Ryan and Amy - The Colorado Wedding

This is the story of a boy, whom I have known since the day he was born, he is my nephew Ryan! I am so proud of him and his new bride, Amy! They are made for each other! Spend 2 minutes with them and you will see why!

This is one of my favorite shots from the day and there were over 700 to choose from! This one struck me because you can get a glimpse of the venue where the ceremony was performed in the background.

This is Amy's son! Look how sweet he is hugging Mama on her big day! He is such handsome guy!

This is Amy's daughter! She is so precious!! I love the way she is looking at them! This was taken immediately following the lighting of the unity candle.

And here they are the new Mr. & Mrs.!! They are so cute together! I wish you all the happiness in the world! Congratulations!! To see more click here!

We Are On A Photocation!

Yup, I am winging it to Colorado to photograph a wedding and I will be gone until Monday!! Yeah for me!! The kiddos and I are on our way to the airport as you are reading this, or maybe we are in the air by now or if you are a late reader, we may already be there!!

I will try to post some travel pics as we go but I won't promise anything because I will probably have my camera in my hands the whole time photographing all the wonderful things we will see on our journey!!

This will be the first flight for the Diva so it should be interesting! She is so excited and keeps talking about flying on a big plane to Colorado! Our newest thing is trying to figure out which animal will be on the tail of the plane since Frontier has animals on all of its fleet!

Well, peeps that is all for now! Wish me luck and look for some cool photos in the coming week!!

I am off to My Secret Place!

OK, I only wish I was off to my secret place but unfortunately I have too much to do to escape today! Off to Altamont to photograph the wedding of Tyler & Megan and then the reception that follows! Then the fun really starts because I will need to get all the photos edited and ready for printing! In addition to that I have to pack three people for Colorado, register the moody teen for school (he starts 3 days after we get home), shop for the knight so he has stuff to munch on while he we are gone (I know he will not starve) and the usual, laundry and housekeeping all before we go! I am tired just thinking about it!

I know I will need a vacation when I get back! Ha! That won't happen but it doesn't hurt to dream does it?

I hope you all have a great weekend! I will share photos of the wedding as soon as they are processed and ready!

The Beauty and the Baseball Bats

I had the opportunity to sit down yesterday with a lovely young woman, whom I have known for 14 years, to discuss her July wedding which I will be photographing. It was nice to catch up with her and her mom and step dad. Amanda is a girly girl who was into pageants and is now a teacher and cheer coach and is marrying a guys guy who loves the St. Louis Cardinals (she also likes them).

We talked for a while about her fairytale dream and then she threw me for a loop and said that they were thinking about walking through an arch of baseball bats that the groomsmen would be holding up, like the Marines hole up swords. What a picture that would make and how original to incorporate his favorite sport into the wedding. This thought only set my mind a whir with other photos that would be perfect for the groomsmen and maybe even the bridesmaids! I imagine there will be a couple of shots of the groom and his guys "playing ball" in tuxes and many other sports related shots! I am so excited!

At the end of the meeting Amanda asked if I was a ZTA and I was thrilled to find out that she is a sister ZTA from Indiana State University! How cool is that?

By the way, I thought I would throw a plug in here for Entrecard. This blog is now 5th (for the moment) out of 513 photography blogs and I am working hard to get into the top 3 because then my button would be displayed on the main campaign page for Entrecard! I think it is pretty cool but it takes a lot of dropping and a lot of advertising on pages with higher rank. Entrecard has also helped me triple my traffic to my page!!! If you don't have Entrecard check into it, afterall it is free!

We are spending the afternoon with Spencer's dad today so I will be out of the loop for a few hours! I just hope I can survive without my laptop! Today's picture is just a fun one I took for the heck of it to see how it turned out! Not my best work but it was kind of fun!

Playing With Fire!

Here is another photography experiment that was fun to try! The first results (bottom 3 photos) were not the greatest but I kept trying until it worked the way I wanted it to in the top three photos! I wanted to try this at home before I hit the road and set up the tripod to capture light trails from traffic. Zach was a willing participant, for the first three photos, because he got to play with the laser pointer in the process! I always warn him about the laser pointer and the hazards of shining it someones eyes. I did the top three photos after everyone was in be and I really like the results.

In one of the shots it acutally looks like Zach is on fire! Trust me when I say, no children (or animals) were harmed in the shooting of these photos. By the way, if you are going to try this please make sure that you are not looking through the view finder while your helper shines the laser pointer into the lens! You could really get hurt!

I really like the different looks between the ones Zach helped with and the ones I did on my own. The difference comes from the direction in which the laser was pointed in relation to the camera. The ones I did pointed toward the wall while the ones Zach helped with pointed toward the lens directly.

Anyway, I am a little bummed because I was supposed to meet today with a couple getting married in May to discuss wedding photography and they called to cancel last night! They hired another photographer, which is great but here is the kicker.......they hired a photographer who is also a deejay and he gave them a good deal! I am sorry but I think that the photographs will not turn out like the couple wants especially of the reception! Oh well, you win some you lose some and I am OK with that! I wish them well!

Check me out tomorrow when I post Playing With Fire 2 and see how I drove my husband looney with my photo taking project!!