So in love.

This couple just surprised the hell out of me. Susan and Adam...married at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden last month.

So they show up at the studio last Fall, and are super casual, laid back...no preacher, no plans, thinking about wearing flip-flops to the wedding. Just wanting to get hitched in a beautiful setting.

True to their laid back form, the bride didn't even find her dress till 2 weeks before the wedding! But what a dress it was. Her mom said it came from Franco's...who'd have thought? She looked like a goddess.

But what a treat they were to work with. And who could ask for a more beautiful location for photography? We shot their engagement session in the garden in early March and had lots of fun getting to know each other.

By the time we got to the wedding day, they were steaming up the lens. So passionate, so in love, so beautiful.

See their entire wedding day by clicking here, or go to the proofs/events link on our website and type in "adam" for the password.


All images and text Copyright 2008 Elaine Odell for Church Hill Photography, LLC.

Crazy Cool House

Last week, we photographed an unusual home (unusual for Richmond, that is). My assistant called it a "Brady Bunch house, just way cooler". But the owners, Andy and Greg, call the home "Riversong".

This is the living room looking out toward the Newfound Falls River in Hanover County.

What I liked about the home is that it had this mod-Los Angeles/Miami look, yet it's in the Virginia countryside. We heard the rushing sound of the water falls whenever we stepped outside, and in the early morning, we heard cows mooing in the distance.

The current owners really made the most of the floor to ceiling windows. Each room is oriented toward the view. And they embraced the modern architecture with goovy interior decorating choices.

As we set up each shot, I imagined the first floor full of beautiful people in chic attire sipping martinis--this seemed like the perfect house for a glamorous event.

But my favorite room was the master bedroom. I just wanted to lie down and take a nap...open the glass doors and fall asleep to the sound of birds singing and water rushing.

What's amazing about the house is the consistency of interior design and decorating throughout. Also, the level of comfort in the furnishings impressed me. I'm a latecomer to the discovery that modern design and furnishings don't have to be hard-edged or rigid. Even the kitchen table chairs were soft and inviting. And no matter where you were in the house, there was always a good view out the window into the soft spring-green trees.

Carter Ritchie has the listing on this home, which is going on the market soon. You can reach him via http://www.carterritchie.com

XDL Intellectual Property Law

XDL is one of the coolest clients I've had the pleasure to work with. The XDL firm is comprised of attorneys with various specialties in my favorite area of law: intellectual property ;-).

When they first called me for a shoot, we focused on full length high-key portraits of each attorney, for the "who we are" page on their website. That was a lot of fun, and I got to know each of the attorneys personally during those sessions.

But the images I like the most are the black and white environmental, available light images you see here.

The attorneys live all over the US, from Seattle to Minneapolis to Richmond, which doesn't poses any apparent obstacles to the ability to litigate effectively on behalf of their clients. When they do get together in one room, it's amazing.


All that brainpower in one location...all focused on protecting intellectual property rights...it's enough to make any creator swoon. Talk of copyright protection, patent and trademark litigation...ooooh, ahhh.

So my client, Amy Smith Pike, Marketing Director for the XDL group, says, "lets get some action shots of these guys all together hashing things out". So I got my trusty monopod, locked in the long lens, and stabilized the camera for some high ISO/low light/no flash/low shutter speed images of the group in one of their bull sessions.


Normally, when I'm asked to shoot meetings, I like to place off-camera strobes in the room to bring up the light level. This enables us to get low ISO, and thus low noise color images.

But something about this meeting was different...perhaps it was the intimacy of the room and the time pressure these folks were under to keep the agenda rolling (half of them had to catch flights home in the afternoon.) I felt it would be too much of a distraction to have strobes popping, plus, the room had so much stuff in it (flip charts, coffee pots, laptops, luggage sodas and snacks) I don't know where I would have found the room for light stands.

When converted to gray-scale, the low light/high noise images looked like good old fashioned grainy T-Max film. Didn't hurt that my client, Amy, used to work in media herself...she's an old news-hound and "gets it" on the photo-journalistic concept for her firm.

In the end, I was surprised at how much I liked the images, and I love how the design firm, Prototype Advertising, used them on the XDL website. Nice to know I have clients in high places, should I ever need to go to court to defend a copyright infringement.
All images Copyright 2007, Elaine Odell, Church Hill Photography, LLC.

Lovers in the garden

This is Adam and Susan...to be wed May 10, 2008, at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden here in Richmond, VA. They both live and work in Northern Virginia now, but the bride hails from nearby Mechanicsville.

Last week, we went over to the Asian Garden (their reception will be in the Tea House) and walked around with a camera to get a feel for the site. I've photographed several weddings at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, but this will be my first using the Asian Garden as a reception/photography area.

An engagement portrait session with the bride & groom is a great warm up for the wedding day. The couple gets comfy smooching in front of a camera and we usually get lots of romantic images of 'young luv'.
















The couple probably won't choose this image of her kissing his nose ...but I absolutely love it! It's the only frame like it, and shows how playful they are. I can't wait for the wedding day.

All images and content Copyright Elaine Odell/Church Hill Photography, LLC, 2008.

Pardon Our Dust...

If you've made it to this location on the World Wide Web...forgive us as we overhaul our website this weekend and republish our blog. If you've ever been through this process, you'll understand that things never work the way you anticipate...just gotta keep moving things around on the server till we get it right. Everything should be in order by Monday, March 31, 2008.

My Hero: Sandra Day O'Connor

One of the institutions I have the pleasure of working with is the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, VA.

These days, former Supreme Court Associate Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor is the serving as Chancellor for W&M.

She attended the annual Charter Day festivities this year, and I was asked to cover the celebratory, black-tie dinner at the end of the day. This was the second time I'd had the opportunity to photograph her on the college campus. And this time, just like before, I was totally star-struck.

The image above is my favorite picture of her from that night. We have lots of shots of her delivering a speech and doing the formal things on the agenda...but those look as you would expect. At this point, former W&M President, Gene Nichol was at the lectern, and he must have made some jovial remark which made her laugh. Lovely.

She really was the classiest dame in the room...and fell for her. When the event was over, I saw her talking with Harriet Mayor Fulbright (president of the J. William & Harriett Fulbright Center).

Seeing these two amazing women together was really powerful; the Supreme Court Judge and the world peace advocate. I just had to document what appeared to be a warm friendship. With my photojournalist hat on, I followed O'Connor and Fulbright out of the banquet hall, got ahead of them, turned around and walked backwards hoping I wouldn't knock down one of the other guests as I made pictures.

Just after I got this shot, O'Connor said "That's quite enough now." Her words were like a laser beam: delivered with a smile and complete seriousness. It was a little taste of what it might have been like to argue a case before her.

Instantly, I stopped shooting, and scooted back into the ballroom to photograph the other guests.

Eat In Kitchen

Here's another one of Perry DesJardins' killer kitchens. This was shot during a day and half of image capture at a custom-built DesJardin home in Goochland County, VA.

Deciding what to leave in was the challenge in this shot. The home owner, like most of us, had all sorts of tchotchkes around the kitchen (with all that counter space, wouldn't you?)

But since I was shooting for the builder, we needed minimal distractions. The marble counter tops, custom cabinets, tile back splashes, lighting, etc., needed to be the stars of the show.

So I set up the tripod, framed the shot, and asked my assistant, Karin, to start removing items one by one. The challenge was for her to remove the cookbooks, decorative plates, potted plants, etc., and stow them in such a way that she could put them back just as she found them, so the homeowner would find the kitchen just as she left it.

The lighting is a combination of window light (provided by floor to ceiling french doors) in the out-of-the-frame family room to the right of the camera, and the tungsten lighting within the kitchen. Several bracketed exposures were sandwiched together in post-production to achieve this final image.

We're pleased with the final result...there are just enough decorative details in this kitchen to make it pretty, without being distracting to the overall design.

All images & text copyright 2008 Elaine Odell/Church Hill Photography, LLC.

Protesting High Gas Prices

Last week, while driving through rural Nelson County, we blew past this gas station on Rt. 664 in the hamlet of Beech Grove, a few miles down the mountain from the Wintergreen Resort.

We turned around and went back to photograph this sign. According to the manager on duty, the owner of Hickman's Exxon has gotten fed up with rapidly escalating gas prices and the all too frequent climb to change the numbers on this sign (about 20-25 feet up).











This was shot on Thursday March 6, 2008, when a gallon of regular was $3.34. Below, is the wide shot of Andy Hickman's gas station, which is just a short drive from the Blue Ridge Parkway, Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

The Artist's Space

Jennifer Young's Vibrant Landscapes are favorites among fine art collectors, interior designers and decorators. Although she creates a lot of work in the plein air mode, Jennifer's indoor space is where she finishes the canvases (varnishing, touchups, framing, etc,) and does indoor painting when the weather doesn't cooperate.

Jennifer moved to a gorgeous gallery/studio in Downtown Richmond over a year ago, and we'd yet to create a portrait of the artist in her gallery. Finally, on a rainy, cold January afternoon, we did it. Luckily, the sunny yellow walls in the interior gallery more than made up for the miserable weather outdoors.

What I really like about Jennifer's gallery is that it feels like a real home, instead of a sterile white-walled gallery. The row house has a large front room with lots of natural window light (easy to imagine as your home living/family room) as well as an interior room with decorator lighting (like your dining room). You see the paintings displayed this way and can envision them hanging on your own walls.

This shoot is a good example of collaboration and give-and-take with the client. Jennifer was more interested in showing the gallery expanse and the paintings on display. While she realized she needed to be in the picture, she wasn't really interested in being the central focus. Like most artists, she prefers that her art be the "hero".

Well, I saw things a little differently...I was more interested in creating a portrait of the artist, with the work & the environment accompanying her, telling her story.

So, to achieve both our goals, we set up a wide shot and placed paintings strategically within the camera's view. Stylist Winifred Halliday was very instrumental in helping set up this portrait.

One benefit of shooting wide and seeing a tighter crop within it, is the flexibility it gives graphic designers. It's especially helpful for magazine or newspaper folks who often don't know the layout of a page till the last minute because images and text blocks are coming from multiple sources. If you're a client submitting an image with a press release, having an image that crops easily as a horizontal or a vertical makes designers really happy, and increases your chances of prominent page placement.

So here is the wide shot. It tells you more about the gallery space and lets your eye move about the frame. The artist is still central to the image...if a newspaper is writing a story about galleries, then this image would likely get used in publication because of the extra visual information.
All images and text Copyright 2008 Elaine Odell, Church Hill Photography, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Pet Doctors

This is Dr. Key. She works at Lakeside Animal Hospital in Richmond, VA. Earlier last month, we spent the morning working with the staff to create images for their new website redesign. It was a fast paced few hours with great teamwork on the part of staff and their pets.

The cool thing about Lakeside Animal Hospital is that they work with birds and reptiles, too. Below is Dr. Gonzales, with one of the pet birds who lives at the animal hospital. Photographing someone with a bird was new to me. I was a little concerned. I've done lots of shoots with people and their dogs. But a parrot? I didn't know how he'd like the flash. We placed the strobe head behind the bird so the vet would be looking into the light, the bird would have his back to it. I think that helped, because it was a small exam room and we were flashing away. But what probably made the most impact on keeping the bird relaxed was the comfort and attention from Dr. Gonzales. The parrot and her are old friends. The two of them just chatted and cooed the whole time we were shooting.

All images and text Copyright 2008 Elaine Odell, Church Hill Photography, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The Other U2 Guys

Remember the U2 spy plane incident? In 1960 Russia shot down super top secret CIA spy pilot Francis Gary Powers. He was held prisoner by the Soviets for nearly 2 years...and eventually was released in a spy swap.

Well, this is his son, Francis Gary Powers, Jr. He's the founder of the traveling Cold War Museum. They have a neat website.
Gary travels the US, speaking to groups interested in the Cold War. He's also raising funds for a museum home base outside of Washington, D.C.

The day of this shoot, we decided to do two set-ups: one outdoors with a model of his dad's spy plane, and another in his study. The first shot would show the playful side of his personality: the big kid in love with aviation and history. The second shot would show the business side of Gary's directorship of the museum.

We set up in Gary's office and this is one of the frames from that sequence. Your basic business guy/professional portrait that just happens to have the U2 model plane in the foreground.

Now here is the funny thing about this shoot. While writing this entry, I just happened to go to the Wikipedia entry for Gary's dad.















Twilight zone time...I swear I never saw this old black and white news photograph till now. Wow. Like father like son.

Above color images Copyright 2008 Elaine Odell Church Hill Photography, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

New Year's Ride to Church Hill

Every year, on New Year's Day, a bunch of local riding clubs get together and trek 35 miles from Charles City County to Church Hill. The ride always ends a Jefferson Park, overlooking Downtown Richmond, the State Capitol, and I-95, just at sunset. Today, as the horses came clattering down the street (gotta love the sound of horse shoes on pavement) I grabbed my point-n-shoot along with some apples and carrots. This year, the weather was great. And lots of little city kids got to pet a horsey. Once the light faded, I knelt down and captured the silhouette image above. The the lights of Downtown Richmond and Riverfront Towers are in the background.

These are just a few of the snaps from Jefferson Park; to see the rest of the images, click here.

Here is a link to the website for one of the clubs in case you want to find out more: http://unitedhorsemen.org

All images Copyright 2008 Elaine Odell Church Hill Photography, LLC. All Rights Reserved.