Circle Day, Red Day

Looking for a creative way to change the way I see things photographically, I decided to come up with a personal challenge. I would only photograph circles or round object. Another day I walked around the neighborhood and photographed anything red that caught my eye. Then I assembled them into a 5x5 collage using a free Photoshop Action I found online. A good time was had by all. If you have any creative assignments that have worked well for you, post them in the comments.

Best of Denver

For some reason I keep thinking of this famous National Lampoon magazine cover from the 70s where the publication shows a gun to the head of a lovable dog stating that if you don't buy this magazine, they will shoot the dog. Okay, we're not taking such drastic measures to get our clients and readers to vote for us in the photography category for Channel 7's A-List Best of Denver, but we thought some subtle association couldn't hurt. Vote for us and add your comments, too, at this link:

Channel 7's Best of Denver voting

More Lightpainting, Different Subject

Many of you have probably seen the recent Sprint commercials showing dancing figures of light moving about the screen. Using flashlights and other LED-based lights, a Japanese performance group known as Pika-Pika discovered a whole new way of painting with light. Not sure if they are the designers of the new commercials, but if not, they certainly were the inspiration for it. What's neat here is that instead of painting a surface or tree or cactus with a lightsource, the light itself becomes the subject. They make repeated photographs of the lights spinning, moving about in distinct shapes. Then they animate them with software to create a type of cartoon that will blow you away.

Check out more here (courtesy of Strobist blog) and follow the link to watch the Sprint commercial and the original Pika-Pika videos:

Lightpainting Videos

Lightpainting--What Is It?

Forget lightsabers and paintbrushes for a moment and think of light as a way to illuminate the surface of some object or scene. Now imagine setting up your camera on a tripod and leaving the shutter open for several seconds, if not for many minutes. Then take a light source (flashlight, strobe light, LED keychain light, your open cellphone or even car headlights and placing light just where you want it to go. Now if you do this under cover of darkness, no one will think you are weird or working for a counterterrorism unit, but rather that you are having a blast making one-of-a-kind images that extend your creativity in entirely new ways. Of course they might still think you are weird--just look at the shot of me above lightpainting in front of the Flatirons in Boulder, CO.


For a basic primer on the topic, visit the link below:


Dave Black's Cool Lightpainting Tips

Distraction

From a recent trip to Williams, AZ, I shot this cafe sign along the street. A couple of topics come to mind on this shot--leaving out distracting details and, well, I'll leave the other topic out for now. The temptation here is to shoot the sign, the pole it was on, the front of the diner and even the street scene in the background. Boring! There would have been way too much activity for the eye to digest, leaving the viewer with an uninteresting photograph. Zooming in tighter overcomes much of this problem, allowing your eye to visually absorb what just the sign has to offer. And don't be afraid to crop in tight, even cutting off the edges of the subject a bit. The other temptation here is to go inside the diner and order a chocolate malt, greasy french fries and a tasty burger. But I wouldn't know anything about that now would I...?

Trash the Dress?!

a.k.a. Drown the Gown, this new trend is trying to break away from traditional views of the wedding dress. I personally go back and forth with the idea of destroying an expensive piece of clothing. Part of me thinks it is a wealth status symbol to frivolously destroy what can cost thousands of dollars. But then again if you are spending that kind of money to begin with on a dress and you hope to never need to wear another wedding dress again in your life, why not start your own tradition and go counter-culture? You can make some amazing photographs that don't even require you to demolish the dress. Taking a quick swim in your wedding dress or jumping on a trampoline? Why not? You can still get it cleaned later and preserved for posterity.

Sharefest 2007

Forgot to post about our piece on the front page of the Lafayette newspaper earlier in the summer. The paper ran three of our photographs from our coverage of Sharefest 2007. Sharefest is an annual church-based event put together by many Boulder County churches to paint, clean and fix up something like 16 different public schools in the area. Over 2500 volunteers turned out and did some great work getting the schools ready for the fall start to the school year. Lots of fun! One school hadn't been painted since it opened nearly 22 years ago!

Fairview HS Class of '87 Reunion

It's fun catching up with one old friend you haven't seen for 20 years. But when you multiply that sensation times 200 all at the same moment, it can make your head spin! My 20 year high school reunion in Boulder, Colorado this past weekend was more fun than any human being should be allowed to have! For those of you who didn't attend or left before the bitter end, click through to see which classmate took the 'casual cocktail' dress code in an entirely new direction. What a fun time, Fairview HS class of'87!

View the reunion photographs here

Unnecessarily Beautiful World

Customers have been asking to have easier access to view our landscape photography collections, so the links to our main body of nature work (i.e. those generally without bodies in them) can be found below. To view/purchase, follow this link:

Landscapes and other Unique Images

Ashley and Matt's Wedding

Jim and I road-tripped across Colorado down into the Oklahoma Panhandle to celebrate this outrageously fun wedding. Giant windmills some 15 stories tall, Ashley and her mother-in-law frolicking a la Marilyn Monroe on a steam grate, the bride on horseback and jumping on a trampoline and more! A tornado even hit this Oklahoma town just a few days before the ceremony. What an exciting and colorful wedding--thanks, Ashley and Matt--we enjoyed ourselves!



See the full wedding here

Stretch Your Wedding Budget--Photography Registry

Brides have been asking about ways to add their wedding photography to their bridal registry and we can now accomodate it! It is as simple as telling your family and friends in an email or on your personal wedding website where to find us. If you are HTML savvy, just create a link to Marc Littmann Photography somewhere on your webpage. Or just include www.littmannphoto.com/contact.htm in an email to them and they will be able to purchase a gift certificate good for any amount they want. It will be placed in your name as a regular store credit towards prints, an album or even towards your remaining deposit on your wedding package.

To DVD or Not to DVD, That is the Question

One of the most frequent questions I am asked is whether we offer a DVD with print files included in our packages. It's a good question, as photographers often don't want to give up their reprint revenue stream. But many couples want to own a copy of the DVD for safekeeping and ease of making reprints 2, 5 or 10 years down the road. We offer such a DVD on our Grand Tetons package for no extra cost. But for those working within a more limited budget range and who don't need the unlimited coverage of our 'grandest' package, we can create a modified version that substitutes certain items and even some of the print credit towards the purchase of the DVD with the print files. For example, a Boulder, Colorado couple decided to swap the thank you photographs and the slideshow DVD and received a credit to be used towards the purchase of the print file DVD. After an additional charge and a reduction of their print credit, they had exactly what they wanted and remained within the budget they set for themselves for wedding photography. And they'll go to the altar and live happily ever after (without breaking the bank!).

How Does the Print Credit Work?

One question I get asked a lot is how the retail print credit works in our packages. Each package option comes with a print credit that is similar to a gift certificate. For instance, if you have purchased the Maroon Bells package and receive the $1000 print credit, you will be issued a code that you punch into the website with your photos on it. So if a 4x6 costs $6.00, ordering two of these reduces your print credit by $12.00. Order 25 5x7s and 10 8x10s, then even another 200 4x6 prints and you can just keep going until you burn up the $1000 credit. Beyond that, prints are then paid for via credit card after your print credit is used up.

Eye For Detail

The majority of our photographs are shot digitally in color, with the option of going to black and white, sepia, cross-processing or selective color interpretations as seen in this image. During the editing process following your wedding, we will concentrate our efforts to produce more (or less) of certain color styles, depending on your personal taste. Be sure to let us know "I love sepia, but don't care too much for black and white images," or "Get as creative as you want, Marc, with bringing back color on an image you have previously converted to black and white." The more we know about your personal tastes, the happier you will be with your final result.

Marc Littmann Wedding Photography

We invite you to look around our website, browse our photography and see if what we do will meet your needs for your big day. We specialize in the increasingly popular wedding photojournalism style, where we record the story of your wedding--natural and relaxed, fun and memorable. We will travel throughout Colorado's Front Range and up to many mountain areas across the state. For weddings further afield, don't hesitate to contact us for more information and pricing.

Thank you for your interest in our work. You'll find a sampling of images and stories from previous weddings on the postings below.
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