Virginia Tech Graduation

This past weekend I went down to Virginia Tech to visit and go to one of my best friend's graduation. I had only been down the Blacksburg 3 times over the past four years, so I wanted to get some good shots this time around, but it wound up raining one of the days I was there, so I only took a few...hundred...these are my favorite from the weekend.

My friend Jon was thrilled to be graduating

Sometimes you just can't wait to say it (this was taken the day before Mom's Day)

Jon and his Mom playing some tetherball

Jon's brother and I played some checker's...he kicked my butt, he was quite the master...

Jon likes to drive fast, 3X the speedlimit on a dark mountain road fast...

Jon's brother and I played gigantic chess later, it was a close game but he STILL won...the guy's a champion...

A ton of graduates put messages on their caps, these were the last to graduate that day...

We went to a outdoor pinic/barbaque later in the mountains, the sky was just SOOO perfect!

Mike and Maggie's portrait turned engagement shoot

So we knew this going into it, but Armin and I were shooting a lifestyle portrait session with Maggie and Mike yesterday, and about halfway through Mike popped the question. Maggie was so surprised when he dropped down to one knee, and was laughing when a guy in a car passing by shouted out "Don't do it, just say no!" as Maggie raised her fist and shook it at the guy retorting "You're ruining the moment!" Enjoy the photos!

Postprocessed for Armin...tried to be 'moody'

Maggie wanted a shot of her rather shiny shoes

Wait for it...wait for it...

Maggie laughing at the guy who drove by shouting "Don't do it, just say no!"

Showing off the new bling

It takes two to tango

Notice the sign says Church St...

Hope you enjoyed the photos. I'm down in Blacksburg right now, and will be taking some photos around town today and tomorrow and will post them up early next week, also with some updates on the website. If you haven't noticed I've changed the color scheme and design of this page as well as noahhayes.net to match the new site which will launch soon.

Photoshoot 1 with Maggie and Mike (and Armin and Erin J)

Tonight I was hanging out with Armin and Erin J as we played with light (that is what photography is all about after all anyway, right?) as we took some photos of Maggie and Mike. We met up in Tysons Corner and trekked to a couple different locations. Armin and I will also be shooting a portrait/lifestyle session with them later this week, I'll be sure to post those pictures this weekend, they should be pretty good, we'll be in old Leesburg. These are just some of my favorites from the day, the rest are available for your viewing at noahhayes.net!

The 'crew' at Chili's in Tysons grabbing some grub waiting for the light to begin to fade into the horizon... (when the sun is really low in the sky you get a really nice tone to the light)

Maggie posing in front of the painted American flah outside of Chilis

Armin going for different angles for the shot

Erin J and Armin shooting Maggie from both sides

Shooting into the sun, using it for a really nice backlight

Once it started getting dark we pulled out our flashes and got a little "creative"...I think Maggie was frustrated...LOL

After dark we used a continuous light to get some nice warm (color, not heat) light

Armin pulled a Jet Li pose while we played around with high-speed sync flash, a la Nikon SB-800 and Pocket Wizards...sorry Armin no Canon flashes were harmed in the making of this shot :)

These two are gonna take crime into their own hands...literally, he's a cop and she just graduated with a degree in criminal justice! Watch out!

More fun with high-speed sync...well at least I had fun taking it!

Armin had an idea to use his car's headlights as a way to illuminate the "model", I think it worked out well...

Hope you enjoyed the images, there's a few more on noahhayes.net! Also I'll be heading down to VT for graduation this weekend, so I may not get a chance to post anything until I get back, but rest assured that by Mon/Tues next week you'll see a couple more posts up here.