips and few great photographers like Joe McNally and Rick Sammon. These guys are not only great at what they do and well respected in their fields but they're fantastic instructors as well. You can find out all about the classes they'll be teaching at Photoshop World by going to the site.

Weather in New England

Well it's an understatement to say this has been a tough winter. Here is Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire there's been more snowfall this year than in any year in recent memory. The positive is the Ski resorts in Vermont and New Hampshire are thriving. The negative is shoveling, scraping, salting, chipping, plowing, clearing, well you get the picture. Winter is also the slowest season for wedding photography. At least shooting that is. Right now it's booking season for Summer and Fall. So I as keep up with the emails and calls I'm thinking about the nicer weather on the horizon. One of my Summer highlights is a family trip to Martha's Vineyard. Thinking about that, I was reminded of some of the amazing sunsets in Menemsha (a small fishing village). So here are a few images. Just observe the vivid color but don't think there was a lot of post processing. These images have no saturation or vibrance enhancement. They'll make you want to visit!

Lightroom Mogrify

So what does "mogrify" mean? Well, I have no idea what the actual word means but I do know that photographers and photography gurus now associate the word with Timothy Armes Lightroom Plugin. If you don't use this plugin yet, you have to give it a try. It's a watermarking and image border creation tool that works through the export command in Lightroom. It has some great options and it's really slick. For more information click Here. While your there check out Timothy's work as well. He has some great images. If you want to go directly to his home page click on his logo to the right.

Now back to Lightroom Mogrify. The only way to currently watermark images in Lightroom is to use the print module and load your logo via the identity plate adjusting the opacity to your liking. This method is limited and does not allow you to create a custom border. Hopefully in a future version of lightroom we'll see a better watermarking tool but until then, Mogrify provides an excellent alternative. It gives you real flexibility for creating a border for your images as well as placing your watermark. Once you create your settings, you can save them as an export preset for future iamges. This makes a great tool for blog images. Here are a few samples. Let me know what you think. These are two wedding bridal bouquet's.

Pology

I hope you've already had the opportunity to visit the travel and cultural online magazine at pology.com. It's put together each month by the hard work of Neil Schwartz who really inspires with cultural insights and amazing photographs that are contributed from various photographers. I recently had the privilege to be included among them. In '08 I spent a month traveling in Southern Africa. Among the many stops was the town of Chimoio in Mozambique. One of the most powerful experiences was seeing the children. Their eyes tell such an amazing story. I was completely captivated by them and I think Neil was too. I suggest you fly over to pology for an inspiring visit and if you'd like to view my series on the Children of Mozambique, click here. Here is one additional image that you won't find there but was one of my favorites. I dare you to just stare into this little girls for awhile.