Tammy Hughes Photography – Modesto, Northen California – Modesto Wedding and Portrait Photographer

MALLORIE + MATT

April 9, 2010

We actually hit a warm day for this engagement session! Spring is wild this year. I would have posted last week - but the kids are out of school and my time is not my own. (seriously, when is it? I need a ghost blogger) Soooooo… Matt and Mallorie, here are a few images. Your cd and Pictage gallery will be ready in a few days. Doing your engagement session makes me look forward to the wedding all the more… Well, I’m off to photograph a wedding with a colleague in the bay area this weekend, she had knee surgery a few months ago and needs the “moral support.” Oh, let’s be honest it’s the perfect excuse to get outta Dodge. (but she really did ask me to help – cough cough)

Posted in Engagement * Portraits Tags: Engagement * Mallorie Hetherwick * Matt Watson * McHenry Mansion * Modesto * photography * Portraits

no comments

Unexpected Storm

March 17, 2010

I don’t blog every client. I can’t. Time being a factor, if I blog everyone but skip one because I’m too busy that week, then somebody will feel slighted. I don’t twitter for the same reason – time. Life is short. (but it is wide) I want people to discover how I see the world around me. So in this post…an excursion with my kids. We took them up to Columbia, then over to the college campus for a walk around the lake (pond). We watched the sky darken to a pure and vivid blue. Then a few days later the weather went from perfectly clear skies to a huge storm. I always wonder which one will be the last storm of the season. So when this one came I grabbed a camera and caught raindrops in the pool…then in my front yard I had to take cover under the roofline. I couldn’t get the right angle without soaking my camera (not an option) so I turned to go back in the house and realized what I wanted to photograph was right there reflected in my front window. I was able to stay dry under the eaves and capture it. In my opinion the photographs turned out better because of it; the unexpected in an unexpected storm. Sort of like life isn’t it?

The unexpected is always upon us.

We started at the schoolhouse in Columbia then realized the sun was setting quickly so we headed to the college…

…the campus…it feels like you’re at a mountain lodge. Wonderful.

…the library above…And then two days later rain…

It was late in the day when I took these, the storm thinned a bit and the sun was able to cast some color through the clouds, peachy-pink light…muted and soft. Shooting the reflection gave the images a completely different feeling. Reminiscent of a Holga. (the trick is to have double-paned windows)

Posted in Personal Tags: California * Columbia California * Columbia College * foothills * Personal * personal work * photography * rain * spring

no comments

Endless Summer

February 25, 2010

When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, I remember a poster my older brother (a teenager at the time) had on his wall. From the film “The Endless Summer: in search of the perfect wave”. It was the mid 1960′s, my brother would hitchhike from Modesto to Santa Cruz to surf, then hitchhike back home again. I have fond memories of that era. And my memory of the poster I loved has never faded…the colors…the guy carrying the surfboard…has always been in my mind’s eye. Google The Endless Summer and you’ll find the poster.

So you can imagine my surprise when one of my older digital cameras decided to have a 60′s psychedelic moment. I don’t want to know how or why it captured the image this way. It doesn’t matter. What seemed like a mistake was actually a gift, because now I have my own version with my own twist on “The Endless Summer”. Fitting isn’t it?

Here’s my homage to an iconic image…The Endless Summer for wedding photographers.

This was from the wedding of Jameen Bogetti and Albert Mendes…taken on the Mape’s Ranch.

Posted in Personal * Wedding Tags: Endless Summer * Mape's Ranch * Modesto * Personal * photography * weddings

no comments

Liz + Ruben’s engagement session

February 23, 2010

This is a couple I couldn’t wait to photograph, even though it took a while to get to this engagement session. But I’m not talking about physical distance. I just knew they were meant to be together. So here’s a sneak peek!

Posted in Engagement * Portraits Tags: Engagement * engagement photography * Liz Raynor * Modesto * Modesto photographers * photography * Ruben Cantu

no comments

Spring has arrived

February 20, 2010

“The poetry of earth is never dead.” – John Keats

Spring reveals itself, reminding me that the unexpected is always upon us. Walking up to my mother’s house I glanced to the right and there they were, the first blooms on the tulip tree. While others are only just showing leaf buds.

But spring is fickle, knocking opposites into each other. Warm one day, cold the next, sweaters back on. I think that’s why it’s hard to choose clothing for portraits in the spring: sundress or turtleneck?

Enjoy these harbingers of the season…

Posted in Personal * Portraits Tags: John Keats * Portraits * spring

2 comments

Film – Keeping it alive

February 18, 2010

I am a Renaissance girl….and I’ve been missing film. There I said it. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of photographers out there who don’t know what I’m talking about. Missing film? Maybe because they’ve never used it or don’t know how. (one of my friends calls them fauxtographers, funny.)

Film is not dead, not by any means.

In 2002 when I saw my first digital images I realized it was nothing like film; where were the smooth highlights? You can’t mess with digital in the camera like you can with film. Highlights are gorgeous for miles and miles with film capture.

But I was determined to make it through the learning curve of Photoshop and figure out how to make digital look like film. Sounds like a backwards way to get from A to B. In some ways I guess it is. My reason for this post is not to get into digital vs film. They’re apples & oranges. Would you ask, which is better, oil paint or watercolor? All mediums have their quirks. LIFE has quirks. When I caught the digital wave I ended up liking Photoshop and never looked back.

Well, I never looked back until now. Homesick for the familiar.

When I saw this site: www.keepfilmalive.org the purist in me awoke and I realized for the past 8 years I’ve been feeling guilty, like I was allowing the death of an art-form. So, the next day I bought some film, took out an old Nikon, and felt again what it’s like to wind film (it’s a manual camera) click, advance the frame, click. It was like Christmas when the prints came back.

NOTE: Prints from film must be appreciated in person. YOUR MONITOR WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SHOW HOW SMOOTH THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE.

When you purposely, generously overexpose film you will achieve highlights that are amazing right out of the camera. When I showed the prints to a colleague she asked “What did you use on them?” That’s digital-speak for “what did you do in Photoshop to make the images look like this?” There was a long pause when I answered “Nothing, it was film.”

Does this mean I’m turning my back on digital? No, I enjoy Photoshop and digital. But it means I’ll be incorporating just 1 or 2 rolls back into wedding capture. Clients will receive hi-rez scans of the negs. And then they’ll have something that these days, is truly rare: prints from film.

Keep Film Alive…thank you Tanja Lippert, purist, artist, photographer extraordinaire for the nudge home.

Posted in Personal * Portraits * Wedding Tags: film * keep film alive * photography * Tanja Lippert

no comments

Field Trip

February 12, 2010

One of the cool things about having kids is that you get to go on field trips.

The other day I went with my daughter and about 60 kids to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park to view the King Tut exhibit. I knew we wouldn’t be allowed to photograph the artifacts (I guess Tut is sensitive about having his stuff photographed, no matter how small, and trust me these were small potatoes; if you’ve been in the Cairo museum you know what I’m talking about.) Anyway…I hoped for time outside to shoot some of the architecture. Score. We got there early so everyone had time to roam the Music Concourse. The de Young on my right, the Academy of Sciences to my left.

The de Young tower rises like a Meso-American temple, with a very literal modern twist.

Love the details of this thing…the perforated outer walls are weathering, rather nicely.

Looking across the Music Concourse – a view of the California Academy of Sciences – and detail of those creepy trees, bare and gnarled.

Detail of the Temple of Music.

And then later, a little rain…….hangs on a pine needle. It was a good day.

Posted in Personal Tags: Academy of Sciences * de Young Museum * field trip * Golden Gate Park * King Tut Exhibit * personal work * photography * San Francisco

no comments

Perception

February 7, 2010

One of my favorite things to do is fly in airplanes (next to riding a really big, really fast rollercoaster). It’s fun to pull away from the earth’s surface and watch things on the ground get smaller, they start to look like little toys. And what seem like enormous clouds when they’re above us, appear quite small looking down on them. It’s all in your perspective.

When I was a little kid I really believed you could walk on clouds. Flying through the sky, I’d daydream that I was running around on them…

Perception is reality. Maybe that’s why I like looking at the art of Escher, who said “I think it’s in my basement, let me go upstairs and check.” Wonderfully twisted. His art stretches perception. So when I had the chance to mess with perception I thought why not?

So……here’s the first photograph above, flipped back to it’s original capture. I didn’t take the image looking out the window of an airplane. I never said I did. This shot was taken from the ground, looking up toward the clouds, not down on them. I couldn’t resist. But this is a good idea for all photo-enthusiasts. Flip your photographs to gain a different perspective or perception of them. Some might surprise you and be improved by turning them 90 degrees or 180.

Posted in Personal * Portraits Tags: art * clouds * Escher * flying * perception * perspective * photo-enthusiast * photographers

no comments