Here are a few of my favorites from the race. Click here to view all of the pictures from the race. If you raced and you’re interested in purchasing a print or high resolution download, we’ll be donating 20% of the proceeds back to A Wider Circle.

View all Photographs or click on the thumbnails below for a few more favorites.

Here’s another family session from a couple of weeks ago. It’s always great to be asked by a wedding client to come back when their family grows. Sam and Daniel were married last year and I recently got to see them again and meet Ayden. I spent a morning together capturing these new parents enjoying their adorable new addition.

Click on the thumbnails below for more photographs from their session…

Here’s a quick look at Julia and Matt’s engagement session from a couple of weeks ago while the cherry blossoms were in full bloom at the tidal basin. Julia and Matt were good sports to get up early to try and catch the sunrise. The weather stayed a little foggy and drizzly for the morning so we didn’t get a great sunrise but we did get wonderful soft light and some room to shoot before all of the tourists arrived.

Julia and Matt met while they were both working on the Obama campaign in 2008 and they’ve got a great story that includes a little galantry and some interesting takes on being a vegetarian in South Carolina. Because they’ve been living in DC for the last couple of years they wanted to capture some DC icons in their engagement session. As well as the Cherry Blossoms we walked around the Lincoln Memorial and through the Korean War Memorial. They’re going back to Philly for their wedding and I can’t wait to photograph another wedding in the city of brotherly love.

Photographs from the latest RACE FACES shoot will be shown as part of Slideluck Potshow Baltimore II this Friday at Area 405 in Baltimore’s Station North Arts District. The potluck starts at 5:00pm and the slideshow starts at 6:30pm.

I’m honored to have RACE FACES chosen to be a part of the show and I’m going to head up there to see what’s sure to be an amazing selection of slideshows from local photographers. Come on out to see for yourself.

After I shot my first wedding I quickly discovered how annoying it is to not have the camera times in sync across the multiple cameras used at a wedding. I met up with my Maili, my second, before the wedding with time set aside to sync our cameras, but in the midst of dealing with a flash issue, we’d forgotten to do it. I didn’t notice the problem until it was time to start editing and too late to do anything about it.

Lesson learned, but syncing time through the camera menus can be tedious and If you don’t do it before the shoot starts it’s too late. Here’s a quick tip I learned to avoid the problem.

Instead of taking time to sync each camera time manually, start the day by picking one “primary” camera and taking a picture of the “Set Clock” screen on that camera with the rest of the cameras that might be used during the day. This gives you a time reference on each camera so that you can sync time after the wedding.

Here’s a shot from Maili’s of the time on my camera at one of last year’s weddings. We try to shoot these right a the beginning of the shoot so they’re easy to find. If you forget though, the beauty of this technique is that you can always get that shot later and still sync everything. Oh, and don’t forget cameras used by second shooters and backup gear that may or may not get used.

Once the photographs from the shoot are downloaded and imported into Lightroom, pull up all of the photographs from the shoot in the Library and go into Grid view.

In the “Library Filters”, click on “Metadata” to open the Metadata filter panel. If all of your cameras are different models, then you can use the “Camera” filter to select the camera to be adjusted. If you’re using more than one of the same camera, then you’ll need to switch one of the filters to “Camera Serial Number” by clicking the header and choosing from the menu.

Here I’ve filtered down to all the files from Maili’s camera.

Luckily, the time reference picture is the first on in the grid view, so it’s easy to find. Open it and make a note of the time that’s showing on the back of the camera. In this case it’s 11:56:52.

Now, go back into grid view and select all the images from the camera you need to adjust with Command-A (or Control-A on a PC). Make sure that the image with the time is still the primary selection, go to the Metadata menu, and select “Edit Capture Time”.

In the dialog that opens, make sure that under “Type of Adjustment” you keep “Adjust to a specified date and time”. When you use this option with multiple files selected, Lightroom will shift all of the other files by the same amount that you shift the first file. This way we’ll fix all of the files from this camera in one batch.

Here you can see that the capture time in the file is 11:59:32, but in the time on the other camera is showing 11:56:52. Maili’s camera was about 3 1/2 minutes ahead of mine.

In the “New Time” section, edit the “Corrected Time” to match the time shown on the camera in the photograph. Here I’ve entered 11:56:52 into the “Corrected Time”. When you click “Change”, Lightroom will calculate the difference and move all of the other files selected by the same increment.

Repeat this process for the rest of the camera bodies you need to sync and you’ll have an accurate chronological view of the wedding for much easier editing. Remember, you’re syncing the other cameras to the one that you used as the time reference.

Jonathan at Baker's Dozen, 2009

When I started thinking about redesigning my website, one of the goals I came up with was to make sure that the site was simple and focused. Since my focus on the business front is weddings right now, I removed all of the content that wasn’t related to weddings.

The children and family photography portfolios will return in the near future, but the personal project that I’ve been working on for the last couple of years was suddenly left homeless. Well it’s got a new home now at http://www.joefoleyphotography.com/faces.

Looking at it as a whole has also given me a chance to give some more thought to what it’s all about. It’s got a new name “RACE FACES” and I’ve got the first shoot for 2012 planned for next weekend at Snotcycle. I’m still in the process of uploading the old shoots to the new website, but you can see the original Baker’s Dozen portraits and last years DCCX portraits up there already.

It’s been a while since I blogged about a family or newborn shoot, but I’ve had a couple of really fun ones recently so here’s the first. I’ve been friends with Alicia since our days working at the Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech. She and Tom were back in town visiting family for the holidays with their new son, Zach in tow, so they asked me to come by for a session. We made some portraits of Zach by himself and took a little walk, but mostly I just tried to stay back and capture the fun and love that was going on and look for those little details that make all the difference.

Click the thumbnails below for some more pictures form this fun family photo session.

Darren has been a teammate of mine on DCMTB for many years now. When Darren starting talking about Sara, the team knew something serious was brewing. It wasn’t long before Sara impressed the entire team by showing up to the Leesburg Bakers Dozen and helping keep order in the DCMTB camp. That was only the first of the races and trips that Sara came along on so I wasn’t surprised when, about a year ago, Darren mentioned he might need to talk to me about photographs soon.

A few months later they were engaged. Now they’re in full swing planning their wedding for next fall and we got together for an engagement session in Georgetown last month. We had a great time searching out new place to (and revisiting some of my old favorites). Congratulations Sara and Darren, I can’t wait for next year.

Click the thumbnails below to see more from their engagement session…

Here’s a quick look at Dyanne and Erik’s engagement session. We met up in Rock Creek Park at the newly renovated Peirce Mill and spent a couple of hours exploring the mill and wandering the nearby trails for great places to take photographs. I’ll be seeing Erik and Dyanne next year for their wedding in Pittsburg. Congratulations and Thanks for choosing us!

If the groom looks a little familiar his twin brother is Matthew, who’s wedding to Patty was the last one posted here. It’s been great getting to spend two weekends with this wonderful extended family.

Look down to the end for an updated preview gallery with more pictures from Laura and Peter’s unbelievable day…

Click on the thumbnails below to see the rest of the preview…