Grayson McWilliams

On Tuesday I photographed little Gryson McWilliams, the 4-week-old son of Alexis and Darren. I photographed Alexis and Darren's wedding back in October of 2005 and now they're become proud parents to a beautiful little boy. Darren and I went to junior high and high school together, so it was great to see him and Alexis as glowing mommy and daddy.

Now I must say, it has been nearly 2 years since Emme was that little, and I forgot how much they pooped! Grayson blew through two diapers in about 20 minutes, and it brought back great memories of Emme's projectile poops.

Here are some of my faves from the shoot.

Emme and mommy's new Manolos!

Well, they're actually Merona, which is a Target brand, but Jen can dream, right? ;)

Emme did her usual trapse through mommy's closet last night after her bath and stumbled across some heels. Probably not good that she's into it this early. Could spell disaster by the time she's 12.

Anyway, she was such a ham in these shoes that I just had to snap some quick pics.

New portrait site coming soon!

I've been working hard on building out a new site for my portrait work and it's almost done! Just need to add some more images and finish up the written content.

You can preview the site here.

It's the exact same layout as my wedding site, so the branding is consistent across everything. The main landing page will still be www.schnackstudios.com, but I'll rework that spalsh page to provide the viewer three choices: wedding, portrait, or blog. All three will be represented by a large square image.

Finger Painting!

My sister and her fiancee got Emme a finger-painting kit for Christmas. With the fantastic weather we had over the weekend, we decided to break it out and let the mess begin.

INT Surfboards

Had a commercial job on Wednesday for a company called INT Softboard Technology. INT makes soft surfboards, kinda like the old Doyle boards, but much better and more stable. Unlike the Doyles, which were essentially large bodyboards shaped like a surfboard, the INT boards can actually be ridden like a standard foam and fiberglass surfboard. They recently updated their Web site and needed some images of all their new boards. My good friend Dustin Campbell helps run the place.

Here's the lighting setup I used, with Dustin doing his best to steady a 9-footer. Fairly standard product lighting setup, just a couple strobes at 45-degrees bounced into silver umbrellas. Their going to knock-out the products from the background, so I shot it on plain white to help the boards pop a bit.


I'm also revamping my portrait portfolio and thought it would be cool to do a quick portrait of Dustin with all the boards in inventory.




Thinking about a portrait project that concentrates on the people behind the scenes in the surf biz. There's so much concentration on all the stars, but we never get to see the people and companies that make this sport go. We'll see.