• Welcome!

    Luster Studios is my personal portfolio where I share weddings, special events, engagement sessions and portraits. My origins stem from a fine arts degree in photography and computer graphics. My "style" is a perfect blend of creative ideas driven by a relaxed attitude and a fun yet thoughtful personality.

    Through a combination of posing and photojournalism I strive to capture planned and spontaneous moments that will later help you relive how you were feeling at that exact moment. I'm based in North Carolina and often travel to destination locations. I look forward to getting to know what inspires you both creatively and personally.

    - Craig Carpenter

Crenshaw Hall Weddings Engagement Photos (Abbey + Sean)

BABY it’s cold outside but these engagement photographs for Abbey and Sean’s wedding at Crenshaw Hall are sure to light up your screen! I had posted a bunch of teasers on Facebook back in November but am now revealing the full shoot. I’m finding it harder and harder with each post to limit the number of photos that I share so I might have went a little overboard here. :) When you connect with a couple so well and everything just falls into place I tend to want to just keep shooting.

Their wedding is coming up here in May and I think we’re going to create a sign-in guest book with these so I wanted to make sure that their friends and family could get a sneak peak! They also shared with me that they are considering a move to China sometime after the wedding to perform some mission work. For me, the idea that my clients can take these ever lasting photographic memory with them as they travel overseas really puts purpose to my work and allows me to enjoy it all the more!

I also wanted to take a moment to send out a big THANK YOU to Abbey and Sean. At the end of our session they offered to take me out to one of their favorite restaurants…. Red Robin. I had never been there before and gourmet burgers sounded good to all of us after a hard days work. There is something about “bottomless fries” that just isn’t natural. Those two words should not be together.

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Since they didn’t see me at first, these speed walkers laughed really hard after they accidentally walked through our shoot. They probably wondered what the heck was going on.

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A few shots to test their jumping prowess.

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They got a lot of air!

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Very sweet!

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The road near Crenshaw Hall was under heavy construction and I didn’t know that you had to go through the suburb to get to the Hall. The couple was good sports about walking but it turned out to be a bit of a hike through a construction zone. For this one I over exposed the background and did a bit of touch up in photoshop to create a clean white background.

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This banister is part of the bridal porch and is one most ornate (and oldest) examples of Italiante style in the South.

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Sean grabs a branch and starts shaking leaves onto the couple.

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I decided to take it up a notch so I climbed up into the tree for some aerial shots! A ladder probably would have been easier.

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Sean poses “king of the hill” style. Anyone want tickets to the gun show? Abbey DOES!

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We also went inside to photograph against this red damask wallpaper.

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I love this one as their traditional black and white portrait.

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A portrait of Sean while his fiance makes a wardrobe change. He looks like he means business here!

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Abbey was rocking some purple wedge shoes. I’ll admit that I don’t know as much about shoes as the average girl but I thought that these were awesome!

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This was also a favorite traditional portrait of them. While we were walking in downtown Wake Forest I saw a cluster of trees with bright orange leaves and I knew it would be a perfect backdrop for their purple and black outfits.

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It really makes them pop off the page!

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It took awhile to get this one with the shadows to look just the way I wanted but I thought it came out quite nice.

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Abbey’s engagement ring was beautiful of course!

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As the light began to fade we went exploring for a place to set up a mock picnic. We spotted an old house and decided that it would be perfect!

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Bales of hay never looked so good!

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I like the repetition and composition in this one.

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This is where Abbey and Sean REALLY impressed me! They were up for venturing in to this old house.

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We photographed a mixture of “serious” poses too.

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This could be their album cover… not for their weding album, but if they ever started a band. :)

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All the brick and dirt spilling out of the fireplace really helps to set the tone.

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Isn’t this one of the coolest rooms you’ve seen?

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I saved the BEST for last. In the words of one of Abbey’s friends… “It looks like something ripped straight from the pages of Vogue!”

7 comments

Leah - August 23, 2010 - 6:48 pm

THese are adorable and creative ideas great job

Angel - May 31, 2010 - 5:07 pm

Love your work, excellent, excellent, excellent photos and unique ideas.. love it!

Jessie Vernon - May 5, 2010 - 4:20 pm

AWESOME!! I just came across your site looking for some inspirational e-session poses.
What kind of lens were the last 3 shot with?

Lori - March 27, 2010 - 5:59 pm

Awesome pictures! You’ve really inspired me!

Amber - March 7, 2010 - 5:17 pm

AMAZING WORK! just totally found these randomly and i cannot stop looking lol awesome!

Brent Deitrich - January 15, 2010 - 12:15 pm

Love the pics Craig – what a great old house to find!

Candice {The Beautiful Mess} - January 15, 2010 - 11:00 am

Love the last image and location!! What a pretty day and such a sweet couple!

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