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life post: house!

I’ve been waiting to share this news on the blog for MONTHS. And, I’m hoping to involve all of my faithful blog visitors in on the fun of the project that’s consuming a huge part of Jess and my life:

WE’RE BUILDING A HOUSE!!!

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” about sums up my feelings about the house that’s on its way to becoming reality. Beginning in September of last year, Jess and I began thinking about what our future housing plans might be. You see, for the last two years Jess has been a Resident Director at the college where we met, were married, etc. We’ve both graduated, but her RD position is one that includes housing in an apartment inside of one of the college dorms. Needless to say, it makes for interesting days.

We consider the RD position to have been a gracious provision of God, and it’s given us some time to save up for our first home which we’ve decided to build. It’s going about 4 blocks from my photography studio, right in Olde Towne Clinton. It’s the PERFECT area for the two of us–old, full of character, and within walking distance to work. The house officially began this past week and we’re hoping to move in sometime in the month of June!

As you could probably guess, there are LOTS of decisions that go in to building a home. And since Jess and I worked up house plans from scratch, we’ve been making TONS of decisions already. So, from time to time I’ll be enlisting the help of all of you in getting your ideas when we’re just stuck in indecision.

Now, lastly, please allow me to RAAAAVE about the man that’s making all of this possible, and that is our INCREDIBLE builder, Tim Prevost. Tim owns Timber Creek Homes, and knows what he’s doing when building a house. Jess and I go to church with he and his family and I can attest positively to his ability to build a house and love the Lord. He’s such an inspiration. For the past two years he’s been recognized with First Place honors for best house in Mississippi. Ok, get my gist? If you’re even considering about building, you HAVE to call Tim.

Here’s a look at our plans for what’s goin up…

Bottom floor:

Second floor:

And here’s a video of the stakes going in!

The Stakes Go In from Robby Followell on Vimeo.

Emily & Michael

There IS a downside to being a wedding photographer, and that is that sometimes your closest friends get married on date for which you’re booked and you can’t even go to their wedding. Such is the case with Michael. Michael’s one of my closest friends–a groomsman in my wedding–and yet I’m going have to miss out on he and Emily’s big day. That DOESN’T mean, though, that I didn’t get to shoot their engagements.

You may remember me rambling on the blog not long ago about not shooting in the month of February except for a single shoot which would be experimental and, well, off the chain. That’s where these guys came in. We ended up spending a couple of days (thanks to bad weather on the first) finding the coolest locations for some beautiful pictures. The good news is, Emily & Michael are hot stuff and looked great just about wherever I put them.

Here’s the latest and greatest…

I love when couples are so in to each other that I don’t have to force them to be sweet to one another… such is the case here:

One of my personal challenges for the session was to shoot INTO the sky and get some really clean backgrounds. I love simplicity.

Another goal of mine was to shoot with some off camera lighting at low shutter speeds to see what kind of effects that could produce…

I also wanted to play around with some off-camera lighting while shooting in direct sunlight. I like what happened…

They’re not laughing here because I said something hilarious. They’re laughing because two dogs are humping across the street. Ah, the unexpected scenarios of ghetto Jackson…

I don’t often pose people laying down. That was another goal of mine–to pose these two lying down in a tasteful way. I think this works…

the fotobooth.

uhhh… I haven’t been this excited about an announcement for the business in a LONG TIME. I’ve been spending lots of hours over the last month developing a new service that will be available to ALL followell |  fotography brides. I bring you the:

I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but, basically imagine: at your reception, we spend time hanging out with all of your guests, getting super fun pictures of them, and as a result providing you with a pretty-fly-for-a-white-guy album of all of those pictures. Imagine having the total opposite of those crazy lame picture directories that churches publish showcasing all of the people that love you the most.

Anyway, if you’re an approaching f | f bride, and this is something that interests you–email us right away and we’ll book the FOTOBOOTH at a special (and crazy low) introductory rate! Email us (robby@followellfotography.com) for all the info.

Here’s a look what these FOTOBOOTH images look like… excuse the fact that they’re all of me and my friends. That’s just how I roll.

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life post: travels

I don’t blog a whole lot about personal stuff, but over the past few months Jess and myself (and sometimes just myself) have traveled around a little bit, and I wanted to just pass along some of the fun we’ve had. Perhaps to your surprise, I don’t love lugging my camera around when I’m “off” so I don’t really shoot that much when I’m traveling. I really want to do better, though, ’cause I love having images that document the places we go. If you don’t much get in to my personal musings, just carry on… I’ll be posting the stuff I get paid to shoot soon… ; )

In September, Jess and I went to visit her parents in the Dulles, Virginia-area. They moved up there this past year and we hadn’t yet been to their new place. They’re about 20 minutes from DC–so, it makes for an incredible visit. We spent a full week up there and had a blast. Got to see so much…

Jess with her Mom & Dad:

Having smart friends is a wise move. Enter: Aaron Graham. Perhaps my smartest of friends, is a student at Harvard Law School, and I made it up his way this past October to catch up and get to know his Boston home. It was BEAUTIFUL. The fall up there really is all it’s cracked up to be. I will be going back… with Jess. But, this was for some guy time.

My favorite stop was the Public Garden. Incredible colors… Hopefully I’ll get to shoot a portrait session in all of this perfection…

Aaron… my smart friend. A guy I could never spend too much time hanging out with…

Unlike lots of folks, I’m blessed to stay in touch with a very few friends from high school. They know me better than most anyone. Rare is it that a week goes by that I don’t talk to at least one of these gals. I love ‘em. Anyway, we got together for New Year’s… it was the perfect way to ring in the new year.

Making ridiculous faces is some sort of safety blanket when I’m being photographed.

And this month, it was off to Louisville, KY, to visit a couple Jess and I simply love to be around–David & Laura Dawkins. David was a huge mentor figure in my life and spent so much intentional time demonstrating a life lived for Christ. Laura, too, loved on Jess, and made as much of an impact on her spiritually as anyone else. So, we headed up their way for several days during my month off and couldn’t have enjoyed it any more. Here’s the four of us:

Happy little tree:

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Kate & Kyle

Kate & Kyle are SOOO sweet to one another. I’m pretty sure you’ll gather that from the images below. It’s so refreshing to see two people that constantly build one another up and love the even the littlest things about the one another. Needless to say, Kate & Kyle’s wedding in April is one I greatly anticipate shooting. Here’s a few from our engagement session together…

Mr. & Mrs. Boteler

There’s about 500 good things I could say about Kate & Brad. I could talk about the fact that–3 hours before the ceremony–they found out that one of the bridesmaids (whose husband was a groomsman) went into labor and missed the day entirely, and yet Kate & Brad were just thrilled to hear the news. Not even a trace of selfishness. Or, I could talk about the fact that Kate is one of only a few brides who took the time to write me (before she’d even seen the pictures, mind you) telling us just the nicest things you’ve ever heard. Or, I could tell you about Kate’s excitement about having snow on her wedding day when, from my perspective, it was just bitterly cold and kept us from getting outside to shoot. But, instead of telling you all about those things, I’ll just tell you that I’d shoot Brad & Kate Boteler every day if I had to. They’re just that kind.

Hope I did your day justice! Thanks for everything…

Get it girl…

MC Wallpaper

Hey fellow Choctaws…

Got several (flattering) requests from folks who wanted to use my most recently posted images as desktop wallpaper. So, instead of making you stretch a tiny blog image to fit your big ol’ screen, I thought I’d give you some larger resolution files sized for the most common monitor sizes. Consider it a very late Christmas present. Hope you guys enjoy!

(just click on the appropriate display size below each thumbnail and the image will open in a new window. once the image loads fully, you may right-click on it to save the file.)

1280×800 (widescreen)

1024 x 768 (fullscreen – 4:3)

1280 x 1024 (fullscreen – 5:4)

1280 x 800 (widescreen)

1024 x 768 (fullscreen 4:3)

1280 x 1024 (fullscreen – 5:4)

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snowww!

You KNOW Mississippians freak out when it snows. So, I freaked out a little bit this morning… and just had to get to MC’s campus to shoot a bit of what we woke up to this morning. Happy snow day!

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The Harrison Family

There’s a TON of benefits of being self-employed. Not having a boss is only one of ‘em–but a good one, to be sure.

However, in a client-based business like photography, you really do have bossess–sort of–in your clients. Particularly when you shoot commercially, you’ve gotta be sure that you’re satisfying the people that are paying you. I don’t shoot a whole lot commercially, but Mississippi College is one place I hope to shoot for until I die. I do the photography for MC’s Beacon magazine, and Tracey (the mom below) is editor for that publication and MC’s Director of Public Relations. All that to say, Tracey is about the best project manager/editor/client/boss you could hope for. She’s incredibly committed to the Beacon magazine and really seeks out God’s direction for every issue. And the way He leads her with it is amazing. Really.

So, I like the Harrisons. I like shooting family portrait sessions. And, I REALLY like when you put those two together…


Bridges, Jim & Tracey’s son, is a little stud:

I love what’s happening here… a family just being a fun, happy family…

So glad I found these two massive rocks… this shot is high on my favorite-family-picture-of-all-time list:

Bethany & Jonathan

I loved everything about this session. The weather. The locations we shot. The couple. The fact that they laughed at my jokes. All of it.

I’m also pretty pleased with the way they came out. Wish I was able to photograph Jonathan & Bethany on their wedding day, but, I was already booked for their big day. I’m thankful, though, that I got to hang out with them and get some cool engagement photos while we were at it. Lots of fun…