Connor Studios Blog

We had a really nice afternoon photographing Terri and John’s engagement photos around the Annapolis Yacht Club and downtown Annapolis. John proposed to Terri in Annapolis and they spend a lot of time there with their boat so it was a perfect place to take their engagement photos.

Their wedding is next weekend and is going to be insanely beautiful! Make sure you come back here to see those photos!

Just saw this online today.  

Sara Love’s new music video to “A Thousand Bees” was photographed by Noah Webb.  He combined 4,664 still images to make her music video.  

Song is kind of easy to listen to.  Having dabbled in something 1/1,000th as hard, I can only imagine how tough this was to do.

Can we talk?  There is something that is bothering me and I need to get it off my chest.

Whether we are photographing at the White House or at a Redskins game or even a child’s dance recital, there is a new craze that has to be stopped.  I understand that I am being paid to be there and am carrying over $15,000 in camera equipment.  I’m not asking you to do that.

What I need to ask you is to bring a real camera.  It can be a point and shoot.  It can even shoot film.  I don’t care!  Just don’t trust huge moments in your life to your cell phone camera!!!!  

I can’t tell you how many times we see a dad with his son on the field before the game getting a picture with his favorite football player or someone with the President during their once-in-a-lifetime trip to the White House taking photos with their cell phone.  Only about 1% of cell phones are any good and have a big enough chip.  You can’t make a decent print out of it.

Take it from someone who’s “other woman” is his iPhone.  I absolutely love that phone and take goofy pictures with it every now and then.  But anything I really care about gets a real camera.  Please just do this for me — and you — and your children — and humanity.

Here were a ton of people in the East Room of the White House who came in from around the US and didn’t bring a real camera.  Shame!

It looked like it was going to be a normal day at the White House today.  Not too much on the schedule — no problem.  

Then Pierce Brosnan had to show up to talk about whales and Hillary Clinton had to show up to talk about Pakistan and then Arnold had to show up to talk about Cauleeefornia and then Nancy Pelosi showed up rocking some big shades in the Rose Garden and the President even decided to make a couple of appearances.

I guess Pierce and Arnold called each other up this morning and talked about how to gesture in front of the camera (must be a Hollywood thing).  :-)

It was an absolutely beautiful day out!  Our first photo-op with the President was in the Rose Garden.  We all joked about how it was one of those days that reminded you of trying to talk your teacher or professor into letting you have class outside because it was so nice.  We wanted to ask Obama if we could do the next photo-op outside as well.  He was out talking about raising fuel efficiency standards for cars over the next decade.

Governor Schwarzenegger and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick drew quite the crowd outside the West Wing.

President Obama finished his day with us and Small Business Owners in the East Room.  The President loves his teleprompters.  They can really get in the way when photographing him.  I guess if you can’t beat it, join it!

On top of that was a 30 minute commute home that turned into 2 hours!!  I still don’t have a clue as to what caused it.

Audrey was just short of 2 weeks old when I got the chance to photograph her at her home. Two weeks before, Audrey’s parents were supposed to come over for brunch. We got a call from Jeremy and Keri two hours before brunch that they were heading to the hospital.

Of course, I thought they just didn’t want to eat my pancakes (which were GREAT by the way!!!) but along came Audrey.  Actually Audrey came 30 minutes before blueberry pancake time so we definitely could have made more.  :-)  

I love this first shot of her with her tongue out.  It reminds me of a photograph of my daughter at that age.  Plus, look at those guns!

Being a HUGE fan of The Big Lebowski, I had to photograph Audrey with Jeremy’s shirt.  Now I just need to find one of those shirts for myself!

Monday was a long day heading up to Pittsburgh with Peter to shoot Game 6 of the Washington Capitals vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins.  My in-laws are all from the Pittsburgh area so they are all rooting on the Penguins.  I on the other hand always liked the Penguins but have been really happy to see how well the Caps are doing.  

On a selfish note, I have to push for the Caps only because I want to shoot the Stanley Cup!  :-)  I know that in this town, I might not ever shoot a Super Bowl, an NBA Championship and will certainly never shoot a World Series (unless we start covering an away team) so I am definitely happy to see how well they are doing.  (before I get any hatred from Redskins/Nationals/Wizards fans  – I would be very happy if they played in any of those games but am just not sure how soon that will be)  The Caps definitely put on the best fan experience of any of the major sports around here so it’s been a lot of fun covering the run to the Stanley Cup.

I will be happy for Penguins fans when they open their new stadium.  My best friend’s architecture firm is working on it.  Mellon Arena is so tiny compared to the Verizon Center and seems to be very quiet.  The one thing that you certainly notice is how quiet it is when the Caps score.  If you don’t see the puck go in the net, the only way to know the Caps scored is to wait for one of their players to react.  There is no sound, no boo’s, no nothin’!  It is just eerily silent!  When the Caps won in overtime, we couldn’t really see it so it wasn’t until Steckel started celebrating that you knew they won.  The weirdest thing was that the Penguins fans just quietly stood up and left.  You just had to be there.  It was SOOOO quiet!

Ok, enough of my recap.  On with the pics…  These are just some of the highlights (there were a lot with 9 goals scored and two of the best players in the league):

Beagle’s unsuccessful tip-in during the first period:

Laich gets 2 minutes for cross-checking Sidney Crosby:

Alex Ovechkin:

Celebrating 2 goals in the 3rd period:

Kozlov’s goal in the 3rd to take the lead (not sure why the girl in the top-center is spending more time texting than watching the game):

Steckel’s OT goal to win the game and the celebration following it:

My favorite thing about this photo is the small point of dejection with all the celebration.  The funny thing is that you think the dejection is in the top right corner.  It’s actually in the bottom left as well.  The little blob is a “Terrible Towel” that Pittsburgh fans wave being thrown away by a Penguins fan after his team lost.

I will post more from the deciding Game 7 after tomorrow night.