Maryland and Delaware's creative documentary wedding & portrait photographer

Maryland Senior Portraits

markgardner — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:00:07 +0000

Today Ashley came in to have some traditional senior portraits done. We used a simple lighting setup on a white seamless background. Equipment used: Canon 1DMkIII w/50mm f1.2L lens.

The shot below we used only the available light from the door behind me. The “Open Door Studio”.

Princeton NJ Wedding Photographs

markgardner — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:49:30 +0000

Congressional Country Club Wedding Pictures

markgardner — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:01:50 +0000

North East Maryland Engagement Photos

markgardner — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:24:10 +0000

Andrea and Rick made the trip down to North East to shoot their engagement portraits at sunset over the Chesapeake bay.

Jessica and Ryan’s Engagement pictures

markgardner — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:24:14 +0000

Jessica and Ryan wantedto take advantage of the beautiful fall colors and take their engagement pictures here in North East. We’ll be doing their wedding at the Hotel DuPont later this year.

washington dc wedding photography

markgardner — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:49:39 +0000

Images from One Light Workshop

markgardner — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:05:16 +0000

A few images from the One Light workshop I attended yesterday. What a day…

westminster maryland wedding photography

markgardner — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:05:49 +0000

This photograph was made well after sunset using a technique known as Painting with Light. Super-long exposure, applying additional light on only what I wanted you to see. Kudos to Tessa and Chris for putting up with the brisk conditions to make this shot happen.

Protected: Bobbie’s portraits

markgardner — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 06:56:47 +0000

St. Michaels Maryland Wedding Photography

markgardner — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:45:59 +0000

Sarah and Dave asked me to tag along after rehearsal dinner to a local pub to party with friends. We took a few minutes to play with some light… and traffic

The wedding was held at a private home resting right on the water, and the weather couldn’t have been better! Here is a few shots from wedding day.

Chestertown Maryland Wedding Photography

markgardner — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:33:00 +0000

OK folks, I’m nowhere near done editing this wedding, but, I love showing great images, so here is a preview, or maybe it’s a ‘teaser’

High school senior pictures

markgardner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:21:00 +0000

Here is a preview of one of our recent high school senior portrait sessions, just a nice clean traditional portrait.

Atlantic City Engagement Portraits

markgardner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:25:09 +0000

Lauren and Josh met me at the steel pier near Trump’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey for their engagement session. We’ve been trying to get this session in since early spring, and finally, Mother nature co-operated, we had some great weather, lots of fun, and some neat images. Take a look.

Hair designer magazine submission

markgardner — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:41:36 +0000

Today I did a shoot for a local hair designer, who is putting together his submissions for Short Hair magazine. Here is my favorite from the session.

Equipment:

Canon 1DMkIII w/Canon 70-200IS

Minimalist lighting using a Sunpak 120J w/ 18″ Norman softbox and Canon 580EXII w/Photoflex

Annapolis engagement portrait session

markgardner — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:38:29 +0000

Christina, Rob, and I traveled down to Annapolis to shoot at City Dock, unfortunately City Dock was shut down to the preparations for the boat show. We made the best of the great weather and looked for some alternative locations, cool thing about Annapolis is all the little side streets provide for some cool backdrops.

Brooke’s high school senior portraits

markgardner — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:09:42 +0000

pennsylvania wedding photography

markgardner — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:55:58 +0000

Here is a slideshow of images from Krista and Chris’s wedding held in Avondale Pennsylvania, with the reception at the Revere Tavern.

Test, Test, 1. 2. 3….Testing

markgardner — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:54:33 +0000

Ok gang. This is fore-warning that my blog may be doing some freaky things in the next days and weeks ahead.

I’ve been selected to test a new WordPress Blog template that is currently in Beta. This should be fun!

So, if you happen to see something you like please leave a comment, if you see something you don’t like…well you can comment on that too

Keep checking back, cool stuff is on the horizon!

Jessica and Kevin’s Wedding at Chase Center in Wilmington

markgardner — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:04:28 +0000

Portraits at Fair Hill Nature Center

markgardner — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 22:02:20 +0000

Kirk, Yvonne, Dixie, and I had a blast at Fair Hill Nature Center.

Bridal Message Boards (humor)

markgardner — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:56:03 +0000

I’ll admit it, there was a time I used to visit some of the more popular message boards for soon-to-be brides. I thought it was a place where I could find out more information about what was cool and hip in the wedding planning world, but quickly decided it wasn’t for me.

So I recently stumbled upon a blog which I find very entertaining, chances are you will too, especially if you happen to read or participate some of these message boards (you don’t have to admit it).

So grab a cup of coffee and click here too see the funny bride re-enactments

Photographer consulting services

markgardner — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:16:10 +0000

Digital Photography Workflow

We offer complete digital workflow consulting in your home/studio. Whether you are shooting hundreds or even thousands of images each week, your library of files is huge, and getting bigger. Do you have the system in place to keep on top of it all? If a client from 2 years ago suddenly calls, can you find the images and produce a print quickly or, will you spend hours searching, hoping you will find them without feeling as if you’ve lost a day of productivity? Remember, these clients are the reason you are in business. Remember?

Fear not! We’ll give you the step-by-step and by the numbers approach to creating, managing, and staying on top of your ever growing and expanding collection of digital images. We’ll start right from the beginning, evaluate how your doing things now, identify problems with your current workflow, offer alternatives to simplify, and remain organized. Your digital photography workflow doesn’t start when you get home and download your memory cards, it starts when you plan the shoot!

So what’s next? Well, eventually you need to retire some data. No, not delete it, but move it to a safe location, that can be accessed quickly when a client returns for additional prints.

It’s not rocket science, it’s a step by step, by the numbers, no-nonsense, program for successful DAM (digital asset management). In your studio, or mine. Call for more info. 443-466-0000

SEO- 10 things you can do right now to improve your ’sites search savvy’!

I’ll teach you exactly what I did, to increase my visibility in both Maryland and Delaware, I’m not guaranteeing first page google, but I am guaranteeing a more popular site under generic terms (vs. specific) in a very short amount of time. Are bookings slow? Does your competition seem extra busy while your waiting for the phone to ring? Help yourself help your clients find you! Call the studio for more SEO class info.

Photography Equipment Reviews

markgardner — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:11:50 +0000

Guilty as charged…I am a gadget junkie!

Here is my chance to give my real thoughts and opinions on what I think are some great products. As you may already know, some products just don’t live up to the hype. I’ll share my experiences with the junk that bought because I fell into the trap that is cool commercials, hip music, and great actors with a sense of humor.

Canon Powershot A2000 Digital Camera

This little camera may just be my next purchase. It’s super small, with a huge 3″ LCD, 6X optical (that is important), 10 mega pixels (which IMO is seriously overkill, but whatever), it also shoots 640×480 30 frames per second video clips, that’s cool. Most importantly, I think is the user selectable (or Automatic) ISO. Which makes it take great images even in lower than normal room light. Now keep in mind, if you try to take pictures in a dark tunnel, without some type of additional light, your pictures will look like they were taken in a dark tunnel…blasted with flash. Anyway, I really like the specs on this camera, and would recommend it to most shutterbugs who need a great camera for vacation pics, or everyday use.

Sony Snaplab

Google Sitemap Automator by Rage Software

This little piece of software has to be my best purchase this year. It has without a doubt made my site much more Google friendly, and makes it a breeze to keep my Sitemaps up to date. I simply enter my URL, click the button to generate the sitemap. It then scans all of my web-pages and records all of the links and pages associated and creates the sitemap for me to upload to my server, simple, and automatic.

EyeFi Wireless SD Card

I’ll start off by saying I was a bit skeptical at first, but figured I’d at least give it a shot. To my surprise this little beauty works as advertised, and that’s a very good thing for the way I want to implement this into my studio photography workflow.

I had two hiccups right off the bat which left me feeling a little deflated. The instructions were easy to read, but if they would have included one additional word I would not be writing this part of the review. More on that in a second. I inserted the SD card and USB adapter (included) into the USB drive on my Mac, but the actual software was nowhere to be found. I was able to overcome this obstacle by going to the Eye-Fi website (www.eye.fi) and downloading it from the support page.

The second hickup came as I went to setup my Eye-Fi card, where I was not given the option to create an account, just a login page. Here is the part about one additional word added to the instructions would have saved me a headache. I’ll add that the customer support folks were super fast in answering my initial email, and helping me to troubleshoot my problem. So they get an A+ for the customer service, Kudos. As it turns out, you must use a powered USB port, the key word being “powered”, once I had that squared away the set-up is a snap! I was literally shooting and watching images appear on my laptop approximately 12 seconds later. Pretty cool.

Here’s actually how I’ll be implementing the into my studio workflow. Since I shoot with the Canon 1D Mark III series camera, it has the ability to record images to two separate memory cards simultaneously. The first card, Compact Flash, will be reserved for RAW files, while the Eye-Fi SD card will be used for the small JPG files.
As I am shooting a session these small JPG’s are flying across my wireless network directly into a preselected folder on my Macintosh desktop, where my assitant or editor can quickly go through and get a quick preview ready for the client almost immediately after the shoot, or simultaneously print images on our Sony SnapLab. Pretty cool.

What’s in my bag?

markgardner — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:07:27 +0000

Besides the normal stash of Power bars, Jolly Ranchers, Advil, Chewing gum, and a bottle of water you will find all of the gear that I use on every assignment, whether it be a baby portrait, high school senior portraits, even a destination wedding.

Canon 1D MarkIII

Canon 5D

Canon 24mm f1.4

Canon 35mm f1.4

Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM

Karen and David’s Wedding at the Top of the World Trade Center in Baltimore Maryland

markgardner — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:36:25 +0000

We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day for Karen and David’s wedding in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. These guys were such troopers as we walked from location to location in the 90 degree heat, although I think the idea to stop at a local watering hole really got the guys motivated. So here’s a couple of images from the days events. Enjoy.

Portraits of Jordan

markgardner — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:45:34 +0000

Here are a couple of images of Jordan during a recent trip up to Valley Forge State Park.

This last one was a technique called Painting with Light.

Powerful images

markgardner — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:12:11 +0000

So as I go about my duties of editing weddings I often notice my expression changing as I view the images, lots of laughs and smiles as I replay the days events back in my mind. Today was no different, except I ran across this image of David and his daughter prior to the start of the wedding… I’ll let the photo do the rest of the talking.

Krista and Chris’s Engagement session

markgardner — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:05:09 +0000

Digital Photography Workflow

markgardner — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:45:11 +0000

This post is geared to my fellow photographers who ask quite often about my workflow and methods I use to speed things up without sacrificing image quality.

I’m not talking about actual Digital Asset Management (DAM), but rather individual image editing and album page layouts. I’ve always known that being efficient when working images will greatly reduce the amount of time spent at the computer, but it wasn’t until I purchased a set DQ Quikeys that I realized how much more efficient i could I could be. This tool has simply made my life easier, and given me more time to work on my business, meet new clients, foster relationships with other wedding vendors, planners, photographers, etc.

DQ Quikeys leverages the power of keystrokes already available in Adobe Photoshop (most I don’t know or cant even remember) to the simplest of tasks as well as running the most complex actions with the simple press of a button.

I’m also using DQ Quikeys to speed up my album design workflow. Quikeys has a second set functions which allow me to seamlessly switch between Adobe® Bridge® and Photoshop® and turn these images into beautiful album spreads, quickly.

I’m excited for the future of DQ Quikeys as they are soon to even further increase the speed at which I can edit my RAW image files using Adobe® Lightroom®. This most likely will require me to modify my DAM strategy yet again, but it will be for greater good.

So if your a active professional photographer looking for a way to get out from behind the computer at the same time as making your images look better, you owe it to yourself to check out DQ Quikeys.

Photographing Musicians

markgardner — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:15:05 +0000

It’s not often I get to photograph musicians, but when I do, I’m looking for something different. Here are a few from the jam session last night at The Pickled Herring Pub here in North East, MD.

Shooting Pro In-Line Vert Skaters Thumper Nagasako, Marc Englehart, and Shane Yost

markgardner — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:06:55 +0000

Yes. They make it look this easy!

Shane Yost / Melbourne, Australia

Marc Englehart / Lansdale, Pennsylvania

Thumper Nagasako / Maui, Hawaii

Lacy and Matt get Married at Red Rock Canyon State Park

markgardner — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:56:45 +0000

Mark Gardner Photography now on iPhone

markgardner — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:31:37 +0000

That’s right! See for yourself. Navigate to Mark Gardner Photography using your favorite Browser (we recommend using Firefox), and you will see the same “splash page” allowing you to choose where to go next.

Now navigate to www.markgardnerphotography.com on your iPhone, you are automatically taken to splash page optimized for the iPhone giving you the choice to view my portfolio or check out the blog. Yes, the blog is optimized too!

More content being added as we can, right now we’ve got to get back to editing these weddings.

So there ya go. Tell your friends!

Beginner Photography Classes

markgardner — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:18:49 +0000

Coming soon: My New Camera!

Classes for Mom’s (and Dad’s and teens as well), that just want to learn how to get the most of their new digital camera. Call. We CAN help.

Coming soon: Intro to digital image editing

A class for the hobbyist to do it nice, or do it twice…or thrice.

Coming soon: Taking a better digital picture

Get a better image in the camera, not in the computer.

Jennifer and Steven’s Wedding Photography

markgardner — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:21:01 +0000

I went to the Chesapeake Bay Hyatt, in Cambridge Maryland this weekend to photograph Jennifer and Steve’s wedding and a huge party broke out! I’m not kidding, this group really new how to get it done! My thanks go out to all of the family and friends who traveled from Ohio to celebrate with Jennifer and Steven, all of you really made this a wedding to remember. You all Rock!

Here’s just a few of the images that my good friend (and fabulous wedding photographer) Jason Domingues and I came up with.

Photograph of a lightning strike

markgardner — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:03:27 +0000

Finally. I’ve been trying for as long as I can remember to get a decent photograph of lightning. The timing of this storm was absolutely perfect, or maybe I was in the right place, right time. Doesn’t matter, here is my very first lightning shot from the storm that rolled thru DC, Maryland, and Delaware on Saturday night.

Lauren and Steve at Dave and Buster’s

markgardner — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:56:15 +0000

Jillian and Tony’s Chesapeake City wedding

markgardner — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:50:14 +0000

Jillian and Tony’s intimate wedding ceremony took place at the Bayard House along the banks of the C&D canal in Chesapeake City, Maryland.

Demolition Derby Wedding @ Cecil County Fair

markgardner — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:43:31 +0000

A barrage of photographers and film crew practicing their discrete methods of photo/video journalism

Sealed with a kiss

A salute to the Bride and Groom from the Demolition Drivers

Krystal’s Maternity Session

markgardner — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:58:13 +0000