Chelsie + Johnny Engaged!

A few days ago I took a little road trip down to Baltimore to shoot engagement pictures for my long-time friends Chelsie and John.  I’ve known Chelsie and John for quite a while, and it’s been so great seeing them grow closer throughout the years.

Sometimes finding the right poses and making things look right takes some effort, but Chelsie and John together felt so natural.  A lot of the time I didn’t even have to direct things, they both just did their thing…and they rocked it!

Here are a few of my favorites.

All in all it was a great time in B-more.  We went to Lexington Market, the Brick Oven, the hood, a few different parks, the Orioles stadium, and a few other places.  I got quite the tour.  :)  Good times, good times.

~ Jon

Dr. Dog + The Metters in concert

For the first Harding concert of the year, Dr. Dog and The Metters came down to perform. The Metters opened with some great fun music. They played at Harding a few times in the past, but I forgot how much I liked them. Dr. Dog was also pretty good. I wish I would have learned some of their songs beforehand though–that always makes concerts better for me when I can lose my voice singing along. :)

As with any concert at Harding: the crowd is always pretty lame. About 75% of the people sit down, then the rest that are standing up just clap (sometimes), sing along (although rare), and yell.

Thankfully there’s more to life than being energetic concert attendees.

In other news, there’s this cool thing in concert photography where you aren’t supposed to take pictures past their 3rd song. It’s generally only with larger bands, but it’s cool because at the beginning of the concert is when everyone is all pumped up, the bands play their best songs, and the energy is crazy. By the end of the concert, the everyone gets bored, a few of the band members fall asleep, and the most of the crowd has gone back to their room to do homework.

It’s just something I need to get used to. ;) Great job by the Metters and Dr. Dog! Fun times.

~ Jon

Devon + Trent | married!

For my first solo wedding, I shot some friends that have been close to me the whole way through college.

The story: I met Trent first through living in the same dorm. We (along with a couple other guys) were hanging out at a freshman orientation (or equivalent) event, and we met Devon and a few other girls there. We all ditched the slideshow video that was going on and went to a coffee house close by. It was a good time; we played some games, talked, and hung out. At the end of the night, we all exchanged phone numbers in a true “hey let’s be friends!” fashion.

I’m sure our little friend group hung out a few more times after that, but a few weeks later, we heard of a 4 hour phone call into the wee hours of the morning. We then knew something was up. Soon enough Trent and Devon were official. The rest is history.

Over the years we’ve had many more good times. We’ve even dabbled in extreme music videos.

And now… they’re married!  How cool!  :)  Devon was incredibly calm before the ceremony which is unheard of and super cool.  The whole day was a blast to photograph.  This couple is tha bomb.  ;)

Take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

~ Jon

Wedding Things; branding; the biz

Being professional and also open about your learning seems to be two things that don’t usually go together in the photography industry.  From the start, my plan has to been to turn jonyoder.com into my business site.  Since I haven’t always had a clear plan for where my business is heading, this blog has mainly just been a place to put the photos and ideas that I come up with, having only thoughts of doing photography professionally here and there.

The idea that seems to be most prevalent nowadays is to “fake it ’till you make it” in your business, while also having a personal side that people can relate to.  I understand this concept–you want to make your potential client confident in your ability to deliver something of quality in a professional manor.  So, even if you’re making things up as you go, you should do it with the confidence as though you’ve been doing it that way forever.

This mindset might sound weird to some of you.  Maybe it sounds wrong to show confidence when you aren’t sure or always trying to look/sound professional.  Personally, I’m choosing to be mostly open in my learning of the ins and outs of wedding photography.  It isn’t that I think different ways or what I’m used to seeing is bad, but I’m just choosing to be open about my learning simply because that’s the way I want to do it.

I’ve always been pretty open about things, so why stop now?  There could be many different good answers to that question…but for now, I’m just posting what I do.  What I learn.  Today it’s logo, website, and style choices.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time looking through different fonts to put together a logo.  As of now, I’m thinking: Jon Yoder Photographer | weddings & portraiture.  Pretty elaborate, right?  :)

I know that photographs speak louder than websites, fonts, styles, and logos, but being a perfectionist, I spend a lot of time trying to get things, well, perfect (except that I never am 100% happy with the way I make it).  I follow quite a few wedding photographers, and a decent amount of them have websites that are kinda hideous (I’m not going to name anyone :-) ).  Yet they still seem to be doing fine–I guess brides know that they aren’t getting a website made for them or a book of some terrible font, they’re getting the photographs.  That’s not to say that the presentation doesn’t matter, it certainly does, but you can sometimes still do alright without a strong website.

All this brings me to the things that I still need to work out:

• I don’t know my unique style.  I’ve been tending toward more natural vs. lots of photoshop work lately, but I think it’s good to have more of a distinctive style than just the way you shoot.
• I haven’t settled on a logo.  Or a watermark.
• This goes with the last point–but I also want to change up the website a bit and have a style that goes across my whole brand.

There are definitely more things, but those points are what I’ve been thinking of most.

My favorite wedding photography brands (as far as websites / styles / design goes) and inspiration:

• Mindcastle // amazing style.  I really like their name, defined style, video work, & creativity.
• Red Leaf Studios // I like the leaf in the logo…and the background, and the photography.  ;)
• Stacy Reeves // Really great style.  :)  I like the brightness and the patterns.
• Matthew Saville // One of the few photographers that uses dark theme/light text.  I like the fonts and color choice. Great guy and mentor.
• Jasmine Star // obligatory.
• Jon Yoder // The color blue…the simplicity, the experience…wow–haha, I’ll stop now.  :)

I’m always going to aim high.  Where that will get me, I don’t know, but I suppose you’ll find out how it’s going soon enough.  =)

~ Jon

Self portraits, yay or nay?

I’ve always had a little bit of reservation and discomfort about self-portraits. It’s probably something I have to put aside in the name of photography, but it’s just something that I’m never 100% comfortable about. It’s kinda like my fear of “street photography” aka taking people’s pictures without their consent. I feel completely comfortable doing it in a sly manner, but it’s hard for me to just straight up take pictures of people close up.

Another thing that makes me a little nervous is setting up lights and everything in public for a photo shoot. This is something I know I just have to get over, and it won’t really stop me, but it still makes me nervous.

A few influences that have encouraged me to just be a fool in the name of photography (per se), and just forget all this emotional nonesense are the very popular photographers Aaron Nace (some pics), who started off mainly doing self portraits before landing some jobs, and Dustin Diaz, who took a picture a day for a year (aka 365 project), with a good portion of those pictures being self-portraits.

I don’t really have a problem with self portraits, I’ll never have a majority of my pictures be self portraits, and I don’t plan on removing self portraits from my photo arsenal, it will always be somewhere in between.  Exactly where, I don’t know, but I don’t plan on caring about it very much.  I do, however, hope to give up on over analyzing everything and just going to work.  ;-)

Just me being a weirdo. No big. (click for large / uncropped)

~ Jon