Cheridy and I met in January of 2000, were engaged in April 2000, and got married on June 2nd, 2001.  When we got married, we had never seen really beautiful or artistic wedding photography and did not do any research into it to find someone that could shoot like that.  Our goal was to enjoy our wedding day and not worry about photos.  I think that was a huge mistake.  Looking back on it now, I wish we had hired someone for the whole day to make us a beautiful wedding album that we could pass on to our kids as a family heirloom.  We have a couple of nice wedding photos and that’s all we wanted at the time.
Soon after getting married, our goal was to move out to California and enjoy the mountains and the ocean for a few years.  We were so serious about it that we even bought a condo out there.
Well, the engineering job market was just starting to take a turn for the worse and there were no jobs available for me out west.  I still had a nice job at GM here in Warren, MI.
Cheridy started to encourage me to do photos of people instead of just landscape and travel images.   I was starting to buy expensive equipment, so it would be nice to at least pay for that.  At the time, I never really had a goal of becoming a Michigan wedding photographer.   I really had no training in wedding photography and honestly didn’t know what I was doing and we made sure to tell everyone that so they didn’t have the wrong expectations.   After shooting a few jobs, we realized that I was actually pretty good at it.   The photos were turning out fantastic and when I compared what I was doing to what other pros were doing, I thought that I had some potential.
Cheridy came with me on every job and she always carried around my equipment and backup equipment.  Since she was always carrying a backup camera and lens, we realized that it made the most sense for her to just take some pictures with it even though she didn’t know what she was doing.  After each job, I would critique her pictures and let her know what worked and what didn’t.  She started to learn the relationship of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.  Her pictures started to get better and better and that eventually turned into a second shooting position working with me.
Our business started to expand and we started to invest a lot of time into building the business along with marketing and networking with other Detroit wedding photographers.  After two years, things really started to pick up and we realized that moving out to California was not going to happen.  So we sold our condo in Sacramento and made the decision to stay in the Detroit area.
I started to attend lots of workshops and seminars about photography and realized the true potential to do it as a business without being a starving artist.  The Detroit wedding photography market looked to be stronger than I initially suspected so I put all my time and energy into learning about business and learned everything necessary from accounting to marketing and all the boring stuff that you needed to know to run your own business.

There were a few things that became the catalyst for wanting to do this as a fulltime business:
1) wedding photography could be a form of art and inner expression
2) we were going to get to work with people on one of the happiest days of their lives
3) the Michigan wedding photography market was strong
4) Cheridy and I would be able to work together and be together all the time

After about my third year of burning the midnight oil and trying to work at GM and do photography on the side it was time to quit.  Soon after, Cheridy quit her job as well so we could both work from home fulltime which has been a blessing.   Our business has grown exponentially since then.  In 2007 we were voted the Best Wedding Photographers in Detroit in the WDIV vote 4 the best contest.  We started to get wedding clients from Birmingham, West Bloomfield and Ann Arbor all the way to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  As our skills and product improved, the venues that we started to work at improved as well and we now are regular working at places like the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, the Meadowbrook mansion in Rochester Hills, the Detroit Athletic Club in Detroit, etc. etc.
We believe that everything that has happened for us in the last few years is truly a gift from God and hope to always use the gifts and blessings that we’ve been give to bless other people.

We are always continuing to improve our skills and build on what we have already started.  We began to introduce more fashionable posing into an otherwise mostly photojournalistic style and have lately been trying to incorporate more dramatic lighting to vary the look of the photos.  The best part about this job is that there is potential to never stop learning and growing and there are always new things to try out and learn.
To find out more information about our wedding photography business, please go to our main website at: www.ArisingImages.com

Here’s just a few of our favorite images taken at weddings in Michigan:

Check out the chubby little leg rolls!

This first one is from Mayz’ bath time tonight:

Here’s one when Cheridy was playing with him at the park:

I downloaded some of the pics from the card and there were a few older ones on there too.  Here’s a fun hair shot from back in February:

First, we got together with Ralph and Devon who came in from Cali. This is the first time we met them and we had a great time laughing it up as we walked around the Utica, MI area doing their photos.
Here are a few:

After that we took off to meet up with Kirk and Lisa who flew in from Chicago. We met them over at Cranbrook in Birmingham, MI. The grounds at Cranbrook are some of my favorite to shoot at because their is an exquisite mixture of beautiful architecture and nature….along with some funky bigger than life modern art sculptures.

Zion is located in southwestern Utah and is one of the most impressive national parks in the United States. I’ve been to Zion a few times, but never with a group like this.  On this trip I didn’t take too many photos and instead just enjoyed the scenery and the people I was with.

The rest of our images from the Zion and Bryce region can be found on our website. Here is the direct link:
http://www.arisingimages.com/fineart/00_all/index.html?show=__Utah

Here are a few pictures:
This first one is from Observation Point which is the highest lookout point overlooking the park that you can hike to. Tom Wilson and I hiked up there on Saturday. It was a steep climb that definitely got the heart pumping, but it was well worth it for the views along the way and at the top:

Here is one of the views from the trail up to Observation Point. We got to walk through a really cool slot canyon:

This is just a quick photo showing part of the trails in Zion. The trail on the lower half of the picture is what goes up to Observation Point and the split and then zig zag on the upper half of the photo goes to Hidden Canyon.

This is a pic of our campsite with the moon about to rise over the majestic Watchman peak.

I brought an infrared camera with me and spent some time on Sunday shooting some pics around the valley. This one is down by the river right by the Court of the Patriarchs bus stop:

Here is another one from the same area:

I just wanted to say a quick thanks to the mens group that organized this trip. Planning a trip for 40 guys is no small chore, and they did a fantastic job!!

Here’s a few photos:

Here’s just a couple of shots of the work in progress:

Here’s a pic of Zack working:

We decided to have some fun with the fact that Chad is super tall. Chad and Stacey are two of the most happy and smiley people ever so having a serious face like this photo is funny in itself.