Our Little Trip to Richmond, VA

Christina and I went to Richmond a couple weekends ago for my friend Mike's wedding. The wedding was great and it was really fun to see and catch up with friends from VA. It was also cold! But we enjoyed the [much] cooler weather regardless. We had some time on Saturday since all of the Virginia folks drove home Friday night, so we headed into Richmond to walk around, get some food, and enjoy the brick buildings and beautiful, old homes (Florida is lacking in both of those areas).

We also enjoyed the taste of fall and the oranges and red leaves. I didn't take a ton of pictures - it seems I am just as good at not taking pictures - but here are a few!

RE: How to Take Great Race Photos @Healthontherun.net

Since my sister-in-law had a funny post about marathon photos, it inspired me to do a quick search through the several marathons I have photographed for family and/or friends. I sifted through and found a few good ones (embarrassing ones) you know - the usual. And from a photographer's perspective, it is pretty difficult (especially towards the start) to catch your friend or family member, often times a marathon is just a sea of faces.

But to respond to a few of the questions posed like "Can you ever really have a good marathon photo?" -- I would say "Yes! But only when you know it's coming." Check out the last photo in this post - it is definitely helpful having a photographer in the family or a close friend because they can be recognizable and you can end up with a frameable photo for your home or office (like my dad is requesting for a Christmas gift this year). Enjoy these in the meantime:

I'll leave the caption up to you... 

 Can you tell who has run a few marathons? Dave (far left) is a sub-3 hour marathoner smiling away,
my sister (middle-left), my dad (middle-right) making a great straining face towards the finish, and
Dom (far right) seems to be concerned with someone on the sidelines.

 Just an all around good shot - dribbling water, great facial
expression, extra water dribble on her thigh, nice tattoo on
her abdomen...and more I'm sure!

My dad and sister near the finish line (left) - I love the guy right next to
my dad (in blue) - funny expression and so exhausted!

 My sister making a face - one that exclaims "How are
you there AGAIN" - since I caught them twice on
this bridge alone!

Thanks Lauren for sharing your funny photos! It was fun seeing yours and searching through mine to find some best of's! Here is a posed shot - where it is so helpful knowing a photo is coming!!

Costa Family Portraits - Bal Harbour Beach, Miami, FL

Here are some of my favorites from the recent family session with the Costa's! Such a beautiful and fun family. Grandma was in town from Texas, so she joined for the session and for some of the photos. Enjoy!

Check out my Facebook page for more photos:
http://www.facebook.com/BrettBeckerPhotography

And my Website:
http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/

Less Time Blogging Does NOT Mean Less Time Photographing!

Some photographs of birds over the past month or so from our balcony...

 Blue Jay in Black and White

 Caught this bird at the right moment!!

 Dueling Birds

More posts to come!

Announcing Brett Becker Photography!

My website is live! Check out www.brettbeckerphotography.com/


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New Domain! BrettBeckerPhotography.com

As you may have noticed in my previous two posts, I started watermarking with "Brett Becker Photography" and some of the new BIG NEWS is I also registered my domain name http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/ - don't get too excited just yet! It will bring you right back here! But there are some exciting things in the process and will hopefully be unveiled soon. So in the meantime, take a look around and enjoy all the photos I have on this blog already!

But it means there are two ways to get here for now:
http://www.brettbeckerphotography.com/
and
http://lettherebelightphoto.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, here is a photo of my parents from a family wedding last year (such a good looking couple, right?!):

I'll tell you this...since I am now editing with Adobe Lightroom 3, Blogger does NOT do my photos justice. I think they look so much better before they get loaded and compressed into Blogger! But that's okay, I realize that Google is high-powered and all, but not enough to put full-size, all-the-millions-of-pixels-photos on my blog time and time again. There's only so much space I guess!

3 for 3 this week (Monday-Wednesday posting) - not bad!

South Beach Miami - Paying to Park...for the Homeless

With all that's going on in South Beach, Miami, it was actually really refreshing to see this! There is SO much money, fame, greed, and waste going on that you wouldn't expect to find a program that provides something for free and even more so you wouldn't expect them to actually forward 100% of the money raised! This parking lot is on Commerce Street in between Washington Avenue and Alton Road - a little west of Collins Road (A1A).

Check out these signs for the full info...

Curb Your Dog! But more importantly, a program that helps change lives...

THIS IS NOT A PARKING METER
You Don't Have To Feed The Meters To Park Here.
But The Change You Put In Them Will Change Lives.

By placing your spare change in our donation meters, you are helping change lives. 100% of the monies collected in these meters fund housing and indoor meal programs for people experiencing homelessness.

Miami-Dade Count Homeless Trust

FREE CALL - Homeless Helpline
1-877-994-4357

 I think these are some of the coolest looking parking meters around. I have taken a bunch of photos of viewers (you know, those things that are like "binoculars" or a "telescope" so you can see the view of the beach or city in a little more detail?!) - well maybe I will have to do some parking meters now! Who knew that they varied from place to place. 

Here is the website for Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust if your curiosity has been sparked. There are definitely a lot of homeless down here in Florida. Having lived in New York, Massachusetts, California, Virginia, and now Florida, there are homeless everywhere and we are all aware. But at least next time you are parking your Lamborghini in South Beach or Miami, you can give to the homeless pretty darn easily. 

I know Hollywood, FL has a homeless shelter and ministry called the Homeless Voice - and they help feed, clothe, house, and provide job training for those who are homeless. But there are usually great people doing great things almost everywhere!

A New Camera, A New Photographer, A Not-so-New Model!

BIG NEWS!

It has come - the time to upgrade to a new camera. It is an exciting time! There is some more news that will be coming along with it (good news of course), but it's not quite at sharable status yet. So stay tuned! But in the meantime, I enjoyed taking my Canon 7D out for a "get to know you date" with my lifetime date (aka wife) to get to know how to use the 7D a little better - and of course enjoy time with my wife. Having my Rebel XTi for 4 1/2 years had me so used to the settings, how to change things quickly and make them the way I wanted, I was so used to the weight and size, and everything changes with the 7D. In order to do the very same things, I had to read the owner's manual...the OWNER'S MANUAL! You think, "Who even reads those anymore??" Well, I read a lot of it. It's very informative and a good reminder of settings, but more importantly I needed to actually LEARN how to change the settings quickly, rather than the slow way which I had figured out easily.

Short story long, here are some photos I took of my beautiful wife Christina - we went down to South Beach Miami (look for my next post) and walked around for the day. It was 95 degrees...and humid of course. So it's not a photographer's dream to be sweaty and trying not to drip all over his camera, nor is it fun for a model who is also sweating. These shots were taken after cooling down for a good half hour or so in a coffee shop, enjoying cold drinks and VERY cold a/c (Florida knows how to keep things cool!), so we weren't too bad by now!

Since we were both pretty unfamiliar with South Beach - as far as finding cool spots to take photos - I tried to keep my eyes peeled for some good ones. I definitely like this one we found (above). This is along the sidewalk that follows the beach - I wouldn't really classify it as a boardwalk. But this short wall added some cool dimension to the photo and elevated my beautiful subject, which also helped remove the people walking and cars behind her.

Here's my new photographer! Christina now tells me this is her camera (the XTi). It mostly is, unless I need a backup! I'm so excited to help teach her how to use it at a more advanced level, since she already knows the basics. She'll be a pro in no time.

I don't think I can pick a favorite between this photo and the first on this post. She is SO beautiful! Stay tuned for a post about South Beach!