Sarah & Nick's Wedding - Memphis Tennessee - Michael Allen Photography

Here are a few highlights from Sarah & Nick's wedding. They were married at White Station Church of Christ with their reception at Memphis Botanic Garden. I had a great time photographing their wedding, and they had a fun group of friends for their large wedding party. It was a beautiful day for a June wedding, and everything was picture perfect for their day! I love photographing weddings like this, everyone was incredible! We had a great day with time to shoot lots of details. I put together a few of my favorite shots for the blog, and chose a collection of black & white images that create a classic modern wedding. For the outdoor photographs I look for the best light, choosing some partially shaded areas. This was a very bright day, so I look for high canopies under large trees to soften the light. When I find the right light, it mimics a large soft box, creating some very fun and timeless images. Sarah & Nick were very at ease with the camera, and as you can see, they ended up with some incredible photographs. Congratulations Sarah & Nick!

Emily & Glenn's Wedding - Memphis Tennessee

Congratulations to Emily & Glenn on their recent wedding celebration. I had a blast working with Emily on her wedding day, her family and friends are so wonderful. It was a great day to share with this fun couple! I love working with couples that relax and have fun, capturing them on their very special day is an honor. Their wedding day was one of those potential rainy days, with looming clouds and rainshowers all day long, but when it came time for photos, the clouds broke away and the skies cleared like a scene from the Old Testament when Moses parted the sea. I hope you enjoy a few of the highlights from their beautiful wedding! Emily & Glenn flew in from New York to get married in their hometown for a grand wedding day. As you can see by some of the details, it was a beautiful event.

Kelly & Keith - Memphis Brooks Museum of Art - Michael Allen Photography

Congratulations to Kelly & Keith on their wedding, which was recently featured in Southern Bride Magazine. I really love working with Kelly (& Keith) and her eye for fine details. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an incredible choice for a wedding with all of it's art exhibits, fine paintings and sculpture. I particularly love the architecture of the building, including both ultra modern design and historic detail from the early 1900's. Angela Mazanti was the event designer, and offered creative uses of color and texture for their wedding, making their wedding an incredible, beautiful event. Here are just a few of the details of their day.

Food & Wine Magazine Top 10 Chefs - Michael Allen Photography - Memphis

Congratulations to Kelly English at Restaurant Iris...... One of our recent clients has just been selected as Food & Wine Magazines 2009 Top Ten Best New Chefs! This is great honor and a significant award.  If you have not been to Kelly's new restaurant, be sure to make reservations well in advance, it was hard to get in before, now with this award, it may take months just to get in. The food is absolutely incredible. 

Here is a brief review from the Food & Wine article: 

How his cooking career started: “I was filleting catfish in a little fish shack in Oxford, Mississippi, while I was pre-law at Ole Miss. I realized I liked going to work more than going to school. When I told my dad, who’s a lawyer, that I wanted to go to culinary school instead of law school, he was really excited about it. In his business, everyone is unhappy; I liked the idea of making people happy. He took me to August restaurant in New Orleans—we had gnocchi in fennel cream sauce with black truffles and blue crab, and from that first bite, I knew. That dish changed my life.”

How he opened Iris: “I was in Memphis with my now-wife, Angela, and I heard about a space that was for sale, an old Memphis institution called La Tourelle. Inside, there was a stained glass fleur-de-lis (a New Orleans symbol), and I said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ We went outside and there was a rainbow. I said, ‘What’s next, a unicorn?’ Everything about it was exactly right.”

Be sure to read more about Kelly at www.foodandwine.com/articles/best-new-chefs-2009-kelly-english

Kelly and his wife Angela were married last year in Memphis at an extravagant high end wedding at St Peters with a grand reception at Central Station. Shown here is a portrait of Kelly & Angela we photographed on location at Restaurant Iris. Congratulations to Kelly and Angela for this incredible honor.

Buckle Stores Advertising Session - Michael Allen Photography

Here are just a few commercial advertising photographs that I shot this month for "Buckle". For this session we were going for a natural lighting for an edgy fashion look, keeping a bold color palette within Buckles targeted demographics. Sessions like these are a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work. We had over 10 models, 2 hairstylists, 2 makeup artists, 3 fashion designers, and our team. Part of the concept of the shoot was to work in a live store, creating strong public excitement of shooting on location in one of Buckles highly successful stores. The gear used was pretty simple as far as lighting. I got to put my new Canon 5d Mark II to the test and used a variety of lenses from a 15mm fisheye, a 24-105mm IS lens, and a 70-200mm IS lens - in RAW mode at 21 megapixel. Shooting on this camera reminds me of the days when I shot all transparencies for the magazines. The digital capability of this camera is fantastic. I used several reflectors, blended natural light with ambient sunlight, and worked in ISO ranges from 640 to 6200. I also used some flash depending on the spots I choose on the location, bouncing flash into the reflectors to create a full wash effect. We had the ad agency team on location who helped us stay on task and kept the team working at full steam. I've done lots of sessions like these over the years, and working with great models who know what to do takes the session over the top! Hopefully sometime next year some of these will end up in their ad campaigns, I'll keep you posted when they go to press.

Children's Spring Portrait Sessions Now Booking in Memphis

It's a perfect time to book your child for one of our lifestyle portrait sessions. We love to catch kids being themselves and having fun, you get some incredible photographs of the most simple things. Here is one image of a portrait group we are working on for our Spring Portrait Sessions. With Easter just around the corner, what a perfect time to schedule a session. We customize each session to fit your child's personality, and unlike some portrait studios, we shoot over 100 images, so you will have more choices than you can imagine. This image will be great on a 24x36 inch canvas portrait. Instead of buying expensive art for your home, invest in your child as Art.

Baby Sessions

I love the diversity of professional photography especially when I can go one day from shooting wild rock stars, then book a session with a new mom and her sweet new baby. My approach to photographing any subject is to capture some incredible images. Children are an incredible blessing in life, and if you can capture them being themselves and combine those moments with Art, then you have a great session. I did Shannon's wedding a couple of years ago, she recently called me for her maternity session, and now her new 5 month old baby boy. I schedule quite a few baby sessions each month, and love every minute of it. I used the new Canon 5d Mark II with a 24-105mm IS lens. I shot these at ISO 1000 in the studio with a soft box, 4x6 reflector, and a small backlight for the background with some spill on the subject from behind. My studio has a nice full glass wall that brings in lots of daylight, so I shoot everything in daylight mode.

Yung Rip

Last month I got a call from a music industry executive in Australia who represents a new hip hop artist - Yung Rip. He is in Memphis recording his new cd at Ardent Studios. I got a chance to photograph these images with the new Canon 5d MarkII camera. Here are just a few of the images from the session. I'll keep you posted when the cd comes out and which images they choose for the cover. The great thing about working with new artists, they have lots of drive and incredible talent, you never know when you may be working with the next grammy winning artist.

Save The Dress-Memphis Wedding Photographer

Here's our hot new photography feature that everyone's talking about. If you want one for your wedding or engagement session, just ask about our special package offer. Our videos can be downloaded to your Facebook, Wedding Website, or wherever you want. Check out our new video and imagine yourself in these images....pretty cool! You can also get some pretty cool music from a list of great artists in our stock music plan. Tired of the same old boring videos? We can change that!

Memphis Wedding Photography Classes - Photo Art

Here is part of a recent collection I shot in Mobile Bay last summer. The Photo Art collection is one of our most requested techniques for brides who love art! We also teach this in our workshops and one on one mentoring classes. Find out more about our workshops on the website. We teach photoshop processing techniques and a variety of art techniques. We teach classes for advanced photographers, and new enthusiasts. We can also bring in our advanced team, one who is a recent graduate of The University of Art in San Francisco to teach larger workshops. Ryan is a master in the entire Adobe CS4 Suite, and has an incredible talent for art. On this image, I did a layering process with about 6 layers and created an overlay along with distressing to create this piece. Visit our website at www.michaelallenphotography.com to find out more about our collections.

Lindsey & David - Memphis Tennessee - Michael Allen Photography

Here's a sneek peek of Lindsey & David's wedding on January 17th, 2009. They had a full Military Style wedding at Griffin Chapel in rural Memphis. Here are just a few of the highlights from their wedding.

Michael Allen Photography Memphis - Southern Bride Destination Weddings

 

Here are a few pages of the new 2009 Spring Summer Edition of Southern Bride Magazine due to hit the newstands in January. I loved shooting this session, and chose one of my favorite locations in Perdido Key Florida, a remote key with beautiful surroundings and a rainforest landscape design at the Eden Resort. I hope you enjoy the photographs shown in the layouts from the magazine. For the session my wife Janice provided the hair and makeup designs, and the support team at Southern Bride Magazine assisted with the models and location arrangements, as well as assistance from Orange Beach Weddings, For the session, I used a Canon 5d with a 70-200mm IS lens, and a large california sunbounce reflector, and a variety of additional scrims and reflectors from Westcott. We contracted the models from the local region, and as you can see, they did an incredible job on the session. Part of this collection was shot for our Destination Weddings collection, to give brides an idea of how to turn an ordinary beach wedding into an incredible destination wedding with an international flavor. When I started the shoot, I set the model away from the building, but as I turned and began to notice how the building looked like the bow of a huge cruise ship, I moved the set quickly toward the balcony of the resort to take advantage of the available light. The session began at high noon, which some photographers shy away from due to the intensity of the sunlight, but in this case I used it to my advantage and popped in some extra sun with my reflectors. For the next segment of the session we traveled to the historic district in Mobile Bay. I'll post those next. I hope you enjoy! 

Michael Allen Photography Memphis - Flemings Prime Steakhouse

Here are some recent photographs from a corporate session with Flemings Steakhouse. Flemings is one of my commercial clients. Flemings is one of the best,high end, fine dining restaurants in the country, winning numerous accolades nationwide. Located prime cities offering the finest in dining experiences,

Flemings offers some incredible cuisine and fine wines.

For this session I was asked to photograph the local owner-partners in the Memphis location for the companies website and various media publications. For this session I used a Canon 5d with a 24-205 mm IS lens and a Canon Fisheye Lens with a colored corrected soft box from Westcott, a diffused fill flash, a small hot light to accent the background, and combined the ambient lighting of the restaurant. I kept the ISO from 500 to 640, and the aperture at 125, with an f-stop of f4. For the room settings I again used some small hot lights to accent the room, and adjusted the color temperature to match the ambient lighting. I left the images a bit on the warm side to add to an evening dining experience.

Michael Allen Photography Memphis - The Gift

Last month I was asked to photograph a story line that is being edited into a HD Video presentation for the Holidays at Hope Church in Memphis. The basic story line is about a recovering alcoholic father and his first Christmas back at home with his wife and daughter after treatment. His daughter gives him a gift that reminds him of how wrong he is in his daily life, and how much of a blessing he has in his family. This is a pretty exciting photography/ HD video that will be shown to over 25,000 people who attend the Hope Christmas services on Christmas Eve. It's not often that I get the opportunity to have that many people see my work in one place, so I'm very excited to be involved in this project. These images will be edited by the production editors at Hopes state of the art facilities, cut in Final Cut Pro and rendered to full 1080i HD and shown on 2-25 ft x 35ft HD screens using the latest Christie HD projectors. I did a similar project for Hope this summer, which I will post at a later date. Here are just a few of the several hundred images that I shot for this project. I shot this with a Canon 5d with a Canon 24-105mm IS lens in available light with a california sunbounce light reflector & light modifiers, I did a mild boost in the vibrance level, but the images needed very little color adjustment. This project is a great example of a cinematic style of photography that I offer to many of my commercial clients. Here are just a few of the images from the shoot, they are not in any particular order, but I hope you enjoy the images. (All Images Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved - Michael Allen Photography)

Michael Allen- Editor's Choice Award- Capture Memphis Book

Here's an update from the special Capture Memphis book which was released at a special book release event last week. The book is now published and available for sale at Davis Kidd Booksellers and other local Memphis book stores. We are very excited about this breaking news!
This years "Editor's Choice Award" was given to Michael Allen Photography for the collection of photography featuring Special Events in Memphis! We are so excited to have one this prestigious award. This is a tremendous honor to be selected as the best of over 10,000 photographs submitted in the competition. We are also very excited to have many of our photographs published in this great new book showing off our great city! The book is now available at most major bookstores in the Memphis region. Be sure to visit www.capturememphis.com and order a copy. Thank you Memphis for this great honor! A few select Memphis Photographers won similar awards for their photographs, including Mark Allen, Michael's brother who is an avid photographer in the city. Several other Memphis photographers are featured in the book for their top voted photography as well. Capture Memphis is an incredible book that depicts the absolute best photography in Memphis! Shown above is one of the award winning photographs that appear in the book from the Hope Summer Concert Series. Follow the images below and visit the Capture Memphis website.