Well,

It had to happen. I love my iPhone so much, I had to incorporate it SOMEHOW with my photography! Let me start by just being blunt about it: the iPhone camera app leaves much to be desired. It doesn't have great depth of field, the shutter speed isn't great, and the color is awful. However, as far as mobile phone cameras are concerned, I can't really complain.

Whats great about the iPhone is, of course, there are thousands of apps to add to your phone to make it even more amazing than it already was!

We live in the digital age of photography. With that said, digital photography is just as much about the post production process as it is about actually getting the perfect shot.

Well, I thought it would be fun to give you guys a few tips on creating great pictures by using your iphone camera, then editing your pictures purely with your iphone. Because if you're a photographer like me, you cringe when you have to take a point and shoot shot. Where's the art?! After these few post editing steps the results are pretty cool, for a cell phone. ;)

Here's what you'll need:

An iPhone (pretty obvious, hehe)
Tiltshift Generator
Shakeitphoto
Photoshop Mobile

Enjoy!

Tutorial - How to take better pictures with your iPhone from Danette Chappell on Vimeo.

Let me first say, I've been looking forward to doing this wedding for MONTHS!

Jenny & Steven are absolutely one of the funniest couples I've ever met. You can really see that they love life, they love being together, and they make me want to live life to its fullest! I felt like their whole ceremony was a celebration!

They met 3 years ago on July 4th, and I'm pretty sure Steven has been making Jenny laugh every single day since that first day they met.

And lets talk about photogenic. Seriously, they're so much fun to shoot. Jenny comes up with the cutest ideas and I love it! I wish I could bring her on all my shoots so she can tell me some cute poses!!! ;)

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the pictures, and the slideshow.

A special thanks to Dominique (Dominique Elise Photography) and to Chris Chappell for both of their awesome second shooter skills!!!

Ooooohhhhh yeeeeeeeaaaahhhh, for the first time ever, we did video at a wedding. Its a surprise to Jenny & Steven, so this is the first time they're hearing about it. But I hope they love it. It was just a little video that we did, trying to capture the essence of the night, in the midst of taking some fun pictures!

Enjoy!!!

Steven & Jenny ::: The Beginning of a life-long Journey from Danette Chappell on Vimeo.

Hi everyone!

Well, a few weeks ago I had the privilege of shooting a gorgeous wedding in Maine. I'd never been to New England before, and let me tell you, its like a whole other world compared to the one I'm from. It was GORGEOUS. I've never seen so many different colored trees before! Absolutely amazing.

Anyways, let me tell you about my bride & groom. Hilary and Joel are two amazing people. Just from the handful of times that I'd gotten to talk to them, I can see that they have hearts of gold. They both love the Lord and are passionately involved in outreach. I loved their ceremony. Everyone took a few minutes to worship God in the midst of the entire ceremony which was awesome. It was so cool seeing Hilary & Joel up on the alter totally focused on God. So so cool. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was watching Joel look at Hilary. I can't help but smile every time I think of his face, or see a picture of him looking at her. They're both so IN LOVE! I had a blast shooting with them, and can honestly say that it was an unforgettable experience.

Thank you both for your hospitality, and for the absolute privilege of shooting the two of you. Also a special thanks to Hilary and Joel's families for all the amazing accommodations!

On to the slideshow, I hope you all like it!

Well, I've been a busy busy little bee the last couple of weeks. I spent the end of September with one of my best friends, Dominique, in Las Vegas, then went straight from Vegas to shoot a wedding in Maine where one of my other best friends, Cassie & her husband Caleb, just happened to be. And actually, funny enough, Cassie & Caleb are the faces of my blog. (see up there on the big banner....those beautiful faces...thats them.) ;)

It was AMAZING! I can't begin to even say how thankful I am for the time I got to spend with some of my closest friends. Just being able to spend time with them, and catch up, and make new memories with them was priceless.

Not to mention how gorgeous the weather was in Vegas and how beautiful EVERYTHING was in Maine. I shot one of the most gorgeous weddings I've ever done, and spent most of my time on the coast of New England eating seafood almost everyday.

While I was in Vegas I spent the whole time enjoying amazing company, and making hilarious new memories. It was the best. Seriously. Here is a slideshow from the last two weeks of all the beautiful faces I got to pass the time with, they're some of my favs, and also a random video with a bunch of random clips from my iphone, just for fun....if you're bored.

Hola Everyone!

I've been toying with the idea for awhile about starting a series of tutorials for the budding photographer out there and today I decided to follow through with that idea. I've created a tutorial that is a basic rundown of editing a photo in Lightroom w/ a followup edit in photoshop.

This tutorial isn't meant to be an advanced look into Lightroom, but its meant for those who really want to start getting into digital photography. Its a good start.

I'm sorry to say that the video quality isn't as high as I would have liked it, I'll have to figure that out for my next tutorial so you'll most likely want to watch in full screen mode.

Also, something definitely worth mentioning that I didn't mention in the tutorial is that if possible, you ALWAYS want to edit in RAW format. A RAW file is not compressed and flattened like a JPEG so the editing process is much smoother.

I've included the picture that I used in the tutorial in RAW format so you can follow along with the tutorial if you'd like to compare results:

Click here to download picture

Also, you can download a free trial of both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop here:

http://www.adobe.com

OH! And, here is the link to the awesome Lightroom tips website I LOVE:

http://www.lightroomkillertips.com

SO I hope this is a successful tutorial! Be gentle on me! Its my first!

Before:


After:


And last but not least, the tutorial!

Basic Photo Edit in Lightroom & Photoshop Tutorial from Danette Chappell on Vimeo.

Hello Blog World!

A few weeks ago I had the amazing opportunity to fly out to Baltimore and shoot an old friend's wedding. Carolyn and I met back in 2003 when I was attending Liberty University. Right away I could tell that this girl was F-U-N. She seriously is the life of the party. Whenever she was around, she kicked it up a notch and made whatever she was doing a party. I love her.

When she asked me if I would consider shooting her wedding I got so excited! I knew it was gonna be a nonstop fun time the entire time I was with her.

Let me tell you, Daniel and Carolyn's wedding party are insane! I loved all of them. They are surrounded by amazing friends and family that love them very much. I enjoyed meeting and getting to know them all!

So on to the slideshow, I had so much fun shooting! I hope everyone enjoys it!

Hey Everybody!

I had such an amazing time at this wedding! A few posts down you may have seen the recent couples' shoot I did with Matt and Amy. Well, its been kind of a whirlwind batch of photoshoots with them, but they're just so darn photogenic, I had to torture them with a couples' shoot and their wedding day pics all in the same week. ;)

This couple is seriously amazing! With just the little amount of time I've been able to spend with them, I can totally tell that they have a blast together. Their wedding day was so fun, and it was full of just family and friends spending time and enjoying each other's company in the moment.

Matt is a cowboy, and Amy is a city girl and its so awesome to see both of their styles and personalities collide. They really compliment each other very well.

I enjoyed every moment I got to spend shooting them, and I'm really glad I got to know them a bit, and share in their special day.

Enjoy the pics and slideshow!

Hey Everyone!

So as most of you probably already know, my friends and I are pretty crazy. One of my best friend's Dominique and I have always had a strange pact with each other. Since we've known each other, and from the start of our friendship we've promised each other that we were one day going to do a photoshoot involving slapping each other with dead fish.

Well, we finally got around to doing that. Don't ask, I'm not even really sure why the heck we did it, or wanted to do it. All I know is that it was the smelliest photoshoot I've ever done.

I've compiled a really funny video of how we did everything along with a slideshow of the shoot, so check out both and hopefully by the end you'll all be laughing at us. We're fools.

Enjoy!

Hey Everyone!

I just had a really fun, and super quick photoshoot with my new friends Matt and Amy. My family and Amy's family have been long time friends, however Amy and I had never met until recently.

Though her and her fiance Matt have recently relocated to Oklahoma, they're in town for their wedding that I'm shooting on Saturday! And even though the wedding is so soon, I really wanted to shoot an engagement session with them.

The weather was perfect for our shoot today! Though it was a bit hot, the lighting was perfect, and Matt and Amy are amazing subjects to shoot. I had a blast shooting them! Although, I think Matt has a better time being behind the camera instead of in front of it. ;) But we had a blast nonetheless!

I hope everyone enjoys our quick shoot we did, I enjoyed shooting it. And I hope you all like the slideshow!

Have a great evening!!!

Well......they're not really "new" faces, but they all make an amazing collage right?!

I've been working for the last week and a half on a new website for Danette Chappell Photography, and I'm SO happy to say that its FINALLY FINISHED! You can head over to danettechappell.com to see it, and I have to say, I'm SUPER proud of it!!!! So go tell your friends and your friends parents, and your friend's friends getting married, and your dog to look at my new website! I hope you guys like it! I know I do!

So, to make this post even MORE interesting, I put together a slideshow of the new gallery on my website dedicated solely to portraits. Enjoy!!!

Hey everybody!

So this would be my perfect day: The beach, sushi, chill music, and having all of my best friends in the same place at the same time.

I have a little core group of girls that I actually consider to be my "best friends", and sadly, they all live in different places, all really far away from each other. Sad, I know....don't cry.

This week, my amazing friend Cassie was in town for the first time in six months, in the midst of her and her husband moving from Indiana down to Nashville. Her husband had to stay behind in Nashville while Cassie came to Santa Fe to spend time with family and friends before she continues the rest of the move down to Nashville.

I LOVE seeing Cassie. When she lived in Santa Fe we literally spent almost everyday together. And although I'm totally wacky and she's really mellow, when we get together we get pretty crazy. So of course the ideal afternoon for us would have to consist of a crazy dumb photoshoot.

AND that right there is the reason this blog post even exists. Cass and I had some quality time being dorks today and I thought I'd share it with everyone...so sit back, relax, and enjoy our stupidity. I love my friends. :)

Well, I'm SUPER excited to debut this engagement shoot! Out of everyone I've ever shot for, Steven and Jenny are probably the most natural at having their pictures taken! Almost every pose we did was their idea and the entire shoot came out AMAZING! We shot at this amazing place in Taos, NM called Overland Sheepskin Co, which I'm assuming has something to do with sheepskin? Haha, I'm not sure what it was, but it was gorgeous.

Steven & Jenny are also two of the funniest people. I love to watch them interact with each other and enjoy time together. I seriously had so much fun at this shoot!!! They both totally made my week. They both have such vibrant personalities, its definitely true that they're made for each other! I feel like if I were at a party with them, they'd be the life of it, for sure. On a cool note, we did the shoot pretty close to their 3 year anniversary. They met on the 4th of July! Pretty cool!

So on with the slideshow, Jenny and Steven, I hope you guys like it! :)

Hey Everyone!

What an intense spring 2009 has turned out to be! I've been shooting quite a bit lately, almost on a biweekly basis and its been wonderful!

Last week I shot the wedding of some wonderful new friends Bobby Lee and Tish. They hired me pretty last minute and right off the bat I knew I really liked them.

They have a beautiful home in the hills right outside of Santa Fe where they decided to hold their wedding ceremony and it was awesome!

Although it rained for most of the day, the wedding, which was an outdoor wedding, still turned out really well.

I brought along one of my best friends, Dominique (of Dominique Elise Photography), and we had so much fun shooting their wedding and hanging out getting to know some of their wedding guests.

It was all so much fun, and I really hope everyone enjoys the slideshow.

On a side note, the song for this slideshow was sung by Tish's son Bobby. She requested that it be on the slideshow! I hope you all like it!

Whats with me? I must really love this blogging thing, I think I'm craving it because I haven't posted that many lately.....hmmm.

Some of you may know that I'm really involved with an organization called Youth With A Mission. For those of you that don't know, YWAM is a missions based organization all over the world that focuses on evangelism and service in as many countries as possible. Within YWAM, there are different specialties and missionary based programs that focus on the different talents of those involved. An example is the specific ministry I'm involved in under YWAM called Musicians For Missions. MFM specifically focuses on using the musical talents of people by equipping them to know how to use their giftings in other countries to bless those they're serving. Karen Lafferty, the founder of MFM, brings young people from all over the world to her hometown to teach them how to use music in the missions field. Karen also gives people the opportunity to tour the states with her playing music for different churches and ministries as well.

Recently YWAM and MFM put together an east coast music tour that I was supposed to be traveling with, playing music, but because of my photography business scheduling I wasn't able to help out this time around. Instead the group asked me to do a quick photoshoot with them to help with the promotion of their tour.

The shoot was scheduled to be an outdoor shoot but because of the weather, I had to move it inside at the last minute. I was so excited to use a new photo setup! I decided to choose a room with a good amount of natural lighting, but also used an umbrella flash to disperse the lighting a bit more. The effect was an overall natural lighting look, although most of the light really was studio lighting. I was so happy with how it turned out since I only had about an hour's worth of prep and setup time to figure out how I was going to transfer an outdoor shoot to a studio shoot.

So I threw together this continuous loop for you guys, I didn't really want to turn it into a real slideshow, but this is fun nonetheless! Enjoy!

Hey everyone!

I just had the most incredible week EVER! I'd been planning a trip out to see one of my closest friends, Dominique, for a long time, and we finally decided that the week of my birthday would be the best week for me to go visit her in Las Vegas. Dude, let me just tell you guys, Dominique is one of the funnest people on the planet. I'd say we laugh about 97% of the time when we're together. This entire trip was just nonstop fun. I'm pretty sure we only got around 20 hours of sleep in 9 days.

We spent most of the trip in Vegas, but on my birthday we drove to Cali to Huntington Beach because I really wanted to spend my bday on the beach. We didn't really prepare to actually go into the ocean....but I'm so spontaneous that we actually ended up totally wading waste deep in the waves and didn't have any clothes except our PJs to change into. We ended up going out to dinner that night at a really nice Sushi restaurant completely in our pajamas. It was so much fun, and we're lucky we didn't get kicked out....

The rest of the week was spent hanging out on the strip and with Dominique's friends and family. It was seriously the best birthday ever.

Dominique is actually an amazing photographer and musician (please visit her amazing website) which is probably a small part of why we get along so well. The last 3 days of our trip were spent back in my home town of Santa Fe where Dominique second-shot a wedding with me. It was a ton of fun and you'll all be seeing that blog very very soon.

I hope everyone is well, and I hope you enjoy this slideshow of the greatest vacation/birthday week EVER! I can't keep saying that....it was the BEST!!!!

Hey guys,

Its been awhile! I've been taking a break from life lately! Its been so crazy! I've really just been focusing on my personal life and hanging out with friends. Its been a great month.

Anyway, on to the main event. Bobby Lee and Tish are two of the nicest people I've met recently! They were referred by a long time mutual family friend and as it turns out I actually used to play guitar at the church that they attend, so it already kinda feels like I'm shooting for family!

We had a mini engagement shoot last week and it was so much fun! They have a beautiful home on the outskirts of Santa Fe where we did the shoot and the weather was perfect! I really had a blast, and I hope you all enjoy the slideshow! Look out for Bobby Lee and Tish's wedding shots soon!

So I've finally finished editing all 2,000 pictures from England!! It was such a wonderful trip, I'm so blessed that I was able to go and see all that I did, and to be able to minister to the English people a bit. Amazing. My heart is totally with England now, and I'm really hoping to go back very soon and do even more ministry.

I've put together a slideshow of some of my fav pics from our time there, and I've also put up the remainder of our video....which is really random and hopefully a bit funny.

I hope you guys enjoy this post and I hope that it captures just a little bit of how I saw England.

Hey everyone!

So this week I'm in a pretty different place.....obviously you can probably tell where by the title of this entry.... Anyway, its always been my dream to come to England. It definitely still doesn't feel real even though I've been here for a week! I can't believe it! A week already! Time totally flies. Karen Lafferty invited me to come with here to the UK because she was being awarded a Christian Music Association New Christian Music Radio Play award, and she wanted a photographer, but she also wanted a musician to travel with her. She decided to make an entire tour instead of just coming over for a weekend to accept an award. So I've been traveling with her taking TONS of pictures and playing music. Its been amazing. The people here are so wonderful, and the cities and countryside are beautiful. I really don't know if I'll leave.....just kidding mom.

Anyway, throughout the week my good friend Callie, who's also been traveling with us, has been video tapping alot of what we've been doing, so I made a little video journal from the footage! I thought I'd post it for you all! Its kind of random, but really, when am I not? So I hope you guys enjoy it....I'll be posting a few more videos and then a super awesome slideshow from the trip in the coming weeks. In the mean time, I'm staying at this swanky 4 or 5 story mansion called Holmstead Manor. Its seriously huge and beautiful! Tomorrow we'll be off to London for a fun time of site seeing, and I'm hoping to fit in a small photoshoot as well.....should be fun.

Enjoy!!! Talk to everyone soon!