Well its been a while since I have posed on here.  Life has been crazy busy. Most of you know that I do have a full time job which for a while was taking up a lot of my time in the evenings.  My commute to work was also 2 hours each way and thus I was left with no time to do anything else. Then in October of 2016 I became an aunt to two awesome twin Nephews which meant my time became even less.   In the last year I switched jobs to have a better commute but in my free time I

Ryan and Gabby’s wedding was beyond beautiful! Their wedding took place on probably the most rainy day of the year so things last minute had to be completely changed(their wedding was suppose to take place outdoors) but it still was incredible! They do say rain on your wedding is good luck and since they had so much their marriage should be amazing! They got married at Morais Vineyards several months ago. PPS were the photographers for their Catholic ceremony, and a little of

This engagement session was so fun! We started in Old Town Alexandria and ended at the Meridian which was absolutely gorgeous! We had a blast shooting their engagement photos because we have known them for over 7 years now and we were all in the same professional fraternity (Delta Sigma Pi) together in college.  We have seen them go from starting to date to getting engaged to even getting married (which will be posted next week). These two are some of the kindest people and c

If you are just starting out in Photography and are looking to get equipment that is powerful but inexpensive we have some tips below.  First things first is to know what you want to shoot and what you like to shoot with.  You can do this by renting different lens and seeing what works. For us we prefer prime lens.  When we started we started with we started with a Canon Rebel T3i and a 50mm 1.8 lens.  These 2 are perfect for starting out!  They are not very expensive and can

This weeks blog post is all about using flash.  First so many people will say so many different things when it comes to using flash so this is what I personally think works best for my style.  When using flash at a wedding I typically point my flash up and use a white card.  However depending on what looks best I might even angle it to a sideand back a little while using a diffuser.  The reason is so that my client/subjects are very well lit and the photographs is what I want

Today is all about lighting for studio portraits.  When photographing in a studio the entire this is that everything should be well lit and you subject should also be well lit with no shadows. Typically when I shoot in a studio I have several box lights pointing in different directions which illuminate my clients so that their faces are shadow free!  When it comes to lighting in a studio though you can go beyond the basic head shoot and get creative with lighting.  You can o

Today’s blog is all about the proper lighting for portraits.  There are 2 very different form of lighting for portraits.  There’s natural lighting and there’s studio lighting.  Today we are going to primarily focus on lighting for portraits using natural light. Natural light is the best light for all portraits whether it be wedding party, family, or individual portraits. When scheduling a portrait session look at what time the sun will be setting that day and try to schedule

Last week we talked about all of the different components of a camera and the different settings to use or think about. Today we are going to get more in depth on how to use your camera and even show examples and tell you what the settings are for the image. For example you want to take a photograph of a bride on a sunny day and you want to focus on the bride and blur the background. Using your light meter set your aperture between 1.8 and 2.2 then set your ISO to 100 and the

Not too long ago the PhotoPlanning Services team had the honor of photographing and documenting Jeremy and Sameera’s Mehndi and Wedding in Charlottesville, VA. Jeremy and Sameera met in college through GMU’s Business Fraternity Delta Sigma Pi where many of the PPS team met as well.  The PPS team knew Jeremy and Sameera before they started dating and witnessed them fall madly in love with one another.  Today we wish them many happy years to come.  We hope you enjoy the photogr

When it comes to working a camera at first you may get frustrated and just want to switch to shooting in automatic but with practice you will be a pro in no time. We have already talked about the different components in past blogs which you can check out by clicking here. Over the next two weeks we are going to go over how to use each of the functions together to use your camera properly and to take amazing photographs. First let’s start with your light meter. The object is t

Focusing can make or break your photograph. If you focus on the wrong person or wrong part of the person the whole picture could be ruined. Cameras honestly have 2 settings which are manual where you focus where you want and the camera does not help and automatic which is when the camera decides what it wants to focus on. Then there is this thing in the middle that I always call auto/manual because you are picking manually where you want the camera to focus and then it automa

Not too long ago we were honored with the ability to photograph Larry and Audricia’s wedding at the Gaylord. Their wedding was beyond beautiful! We hope you enjoy this Thursday reveal of Larry and Audricia’s wedding! Soon after the wedding we tweeted out a sneak peak the Gaylord actually retweeted some of the photos! #TheTeam #Photography #Weddings #ThursdayReveal #Photographs

ISO – International Standards Organization. This is basically the standard measurement for how sensitive the film or image sensor. Ranging from about 100 to 3200 the 100 is not sensitive to light and better for very bright settings such as a sunny beach, where as a 3200 would come in handy for extremely dim environments. When I began with film 400 ISO was the standard. It works well both indoors and outside generally. It is also closer to the low end of the scale, since high

A couple weeks ago a local photo store was going out of business which was quite bittersweet. It’s sad to see stores like these lose business to online retailers and reviews. The people who work at specific camera stores are experts who know the technical specs inside and out and allow us to easily rent and test out equipment before emptying out the bank.  On the sweet side, it meant a great deal for me! For the past few months I’ve been drooling and debating when to get the

Today’s blog post is all about depth of field which is also related to aperture. Last week we learned that f/1.2 lets more light in and f/32 lets less light in.  Well with regards to depth of field or whats in focus aperture plays a big role.  At f/1.2 the background will be completely blurred and even the entire object you are photographing may not be in focus.  While at f/32 the background will be very sharp and everything will be in detail.  Then in the middle most will be

Aperture is a very neat function of an SLR/DSLR.  The aperture is located inside of the lens and ranges from f/1.2 to typically f/32.  The lower the number the bigger the opening and the greater the number the smaller the opening.  The aperture setting f/1.2 will let the most light into the photograph and f/32 will let the least amount of light in. The best way to explain aperture is to take your hand and make a circle and look at the light through the circle. now make a very

Today we are going to pick up from where we left off last week on shutter speeds.  Last week we talked about how the faster the shutter is the less light you let in but the more crisp your images are going to be and the slower your shutter speed is the more light and less sharp your images are going to be. Now to jump into things this week we are going to talk about what it looks like on your camera and how to set it.  Shutter speed also known as f stop is measured in

Many people want to know why is it that when I take a photo on my digital camera it does not look anything like when a professional takes the same picture with their DSLR.  Well the reason is because the cameras are very different and work completely different. The snap and shoot camera works in a simple way.  It has a lens that may or may not zoom in and out and a sensor.  What you see is what you get.  For most cameras the camera makes all of the decisions for you and take

Starting next week on Tographer Tuesday there will be a 9 part blog post series on cameras featuring how to use them, what they are, and how they work. If you have a DSLR camera and are currently shooting with it on auto and want to know how that thing works or if you are a beginner and want to know some more about that lovely camera and see what it can do tune in over the next several weeks! #CameraSeries #Photography #TographerTuesday

Cuteness is hitting the blog today!  I had the honor of photographing this adorable baby girl.  She was the best to work with and her smile was beyond amazing.  I really hope you enjoy today’s blog post! #TheTeam #Photography #HeatherShaner #Families #Newborns #Photographs

Not too long ago I had the pleasure to photograph Amit and Khushboo’s baby shower and religous ceremony.  I hope you enjoy the photographs! ~Heather #CouplesShoot #Photography #HeatherShaner #BabyShower #Maternity #Photographs

This past week was full of good things! I had a long weekend celebrating our nations heroes, camped with friends and taught kids a little about cameras. I never thought I’d go from being student to teacher so quick but was asked to fill in for a photographer at the school’s science fair. I whipped up a presentation in just a few days, and showed the students the basics of camera lenses. It was a ton of fun and hope that I got some kids interested not only in photography, but