5 of the best spots for senior and family portraits in the Salem area

The Willamette Valley is full of great outdoor locations for Fall family portraits or Senior shoots. Here are 5 of my favorite: Minto-Brown Park Minto-Brown park is located minutes from downtown Salem, Oregon. It is the largest park in Salem. Numerous fields and paved paths abound in Minto-Brown Park, providing a variety of locations to choose from which makes it a favorite location for me because it has a good variety of location types. There are old stumps with vibrant green foliage, grass fields  and…

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Budgeting for your wedding

Weddings are expensive. Let’s face it. According to CNN, the wedding industry is a 53.4 billion dollar market and the average wedding costed about 28,000 in 2012. Those are some crazy numbers, and I’m certain they are only rising. That doesn’t mean that you have to take a second job just to be able to afford your special day. I believe that there are two main factors that need to come into play when you’re planning and budgeting for a wedding: Prioritization Effort Wait, what?…

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Beach Elopement story (Bree and Logan)

I had the good fortune to photograph a special wedding one day in Seaside, Oregon. It was a summer day on the Oregon coast. Kathryn and I drove from Salem to Seaside one afternoon. When we reached the location very near to the Promenade, we hopped out to find the weather pleasant and peaceful on the beach. When we arrived at the address provided by the couple, we discovered only 4 people, the bride and groom, the officiant and a witness. The easy-going couple had…

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3 Tips for Getting Better Photos

Capturing great images usually rests firmly in the hands of the photographer, but I have found that the people I photograph who come prepared often capture the best photos. Here are three tips you can do to improve photos of yourself: 1. The “turtle” Kathryn and I have nicknamed a method of removing double-chins in photos as the “turtle”. The “turtle” is a method of elongating your chin towards the camera. Think of it like pushing your face away from your neck then lowering your…

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Photo recreation, Richard Weddle story

Occasionally we get a client who wants to recreate a photo. I especially like the recreations that are funny because of the posing or styling of the original. Today’s post features the photo of two brothers as young children. They contacted us and told us about the photo, saying it was going to be funny to remake and indeed it was. Obviously the brothers were older and the younger wouldn’t even fit in the photo like the original, but we posed them. They brought a…

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Secret Beach Engagement

Have you ever heard about a secret wedding engagement? Sure, oftentimes the person proposing willkeep it a secret until they are ready to pop the question, but in the case of one groom-to-be, he thought ahead. He planned how he was going to propose to his future wife and decided to whisk her away to the Oregon Coast for a vacation where he would propose for her hand in marriage. But that’s not all. He also wanted that memory to be a special surprise for…

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The best weather conditions for portraits

My favorite weather conditions to take portraits in is when it’s cloudy. Can you believe it? Bright sun definitely makes for a boost in morale, but it’s really the days when it’s cloudy that I prefer to take portraits in. Why is that, you ask? When it’s cloudy, the light is spread out better and colors are more even. If you’ve ever been in a photo studio, you might have noticed those large white screens. Those screens are small versions of clouds. Light is bounced…

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3 Posing Tips for Your Portrait Session

Part of the reason why I love photography is because I don’t have to be in front of the camera =-). If that sounds like you too, then I have some important advice for you that I’ve learned from being in front of the camera that can make your portrait session much more rewarding. Be yourself One of the best things you can do to improve your portrait shoot is to be yourself. Really! From behind the camera, it’s very obvious when my subject is…

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3 Things to Know Before Scheduling Your Spring Portraits

Natural light is your friend Have you ever had a photoshoot scheduled and it looks like it’s going to rain shortly before your outdoor-Oregon family photo session? Don’t worry too much about it, call your photographer up and see if they think it’ll still be a good time to take photos. If the weather is like many Spring days in Oregon are, there is likely a chance that that dull gray sky will actually enhance your photos. I like to think of those dull gray…

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What does a typical wedding ceremony look like?

Wedding Ceremony at the Oregon Gardens by Photos By Orion

You’re engaged, planning your wedding, checking out dresses, and are super excited to start meeting with vendors. They ask you about your ceremony and you suddenly realize you have no idea how to put together a wedding ceremony! You start to freak out as you add yet another thing to your list of to-do’s that is already a mile long, but take a deep breath and relax for a minute. A wedding ceremony can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make…

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