Testing the waters with my new Instagram photo sharing app. My recent visit to the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Enjoy,

The second addition to the family is on her way. Third if you include their other child Abby the dog.

See the first addition images here.

Here are a few of my photos from Niza and German’s wedding in July. Click here to view all the wedding day images.

Because I’ve already raved about their wedding, I’d like to take this opportunity to share a little bit more about my editing process.

Before I make any edits to the actual photos, I go through every single one of the hundreds of images I shoot and rate them in a program called Adobe Lightroom. This program has saved me hours of time because the software is made specifically for high-volume editing, whereas otherwise I’d be opening and closing each file individually. Saving time means saving my customers money. And it means more time for actually editing photos.

Once I rate the photos, I pull up all of those rated two stars and above. (To get even more technical, two stars and above mean the photos will end up in the online gallery, three and above rank an appearance in the photo book, four stars mean they’ll show up in a blog entry like this one, and five stars make it to the “Sneak Peak.”)

All photos in the online gallery (usually 200 to 300 or even 600 for a wedding) get basic edits. This means adjusting images for contrast and color, and cropping to perfect composition.

Images that go into a photo book get the full Andrew Nenque Photography artistic photo-editing treatment. This includes darkening backgrounds to bring out subjects, sharpening and soft-focusing parts of the image, removing blemishes, converting to black and white, adding texture or color effects. Because this process is so time-consuming and requires an artistic touch, photo books are priced in part on how many images go into the book.

Images that are printed either on canvas or professional-grade paper also get this treatment, with an added service of making sure the image fits with the particular size. I recently purchased and began printing on a professional large-format Epson fine art printer. Doing my own printing has significantly decreased my cost of production on both fine art prints and poster-sized art prints, and gallery-wrapped canvas prints, which allows me to offer clients professional-quality prints for a lower price. (New prices to be posted soon.)

Most clients get to see their online gallery within two weeks of the event or shoot. The photo book takes a couple more weeks, and prints can be done at any time immediately after an order is placed. As always, if you have any questions about this process or anything else, please email me at photo (at) nenque.com or call me: 512-203-6849.

I set up the first Andrew Nenque Photography photo booth this past weekend at Niza and German’s wedding. It was a hit. Everyone came out laughing – and they got to take home a souvenir with them to remember the wedding. For now, I’m offering these as an optional service for my wedding clients, but eventually hope to expand the awesomeness to birthday parties, corporate events, my backyard barbecues… I provide the props and an assistant to print and cut the photos. Half of the photos get pasted into a scrapbook for guests to sign messages for the bride and groom, and the other half serves as a wedding favor.

Those who were at the wedding can check out all the photo booth gallery images here.

I was so excited about shooting Niza and German’s wedding this month. Ever since we met in Elgin for their engagement pictures, we clicked right away. This is a fun, laid-back couple, and I knew their wedding would be a good time, and even more so because they had a band from Brownsville, their hometown, which happens to also be my hometown. Their wedding was in Kyle at Texas Old Town, one of my favorite venues in the Austin area because of its rustic, “old town” Texas feel. The wedding itself was beautiful, as was the bride. Here are a few of my favorites.

I got the chance to play with my new camera’s video feature on the 4th of July. Video of the Austin skyline fireworks show from our balcony. Enjoy.

Over the course of Katie and Bryan’s wedding weekend, I ended up with close to 1,000 photos for the couple’s online wedding gallery and DVD. Needless to say, it was tough narrowing those 700 down to 40 to post here. Before the wedding, we returned to the new Twins stadium with the wedding party, where the bronze statues, glass walls and cool architecture, along with the beaming couple, made for a good combination. Katie and Bryan’s wedding ceremony took place on the roof of a building in downtown Minneapolis, with the reception following in a candle-lit ballroom. Their friends and family came from as far as West Texas, Spain and New York. They ended the night with a gigantic group hug, which was possibly my favorite moment of the evening because it showed how loved they are by family and friends, and how happy Katie and Bryan are together. Congratulations, Katie and Bryan.

Those who were at the wedding can check out all the wedding gallery images here.

Just got back from shooting Katie and Bryan’s wedding in Minneapolis. What a place. What a couple. What a wedding. The weather was beautiful (nowhere near 100 degrees like it is in Texas). Although the overcast sky caused a bit of worry about rain because of the outside ceremony, it made for nice photos.

Katie and Bryan love baseball, and I love hotdogs, so we caught a Twins game at the new stadium a few days before the wedding, then returned with the bridal party the day of. We almost made it inside the stadium thanks to an eager TV news reporter willing to pull some strings in hopes of interviewing the couple, but in the end, we stayed outside, where we met a mascot and got a photo with the bride, and the wedding party tried to fit into a golden glove statue. More photos coming soon. For now, here’s a peek: