While we’re sitting in the hotel room waiting out the snowstorm, I thought I would post some of Ethan and Sarah’s pics from this weekend.
We came out to Colorado to photograph their wedding in Morrison, Colorado. We flew in last Thursday and then went out with them for a photo shoot on Friday. We went to the ranch that Ethan is staying at, along with the town of Golden, Colorado which is where we stayed. Then we went up to Red Rocks State Park which was a really cool place to go!! The weather was cold, but Sarah was a champ doing the pics goosebumps and all!!
Friday they had a cowboy themed wedding at Willow Ridge Manor and the weather turned out to be absolutely beautiful for them!
Thanks for a great weekend Ethan and Sarah!!
Here are a few photos from their shoot on Friday:

Cheridy and I are out in Colorado right now. We shot a fantastic wedding (I’ll post images once we get home!). We planned on staying in Colorado for a few days to enjoy the beautiful mountains. Those of you that know me know that I’m very anal retentive about planning. This was one of the first trips that I didn’t plan very much and it’s been interesting.
Our first day we were going to head out to Dawn and Jay’s house who are Cheridy’s aunt and uncle but we found out that their daughter Devanie was in the hospital in Denver (I won’t go into details) so we ended up heading out to visit with them at the hospital which was really nice to have had that opportunity (we’ll be praying for ya Dev). After the hospital we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was mostly snowy and gloomy and due to my lack of planning, I was an idiot and didn’t realize that the road crossing the park was still closed for the season, so we drove out there, stayed in the hotel and planned on heading back towards Denver and then on to Vail the next day. I had some time in the hotel to do some planning so I found our new destinations, hotels, etc.

Today we headed to Vail and it was very snowy and miserable outside. We decided to stop for lunch in a town called Frisco which is near Vail. We stopped for lunch and then got back on the road and we saw a sign that said the main highway was closed due to an accident. They had put a road block down and we were the first car after the road was closed. We figured that it might take an hour to clear so we found an alternate route. We started driving that way but the weather was crazy and after looking at the new route in more detail, it was going to take us over two 11,000 ft. mountain passes and we were right in the middle of a severe weather warning. So, we decided to wait it out by the main expressway and hope that the road was cleared soon. We saw lots of ambulances and firetrucks go by and with each one we figured…only a few more minutes and they’ll open the gate. Two hours later, a guy came by informing us that there was a 70 car pileup at Vail pass and that the road would be closed for another 10-12 hours. So, we went back to Frisco and checked into a hotel.
We realized that if our lunch had only been 5 minutes shorter, we might have been right in the middle of that pileup. Thank God for that!
After we checked into the hotel, we got online and found that ALL the highways in the area were closed due to other accidents. All the hotels in Frisco are sold out and the red cross is considering opening up a shelter for all the people that can’t get a room. This is crazy!!!

Outside the snow is blowing so hard you can’t see anything…so much for the beautiful mountains!!! Now we just want to get out of here and get home, but after waiting on hold with United Airlines for 1 hour, I finally gave up.

Here’s what the roads looked like today:

This is what we looked at for 2 hours:

I will be teaching an advanced photography class to a small group (max 8 people) starting April 24th. If you’re interested in more details, you can find them here:

http://www.arisingimages.com/miscellaneous/email/sent/20080327_advanced_photo_class.htm

I just finished creating a brief lighting tutorial from the practice session that we did with Abbey a few days ago. For anyone that is interested in seeing the rooms that these images were shot in along with a brief description of the setup and work done, you can download the tutorial at:
http://www.arisingimages.com/learn/advanced_class/off_camera_lighting/

Here’s just a quick sample showing the image along with the room it was taken in. There is much more detail on the link above.

I just got back from a seminar tonight taught by Mitche Graf. Mitche is a photographer who teaches business and marketing practices to other photographers. His seminar was fantastic! I learned a ton of great stuff and some new ideas and fun promotions, some of which we will try to implement in the next few months. Thanks Mitche!
It’s amazing how valuable education can be. I spent four years getting educated in Mechanical Engineering and didn’t use a lick of that in the real world even after becoming an engineer. When I left that world behind a few years ago, I’m going to all sorts of seminars related to photography and get to come home and implement this new knowledge immediately. It’s very satisfying and rewarding, and I’m just grateful that so many photographers and business people are willing to share what they’ve learned.

To learn more about Mitche, check out his website at:
www.powermarketing101.com

These were also painted off of images that I took at the Easter service last year.

This morning I dabbled in Corel Painter a little bit and did a painting of Jesus coming out of the tomb which was fitting since it was just Easter this past weekend.
This was painted from a photo that I took at last years Easter service at Kensington church…it was a really cool visual that I thought would be a great painting.

So as you can see from recent posts on the blog, we’ve been really wanting to do more work with off-camera flash and one of the biggest parts to that like any art form is practice practice practice.
Cheridy and I were ready to give it a whirl. Our friend Abbey from our church needed some photos and we needed a model and she worked out perfect. Everything about Abbey was exactly what we needed for a shoot like this…her hair, her makeup, all the fun clothes and jewelry she brought with her, etc. She was gracious enough to be patient with us as we made adjustments and tried out new things. Cheridy and I worked with her all afternoon and we got some great photos and learned a lot in the process so…thanks Abbey!!!
One of our goals from the photo shoot was to prove to ourselves that we could take cool photos anywhere so we challenged ourselves to shoot a photo in every room of our house including the bathrooms, laundry room, hallways, etc.
I will be putting together an educational page that shows what the rooms looked like and what we did to make the photos work, but that’s coming later. For now, here’s some of the pics:

We just wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter.
For our family Easter represents the rebirth of Jesus Christ. As they talked about in church yesterday, the beauty of Easter is that when you think all is lost the King still has ONE MORE MOVE. That was one of the themes during church to point out that no matter how defeated you feel, you still have to trust that God can provide.

So…a lot of people wonder…where the heck did the Easter bunny come from and how did this religious holiday turn into a day where kids find colored eggs around their yard. This is what I found:

“The legend of the Easter Bunny is far from a modern invention. Long ago, the rabbit was the earthly symbol of the pagan goddess Eastre, and was worshipped in the pagan festival of Eastre. Germans brought the legend of the Easter rabbit to America, though Easter itself wasn’t widely celebrated in America until after the Civil War.
The hare has long been a symbol of fertility and renewal of life — which fit in with the Christian tradition of Easter and the tradition of Easter eggs.
In the United States, the Easter Bunny is fabled to lay the eggs in the nests prepared for it or hide them for children to find.”

From: http://www.knbc.com/easter/570562/detail.html

This weekend is Easter. It’s REALLY early this year and actually is the earliest weekend for Easter for the next couple hundred years!
Our church (Kensington) always has a big production on Easter weekend which is typically attended by between 20-30 thousand people.
The message this weekend was fantastic and for anyone that didn’t go today, hopefully you’ll get a chance to check it out tomorrow.

The volunteers that did the set creation did an amazing job creating a park like setting with trees, a fountain, park bench, etc. There were also lifesize chess pieces that all tied into the theme of the King being Jesus.
It was a great service. I attended the 1:00 service at the Troy campus to take photos and then went to the 5:00 service with Cheridy’s family at North campus.
The music, drama, and message were all fantastic.

Here’s a link for a 60 second slideshow:
http://www.arisingimages.com/slideshows/20080322_easter

Here’s a coupe of preview photos:

So, we’ve heard about facebook for a while but just never had the time to look into it until now.
It’s really addicting and it’s pretty cool to learn some new things about friends and family.
If you have a facebook account, you can look us up on there because we all have pages now:

Prem Mukherjee
Cheridy Mukherjee
Mayz Mukherjee

Mayz might not be too responsive but…we’ll see.

Cheridy and I spent a little bit of time today playing around with some more flash techniques.  I’ve been reading all sorts of articles on a great blog called the Strobist, and they make everything look easy!   It was definitely a lot harder trying everything myself.  Now I know what it feels like to be a student again!!
Here are a few from today:

We have some room darkening blinds in our consultation area and while I was waiting for Cheridy, I setup a couple of lights with some gels on them to get this funky shot.