Viera Photographics Blog

3 days in Paris

Viera Photographics — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:39:45 +0000

The only thing I felt I’d had enough of after our short, three-day visit to Paris, was the cheesy Croque Monsieur (sounds MUCH fancier than ham and cheese). My poor wife was outnumbered by 5 cameras – all of which fit nicely into a small camera backpack, however – and I hope our photos make up for all the times I got distracted and disappeared down an alley or under a bridge or spent long stretches of time clearing airport security, pleading for hand inspections of my film.

There’s a lot you could say that’s already been said of the city esteemed in nostalgic romance – the meandering cobblestone streets, patisseries on every corner, and the seemingly ubiquitous Eiffel Tower – instead, I’ll cut it here and post some photos that document our first few days on my first trip to Europe. This sounds crazy, but made it a point to have no destinations the whole 3 days, we literally just scootered or walked the streets until we saw something cool… then we stopped. One thing that left a lasting impression was the roller-blading cops; can you imagine a high-speed pursuit of a thief on foot being chased by a couple of those bad-boys? Forget about it!

1 Old Buddy, 1 New Camera

Viera Photographics — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:01:15 +0000

We got our new D800 last week and have been slowly integrating her into the family. I haven’t done any technical testing with it and not sure how in depth with that I’ll get – there have been a billion reviews to date and the camera rates pretty much flawless.

Shot with one of our sharpest lenses – the 45mm f.28 perspective control – this is a quick portrait of Buddy who’s been in our family for almost 13 years. I really wanted to capture detail in his eyes and when I cropped in on the 36.15 megapixel image at 200 percent, I was blown away at the resolution and overall pleasant feel of the image and how clearly visible I am in my dorky shorts.

Digital is inherently grain-free, but a good lens/sensor combination can produce a printed image of high dynamic range that has a believable tonal scale and evoke a more analog visual experience. D800 – in a word, Rad.

Ashley and Tim

Viera Photographics — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:15:15 +0000

Ashley and Tim’s relationship began at a High School Track competition; Tim ran sprints, Ashley jumped hurdles. The metaphor is SO tempting to run with (no pun intended), but we’ll try to resist. Tim and Ashley’s relationship has had it’s share of obstacles and both have needed to pull strength from within to overcome breaks, break-up’s, and physical distance separating the two for most of their relationship.

Young love often finds itself at a diverging road, destined only to become a defining memory of adolescence. Ashley and Tim’s love rather, just went underground for the few years they were going their separate ways studying photography and attending college, respectively.

The holiday’s have a way of bringing people together and considering both of their parents live in the same town, it was more a matter of when rather than if. We suspect the intoxicating mix of mistletoe, the ubiquitous smell of all things nutmeg, and fire-side-snuggling on a cold December night in Palm Springs was just what it took to bring the two back together; and by New Years the relationship was stronger than ever. This joy would be short-lived when Tim received his orders to ship out to Marine Corps boot camp just a few months later. Boot camp is not the ideal scenario for nurturing a new relationship but the two remained committed. The tests were just beginning as shortly after completing boot-camp, Tim was off to training in Maryland for 6 months, then off on a 13 month deployment to Afghanistan.

We met Ashely awhile back when she wrote us as a 4th year photography student at Cal State Fullerton to see if we had any opportunities as a photography assistant. She started working with us straight away, and her infectious positive attitude, hard work and ingenuity was a perfect fit for us and now we can no longer live with out her! She talked a lot about Tim and her excitement about getting married, but it always seemed so far away, as he was still in Afghanistan. One day on our way home from a wedding, we asked when her wedding was and who was photographing it – she answered that it was only a few months away and she didn’t know! I knew immediately that it had to be us as we already felt like Ashley was a part of our family.. and though we hadn’t yet met Tim, we knew we would love him too!

Their love and passion for being active in the great outdoors brought the them together; their love and belief in each other is what brought them to the Indio polo fields on March 24th. Under the same wide open skies they ran under so many years ago as kids, they declared their love for each other in front of family and friends. The day was absolutely stunning. Tim was, in fact… super cool (he even got on a bronze horse when Dennis asked him too), and we couldn’t have been happier to have met him and seen them together after all that time. Now that they are married, they are looking to spend much more time together, and we are sad to say Ashley will be following Tim to North Carolina when she graduates (yes, they are apart again, but only for a few months this time). Though we won’t be working with her anymore we are happy that they will finally be together and wish them much all the happiness in the world.

Ashley’s Photography website: Ashley Duncan Photography
Venue: Indio Polo Fields
Coordinator: Rosanna Chhun

Our very own teenager!

Viera Photographics — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:45:15 +0000

Welcome to the Viera Photographics family Francesca. We’ve known Francesca since she was 5 – the same age as our son – which makes us feel pretty old. She’s a family friend and has become increasingly interested in photography over the past few years so… when she told us she’d be headed west from Colorado, we offered her a paid intern position, which she accepted!

It’s going to be an exciting year for us and we’re so happy to have you along for the ride!

Things you may not know about us: #1

Viera Photographics — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:26:31 +0000

Over the past so many years, our lives have followed an extremely non-linear path – although it seems perfectly straight to us! This new column will provide entertaining insight into our zig-zagging history while allowing us to dig through our own image archives.

Dennis is also a DJ.

I’ve always been crazy about music and I can remember as far back as grade-school, staying up late at my grandparents house, watching bands performing live on TV, then flipping on the radio during commercials. In college, we’d have these parties and I’d set up piggybacked stereos so I could switch from song to song with no gap as I couldn’t afford a more sophisticated mixing solution at that time. Summer of 97′, I found a Technics Sl-1200 turntable secondhand with a little mixer and hooked it up to another belt-drive turntable that was extremely ghetto but served it’s purpose – I could finally mix music! From there, things just progressed with obsessive music collecting and, long story short: dj’ing has been a part of my life to some degree ever since. There have been times, particularly when I first moved to New Zealand in 2002, when I played several nights a week. I’ve organized my own parties, played some great clubs, outdoor parties, and music festivals alongside amazing local and international dj’s and producers and met so many great people along the way who have, in turn continued to inform and inspire my musical tastes. I don’t have many photos of myself but here’s a rare one from a bbq/house-party, roughly 2001. Image, courtesy of Brian Lima.

We love each other

Viera Photographics — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:22:26 +0000

Returning home after being away from our son for almost 17 days – we have a hard time letting him out of our sights these days. Alex is such a good kid; SO interested in everything and wants desperately to accompany us to a wedding so “I can help you Mom and Dad!” We were lucky to have him with us the past two weddings we shot out of town because every day truly is a new adventure. I do NOT like having my photo taken and I think – to this day – the only person who can convince me, to “take a self picture of us” would be him.

Blogs are for people with too much time on their hands…

Viera Photographics — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:25:08 +0000

…And I am very jealous of those people. We could have someone else post our blogs for us, but then the words, thoughts, and ideas are not our own; the point of our blog is to put you in our shoes for a moment and see the world as we see it.

So, this means you have to wait a bit longer in-between posts and deal with fragmented posts occasionally when we feel overwhelmed with images.

We are currently overwhelmed with images.

My first trip to Europe – 3 days in Paris and 13 days in Turkey – was a big deal and opened my eyes a bit more to reveal just how big, bright, gray, colorful, small, great, joyful, sad, delicate, and brilliant our world is. I’ve travelled to Asia, Oceana, Central America, and a lot of places in-between with crystal-clear waters and starfish, but nothing was like the experience we had traveling back in time to the places civilization began and evolved. Photographically, I always prefer to spend a bit of time in a place before getting photo crazy but our time was limited so I basically just shot as much as I could trying to make sense of the overwhelming visual stimulation. Our first day in Paris was like landing on the moon and I truly didn’t shoot that much to begin with as there was too much to take in. I have to apologize to my wife that our romantic-Paris-love-affair ended up more of a freaky-photographic-three-way…but it all worked out in the end!

As we edit through images from our trip, we will post various photos over the next week along with some thoughts but for now, here’s one!

European Vacation

Viera Photographics — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:51:37 +0000

A photographer’s first trip to Europe: Intense. I forgot my card reader and don’t trust E.U. labs with my film (although I may in a day or two), so a few Instagram photos will have to make up for the recent lack of posts. More to come soon, love Jaime & Dennis!

Welcome to the world Kailee!

Viera Photographics — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 03:33:19 +0000

I’ll keep this one short and sweet: our cousin Kristin and her baby-daddy Randy just brought a beautiful wee girl into the world. We’ve been lucky enough to photograph her mom a few times before she was born. Here’s a few of our favorites.

On moments…

Viera Photographics — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:27:04 +0000

This image was shot by Dennis on his Rolleiflex. I found it as I was going through the 51,000 personal images we have shot over the past two years.

With such fast digital cameras these days, we find ourselves shooting more and more and we end up with thousands of photographs. I appreciate the fact that so many aspects of our life have been photographed in so many different ways and that we have 51,000 photographs to show for it, but at the same time I also appreciate how special one awesome film shot is. The thing about film is that it makes you shoot slower, it makes you really decide what you want to spend that precious frame on, and when you finally do release the shutter, that’s it. That one moment in time is captured by one single frame and that’s that; its imperfections make it the perfect photo.

I am not sure what I am getting at; I do love both digital and film and each is a tool ideally suited to certain situations. I am not by any means starting a film versus digital conversation, but I am curious on what people think more about the sheer volume of images that people are taking these days. There are photos everywhere, I mean we have 51,000 family photos for the past 2 years – that’s insane! Do too many photos make photos less special, or do you appreciate having all those photos?