And she’s pregnant. So instead of photographing the whole family like we did in 2009 and 2008, we decided to mix it up a bit this year and just get some maternity pictures.

Here we go. The lovely Stephanie Brubaker:

Important sidenotes – Four things:
1- Stephanie gets her hair cut from Patrick at Shep Salon. Go there. They are amazing. She got her hair cut just before she came to the studio for this session. She looks amazing.

2- Huge thanks to Diana Palmer from Yan Photography who let me use her studio for this session. She’s in the same building as me (just down the hall!) and her studio was perfect for our intended purpose. Diana is so awesome. Check out her website.

3 – Interested in maternity or family portraits with the people you love? Call me. I’m currently booked until August 23rd and have available after that just for you. A handful of days are open in September and October. It’s not too early to be thinking about that family picture you’ll be sending out with your Christmas card this year. My contact info is here and our portrait pricing is here.

4 – I love my job.

Thanks for coming, Dave.

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Justin Hackworth Photography: We’re not just making pictures, we’re making history.

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Justin Hackworth photographs happy people and beautiful events and wants to photograph you.

Meet Megan and Mark. Two people I wish lived in Provo.

Megan is hilarious and proves it on her blog, Remarks from Sparks.

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Justin Hackworth Photography.
We’re not just making pictures, we’re making history.

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Justin Hackworth Photography – We’re not just making pictures. We’re making history.

Here’s Laura and Elisa, photographed at Balboa Park in San Diego.

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Justin Hackworth photographs families, mother’s and daughters, brides and grooms, and he wants to photograph you. We’re not just making pictures, we’re making history.

People treat you different when you work in a parking booth. Who cares that you have hopes and dreams and someday you plan on leaving that parking booth to make a name for yourself. Who cares because someone tipped over the garbage on level three so go clean it up, buddy. People do treat you different, but not everyone does.

My boss at the parking lot was Patricia. She treats her gardener the same way she treats the guy that owns the company we worked for, which is to say, with respect. It’s been a hundred years since I worked for Gastronomy, but last week Patricia called me up. She is going to publish one of her books and she wanted some publicity photos. It seems back when I was just learning about photography I asked everyone I knew if I could photograph them. I even asked my boss Patricia. When she called me last week she said I’m the only person that’s ever made a picture of her that she liked.

Meet Patrica, photographed in her home in Salt Lake City.

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Justin Hackworth photographs mystery writers, parking lot attendants, people that need their tires rotated and he wants to photograph you.

Back when I shot film, I loved busting out the contact sheets from the previous years and seeing if there was an undiscovered gem that I hadn’t found before. Like a little treasure hunt. You go back with fresh eyes, and maybe the emotion you felt when taking the pictures has faded a little, so you’re looking at the images with a new perspective.

One of my favorite photographers, Gary Winnogrand, used to wait a full year before he developed his film for this very reason. He would shoot the film and set it aside for one year before he even developed it! I could never do that. I’m too impatient. But for him, looking at them too soon clouded his ability to select the strongest images based on the image itself, not on how he felt at the time he made the picture.

So for me, what I’ve discovered, is that some of the pictures I respond to initially are the same pictures I respond to a year later. And yet, there are some surprises when you find a really great picture that you really didn’t notice the first time around. And I like that feeling. Like when you find a 20 dollar bill in some pants you haven’t worn in a month.

So, if you care to spend five minutes, this slideshow is a portfolio of my images from the past year that I find compelling. (There might be a handful that fall outside that one year range). Enjoy.

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Justin Hackworth photographs happy people and beautiful events and he wants to photograph you.

So, hang tight on that. I’m home now, so we’ll get that straightened out very soon.

Vegas. My wife and I went there for WPPI. It’s a convention for wedding and portrait photographers. 12,000 attended. Sometimes, it seems like there are that many wedding photographers here in Provo. Maybe there are that many. Who knows. And so, for the last few days, we’ve been meeting new people and saying hello to old friends. We got up early and stayed up late. Fun, yes, but also exhausting. It’s good to be home.

We were supposed to come home yesterday, but I was riding my son’s scooter, trying to chase him. He was on another scooter. I fell down on the cement, and on the way down, somehow jacked my foot. I think I smashed it into the scooter on the way down. In any case, I couldn’t walk on it, so we decided to stay another night in St. George. (Truth is, I find every excuse I can to stay as long as I can down there.) This morning I woke up and my foot was nearly as good as new.

So we packed up the car and drove back to Provo. We got here about 45 minutes before I had an engagement session scheduled. I’ll post them soon. Cute couple. You’ll like them. They’re in love and they can hardly stop smiling. Before I left St. George I sent out a Tweet and asked if anyone wanted to help me out on the shoot. To my great fortune, Mindy Gledhill said she could help me out. Great thing about that, is I’ve been wanting to meet Mindy, so it turned out just perfect. And just as I suspected, Mindy is charming, charming.

I’ve got a quite a few things to post on the blog over the next week, so stay tuned. Mostly, I just wanted to say I’m back from Vegas and I’ll get going on the 30 Strangers.

And now, Mindy Gledhill.

They needed a picture of both of them for the Church News and gave me a call. Cindy showed me a sample of what they were looking for. Pretty straight forward. I said, sure, let’s get that picture, but then let’s do something a little more Justin Hackworthy. So this first image is what they need to send to the church, the others are because if you’ve got a few minutes with Steve and Cindy Clark, you might as well take that opportunity to make something special. After all, I won’t get a chance to photograph them for another three years.

Seriously, what family wouldn’t want photographs like this? Look at that image #3. That’s one of my favorite portraits I’ve taken in a long time.

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Justin Hackworth photographs happy families that like Mates of State, Rilo Kiley, Tegan and Sarah, Passion Pit or Tuba music and he wants to photograph you.

Courtney has been using a headshot I took of her last year when she had blond hair. Now that she has brown hair, it was time for a new headshot. That’s where I come in. I drove to her house on Saturday and we had a great time. She doesn’t know this, but if it wasn’t for the appointment I had scheduled immediately following her portrait session, I may have stayed at her house all day.

Her blogs are here:
blog.cjanerun.com
and
cjaneprovo.blogspot.com

Last week, I was on a panel at the Alt Design Summit. Let me just stop the story right here and tell you that the conference was so great. It was for folks that blog for a living, and it was specifically geared towards those that blog about design, but it was attended by all kinds of bloggers. For me, the best part was meeting the folks that write the blogs I love. I knew Kathryn Storke would be there from Snippet and Ink, because she was listed as one of the speakers. But I didn’t know Jen Campbell from Green Wedding Shoes would be there, so that was a great surprise. You can view the complete speaker list here, and as you can see, this was a real rockstar group of speakers. Heather Armstrong from Dooce, Stephanie Brubaker from Stephmodo, Sarah Wright from Sarah Jane Studios, Grace Bonney from Design Sponge and the list goes on.

So back to the story. I was speaking on a panel at the Alt Design Summit and the other person on the panel with me was Karen Walrond, a beautiful women, talented writer and photographer. And, as it turns out, she is the one that emailed me from Texas that wanted to be part of the 30 Strangers project last year. How about that! We had a great time getting to know each other the night before our panel. The next day, we photographed each other. Then we gave great advice to some people on the topic: Photography on the web. Thanks to the Alt folks for inviting me, and a huge thanks to Amber Roussel for moderating the panel and coming up with such astute questions. Amber, I wish I would have been able to photograph you, too. Next time, huh?

And now, I give you the effervescent and magnetic Karen Walrond:

Karen is sweet, sweet. When the panel discussion first began, when she was introducing herself, she said to everyone there, “…You know, I’ve been around celebrities and I never get nervous or anything, but when I found out I was going to be on the panel with Justin, I thought, Oh my God, JUSTIN HACKWORTH.” Ah, Karen. You are great. You know how to make a guy feel good about himself. At that moment, I was ten feet tall.

And here are some pictures she took of me and Amy.

I love those pictures. I’m uncomfortable getting my picture taken. Karen set me at ease, then knocked it out of the park.

One last picture from the Alt Design Summit. Here’s Grace Bonney in the lobby of the Grand America hotel just as I was leaving. I wanted to say hi, but she’s a busy girl and I didn’t get a chance.

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Justin Hackworth photographs photographers from Texas, bloggers from New York, and he wants to photograph you.

Photographed in Provo, Utah.