Good News!

Some of you may have noticed in my A.W.O.L. post a few weeks ago, where I mentioned I had lost my future brother-in-law's wedding photos. I found them...on my laptop which Eric stole at the beginning of the semester and I've rarely seen since. Those fiancees! Gotta watch them!

What you see here is the random assortment of photos taken by a disoriented photographer--you'll also remember from that post that I had just stepped off a plane from a foreign country that had almost been hijacked by terrorists. I was not the official photographer at this wedding, just a semi-related snap-shooter with a really expensive camera. And in honor of the fact that it is almost my wedding (3 more days) and two months since their wedding, I decided Chris and Melissa really needed thier hapshazard assortment of family-taken wedding pictures. Enjoy!

The following two shots are my experiments with two failed and blurry pictures. I like the lighting so I turned them into watercolors in Photoshop. Let me know what you think.

Melissa throwing the bouquet...

Eric tackles his sister, Kayla, in an attempt to wrench it from her hands. I'm glad he's gonna be my husband and not my brother...I don't think I could handle that!

Chris removes the garter...

The escape...I love this shot! They look so happy...and there are bubbles.

Hearts, flowers and cowboy boots

This was one of the most entertaining bridal sessions I've done with Belle's yet. Heather and her fiancee are planning a western wedding and she's got the denham in her bouquet and the cowboy boots to prove it. More than that, Heather was willing to climb fences and roll around in the grass to our hearts' content...which made for some really fun shots!

Cruella dogsits...and likes it!

Meet my fiancee Eric...and Crackers. Last week some friends were out of town, so we took care of their dog Crackers. Origanally a lap dog, Crackers spends the majority of her days now in the backyard playing with the two most adorable kids in the world. However, for a week she pretended to be our dog....and we walked her every morning and night (although we found out she's been on a leash previously maybe once in her life) and played ball with her (well...Eric kicked the ball with her...sometimes at her, but she always caught it and brought it back) and let her sleep with me in my bed (hence the red blanket over the brand new cream colored bedspread). And it was a blast! Even Eric the "I-Hate-Animals" spokesperson could be caught scratching her ears. Tee hee.

Aren't they cute playing World of Warcraft together?

Kayla! (...and Darby) part II

Kayla and Darby part II: formal portraits

This was another learning adventure. We had two main differences between this shoot and the first shoot. The first one was that my assistant switched--where Brittany, Kayla's roommate and Darby's other girlfriend, helped me out the first time, my fiancee (husband in ONE WEEK!), Eric, helped on this shoot. And while he was great technically, he wasn't nearly as good as Brittany at getting them to smile and act goofy. They weren't as comfortable with Eric as the were with Brittany either. The other difference was the clothing. We wanted some of their engagement pictures to have a more formal feel, so we dressed them in more rigid clothing than we had for the first shoot. It hadn't yet occured to me that clothing could transfer to personality. I think there are some good shots, but they don't have the comfortable energy the first set did. Let me know what you think.

The Jello Jordan River and chocolate candy monuments

So, my friend Jen and I are teaching a bible class at church this semester, and while we started out on a great foot with the kids, I think we may have blown it with the parents. We're studying Joshua and we got to chapters 3 and 4 where they haul the Ark of the Covenant out into the Jordan and cross on dry ground. Then they get to the other side and build a 12-stone monument out of river rocks. We built ours out of candy...and then we ate them. Oooops. We also had a 9x13 pyrex pan of "Jordan River," flavored in blue berry burst. We definately ate that...all five of us...out of the same river...at least we had seperate spoons. So our kids came running down the stairs with their chocolate monuments, really excited about it, only to show their moms, who were thrilled with the prospect of chocolate filled children (not that it has any effect whatsover!) and thier little brothers and sisters were upset that they didn't get to build one. Next week we plan to take down the Jericho wall with Kazoos...do you think we'll be fired or not?

Kayla! (...and Darby)

Sunday I took one of my most enjoyable engagement sessions--but it helps when you're good friends with your subjects! Meet Kayla and Darby, engaged to be married July 07, 2007. They were absolutely adorable and this is session one of two...a few more formal pictures to come!

Photographer's note: since I didn't know what size Kayla and Darby would need or how they would be using the pictures, I didn't do any additional photoshop cropping.

So the title: when I started this blog, I was living with our friend Kalyn (don't get confused by all these K's!), who ended up being the subject for most of my posts there in the beginning. So now that we had an excuse to take pictures of Kayla, she's very excited to have an entire post dedicated to KAYLA! (....and Darby.) Now for the pics!

Quick funny story:
I needed an assistant for distraction on this shoot, so I enlisted Kayla's roommate Brittany. So to get this shot, I positioned Brittany to my right and said,
"Kayla kiss Darby, Darby look at Brittany."
To which Kayla quipped,
"That's the story of our relationship right there!"
and I laughed.

Some of these shots are my first attempts at taking shots similar to Mike and Holly, who I am interning with, and Lauren Clark. I think I still need some practice...anyone else getting married????