Do you like to have fun? We do, especially with our photos. We wanted something a little different than the average blog out there, so along with our super talented Blog designer we came up with a Favorites section - or "Wiebner Faves" as we like to call it. What is it you ask? more »
Well, under each photo, you will see a "Vote for Favorite" box. If you really like that image, if it tickles your fancy, or makes you laugh, or just plain old makes you smile - go ahead - check it. We know you want to. Each time that box is clicked on a photo, it adds to the running tally for that image. The top 14 favorite images on the entire blog will be shown as thumbnails in this section. Just so you can see the most popular images of all time on the blog. A little something out of the ordinary - it never hurts to be different!
Also, blog posts can be favorites. Now that we have comments available, you will see a little bar meter at the bottom left of each post. Once the meter hits a certain number of comments, its automatically promoted to a "Wiebner Fave Post". :) Something else just for fun!
Are you ready to advance your business? Education in our industry is important to us. The more photographers that are aware in the industry the better it is for everyone. Won't you join us in making our goals a reality? We participate in various workshops, seminars and speaking engagements. Listed below are various engagements - some are our own workshops, others we will be hosting or speaking at. If you wish to participate, please drop us a line or click the link to find out more info!
I find it incredibly difficult to write about us when put on "The Spot". "I need a 500 word bio about you and Joel, now!" Who can do that? How do you make your own personality shine in a few words, let alone that of two people? Well, I am going to give it my best shot. If you really want to know about US - who we really are - read the blog below. We really try to keep it updated as often as possible, and hope that our fun, casual personalities shine through in the words you read and the images we capture for our clients. The blog below is our way of communicating our lives - both personal and professional - with clients, friends, family and colleagues. We believe strongly in using words and images together to communicate our passion.
I am going to keep this short and sweet - Joel and I were meant to be together - to live, love and be happy making photographs. We were both photographers before we met over 9 years ago - we met behind a camera, and continue to feed off of that energy. We are a rock solid husband and wife team and we wouldn't want it any other way - we work together 24/7 and never tire of each other. We have had our business since November 2000, and have thrived on photographing weddings as our main photography genre since 2002. We love what we do. We like to think we look at the world in our own way - not photojournalistically, not traditionally, not artistically. Just as a Wiebner. If you like what we see, then you will like us too. Oh and don't forget to comment in the blog on our two little darlings - Haydn and Zane - they are pretty darn cute little Wiebners. Enjoy! - Rita
Well it has taken me quite a long time to get this posted, but we were REALLY crazy busy in February and the beginning of March. It's funny, normally we have a "slow" time over winter - usually after Christmas in mid January we start to slow down and just have office work and albums to do. This year was quite different. We just started "slowing down" a little bit this past week. Sure there are always projects to work on, and things to prepare for the year ahead. But this winter - we never really stopped. We have been going strong since last August. That's an awful long time to be working 6 or 7 days a week! After Christmas this year, we headed off to the DWF convention that we attend annually (post on this will be coming this week - finally) - we were away for that from Jan 3rd - 9th. As soon as we got back - like the next day - we started moving our office out of the house and down to our new gallery space downtown (post on this will be coming soon too!) - that took literally 2-3 weeks, then we had a week and a half to get ready for South Carolina. What are we doing in South Carolina you may ask? We had some fun and enjoyed southern hospitality! Well yeah, but for real on February 11th we gave a 4 hour presentation to the attendees of the PPSC convention. (Professional Photographers of South Carolina) - which is affiliated with PPA. We want to give a huge thanks to JeeJee Cowherd, the president elect, who put faith in us and asked us to come speak. JeeJee had first seen our work on the Trash the Dress site last year, and thought we would be a great addition to their annual convention.
When I first found out we needed to speak for 4 hours I was like, how in the heck are we going to talk for that long? Well in reality, 4 hours flies pretty quick when you are talking about something you love to do. Joel and I had a bunch of slideshows we put together, and shared some of our history together and a few of our philosophies on how we run our business, interact with our clients and photograph weddings. The photographers attending were open to all of our ideas, and we just had a fantastic time!
And one other thing totally worth mentioning - I had my first experience with fried green tomatoes - oh my gawsh - soooo yummy!
Below - our view out of our hotel window - it was like 60 degrees, and back home it was only 10 degrees!
A quick self portrait with the p-n-s, boy do we look tired or what?! We had put a lot of long hours in preparing our presentation.
Because we are huge dorks, we had some fun goofing off with our badges - it's weird to see your name as a "speaker".
The program booklet for the convention - now this is really scary - seeing your name in print and all...eek!
Huge thanks to Lucas Brown of Kickstand Studio - our ambassador for the trip. Lucas helped us out every step of the way, with anything we needed. The next few photos were taken by him - this was Joel and I minutes before we gave our seminar.
We passed out some info for the WiebLab!
Hmmmm....I wonder who that strange large man is..... :) - Joel in action!
Everyone watching one of our slideshows.
And I must have been singing praise to someone, Lucas caught this great shot of me!
Us with Lucas and his business partner, Lee Bradshaw - Lee is also another kick-butt photographer!
And the two of us with JeeJee and her husband at the dinner before we left. We are truly honored to have our thoughts and ideas so well received - and want to thank everyone there, and all of the new friends we made!
It's a little ironic that I am making this post, because, well... Elena was not really into having her picture taken by Godzilla at first. Rita definitely had the advantage of the mommy voice and the smiley face. We managed to get a few great expressions out of her for this first shoot in her "Year in the Life" series. Elena's Mommy and Daddy were wedding clients of ours from a few years back so it was so fun to see this next big step in their family building.
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We really battled over which shots to blog from this session, because we had so many cute expressions.
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I wonder if Elena was watching for me in this shot. "Keep that big guy away from me!"
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"Nah, he's cool" :)
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How 'bout an impromptu dip in the sink! Yeah, Elena has her own private bathroom, so she was showing it off.
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We love this cute shot of the three of them. Can;t wait for the next one guys!
It's been awhile since you have seen these two little bundles of adorable-ness so I wanted to throw out a recent fave of the squirts that we took as we were leaving work one day. They are getting so big, I can't believe they are almost 5 and 7. Time sure flies. (And for those of you who might not know these two little munchkins, they are our offspring, Haydn and Zane.)
Anyway, I'll send a fun little gift to whoever guesses first what kind of camera/lens combo was used to take this photo. :) You have to post your guess in comments below!
Well it has taken me waaaaay too long to get this post up and I have to apologize to all of our wonderful attendees for that. In my defense, I wanted to wait until everyone had their blog posts up so I could link to them below - I want to show off everyone's great images from the workshop!
WiebLab #1 was held a month ago - gosh I can't believe it was that long already! We had 11 awesome photographers here for our first workshop, and our special guest John Michael Cooper of Alt-F photography. The amount of learning and sharing were amazing and we were so honored to have some really talented photographers in attendance - they all rocked the house at the warehouse shoot we held. (I'll put links to everyone's blogs below.) The WiebLab opened up on Sunday night with a dinner we held at Annie Bailey's - so everyone could get to know each other. Monday and Tuesday were both totally exhausting days - as we had a ton of information to share and go over, and we ended up talking for 12 hours each day. Below are some of the photos to illustrate the entire workshop, I'll give more details throughout the post! We really want to thank everyone for opening up your minds to our thoughts, ideas, and processes! It was an extremely meaningful experience for both Joel and myself to be able to share with others something we are totally passionate about. We live and breathe this business, and are very excited to be able to give back to the industry. We have already gotten some great feedback from our new friends, and we hope to see them all again very soon!
Also, we have already gotten some people email us about when our next WiebLab will be held - we are planning another one for the fall of this year - the final details have not been set yet, but we are hoping to release the information within the next week or so. If you would like to get on the list to get the low down, please send me an email:
I didn't find any posts for our other two attendees, Erik and Scott, but guys if you have something you want me to link to, let me know and I will! I think that is everyone - lots of great blog reading!
Now, on to our experience...
At dinner the first night...Krisha and Kingston - notice Kingston is rubbing his belly in the background - he was super-starving. I swear all he does is eat. (I can make fun of him, he is a long time friend, and is currently helping us out in the studio - I have the right!) :)
Jonathan and his new sweet toy... a Leica!
Some intense, "getting to know you" conversation with the men.
The "Too cool for school" pose - Joel's brother Mike and his fiance Nicole were some of our models for the shoot on Monday. Here they are practicing their Blue Steel... (if you haven't seen Zoolander ...shame on you!)
Mr. JD! He gives a thumbs up for Lancaster.
John showing off his nifty new Nikon D3.
Kingston....being, well.....Kingston. Oh, and Kingston had the catchphrase of the workshop, "Dude, it's bangin'!" Love ya King!
The next morning we went over a few things at the studio, and then it was off to the warehouse for the shoot. We were able to secure an awesome old warehouse in downtown to do some fun stuff. These next 10 shots are what Joel and I took at the beginning of the shoot - illustrating some different techniques and posing.
One of our Xperiments we had planned - Mike and Nicole were unaware participants. We had given everyone 10-15 superballs, and when they heard the queue word, they all launched them at Mike and Nicole. Made for some great reactions!
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Josh and Michele were our other "models" - we photographed their wedding last year, and were very willing and wonderfully cooperative participants for the shoot. Some of our images of them....
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After we were finished showing a few things, we broke everyone up into teams and went our separate ways. I was able to get some behind the scenes shots as some of the different teams were photographing. Joel and I helped each of the teams with using alternative techniques in lighting and posing. The warehouse shoot was mainly portrait based. Here is JMC getting some shots with his partner for the shoot, Jonathan - as others look on.
Darah and Siobhan intensely watching the shoot.
John and Jonathan again setting up a shot.
Erik and Scott were having some fun with a wheelbarrow we had found.
Rob working the angles!
And I had no involvement in this - but Kingston REALLY wanted to get a different shot...I could have wrung his neck for this one!
The next day, John spoke for an hour or two about some of his concepts and vision and how he goes about his shots. It was a joy having him there, and we always love hearing him speak. Thanks John!
John showing off one of his Zero Packages.
Jason is just a big teddy bear! I loved this shirt he had on. :) He is a T-shirt king by the way, I had asked him how many he had and I think it is in the hundreds...
Intensely listening and learning...
Our gallery room was converted to a classroom for the workshop - we were packed in there!
The whole crew (minus Zenia who had to leave early) - it had been beautiful the day before, with temps almost in the 60s - by the time we took this shot on Tuesday, it was freezing! Thus, we were huddling for warmth, and everyone was doing great big forced cheesy smiles!
Joel's long arms are good for something! A 13 person self portrait - his record so far is 16. This he did with the 35mm f1.4 @ 2.8 - so the depth of field isn't there, but you get the picture...
And for some crazy reason, the week before the workshop Kingston decided he wanted to see if he could carry Joel around on his back. He decided to wait until the workshop so he could entertain everyone - and here he is carrying Joel around. Do you have any idea of the height and weight difference here? Kingston is 5'7", and around 160 pounds - Joel is 6'6" and 300+ pounds. I don't know how Kingston didn't break his back!
Joel had to prove how mighty he was and picked Kingston up and swung him around like a doll. Those boys... (Kingston and Joel went to college together so they go waaay back.)
And last but not least, us and John - don't we all look exhausted? The end of day Tuesday after everyone said their goodbyes. Thanks again to all who came, it was a totally wonderful experience!
We took a walk with Christine, Tom, Hatfield, and Acie around Lancaster to find some fun pictures. We didn't intend to shoot in front of every garage in town, but somehow it worked out that way. Do you have any idea how many garages there are in Lancaster? It's crazy, I think there are more garages than houses. Anyway, we had so much fun on this shoot, and it was so cool that they brought the pooches. Can you guess which pupper is Hatfield? Here's a hint if you aren't from PA. Thanks guys for braving the cold and letting us drag you through the back alleys of Lancaster.
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What a great wall, with great texture!
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I got a good shot of Rita taking this one, I will have to post it one day when she isn;t in the office with me :)
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Look at those eyes. Makes me wish we didn't convert to cats 2 years ago.
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Christine warned us that Hatfield is getting a little cranky and we should watch ourselves if we get too close. Well, we needed to get this shot, so I braved it. Yeah, I'm crazy brave with a dachshund! Now if Hatfield were a Rotty, maybe not so much.
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