Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Posted in Weddings
Although its only been a few short years since we first started shooting weddings with Kelly and Malia’s perfect day, Sarah and I have come to love the excitement, joy and rewarding nature of shooting wedding photography. Out of all the photography that i have had the opportunity to shoot, there is very few moments as rewarding as catching the bride and groom together on their happiest day together. We had so much fun in 2008 that we are working harder to take this adventure further, and today we officially went live on “theknot.com” and “weddingchannel.com” - home to over 30,000 brides a year, we hope to get our name out there and get some new exciting weddings to be part of in the future.
This year we have also become members with WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) and look forward to keeping up with the times and ensuring we can offer the best product out there. We really appreciate any and all of the recommendations we have received, and we are looking forward to an awesome upcoming year. I just wanted to share our excitement with everyone and thankyou to all of you that have helped us along the way! We are having so much fun and learning lots with every wedding we shoot, and we really look forward to trying new things, meeting new people and creating an awesome product.
Feel free to check us out on the Knot by going to - http://www.theknot.com/vs_SEATTLE_PHO.shtml - we are “MKippen Photography”
We look forward to any feedback you have on the profile, and thank you for checking out our blog!
Saturday, December 20, 2008 Posted in Family
Last week i became one of the lucky few to get the new Canon 5d Mark II camera. After waiting over 3 months, i am very happy to join the Full Frame game and to utilize my lenses to their full potential. The Canon 5D Mark II is a marvel, featuring 21.1 MP full frame sensor, canon’s Digic 4 processor, and incredible high iso noise performance. Beyond all that, this is also the first digital SLR to shoot Full 1080P HD video. After having the camera in my hands now for over a week and getting familiar with all it has to offer, i am VERY excited to start shooting some new content, its given me a new breath of fresh air and i feel like i just want to shoot anything and everything at the moment.
This camera will allow much better performance of shooting ceremonies and indoor locations without needing as much flash as previously would have been required, since we can shoot with much higher iso’s and get very similar results - which is very exciting for use with wedding receptions. We have been investing every dollar we can into ensuring that we can offer the best quality photography available, and this is a big step forward to reaching the goal.
Onto some new photographs!
This is My parent’s dog Kayla
My Mom
My Parent’s dog Hunter.
Our Dog Bella
Our other Pug, Oly
My Nephew Christopher.
Out of all the cars i have ever had the privilege to do a complete shoot on in my life, i have to say that this one tops the list of the most difficult interior to shoot. Considering that this car has no sunroof, very high and small windows, and is completely black from top to bottom made it very difficult to show details and get the angles that really show this interior off. Its not often you take a look at the interior of a muscle car like this and expect to see an interior like this which has been as modernized as the suspension it runs on.
The interior features 2 Recaro Style Topline suede and leather front seats, which are full electric with warmers. In the back of the car, the rear bench was completely redone to match the front seats with the same suede and leather combination. The headliner and doors were covered in black suede with leather bits here and there to keep the consistency throughout the interior. The car’s interior also features a CORSA steering wheel and a completely custom gauge cluster built by Brandon at Speedware.
Overall, i am quite happy with these shots, although i think that my Canon 40D was a very big let down on these, considering the low light conditions and all black interior - the noise with the higher ISO’s was really horrible. I cannot wait to get hold my new 5d, these sort of interior shots should come much easier in the future.
While I was at Speedware to get these shots, i also took a couple more of the engine bay for some wide overview looks at the whole package.
Meet Brandon Roettjer - the Speedware tech to make all this fantastic work happen.
Just for fun, i got a couple quick shots of Shawn’s E55 AMG, which is dumped and blacked on on a set of HRE Monoblocks - very sick car.
Tags: amg, black leather, black suede, brandon, brandon roettjer, challenger, corsa, dodge, e55, focal, kelly, mercedes, recaro, roettjer, shawn, sparco, speedware, speedwaremotorsports.com, style, topline
Well, there is a first for everything, and finally I have been able to shoot my frist american mustle car, and what a car it is. Today i hooked up with Speedware to shoot a 1970 Dodge Challenger which they just finished building for one of their clients. This car seems appropriate for a shoot, considering that Dodge is just about to release the new 2009 challenger, and i have to admit, that you can definitely understand why this car has been renewed into the dodge line up next year.
This challenger features a newly speedware-installed 477ci Keith Black Aluminum Big Block which put down an impressive 450whp on a conservative break in tune. Speedware expects that the engine will break the 500hp mark after the motor has shed a few miles and had a once over tune. To flow the fumes away from the car, the speedware crew built a completely custom exhaust back from the TTI headers. The engine sits on top of a Magnum force front cross member. To complete the circle, the car also stops like a race car with a 6pot Wilwood braking system at all 4 corners fed from a Wilwood brake booster under the hood.
Probably the most impressive part about this car is how amazingly well its all come together. The custom Recaro interior with suede here and there, makes it a comfortable place the new 2009 challenger could be jealous of. In the dozen or so times I asked Kelly to move the car or change the angles, the car never missed a beat, starting right up as if it just rolled off the showroom floor (although sounding much meaner). Speedware has done an incredible job with this car. You could spend a half an hour looking at all the details and miss tons of amazing custom work, this car has some of the cleanest wiring i have ever seen, and the custom gauge panel is very trick.
Well, I have some pictures up, but I have to admit I’m not quite adjusted to fall just yet, and the weather is really messin with me. This being a completely black interior really messed with me considering there was not enough light even at 4:00pm. In most of the dubs i shoot there are usually much bigger windows and a sunroof, so I can shoot some flash here and there, but this car has small windows and it was near impossible to flash light on the inside - so were planning on getting together sometime later this week during the day to get some interior bits and pieces.
Thanks Shawn, Kelly for coming out - Good job Speedware!
http://www.speedwaremotorsports.com
This was my favorite roller - Isn’t that profile just sick!
I found this spot to shoot the car in Bellvue at the Safeway plant opposite the Audi dealership (thank god we didn’t get kicked out) - but there was these orange doors and it looked great with the car. Here are some statics.
Sarah and the Photo Mobile, thanks Sarah for being the greatest GF in the world!
Cheers - Hope you guys likey, i really hope i get the opportunity to shoot lots more American Muscle in the near future 
- as long as Speedware keeps up the good work, that shouldn’t be hard!
Tags: 1970, 1970 dodge challenger, challenger, dodge, hemi, holley, Keith Black, RT, speedware, speedware motorsports, v8, wilwood
Saturday, November 1, 2008 Posted in Weddings
October 4th 2008, Sarah and I had the opportunity to shoot Jeff and Dania’s wedding in Yakima Washington, at the Yakima Country Club. Wow, where do I start, I mean this wedding was about as picture perfect, fun and as organized as it gets. The night before in Yakima, it was cold, raining, and wasn’t looking up, but the weather really came through the morning after and cleared up into a beautiful day. The country club overlooked the whole of Yakima valley with an incredible view, and we could not have asked for more photo opportunities than at this location.
Dania and Jeff are really creative and so much fun to work with, it seemed like every time we turned around they were up to something new and different. Between their personalities and the rest of the wedding party, this was seriously the most fun any photographer could hope to be part of. We want to say thank you very much to Jeff and Dania for letting us be part of their awesome wedding day.
I got together with Kelly Campbell today, one of my best friends who works at Speedware Motorsports in redmond. Kelly has one of the cleanest mk3’s you will EVER see, i mean the thing only has 64,000 miles on the clock and its an 11 year old car!! Its crazy, not one dent, not one scratch, its like the day it came off of teh showroom, only with over double the horsepower and 10x the fun.
We drove around south of seattle in the Auburn area for almost an hour before we came accross this awesome field which had a single lane dead-end road surrounded by patches of farming, and nothing else. Not to be bothered by any traffic, i decided to use the stobes for the first time in a while, and had some fun with the shoot rather than trying to make it perfect, and doing the same old. Since kelly is such a good friend, i can always get some new ones if i dont like them anyhow!
Kelly’s car features a VR6 turbo, custon built and installed by himself at Speedware, is one of the cleanest installs around. From the hard line used for the tial wastegate to the routing of the turbo, to the stealthy cold air intake, everything was planned and executed with ultimate precision. The car is throwing down plenty of tire burning power at 17lbs of boost through the t04 turbo into the 3″ downpipe and exhaust.
The interior is also no exception, from a suede wrapped dash, to some of the sickest seats you have ever seen, the custom Speedware Sparco DTM RS sport seats, this GTI feels like it just rolled out of the showroom. The car is sitting on top of some KW varient 2 coilovers, and rides so nice that you could easily drive this accross country and not be upset that you did it, if anything you would be giggling like a little girl most of the way when getting into boost (i know i do). Check these seats out!
Thanks kelly for coming out, i had a good time, hope that you like the shots!
Tags: campbell, Golf, GTI, kelly, kelly campbell, speedware, speedware motorsports, tial, turbo, Volkswagen, vr6, vw
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 Posted in Weddings
Sunday, October 12, 2008 Posted in Family
Yesterday we all got together to go visit the pumpkin patch. Tony and Katrina Kippen, Mandy and Jaco Breedt, and our good friends Kelly and Malia with their little baby girl Veronica. It was a lot of fun, and althoug the weather was decent, its really starting to get cold. It was a lot of first timer’s to the pumpkin patch, so naturally we had to do it right, and we decided to visit the Carpinito Brothers farm in Kent, which was a good time. The pumpkins were only about $.25cents a pound, and they have a huge corn maze (allbeit $7, way too expensive imo) - so we stuck to the pumpkins and got some opportunities to get some good shots.
Hopefully we can get to carving the pumpkins in a few weeks, i’m still undecided what i want to do for mine, but i’m definitely looking forward to trick or treating and some good pumpkin pie (sarah promised). I am also stoked that I finally got a good situation to try out our new Canon 85mm 1.2 lens, which was a blast, but i still cannot wait to get some time with it on a Full Frame camera.
Tags: 2008, Christopher Kippen, Family, Halloween, Jaco, Katrina Kippen, Mandy Breedt, Mike, Pumpkins, Sarah, Tony
by Mike
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