I’ve been waiting and waiting to make this post!

My roots were always in and always will be in Agriculture. I grew up around livestock, always knew where my food came from, and went to college to study it. My first big photo assignments were for agricultural magazines out in California, and since moving to Colorado that’s one thing I’ve really been missing.

Well here comes the Clean Dirt Farm ,  a beautiful company with sustainable roots in Millet Production, specifically Organic Millet. Now many people may not know what Millet is or see it only limited to Bird Seed. However, Millet is naturally Glutten Free, so it’s a super healthy choice.The Clean Dirt Farm cleans and processes the Millet that farmers grow and ships it out to places like Whole Foods Market and countries all over the world.All of this in little ol Sterling, CO

So when the kind folks at the Clean Dirt Farm called me up to help them with a rebranding campaign and doing a few corporate type shots, I couldn’t wait!

It was a true blessing to be on this assignment, and I always feel at home when I can use photography and my passion for agriculture in one shoot.

Dear Canon. Could you please add better weather and dust sealing to the 5dmk2? Thank you

Once the Millet is loaded in the back of a Grain Truck, it is dropped into the processing plant.

Then the Hull is cracked apart and the seed is separated

Then you get an absolutely Beautiful Product ready for World Wide distribution.

Meryl and Her Husband. Together with a lot of hard work, dedication, and ingenuity, were able to make this small family dream a successful operation.

Scott Stebner and Alyssa Stebner are Ft Collins Wedding Photographers available for weddings and corporate shoots throughout Colorado, the Mid-West, and California.

There are moments in life that are so precious that you never want to forget the emotions and feelings both leading up to that moment and the very moment itself. We are so excited to share some of most precious moments in life and our most favorite blog post yet!  Well I will just let the photos speak for themselves…

Scott’s Parents opening up their Christmas Gifts.

A few weeks later, meeting up in Kansas to give my parents their presents.

God has blessed us with a new beautiful life to welcome into our family and I am so over joyed to welcome our new little baby into the world this August. We are so excited to share this announcement with all of our friends, family, and loyal blog readers! We are thrilled to become new parents and can’t wait to meet our beautiful child.

Scott and Alyssa Stebner….Plus 1

My new years definition goes beyond resolutions.

I’ve lived too much of my life believing things are out of reach; maybe not for others, but for my limited self. That this probably won’t happen because of that. That there is a cause and effect relationship between world events and my potential and future. My life up to this moment is full of little impossible moments that should not have happened, but did. Blessings that everyone told me were out of reach but somehow I grasped.

So if Impossible is no longer, what part of your dreams are possible? How would that effect your work ethic?  It was impossible to go to the moon once. It was impossible to fly. It was impossible  to do just about anything that is common these days at one point in history. How would that shape your plans? For me, if nothing is impossible, I can get published in National Geographic, I can get to under 200 pounds again, and I can go full time as a photographer.

How has impossibility been affecting your dreams, goals, and daily lives? What would it look like if you lived beyond what everyone else told you was impossible? Granted, if you want to fly, please don’t go to the rooftop or go and spend your life savings in Vegas.

Ok, we definitely got spoiled this year by the San Diego and San Luis Obispo climate this year. 79 degrees during Christmas??? Heck Yes!

We decided to take a little vacation to California for Christmas this year and spent our time braving shopping malls, Southern California traffic, Casinos.  Though it was weird not having a white Christmas, the fact that we could walk around in shorts and sandals at sunset kinda made up for it

I’ll have more on our amazing Christmas day in a blog post later, but wanted to share the breathtaking scenery of what I (Scott) used to call home. I miss CA, but I absolutely LOVE Colorado and seeing snow fall over the mountains. It’s simply beautiful.

I love Photography because it’s a snap shot in time, and 30 seconds can dramatically change an image.

30 Seconds Later

18 Months later, and she still takes my breath away!

Back to where I grew up…San Diego

San Diego Bay Area Landscape Sunset

CHARACTER

From our latest commercial shoot of the Clean Dirt Farm. The full blog will come out after the rest of the photos are put online at the farm.  We absolutely love doing Colorado Agriculture and Farm Photography. It’s our roots, and we love it.

Sooooo….we’re not quite sure how to describe the following photos from our Ugly Sweater party our Young Adults group at church put on, so we’re not even going to try.  However, the epic Shenanigans that took place over our white elephant gift exchange, ugly sweater fashion walk-off, and a very uncoordinated Wii Dance Party made it just awesome. Enjoy the following randomness. In the meantime, we’re headed out to Sunny California! Whoop Whoop!

Yup, We’re Special…..

It’s been an incredible, busy, and all around wonderful year.  With our last wedding of the year finished, it’s time to brew a cup of coffee, watch the snow fall outside, listen to Pandora, and reflect over the amazing people we have met, the memories we have shared, and the art we’ve been able to create.  There’s so many perfect things that happened this year,   so, for the sake of everyone reading, here’s a bullet point list

• Celebrated our 1 year anniversary…whoop whoop, and continue to fall more madly in love with eachother
• Met some amazing clients / new friends
• Hosted and taught our very first workshop with the help of some absolutely amazing friends
• Totally beat up our 31 by 31 list for the year
• Enjoyed our very first Bridal show experience
• Published in quite a few blogs, pretty darn neat.
• Rocked our world at the last Partnercon in San Diego.

Alyssa and I love doing “best of” posts, because it’s a chance for us to share the things that are closest to our heart…the art we’ve been able to create as artists, and a chance to share it with everyone else.

Alyssa and I needed to get out of the house. It was one of those days with the snow falling beautifully outside and staying inside would end up sucking the creativity right out of ya. So we impulsively jumped into our car, slid across icy roads, dodged debris from snow plows on the highway, and made our way to Denver to visit the Santa Fe Art scene and walk around Denver at night.

The crowds getting ready for the Parade of Lights in Downtown Denver gave us the perfect inspiration for some photojournalistic shots of the busy winter streets of Denver.

We used Silver Effects to edit these…not sure if we like it more than Alien Skin…might be posting a review later.

The Stebners are Loveland Wedding Photographers and Fort Collins Wedding Photographers available throughout Colorado, Kansas, and California.

Before We start with this blog post, we want to make a few things very clear.

1. Scott doesn’t usually have a Mustache. Actually, we found it revolting. Not so much mustaches in general, just Scott’s. He was doing no shave November, and when we decided to make a flier for our annual Ugly Sweater Contest, Scott decided it would make the photo that much better (or worse, depending on viewpoint) to shave it into a mustache.

2. Scott quickly got rid of the Mustache. It was Creepy. Meaning, for a brief moment in time, he was creepy.That’s not a good thing. Honestly I (Scott) couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror and avoided reflective objects. Gross.

3. We love ugly sweaters around Christmas time…not any other time of the year, just Christmas.

With that out of the way, we decided to go full force in the making of this year’s Flier for the Ugly Sweater Party and can’t wait to go thrift shopping while we’re in Kansas for Thanksgiving.

So without any more delay, here’s some creepy Holiday Cheer. Alyssa not so much…Scott very much so. Gross.

We blocked out the Address for obvious privacy reasons. But I mean, come on. If these photos don’t make you fall in love with us as wedding photographers, will anything? We hope you notice the sarcasm

I (Scott) absolutely love photography with a purpose. Part of that is I’ve always believed we are given gifts for the explicit reason of giving back. That philosophy led me to Africa twice and hopefully Thailand this year. This week we organized a photo shoot for our Church’s Mission Team with the purpose of encouraging others to pick up and go help those who truly need it. These photos will be used in a video slide show and print material for a campaign to call people to action and service to others who are less fortunate.

The theme behind it was having people who have gone on Relief / Missions trips around the world stand out and say “I went”. Not only I went to a foreign country, but I went to make a difference. I went to make a lasting impact with the purpose of bettering a person, a life, a culture. I went to give up my own desires and focus on those who truly need it. In these photos represents trips to Ethiopia, London, Australia, Thailand, Guatamala, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, India, the Philippines and more. The challenging being something simple. There are people who have a need in this world and they are desperate for people to help…will you go?

You’ll get a kick further down when you see our Home Made Studio set up.

And a quick composite for some banner work. Yeah, yeah, I’m modeling it up too

And some behind the scenes fun

Now for some basic lighting set up that anyone can do. Here’s a picture of our “Studio” which was actually the children’s room at our church. We had a white sheet for the backdrop that we “blew nuclear” with a bare bulb Alien Bees 800. I chose  a bare bulb light so it would also put a little Rim lighting on the back of the subjects.  On left was my favorite light modifier which is the 54″ Octabank and a little “kicker board” on the right. You can either pay a ton of money for an expensive reflector or go back to your old science fair project days and buy  a cheap white board. This was done to help fill in the shadows and ease that transition from the left to the right. I usually wouldn’t include a shot of such a “ghetto” studio, but I wanted to show everyone you can get amazing photos with very, very simple set ups as long as you understand the basic principles of lighting and creativity.

Scott and Alyssa Stebner are Northern Colorado Wedding Photographers available for weddings throughout Colorado and California. But, they will gladly travel to cool and exotic places