Ryan Phillips Blog

The past few months have been quite emotional for Carrie and I with some major medical problems in her family. Her Dad almost passed away due to a brain aneurysm and on the verge of recovery he found out his wife Suzanne was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She went through 8 weeks of aggressive chemotherapy and radiology and was getting prepared for a major surgery. I asked my closest friends Mike and Emi of Evoke Photography if they would take pictures of Suzanne and her daughters before her extremely difficult surgery to remove the tumor in her lung. Of course they signed right up for this emotional journey. Carrie and I can’t thank them enough for the pictures they took. They are quite simply amazing and we are forever grateful for catching this moment in time. We are happy to report that both Carrie’s Dad and Suzanne are both doing great!

View the full slideshow here:
http://www.evokephotography.com/galleries/portrait/suzanne/

I showed up a little early to the wedding a few weeks ago so I could take some shots of the venue. It is an amazing new venue and will be one of Ventura County’s hottest event locations. It’s called Bella Victorian Vineyards and it was perfectly designed for weddings! I will be posting that wedding in the next few days. Check back since I have some great shots of the venue. Anyway, when I got there, the owner had just returned from a walk with their new puppy Romeo, a Bordeaux Mastiff and by far the coolest, cutest dog I have ever seen. He was totally mellow and let me have a little mini photo shoot with him. Not a single attempt to eat my camera.

The Black and Whites were shot with a Cannon 85mm 1.2 – I processed them a touch on the dark side in Lightroom to bring down the overall brightness. Then I converted them to B&W using Nik Silver Efex Pro. Lastly I used Nik filters Darken/Lighten Center to create the vignette and bring the attention back into the center of the photo. Processing things on the dark side helps out a lot if you are going to burn in a specific area of attention at a later time.

While up in Seattle we went to see our friends who live on a private lake outside Seattle. She called to see if I would just take one shot of the family on the dock, nothing fancy. I told her it’s not possible to do one shot, it’s all or nothing! She agreed to all…not realizing that being on a lake meant airborne into the cold cold water ;-)

My assistant is young but shows great potential ;-)

We holed up at the W in Seattle for the weekend while shooting and visiting some friends. I woke up one morning and scored these shots of the family…..

A few weeks ago Carrie and I took a cool trip to Seattle to shoot a wedding, see some friends and check out a new city. This is the first post from our trip…the wedding of course ;-)

Molly and Cory got married off the coast of Seattle on Bainbridge Island. The town is pretty small but a really cool day trip from Seattle. They had their wedding at a small lodge set in the trees on a windswept beach front. True to Seattle form, it rained…hard! So unfortunately much of the property was off limits due to the weather. It is a tranquil piece of property with amazing views and beautiful old growth trees.

Sorry for the hiatus on comments…we got so busy that it was hard to keep up with responses. Anyways, the comment field has been re-installed and should be working, feel free to ask questions about anything you see and I will do my best to answer quickly. I am also going to re-commit to blogging more so keep checking in often… New posts coming soon… ;-)

Let’s face it, the Morrow boys are wild men…So I went at this shoot with that in mind. We had a really loose shoot, mostly wide angle, and I just let Cooper and Crew go nuts! Baby Cash was not in the mood for pictures which is surprising since he is usually all smiles. Crew led the show from death defying acts on his torker to trying to run me over with a scooter ;-) Congratulations on the new house!

Adalee…




Chloe and Caden…






Tha fabulous Mimi…whose new baby sister I just shot this weekend (Coming Soon)






Sean, Tracy, Lil’ brother Nolan….and the bun…








The Sharman Twins…(Love her hair!)









Kate…