$19.95 each, plus shipping and PA sales tax...or get both for $32.95. Order posters through Amazon!
Printed on sturdy, 100# poster stock with a CMYK press, these affordable posters are perfect for any office or dorm.
Offered by William Ames Photography, these images are sure to be collector's items!
Looking for canvas wraps or different sizes, or true photographic prints? available here.
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More available in the Old Main gallery!
Click below for a slideshow:
Here are just a few of the more than 4000 photos we got that day...
Click on the images below, or here for a slideshow.
Uplighting by Nittany Entertainment makes a big difference at the Mount Nittany Suites, and pay the extra fee to have the lights on in the stadium. You'll appreciate that.
If you'd like photos like this from your wedding, send me an email so we can discuss your plans!
--Bill
Penn State white out, 2014 - Ohio State
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We got some great shots at the engagement session, but the wedding was simply amazing...so much emotion, fun and details planned out extremely well.
After the ceremony at Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus, we headed over to the Nittany Lion Inn, where the excitement never stopped. In all my weddings, I have never seen such a dynamic group of people, and one of the best "first look" sequence from a groom I've had the privilege to photograph. They literally started dancing before dinner and never stopped.
Below are just a few samples from the thousands of great photos I got. I actually had a rough time paring down to just these few.
...but enough talking about it. A picture is worth a thousand words!
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What are the next steps?
First, you will probably want to look through the photos online, in order to see how the session turned out. The gallery allows you to view thumbnails, individual photos, or an online slideshow.
Downloading
To see the full, high-resolution photos, you'll need to download the images. You can do this one at a time, or all at once.
Think of the digital download as a "product"...at least that's the way the gallery works with it.
To download an individual photo, just click the "Full Resolution Digital Download" link in the upper right, then complete the checkout process in the Shopping Cart:
To download the entire gallery, first select all of the photos, then choose the "Full Resolution Digital Download" as the product, then proceed to the Shopping Cart. Here's a two-minute video walk-through of the process:
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I thought I'd share a few of my more recent photos with you.
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Select your favorite photos, front and back, with customizable text and easy-to-use online tools.
Have a family photo to add to the back? No problem! Contact us for details.
Below are some samples, customize your own at checkout! First, select an image from the gallery, then choose your style and add your own text in the shopping cart:
Penn State Old Main Christmas Card sample
Sample Penn State Christmas Card
Penn State Christmas Cards
Penn State Christmas CardsCustom Penn State Christmas Cards, featuring photos by William Ames.
Nittany Lion Christmas CardsNittany Lion Christmas Cards
Samples of available templates - you choose the photos, front and back:
Click here to get started!
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Two calendars to choose from, in partnership with Cafe Press - $19.99 each:
Penn State 2014 Photo Calendar2014 Photo Calendar with the new Nittany Lion Shrine and other Penn State campus photos.
2014 Penn State calendar2014 Penn State photo calendar, featuring images by William Ames. Old Main, the Nittany Lion and more.
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While I've literally got thousands of photos of Old Main in my collection, I don't have any of the interior of the building.
What I didn't know, was that the frescoes were not only in need of restoration, but that the project was complete! I would be the one to take pictures of the finished work for their portfolio.
In addition to taking my own angles, they were looking to match some of the historic photos, probably taken with a view camera and bellows. While I don't have such equipment, I do have digital technology, so I was able to pretty closely match the originals. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to match them perfectly, but they're still pretty close.
The work was tedious, and the lighting terrible, with three different color temperatures from tungsten, daylight and fluorescent. Due to the delicate nature of the frescoes, flash was not an option. I suppose that's why they called me :-)
While the lobby is generally open to the public, we did have "special access" to take these photos. There were chairs and other furniture we had to move, as well as signage and other distractions. Several administrators did stop me to ask what I was doing.
Below are just a few of the hundreds of photos I took, and I'm proud to have them in my collection.
Click on the thumbnails below for a large slideshow format.
Below are a few photos from the shoot...
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While I discuss the complete process in my article on The Digital Darkroom, I thought some more specific examples might be helpful.
The first photo here is what comes out of the camera.
But first a word on why "professional" pictures look so bad without any processing. After all, an iPhone takes amazing photos!
Many professional photographers (like me) don't want the camera doing the thinking. We shoot in "RAW", which captures all of the information the camera's sensor picks up. This is different from a point and shoot camera, or shooting in "JPEG", where the camera processes the data, makes decisions as to how to present it, then discards 20-30 percent of the information. The problem is that the extra information is quite often useful. Processing by hand in a program like Adobe Lightroom gives much more flexibility.
Again, this is what came out of the camera. It's underexposed and it's tinted blue.
Now, I deliberately underexposed this shot, because I knew the white area of the scarf would blow out the highlights, and that's bad. I also knew that I could correct that in the post-process.
RAW photo
Here's the photo after I ran it through Lightroom, with a few gradients on either side. I normally wouldn't make the gradients that obvious, but I wanted to demonstrate that it's possible. These can be helpful when flash is used, or when a sky is overpowering a much darker foreground.
Note that I corrected the color so it no longer looks blue. I also brightened up the image while maintaining detail in the scarf. If you were to see this enlarged, you'd also see that I added some sharpening to the mascot.
Processed for color and exposure
Here is the photo after I've had some time with it in Photoshop.
Photoshop lets me control everything about the photo, including special effects. In this case, I removed some distracting elements, like the string on the canopy, a stake in the ground, and some of the missing patches of the lawn. I punched up the sharpness of the mascot, and I didn't think his index finger was visible enough, so I lengthened it. In the dark area of the Lion's mouth, that's where the poor fellow inside can get a view of the outside world. Trouble is, if you looked closely at the previous photos, you could see inside. In this version, I darkened that. I also found that I didn't like the color of the grass, so I made is more green, and I removed some of the vignetting caused by the gradient I applied in Lightroom. Sure, I could have changed that in Lighroom, but I was already there, so to speak. A few other minor things I did were to balance the color a bit more, and I blurred the background just a bit. I didn't like the way the flag looked with the natural bokeh (background blur) of this particular lens.
So, all in all, this picture looks similar to the one above, but just a little better...in my humble opinion :-)
With a portrait, of course, there are also skin blemishes, sweat and other sundry things to improve, and I'll present that in another article.
Fully retouched
Apparently, the Nittany Lion likes Arnold Palmer's iced tea ;-)
This guy was great to work with...
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I'm a photographer, and I've been to a lot of weddings. After a while, you start to see some patterns.
My clients often ask me (too late) what can we do to look better in our photos? It starts long before your wedding day. Venues and scenery can make for some amazing wedding portraits, but at the end of the day, it's you I'm taking pictures of, not the landscape or architecture.
Every bride agonizes over the dress, and rightly so. Men just don't seem to get it: clothes make the man.
As a photographer, it's my job to find the right settings and poses to make you look good, and I will. One thing I can't do is change your wardrobe.
With rented tuxes, you don't have a lot of choices, but you can certainly make better decisions and instruct the rental agent on how you want the jacket and slacks to fit. Make sure he does it, too. For companies that are in the business of formal wear for special occasions, you'd be surprised how lax their standards are.
Double--or triple--check the fit. Fifteen minutes before my own wedding, I didn't have a shirt that fit, even though I had checked it a few days earlier at the shop. True story, but we'll save that for another blog post!
Here are my suggestions to make the guys in your wedding photos look measurably better - with almost no effort required.
The ill-Fitting Tuxedo Jacket
A bad fit on your jacket is the #1 thing you can screw up if you want to look shabby on your wedding day.
Too big and you look like you're wearing your older brother's hand-me-downs. Too small, and you look like you've been stuffed into a sausage casing. A jacket that's too small can ruin your photos altogether. It bunches up and forms all kinds of pulls and wrinkles that cannot be fixed in Photoshop with any reasonable amount of effort.
The #1 issue I see with jackets is that there isn't enough room in the shoulders. This causes the jacket to bunch up and create all manner of ugly puffs and wrinkles.
For example, the jacket on the left is a bit too small. Note that it pulls on the buttons and creates a snag on the lapel, also the sleeves are wrinkled. Other photos I have from this wedding show that there just isn't enough room in the shoulders and upper sleeves.
For the shoulders, you should have enough room to comfortably reach in front of you, for example, as if you were eating dinner...which you will be doing; or dancing, which you will also be doing. You will be moving around a lot, reaching, wrapping your arms around your new wife, reaching over, bending. Make sure you have the room to do that.
The #2 issue I see is sleeve length. They are usually too long. With your hands at your sides, the sleeves should fall about an inch below your wrists, or just about where your thumb starts. Your shirt should stick out about a bit, too.
Consider Buying
You spend thousands on the dress, so why not buy the tuxedo? If you make a classic choice, it's likely that you can use that tux again. Having a tailored jacket and pants makes all the difference in photos, and tuxedos don't cost any more than a decent suit. Think about it. You'll spend thousands of dollars on photos that are going to be hanging on your wall and passed onto the next generation. What is it worth to look your best?
Droopy Pants
It's rare when I see proper hems on men's pants. They are almost always too long; often by four or more inches. This looks terrible in photos, and it's very difficult to fix in Photoshop. Have the inseam measured accurately, with the pants where they will actually be worn, as opposed to "up on the waist".
A good hem will allow your pants to touch your shoe laces about halfway up your shoe with about an inch of "break". Don't be afraid of "high waters", or having the inseam a bit shorter. It'll look better than stepping on the back of your trousers every step...and you're less likely to trip.
Esquire magazine has a nice entry on how to make sure your suit fits. I agree with it, wholeheartedly!
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Tara and Michael wanted a lot of locations for their campus portrait session, and we got them all in, on time. There was a lot of construction around the Allen Street Mall, but a little Photoshopping took care of that ;-)
The wedding and reception were held at Toftrees, but we got a lot of amazing photos on our brief excursion to the Penn State Campus.
Here is a sampling of weddings I've had the pleasure of working at the Penn State Arboretum. If you're thinking of having a wedding at the Arboretum, send me an email, and I can show you additional shots from these sessions and more....while I don't update this blog often, I do get lots and lots of photos every wedding season!
First up, we have Amy and Ryan - they are both "Bleed Blue and White" Penn Staters, so The Arboretum was a natural choice for their wedding.
Below are a few shots from their special day.
This photo was actually on the way back from the portrait session, when we went back to the Overlook Pavilion for group photos of family. We didn't stage this, but I thought the framing looked nice.
As usual, I slowed down my shutter to let the fountain show up a bit better. Water always seems to look its best when it's blurred a bit.
Jeanie and Ben
We had the threat of rain all day, and it actually did rain during the ceremony, but that didn't stop us from getting some great wedding party photos.
After a quick 15 minutes at the Arboretum, we hit the Nittany Lion for the "must have" photos for any Penn Stater. On the way to a Toftrees reception, we did a smash-and-grab at the Landmark Sign by Beaver Stadium.
Suzan and Sam
I had the pleasure of photographing this couple for their engagement session, even though they moved away from the area before the wedding. They were a delight to work with, and we got a lot of great photos in the time we had.
I thought this was a nice touch, which they used for their post-wedding Thank You cards.
Theresa and Carl
...returned to the Penn State Arboretum to the place where Carl made his proposal of marriage, the fountain.
I slowed down the shutter speed on the fountain, which I think is essential. I wish we had more time, but the wedding was actually held at another location, so we only had about 30 minutes. Wedding guests tend to get cranky if they wait too long! We could easily have spent another several hours. These are just a few shots I selected at random from the session.
The reception was at Celebration Hall, and I decided to throw in a picture of the sparkler sendoff at the bottom of this post.
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