surprise!

a few months ago, i got an email from a lovely young man named fred. he wanted to surprise his fiance for her birthday with a photo session.

they're both archaeologists, and in addition to organizing everything with me, he also did his homework. he went scouting and had lots of ideas for locations. (usually, during these types of sessions, we agree to meet in a particular area, and then we kind of wander around with me randomly going, "here! here's good! stop. ok, um...where do i want you to stand." i always wonder if it's strange for me to be mid-conversation and then suddenly start flapping about and issuing directions...before pausing to figure out what i REALLY want them to do.

anyway...fred kept his secret right up until i met them at the copley square t-stop. he introduced me and then explained that i was a photographer, and we were going to do a photo session...he was so thorough, and he'd thought of everything! he even had her dress extra nice.

he wanted to bring in lots of structural and architectural elements, so i kept an eye out for those details while shooting.






i even noticed the spikes on the lamps outside the public library, and made him stand still so that i could make it look like he had the same headdress as the witch king of angmar-lord of the nazgul. (ok, for the record: i knew it looked nazgulian, but i have a LOTR geek friend whom i consulted to remember that he lived at the top of caradhras, and what is name was.)



i'd never been inside the boston public library before, but...it's amazing! i thought it was a museum at first.








i think this one is inside trinity church.


i love this outtake...it's not perfect, but it's a real and sweet moment.



fred even managed to WILL himself not to shiver so that they would look relaxed instead of just cold...i think he did a great job!

thanks fred and jessica for the great boston outing. i had lots of fun with you, and jessica--you're a lucky girl!

chris & kate: engagement

a few weeks month and a half ago i went up to south portland/cape elizabeth, maine to do engagement photos with kate and chris.

i love their story...they grew up on the same street...then met randomly 15 years later in a bar. she heard someone go, "is that katie?" and turned around to say, "who is calling me katie?" and left knowing he was going to look her up. she was right.

we met at fort williams park (which is SERIOUSLY cool, and i could go hang out there and jump around on rocks and climb on old fort structures for days.) and TRESPASSED...to get inside this area. yep...just ignored the signs...i felt so rockstar and dangerous. (hey, i'm a goodie-two-shoes...it doesn't take much.)


this is kate climbing into the abandoned structure that had "no trespassing" signs all over it. please note chris's head below her elbow. he was the short-girls' human stepladder.


more trespassing. woo.


chris was a ranger in the army a few years back, and he's still very much the "running, jumping, climbing trees" sort. "follow me!" indeed. i loved watching him with kate...he thrived on being her protector and helping her navigate all the precarious positions i asked her to get into. (to be fair, her jeans were very long and she was wearing some very hott purple heels.)


she looks so america's next top model FIERCE in this one...plus, you can see the hott purple heels.


when i saw this one, i actually gasped. out loud. i know...that's a little embarrassing, but...c'mon...it is steamy!


i do so love a good silhouette.

then we went to explore the fort part of for williams park. there were these forgotten and colourfully graffiti-ed bunkers that i, well, i guess we all had some fun with. in different ways, of course. mine involved crawling onto a ledge 100 feet above the rocky sea, theirs was a little more conventional...(and no, i do not have photos of me in precarious positions, but hire me...and you'll get to see for yourself. )




chris is a hoot, and he kept us laughing the whole time...kate's a lucky girl...if you don't have laughter, what do you have?




i love how peaceful and content and in love they look in this one. like everything is right in the world.



chris also made the two of them an awesome website... www.chrate.com
their tagline is: "stronger together"...i love that. that's what it's about, right?

belated.

happy new year, everyone!

what's the deal with time? it just barrels at you like a freight train, and NEVER gives you a break! i feel like i'm always on the run...anyone else?

and, because of that, and my oldest child penchant for "being right" and "doing it well"...combined with my fierce procrastination tendencies...i am always loathe to make new year's resolutions. because as i've been told...i'm "self-intelligent"...and i KNOW i'll probably give up after a couple months. (so why set myself up for failure? i mean, come on now!)

that said...i am also quite a goal oriented person, and i think i'm fairly good at making things happen in my life. SO...i guess what i'm trying to say with all this random psycho-babble is: i am so very, very cognizant of the fact that it has been a MONTH since i posted here. a month. and that is in no way because i've had nothing to say. so, one of my goals for 2008 is to be a much more prolific blogger. i don't have to have all 20 of my favourites ready to post here...it'll be o-k. :-D

keep me accountable, peeps!

before i go...amy flew in from WI to second shoot for me at the VERY fabulous 12/30 wedding i just photographed. (stay tuned!) we explored the north end of boston the next day, and she grabbed this shot of me...she loves it because it's so very quintessentially me: polka dots, camera, red, and you can even sorta see my red chuck taylors.


(ps: the super blonde is going away soooon...i am not the kind of girl who can handle maintaining those roots every 3 weeks. GROSS!)

claire & ben: engaged

i have a problem. i'm not very good with exclusiveness. i SAY i have favourites...but it carries a bit less weight when i tell EVERY NEW COUPLE they are my favourites.

so. claire and ben are my favourite couple getting married in february of 2008. the fact that they are the ONLY ones who've hired me for a wedding that month (thus far) should mean nothing to you, because if they were not awesome, they would not have earned the favourite title.

claire is a minister and went to harvard divinity school...she's very unassuming about it, and i had to ask her directly where she went to seminary. smarty-pants. i can't remember what ben does, but he is very nice, and he likes claire a lot...there is little in the world more endearing than a guy thoroughly wrapped up in his girl. maybe baby fingers/toes, but...that's a close one.



anyway, they met at...wait for it...adult kickball. isn't that the most amazing thing you've ever heard? it made me want to run out and join a league, but the closest ones are portland, me and the boston area, and neither of those are really close enough. so. i will sit here, living free instead of dying, in nh...kickballless.

but you didn't come here for that. you want to see photos, yes?

we met in newburyport, ma for our session...grabbed a few shots downtown, and then headed out to maudslay state park. there just HAPPENED to be a playground right near where we met, and apparently they were swayed by my pathetic longing...i've been dying to do some playground e-session shots for...many months. they were totally up for it and laughed right along with me at the logistical difficulties of positioning two adults in a child-sized crawl-through tube.


anyone who does photos with me in newburyport will have "the coke wall" shot. it is basically my favourite thing in the entire town.

(this was their favourite, but i think i like the next one just as well.)



one of the things i love about my job is getting to know the different couples who hire me...another wedding photographer friend of mine once described the relationship as something like...temporary best friends. i get to see lots of intimate moments and they've got to trust me to capture those things. i am genuinely interested when i ask about their stories...how'd you meet, what are your "things"...funniest moments, etc. claire's got one of the cutest "things" i've seen yet. she likes to smell ben's head. she pulls it down towards her, closes her eyes, and breathes in deep. "pheremones: they're real," she announced to me.



(kissing down by the river is better than living in a van down by the river, right?)



one last thing i love about these two: they've both got hyphenated last names...so they're picking one from each and creating a new hyphenated identity...just for the two of them...to start their new family. fabulous.

so, this one time...i actually ATTENDED a wedding.

my friends hannah and zach got married. and then they got married again. and then they had a wedding. we all find that quite tremendous. (he's in the army, so...the multiple marriages/ceremonies were for logistical AND sentimental AND tradition purposes)

their wedding-wedding was in oklahoma, and it was the first one i've attended...in a non-involved (ha!) capacity...maybe ever.

i went to my babysitter's wedding when i was little, but bek-the-sister and i wore our special jessica mcclintock outlet dresses and passed out programs. the flower-girl consolation prize...we were ok with it, because we got frilly pink dresses. i went to my honourary brother jeremy's wedding in 1998 and held the cup for communion...hey...i had to wear a pretty pink dress again and stand on stage, so...that counts as involvement, right? then bek-the-sister got married in 2003, and i spent the morning of the wedding frantically trying to finish my dress...and wishing to GOD i actually LIKED margaritas so i could relax. i've managed to not attend any of my college/hs friends' weddings because they get married in far off and ridiculous places like calgary, or south bend, indiana, etc...

i've gone to countless weddings in the last couple years...but when i'm behind the lens, it's quite different. so. this was an experience. i learned how to use floral wire and tape and made some really cute corsages and boutonnieres.


got to photograph the bride on the loo (i am extremely eccentric, and there is something about the disparity of the huge white dress, and the very non-ceremonial call to nature...combined w/ the fact that said white dress is SO HUGE that it renders the delicacy of the situation basically non-existent--that just cracks me right up!)


the distracted little flower girls walked in to "concerning hobbits"...hilarious AND apt.


the groom is a west point grad, so of course they had a saber arch...i had a sleeping flower-girl on me at this point as i was given child-duty so mom and dad could play their respective parts in the ceremony, so i didn't actually take this photo...i just directed. :-D


i love the light on this one


oh, and me...with sleeping flowergirl...who didn't get her nap that day, so it's a good thing i had snacks and toys and several years of childcare experience under my belt...no crying during the ceremony!


i totally helped design this bouquet. well...why not...i've seen one or two this year. :-D


the bride has 6 younger brothers...who decorated the car. this window says, "guess what we're doing tonight?" ha.


then some friends asked me to take a few pictures for them during the reception...doesn't really matter that i wasn't the official photographer, huh? 's ok. it's what i do.


hey look! i got them all to look...and the baby isn't crying or grizzling! i must be a magician.


course...sometimes the moments they don't know i'm watching are the best


then we had a little fun in the pastor's study...churches sometimes have...INTERESTING things in their closets. like john lennon wigs.


lastly...the afterparty...at which the army fellows demonstrated how long they can last before all the bud lights catch up with them. heh. (some of them did quite well. the one on the floor...did not.)


i'm feeling extremely motivated to catch up on TONS of things i did not blog about this summer/fall, so...stay tuned. and hound me if you don't see regular posts. nagging: it works!

that's just what i wanted to hear

i changed my hair fairly recently...(went UBER blonde.) i've had a few client meetings/engagement sessions since then, and i was mildly concerned that they wouldn't be able to recognise me because the photo on my website (and here) is me with darker hair.

but all of them said, "oh no...i could tell it was you from your glasses."

NICE.

have i ever mentioned how much i love my vintage cat-eye glasses? because...i so do. i spent an embarrassing number of hours searching ebay for JUST THE RIGHT ONES.

anyway...here's me w/ blonde hair and my awesome glasses. (taken w/ le macbookpro. please note the kitty litter to the left side of the photo. awesome.)

contrite

a friend just informed me that it is UNACCEPTABLE that it has been 20 days since i last posted here. i don't like it, but i am inclined to agree. please accept my humble apologies and recycle through some of my old excuses...because i don't have any new ones.

so...to appease her, and hopefully you, here's my favourite image from a recent senior portrait session i did with abi in portsmouth. iPod ad, anyone? (also, she's wearing a really cool hat...she doesn't have a funny shaped head.)



maybe if i'm really on top of things today, i'll post some of the few shots i got when i ATTENDED my first wedding in 4 years a few weeks ago...i was mostly not in photographer mode, because i was in florist, girl-friday, child-wrangler mode...

warm fuzzy emails

today i got an email w/ the subject line, "vegan shoe girl with backpiece". it was a guest from a wedding i photographed in may writing to say that she loved the photos i'd taken of her and her husband. (whenever anyone tells me, "i'm not photogenic...i always look _____ in pictures", i take it as a personal challenge.

so, i grabbed her and her husband (he was the best man), and did a 5 minute "mini-session" with them. also, she had a beautiful tattoo and awesome shoes, so it was just kind of coincidental that i wound up with so many stunning shots of her/her accessories/ink.

these are the photos she was talking about.

the awesome shoes


the back ink


her crazy-awesome blue eyes (and jovial best-man husband)




aren't they so cute?