Portland Wedding Photographers – Artistique

Who is Artistique?

Michelle

Michelle is a classically trained photographer who attended HTC in Minneapolis. Her background in wedding, fashion, advertising, photojournalism, and architectural photography has helped to mold Artistique's modern fusion style of photography. Among her other professional achievements, Michelle has held the title of Wedding Photographer of the Year or Photographer of the Year for the past three years from Professional Photographers of Oregon and has won Wedding Album of the Year for the past four years. She holds an A.F. P. degree with PPO and has just had two wedding albums accepted into Professional Photographers of America's International Loan Collection. In addition to shooting, she enjoys educating and regularly speaks at photography seminars.

When she isn't shooting or glued to the computer working on images or designing albums, she loves to spend time with her wonderful husband Justin, and the greatest greyhound in the world, Poopsie. They love traveling the world (especially the Riviera Maya!), camping, golf, watching football, gardening, going to the beach and hanging out with all their friends. Oh, and eating delicious food and wine!

Folllow Michelle on Facebook.

Justin

Justin and Michelle met in 2003 and started shooting together shortly thereafter. Justin brings an element of spice to their work, and loves working on unique poses and lighting. Known as the "Lord of the Rings", he is often found laying in the middle of the road shooting rings on the yellow stripe, or creating amazing shapes with shadows. When he isn't shooting, he runs his own business, Artisan Stainless, which specializes in custom stainless steel work for commercial kitchens and private residences including sinks, countertops, stove hoods, bars, and outdoor kitchens.

In his leisure time (what is that?!), Justin enjoys many of the same actives as Michelle but also likes to add "sleeping and iPad games" to his list and leaves the gardening to her.

Folllow Justin on Facebook.

Be sure to check out their blog, which they update frequently with current work and happenings.

Awards & Achievements:

2011 Wedding Photographer of the Year (Professional Photographers of Oregon - PPO)
2011 Album of the Year (PPO)
2011 Best Wedding Album (Professional Photographers of America PPA - Western States)
2011 Two albums accepted into PPA International Loan Collection
2011 Michelle receives A.F.P Degree (PPO)
2010 Photographer of the Year (PPO)
2010 Best Wedding Album (PPO)
2009 Wedding Photographer of the Year (PPO)
2009 Best Wedding Album (PPO)
2008 Best Wedding Album (PPO)

4 Kodak Gallery Awards
2 Fuji Masterpiece Awards

Friday, March 1, 2013

Our Album Received a Score of 99 at Western States Competition!!

We were BEYOND excited this week to learn that our wedding album scored a 99 at Western States Competition in California!! This competition is our regional one for Professional Photographers of America. It will go on to International Print Competition in the summer but has already secured a merit towards my Master of Photography degree. That, along with two more merits received for wedding images, brings me within one merit of enough needed to complete the requirements for the degree.An amazing photographer, Bill Sorenson, bet me $20 several years ago that I couldn’t earn my masters degree in three years. This is year three. I think I might collect!!

Monday, February 18, 2013

Awards at Professional Photographers of Oregon!!

We are SOOOO excited to be named Wedding Photographer of the Year from Professional Photographers of Oregon for the fifth year!! We were also awarded Best Wedding Album, Best Wedding Portrait, Best of Show (for our wedding album), the Wedding Division trophy and two Judges Choice awards (for the album and a wedding print). Congratulations to all the other winners, it was a great competition! I also had the honor of judging the competition (not my own entries of course!) plus presented a program on Album Design for Competition. Thank goodness I won best album, otherwise that might have been a bit… awkward. In additional to all that excitement, I was awarded my Fellow of Photography degree, which I have been working on for the last couple of years. I was SO excited to have my mom there to present it to me as Justin was out of town. Here are my treasures:

Monday, January 21, 2013

Top 27 from 2012

So I thought I would do a top 12 of our favorite images from 2012, but ended up with 27! Well, actually more, but I cut some down and still couldn’t get past 27. SO, here are (some of!) our favorites from 2012!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Wedding Album Accepted into the International Loan Collection!

We were SO excited to have another of our wedding albums accepted into the International Loan Collection! The Loan Collection is a hand selected group of images and albums that are chosen from those that score the highest at the Professional Photographers of America annual competition. This album scored the highest at the state level (Professional Photographers of Oregon), and second highest at the Regional Level (all of the western United States and Canada). Ironically, the highest scoring album at the regional level was also our album, but it didn’t get selected for the Loan Collection. Go figure!

Thanh and Huan’s wedding was FABULOUS, and we had a blast shooting them. They were natural models and so sweet together. Here is the album layout that we did for the competition.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Erin & Jeff, Azul Sensatori, Riviera Maya, Mexico

We had a great time shooting Erin and Jeff’s fabulous wedding at Azul Sensatori, in the Riviera Maya, Mexico! We had the perfect day for the wedding, then the day after did a sunrise trash the dress shoot, then later in the day headed out to a cenote to do some fun stuff both above and under the water! There aren’t many times Justin can shoot photos in swimwear and snorkel gear, so he took full advantage! I have to say it is a little challenging getting up before dawn for a sunrise shoot the morning after the wedding, but definitely worth it!! Here are a few of the shots from the wedding and day after shoots.