A case in point is Erin, a bride from the Lexington area of North Caroline that we met at the Winston Salem Carolina Wedding Show in August 2010.

Erin won a bridal portrait session by identifying the location of a portrait taken earlier in 2010 of another beautiful bride in which we thought the bride rendered like a Greek Goddess in one of the images that was taken at a very well known North Carolina University.  The image serves as the back of Allison’s wedding photo book or what many call a Coffee Table Book.

Raleigh Bridal Portrait

Erin was the first to identify the location of this portrait taken earlier of Allison who attended NCSU with the portrait taken at the Memorial Bell Tower.

As many wedding photographers will tell you the lighting and rendering of the background are usually the most difficult parts of a bridal portrait regardless of the venue along with showing the details in the wedding dress. In this case we had to put down a sheet to protect the dress from the wet grass and placed Erin in the shade with the time being 10 am.

The background details in this crop

A few hours in multiple imaging editing programs and Voila! Beautiful wedding portrait that Erin and her family will treasure  forever photographed at a beloved North Carolina landmark.

We have also taken bridal portraits and/or wedding photos at Wait Chapel, the Old Well and Duke Chapel.

A BW  image file for the  announcement in  the local paper that is included at no charge, etc.

It is important to note to prospective wedding couples that the Carolina Wedding Shows can be over whelming with many choices of vendors including photographers and with limited time to discuss in detail the important aspects of the services provided but the shows do  give you a good start of knowing what is available in the local market.

The value of the bridal portrait with a 16×24 enlargement to Erin and her family – Priceless.

Erin, Bridesmaids and the Big Bad Wolf…..

Ron Day

DayImages.com

ron@DayImages.com

As Hurricane Irene progresses a path that includes most of the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina to New York and beyond I recall a night nearly 15 years ago in a farm house in southern Person County near Timberlake as Hurricane Fran cut a path through central North Carolina progressing through Raleigh and Person County into Virginia.

My daughter Laura a student at NCSU at the time was prepared to ride the storm out in a house with a basement near Western Boulevard that she had rented with other classmates for the semester.

I had called her a few days earlier and asked her to get prepared with water, flashlights, batteries and several days of food, etc. Little did I know the storm would take out every living tree on the lot of the rental house all the way to Western Boulevard including one tree near the house in which the roots pulled the gas line loose and the smell of gas along with water started coming into the basement.

What to do during the middle of the night with the hurricane raging outside with no power and limited communications as we had no cells phones at that time. Another location was found not too far away that she and her future husband Matt and friends decided to go for … Laura was taught at an early age on our family farm to drive a straight shift 1979 Toyota pickup at the age of 8 on the back forty starting on a hill no doubt to refine her skill and had to view the road under the top of the steering wheel. As she got older and with a little fussing on her part she learned to drive the “2” wheeled drive Toyota pickup through rough challenging back farm roads in both Person and Granville counties with mud holes that would almost go over the top of the truck hood and to hesitate was to be stuck in a mess. She mastered her driving skill quite well and later developed her 4 wheel drive skills on the sandy beaches of Ocracoke Island which Irene will likely hammer hard.

Needless to say she was the chosen one to do the driving during that perilously night of Hurricane Fran – first shifting into 4 wheel drive and then finding the paths to take as there were many trees and power lines down on the streets of Raleigh in the black of night with raging winds. As I have been told she drove around downed trees, through yards and crossing ditches using the skills she had developed years earlier on the back farm roads and finally found safe shelter to ride out the storm.

In the meantime I had prepared as much as possible to take care of my parents and especially my extremely ill father who was dying from a botched colon cancer surgery a year earlier. My father had an electric powered feeding tube as well as both bags so having running water and electricity was critical. I had made to call to local electric company Piedmont Electric and informed them of our situation a few days earlier.

It was the longest night ever for me as I lay in the upstairs bed looking out the window southward toward Raleigh hoping and praying my beloved Laura was ok? The wind bounced the flag connectors against the near by flag pole all night and really all I could see was the outline of the porch roof against the southern sky.

As an agriculture producer with approximately 1800 acres of grain in the field I feared the wind on the corn and needed the rain for the soybeans much like the very dry Eastern North Carolina this year as Hurricane Irene rains will help some crops and damage others. In my case in 1996 with my father’s condition I could not find time to go 1 mile 2 weeks prior to the storm to even put the corn head on the combine so no corn was yet harvested.

Upon daylight I checked on my parents and made sure they were stable and ok and then took a short ride around the neighborhood. Trees were down everywhere, I could not get to my farm across the road and water covered the roads in every direction. I have never seen so much water before or since in the area. The wind blew down the very best corn which was still green and soybeans had been wind blown but I did not have time to check if pods were blown off. I remember swallowing very hard when viewing what had been our best corn that year.

There were other issues to deal with father’s care and Piedmont Electric did a wonderful job getting the power back on late in the day. I was so thankful.

Back in 1996 the crop insurance for grain in Person County was worthless and there was no assistance from any federal agency to help us in any manner. Even the crews that were supposed to come around to pick trees limbs, etc. somehow managed to miss our farm. There was not 1 penny in assistance to cover our lost from any entity. Nothing.

For those of you that are experiencing the long day or night of Hurricane Irene I have nothing but empathy for you. We’ve been there and were lucky. May God and the Angels be with you.

Ronald N Day

St Patrick's Day Pot of Wedding Photography Gold!

Attendees of the Greensboro Carolina Wedding Show should have received on 3-11-2011 a pot of wedding photography Gold in their email.

If you did not receive your lucky charm give us a call at 336.303.0540 or email dayimages.com@gmail.com before midnight St. Patrick’s Day.  (3-17-2011).

ID the sender of the 3-11-2011 email from DayImages.com in the subject line and get 2 lucky charms.  1 for the bride’s family and 1 for the groom’s family.

(may not be combined with other lucky charms)

Day Family Farm

My grandparents moved into a 2 room log house around 1906 and had a total of 11 children that this farm supported.  This is a photo of my son Matthew standing in the upstairs part of the 2 room log house.

2 room log house built in the 1800s

The logs were hand hewn.

The exact construction date of the classic wood frame home house is unknown.   My parents brought the home place  in 1968.

I played many a game of  catch by bouncing a baseball against this chimney.

I remember my granddaddy’s daily walks of the property to check the crops and now know he was just enjoying the beauty.

Walking the fields

I remember the community quiltings in this upstairs room . The women of the community would come together to put the finishing touches of hand sewing the patches as well as catching up with all the community gossip of the day.

Many a child has played on these stairs ….

Hand Made quilts and stairs

As a child and teenager a lot of sweat was created in this old tobacco barn.

There were always plenty of places to explore on these lands with the fields, woods and creek.

The whole farm was one big play ground.

Having grown up and farmed this land in some manner since the age of about 5 when my legs were just long enough to reach the clutch and brake of a Farmall Super A as a hay trailer was loaded to commercially growing more grain  on this land in 1 year than my grandfather produced in a lifetime.  It will be  an eternal grieving process in losing this Day family sacred ground.

Generations of Day Family Sacred Ground

It was my personal dream this land would be in the Day family forever but due to conditions beyond our control it was not to be.

Future Generations

Our prayer is the new owners of our family farm  will preserve, love and cherish this land as our family has for multiple generations over 100 years.

Men are fierce defenders of love ones…..

…… to tender kissers of the little ones ..

…sons like to scare their mothers….

…to loving, holding and caring for their mothers all their lives….

Men will walk that last mile with you …….

….they will salute and celebrate your wedding before the ceremony..

…men will love and protect you forever…

A big John is  there to drive you safely to your destination…….

Anthony is the reason for me being a wedding photographer today …  it all started as justification to purchase a Nikon camera to take good  baby pictures of him … and now he is capturing the essence with great wedding photos.

Enjoy our September images of men and matrimony – Men and Matrimony

]]> http://ronday.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/men-and-matrimony/feed/ 0 ronday RND_4785 RND_7511m RND_5357 sonsmothers RND_1917 RND_1946 realmenloveprotect2 RND_8960_20 RND_7980_anthony http://ronday.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/18/ http://ronday.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/18/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:52:25 +0000 Ron Day http://ronday.wordpress.com/?p=18 ]]> I had a photo session with Rachel and Michael at Castle McCulloch  that included many great images ending up with fun images like this one with their Mickie  and Minnie hats

Rachael and Michael

Sailor Bride

We liked the Sailor Bride image so much it has been added to our contact page at www.DayImages.com for Greensboro Wedding Photographers.

This is what is occurring in the background.

Castle McCulloch Wedding Photography

Jamestown Wedding Photography

All of us had a lot of fun as well as getting great images.

Ron Day

We try to capture the essence of a wedding which I think the first image shows clearly as the groom is recalling the wedding service with his beautiful bride as they are walking to a location outside of Hotel Roanoke to take wedding photos.

As you see the wind was quite brisk by the brides hair.

In this brief 15 minute session just before the reception over 200 images of the couple were taken concluding with a warm up by the fire.

The couple is now in Japan and can select the images to be printed in the comfort of their home with our proprietary online selection software. As a long time wedding photographer…… how cool. Technology we could only dream about just 10 years ago.

Oh yes……  not bad for a camera phone and a heavily cropped Nikon D300 image file?

The groom’s body language says it all along with the minister’s coat. It was chilly.

The bride was standing in the sun with somewhat of a wind break but nevertheless.

Amazingly enough the weather seemed to get warmer during the ceremony.

Heather and Jon tossed a coin in the fountain for good luck.

The wedding turned out great despite the chilly temperatures for a delightful couple.

Happy Easter!

Our plan is to share with you our thoughts, observations and opinions on photography focusing primarily on wedding photography. We will also be interested in your opinions as well.

My name is Ron Day and I have photographed weddings for over 30 years and have seen many changes in both the technical and social aspects of wedding photography.

My first weddings were captured by manual metered and manual focused cameras and if a wedding including the reception lasted over 3 hours it was considered a long wedding.

It would also be unthinkable to expose more than 72 exposures of film thirty years ago. Today it is equally unthinkable to expose less than 72 images per hour.

Photography today has actually become more complex in the work flow than the film days but we like the changes and the ability to output images we could not render just a few years ago.

Please visit us often as we attempt to discuss new ideas, issues, etc as they relate to photography and as noted above we would appreciate your thoughts and comments as well.

Ron Day