As you may have heard, Seattle is getting a lot of snow this week.  I decided to spend some time working on photos from the last wedding I second-shot in Washington (back in the fall)!  I’m going to miss working with Chris, but I hear he’s a big fan of the Upper Peninsula – so perhaps he’ll get a gig there sometime

Elliot and Serena were married at Tracy Castle in Buckley, WA.  The venue is nice because it’s tucked away from the busy city life, and had everything they needed for their big day:  dressing rooms upstairs, a great room (with awesomely tall windows) for the ceremony, scenic outdoor spots for formals, downstairs space with kitchen for the dinner reception, and even a gymnasium for the dance-floor & slideshow.  Some of my favorite details were the tabletop trees with ornaments (which served as a guestbook), luggage cake (they both travel around the world on missions trips) & the bridesmaids dresses.  The girls’ dresses stood out to me because they were each unique in style & color, but all coordinated together so well.  As the second shooter I tend to follow the girls around during the morning:  I thought it was amazing how much work they put into the floral arrangements, especially the cross!

As a current Seattle resident, I have to start out with the Starbucks shot.  Enjoy!

Getting our hair & makeup ‘did at Salon:Re.  I remember being sooo tired because I was up all night catching up with Michelle & Adrienne, my friends since middle school!  Totally worth it though – as soon as the ceremony started I was too overwhelmed with activity and happiness to ever notice I was tired

I’m so glad that we booked my former co-worker Amanda to capture our memories:  I can’t tell you how much time I spend re-living our big day through these beautiful images.  We didn’t even think about how well our colors would go with GVSU’s orange buildings — not to mention how lucky we were to get blue skies in autumn!  I couldn’t have asked for more comfortable weather.

I could go on and on about our wedding trip home… it was so great that I’ve been in a bit of a mental funk since returning to WA.  So, to get myself motivated, I decided to start entering photography shows again.  I was fortunate enough to be juried into Glazers Camera’s Holga Competition for the second year in a row!  Last time they had four different categories – but this time it was narrowed down to just portraits.  So when I planned to visit Kelly on our drive between southern & northern MI, I knew I just had to get her to pose for a few frames!  I’m so pleased that I did, because this image got my very first honorable mention:

There was a closing event at Glazers, and I got to meet one of the jurors Michelle Bates, and get an autographed copy of her book!  It felt really good that a few of my newer Seattle friends came out to support me – and even a friend from GVSU who also lives out here!  City of transplants

I was just notified that another photography show I entered, Shadows & Reflections, has accepted three of my entries!  I think that’s a new personal record for me, beating Edmonds Art Fest in 2010, in which I had two entries selected  This show is curated by June Sekiguchi, and will take place in February-June at University House Wallingford.  That’s right – it’s at a senior living center.  I loved reading this article about how retirement community art exhibits are quickly growing in popularity!  I can’t wait to see how other artists interpreted the theme.  Here are the pieces I had accepted:

The first two should look familiar if you follow my blog (I seriously thought I took those a couple months ago, not over a year ago…), and the third one if you follow me on flickr (sorry I’ve been neglecting you).

So there you have it:  how I’ve been occupying my time for the last three months.  Don’t worry – I’ve got plenty of new projects in the works, including:

• Promo shots for Bleeding at Dawn while I’m home for Christmas
• Hanging photos up for sale at Lah Lah’s Pre-Loved Clothing (new store run by three of my favorite Petoskey women)
• Blazing through a refrigerator full of expired film that was so kindly donated!

I did get a chance to get out and have a little fun on Tuesday.  I was chosen by one of my all-time favorite bands, Saves The Day, to photograph their live show at The Showbox Sodo.  Even better? – They were on tour with Motion City Soundtrack, Say Anything, and Valencia.  The line-up was very nostalgic for me: right after graduating high school, my friends and I saw Saves The Day open for Green Day and Blink-182.   Then in college, my new friends and I used to follow Motion City to every city from Chicago to Detroit.  A band called JamisonParker opened up for them on one tour, and that’s where the Say Anything connection comes in – Parker is now in their lineup, as is Kenny from the Starting Line!  Yeah, I was basically reliving 2002-2004, some of my favorite years.

So now you’ll understand why I had such a hard time narrowing these images down.  Enjoy – and expect a couple more to pop up on flickr.

Valencia

Saves The Day

Motion City Soundtrack

Say Anything

PS:  Max (Say Anything) and Sherri (Eisley) are my favorite celeb couple, ever.

It never fails that I have a hard time narrowing down wedding images when I go to blog.  There are so many different aspects of the day to highlight.  For me, the ceremony is what made this particular wedding so unique.  Soft acoustic guitar, no microphones, no pews… just a lot of love, hand-written vows, and even wading in the water.

In the photographic world, you can get an idea of what I’ve been playing around with (film!) over on my Flickr, and as always, concerts I’ve been photographing on Melophobe.  I’ve also gotten back into doing family portraits – I had three great sessions that I will be sharing on my main site soon.

But today I wanted to share some images from a wonderful workshop lead by Wolfgang Kaehler of Digital Photo Academy.  The theme was:  lensbabies!  I got my first lensbaby, version 2.0, several years back.  I had no access to film/darkroom any more and wanted something to give me that ‘Holga’ feel, with digital’s convenience.  That’s how I found this cool gadget.  The good news is that they’ve vastly improved with each design released:  we got to shoot with the “composer” today.  It’s so much easier to control.  About 20 of us armed with borrowed lensbabies started at Glazers, then took over Seattle Center for shooting in some exceptional weather.

*Special thanks to our model Angela.