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Back before I had Indie I use to get annoyed with people posting pictures of their kids on every blog, website and facebook account on the planet….

Before I had Indie….

These days I think my son is a bit of a celebrity or at least it feels like it. Everywhere I go and every one of my clients is always commenting about how much they enjoy seeing pictures of him. Trust me on this one, once you become a parent there are not enough pictures of your kids that would make you think enough is enough.

Indie is 13 months these days. He’s a little tiny guy only weighing a little over 16lbs. He is pretty much the size of a normal 6 month old, but he has the personality to make up for it. This kid never stops smiling and lives his life with a smile on his face. I feel embarrassed to say it, but he is probably the easiest kid I have ever photographed.  Some of that may be because he is my son, but I took about 75 pictures yesterday and he was smiling in about 60 of them.

So today Indie Ridge Lanton makes another appearance on my blog.

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Jennifer and Marc are both teachers here in the Scranton area. Jennifer teaches in Old Forge while Marc is the VP of Abington High school a few miles from my house so someday my son Indie may be sitting in his office if he is anything like his father.

No really I’m serious…. I need to be good to these people.

This session took place about an hour and a half from Scranton where Marc proposed to Jennifer. I was taken away to this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere with a little lake in the center of it. Marc proposed to Jennifer down in front of the lake so it was the perfect setting for their pictures. These two had a bunch of fun on this session so I was happy to have some time this week to post of few of them on this blog.

This is the very spot that plans were made…..

Love being able to take a picture like this…..

Looking forward to their wedding later this year,

Daniel

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In the spirit of yesterdays post on photographers not having pictures with them included in the frame I thought I would share a family session that we had done two weeks ago. These images were taken by our friends Bradley and Janna Lanphear from Rhema Images. Brad and Janna are members of the same church as Janet and I and we have been friends for a couple years now so last week we invited them over for dinner and a picture swap. They took images for us and I will be taking images for them sometime soon.

Not a bad way for photographers to bless each other.

As I write this post my son is in the middle of being sick. It’s been a long couple days without much sleep staying up with him and trying to get him to sleep. The poor little guy is miserable. These pictures remind me of how blessed we are as a family to have such a happy kid.

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Crystal is a wedding photographer here in the Scranton area and Frank is my Chiropractor. Yesterday was actually the first time Crystal and I have met. We have talked many times via email and facebook but we have never run into each other before she asked me to do her session. One of the things that saddens me about being a photographer is that we rarely get pictures with us in them. We spend all our time behind the camera and very little in front of it so I was more than happy to give these images to Crystal when she asked.

Later this week I may even post some pictures of my family that were taken of us recently but for now I’m happy to give the gift of photography to a photographer.

Being one I know how meaningful it is.

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Wedding season has arrived here in PA and I am so excited to get to all these wonderful weddings we will be shooting this year. I just had to post some pictures today from last week at Skytop Lodge to kick things off. This year I am planning on really staying up to date with my blog last year we posted about once a week and this year I plan on doubling that.

Get ready my friends.

We have lots of pictures to share this year.

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I would call this a senior session but I believe Katie is going into 11th grade this year. Despite Katie being a few years from graduation I treated this session very similar to what we do for seniors. I can’t believe how many of these sessions we are getting called about. It’s a bit overwhelming but I really do love these types of sessions.

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This past week I had the pleasure of photographing a 40th wedding anniversary and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed celebrating with this family. It was a smaller event than I am use to photographing, but there was so much attention to detail that was given to every little piece of this event.

So much for the camera to capture.

The following vendors put so much work into all the details of this day that I have to give a big thanks to all of them.

Rentals:  Maggie Farrell from Maggpie vintage rentals

Wedding Coordinator: Danielle Pasternak from Dpnak 

Venue: Canteen 900

Cake:  Cathy Reppert from Truly Scrumptious

Stationary: Kristy Rice from Momental Designs

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I have had some time over the last few weeks to go looking through projects I have done over the last year and thought I would share something a bit different today. Last year I was commissioned to photograph some sculptures made by  Jim Devries in Clarks Summit PA for an upcoming book called Art that tells the story by Chris Brewer and a few months ago I received five copies in the mail. It’s always nice to see my work in print in places other than wedding magazines.

Art that Tells the Story is an invitation to experience the Story through commonly observable, shared experience – in this case, art. But this is more than a book on art. It’s a conversation about the Story God is telling. With multiple contributors and almost fifty works of art, Art that Tells the Story offers an ongoing conversation between image, text, scripture, reflection, and cultural artifact. Join the conversation. Experience the Story. I thought I would take the opportunity today to show you this incredible book and show you how to get your hands on it.

If you want to read a review of this book recently named one of the best books of 2011 by Hearts and minds you can read about it by clicking here.

If you want to just skip that wonderful review and go ahead and buy it you can get it on Amazon right here.

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Even I need a brake every now and then, but even on a brake I bring my camera.

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I am often asked how I got started with the business of photography. I would like to say that it started from the time I was very young. It certainly would be convenient to say something like I always knew that I wanted to be a photographer, but that certainly is not how it happened for me. In my early years, I was always attracted to the arts although that was not the path that I travelled when I made the decision to go to school for organizational management. I actually spent the first few years out of college working in business finance and fundraising. It was during my time as a fundraiser that my wife bought me a camera one year for my birthday. I spent a lot of time on the road traveling and in my downtime I would do mostly fine art street photographer. I actually was more known in my early days for making fine art than for photographing people. Photographing people always seemed like a mystery to me as it took the cooperation between myself and my subject to authentically capture someone.

It was my wife during the  early years circa 2003 that became the first person I dedicated to photographing.

Some of my favorite memories are of people I have photographed and my wife was the first person I ever photographed.

Here are a few pictures I took of my wife seven years ago during the first year of our marriage.