Engagement class & the Zeiss 55mm 1.4 Otus

Amanda & Matt

Winter has been super interesting 🙂   I have so many things to show.  I get an email every now and then from budding photographers wondering how I do things or if there are any opportunities for them to come and watch me work.  Normally, I just say “I’ll let you know”  because it’s hard to fit everyone in.  But, I learned by apprenticing so I really wanted to give them the opportunity, so I thought it would be neat to have an engagement photography class, with the only fee being a couple of extra edited photos for my clients.  This would give them the chance to see what I do and for me to give them feedback on what they were doing.  So, I pitched it to Amanda & Matt, who are clients of mine, and they graciously said yes!  I was a little weary to give up the intimacy that I have with my couples but Amanda and Matt seemed to be okay with it and it turned out to be insanely fun!  We started the class with a little portrait shooting game near a neat wall, and then went into Amanda & Matt’s home where they played music for us…really, really good music. Check out Matt’s band here.  (I love my clients) Lately, I’ve been thinking that I want to photograph couples in an environment that is special to them, so this worked out perfectly. From there we went around to a couple of different spots in Denver, and just had fun.  You may noticed that I had a new lens mounted on my D800, it was the Zeiss 55mm 1.4 Otus which is hands down the best glass I’ve ever had on my camera!  There is no way you won’t see the difference in the way it resolves with the D800 and it is super super sharp wide open.  So sharp in fact that I will have to send my camera back to Nikon because it is off by a hair which made this lens hard to shoot at times.  Besides that the Zeiss 55mm 1.4 Otus is an amazing lens with great colors and is very well built.  The focus ring is super smooth and the copy I had, had very little to no chromatic aberration.  It’s a bit pricey but I can definitely see myself renting it in the future! Most of the images below are from that lens, while there are a few with the Nikon 35mm 1.4 and the Nikon 14-24 2.8.    With that, the class went super well, it was great fun and Amanda and Matt were stellar, their connection was expressed with ease,  all I had to do was find light..wonderful!  Thanks guys!  And thanks to everyone who came along it was a blast learning with all of you and I am excited to see the images you all came up with!  Till next time 😉