Living with Candice, I’d often wake up from a nap or come home from work {back when I had a “real job”} and hear the sounds of screaming and giggling, followed by a loud “smack!” accompanied by more screaming and giggling and Geoff yelling ” ‘Geoff’s the best’ Say it!!!” ‘Geoff’s the best!!’”.. From experience, I knew that I wanted no part of what was going on in that room.  More than likely, Geoff was sitting on Candice with her arms behind her back while she laughed too hard to get a “Geoff’s the best!” out and go on with her day.

Another funny story, Candice and Geoff met initially in like 4th grade, she was dared to kiss him on the bus, she did and Geoff was her first kiss.  He apparently rode his bike home after that, haha. Years later… here they are. Good times, good times. Now these two are actually getting married and it’s freakin awesome! We were going to shoot their wedding until they decided they didn’t want any friends having to work at their wedding, and I appreciate that! I almost never get to go and enjoy a wedding as a guest with all my friends, I am overly excited for this wedding. Anyway, here are their photos!

He has no patience…

Now that all those are out of the way………

“You see to me, comfort is the enemy. It stifles growth and it makes us complacent. Comfort makes us satisfied with the mediocre. Comfort keeps us in the “safe zone” rather than challenging us to explore that which is un-safe. Comfort kills creativity. Comfort keeps us from failing and we need to fall on our faces a lot in life to grow. The majority will seek out comfort. It is the “easy road,” the road traveled by many. I don’t want to be the majority. I want to be the minority, the exceptional, the seasoned, the absolute best I can be. So for me, that means spending more time in the valley than on the mountain top of comfort. It means facing fears and feeling completely out of my element a lot more than I would like. Ultimately comfort kills the greatness that resides within each of us.”- Sarah Rhodes {a fellow photographer}

Holy crap…. I read this and this is EXACTLY what I’ve been feeling lately. It could not have been said better.  I had a long talk with our good friend Josh in the middle of the night a few days back about this very thing, and she pegged it. Glad to see I’m not alone. I’ve never been someone that’s happy with creating mediocre anything, and it’s so easy to get into a phase of feeling the lack of challenge. All back in the day I’d give myself these ridiculously uncomfortable documentaries to go out and do, solely to make myself uncomfortable and force myself to grow as a photographer and a person. I miss that, so much. I’d hang out with homeless people, knock on random people’s doors and ask to photograph them, take photos of people who’ve just lost a child… it was hard. I forced myself to photograph everything I was afraid of. Now those photos just sit in large portfolios under our bed.

I chose to be a wedding photographer because I wanted to take photos that meant something to someone. Photos that displayed who people were and what they were all about. I never wanted to be someone who created things that didn’t matter. We are so blessed with this “job” and we LOVE what we do. I used to be a Fashion Photography major until I realized 3 things:

1. I can care less about fashion, I wear what I want

2. I’m not shallow or catty enough to make it in that business

3. I don’t want to spend my life taking photos that 14year old girls flip through in a magazine and couldn’t care less about

I think that quote was just the inspiration I needed to push it a little farther… and a little farther after that. A good thing to read right before we shoot a wedding today. Thanks you Sarah, someday we’ll have to get some coffee and talk further. Maybe I’ll post some personal work someday if people want to see it…. Actually, it’s our blog, I’ll post it if I want haha.

So wedding season has officially begun for us, I mean BUSY wedding season. We’ve had 2 this year so far, but March is when it gets nuts, we love it! A great kick off to the wedding season.

We arrived in the lovely San Francisco today after a weirdly long flight from Seattle. We were on the worlds more rickety plane that I felt more than claustrophobic walking on to. It was the kind of plane that made you feel like you could hold onto the wing while the plane was flying and not get sucked off. Then to a second, more normal plane where we I slept on a plane for the first time!! Played some iphone scrabble and had a nice conversation with the man near us.

Vlad and Jamie put us up in The Chancellor in Union Square, such a good location! I spotted a dessert crepe place and we had to go.. I love crepes and Nutella, my dream food! And it was delicious!! We continued to walk up the crazy hills of San Francisco for 2 1/2 hours (aka: when my knee caps fell off), then got a $5 coffee and a nice foot rub from my oh so amazing hubby.

We looked at where Vlad and Jamie are getting married tomorrow and it was AMAZING!!!! I saw it, not knowing it was their venue, and thought it was the most amazing house I’d ever seen. I’m giddy knowing we get to shoot there tomorrow!

home sweet home.. for the weekend

Thank you San Francisco…. Thank you…

One of the top 10 happiest places on earth in my opinion…

Best… husband.. ever. Minus the making my toe flip everyone off and calling me “Kimmy Giggler” for not being able to control my laughter.

We met Yen and Daniel back before we moved up to WA and after our meeting with them we were so excited to shoot their wedding, they were so laid back and just seemed awesome. So we’re super excited to shoot their wedding in May! The night before this shoot I was sick from some food and slept on the bathroom floor on a little bed Grayson made me, he stayed in case I got sick too, what a good hubby :]

Well we got up a 6:45 to do this morning shoot, and thankfully, I was A-OK. Our original place turned out to require a $100 permit to shoot at- no thanks. So we had a back up plan which worked out perfectly! It was a slightly rainy, very overcast day, but it was great. Yen packed a picnic for all of us and it was amazzzinningg!

We all sat and ate, they told us about how Daniel proposed, it was cute :] So obviously, this was a really fun shoot. We had to end early because Daniel was off to his Bachelor party in Vegas and then, as Yen put it “GAME OVER DANIEL!” haha.

best picnic spot ever!

Yen packs a fancy picnic. If we were in charge we would have been eating cold mac-n-cheese, haha. No good.

We had the great pleasure of shooting our lovely friends Candice and Geoff back home in CA. I’ve known Geoff sine I was about 18 or so and Candice was one of my fantastic roommates before I got married. {Oh how I miss the” SheShack” and the hours upon hours spent in our pool} But THIS is only a very tiny sneak peak to assuage Candice! I know the feeling of waiting so anxiously to see your engagement photos. She had to put up with me stalking my photographers blog every 5 minutes, waiting to see a glimpse too.

So here it is, a very small peak of what’s to come, and it only gets better.. This shoot was awe-some.

That’s all you get Candice!! For now… more to come soon, I promise!

Good day to you Love Birds… Usually my lovely wife is the brains behind the blog posts, but today I decided to give her a break.  She works so hard all the time and today I am trying to show my appreciation.  On Valentine’s Day we try to shy away from all the traditional stuff… a candle lit dinner, 12 long stem roses, a heart shaped box of chocolates that you got from Costco in bulk (one for your wife, one for you, and one for your mom), and that giant teddy bear that you eventually give to the dog as a chew toy… are just not our style.  We like to take a more creative and sentimental approach to the whole thing.  So, here is our best shot.  It may not be much and it probably doesn’t get every girl’s heart racing, but it’s what we do.

Today is a sort of special day for us… our first date was on Valentine’s day… in IKEA.  Oh, that’s not a typo… IKEA baby!  Take note all you men out there still trying frantically to think of something to do tonight to win your lady’s heart.  Millions of couches, manufactured rooms and meatballs won my lady’s heart.  Enjoy the day and don’t be afraid to tell someone that you love them!  Go make dinner and shock all the restaurants out there expecting their place to be a zoo!  Happy Valentine’s Day!

home made oreo cookies from the wife and yes… Heather ran out of room for the “e” on Valentines… it’s a long word!

So we just bought a bunch of Ryan Berkley’s animal portraits, {which we love.} But there was a lack of ferret pictures- they’re just not as appreciated as they should be. So my present to Heather was “portrait of a ferret”, I thought it was a pretty cool present {so did she}. Also my first ever painting.. first finished anyway :]

Glasby cookies and milk in our Glasby Christmas mug.

So anyone who knew me in school knows I can’t truly love any format but medium. There is something about a square, film image that just gets me going. All through college I had a Hassleblad of a 4×5 view camera attached to me and was off shooting some obscure documentary or typology. I somehow turned into the go-to person for questions about shooting in a square.

I worked in the photo lab at school for 2 years so I got all kind of perks: equipment whenever I wanted, dark room whenever  I wanted.. it was great!! So after I graduated and was cut off from all equipment I was screwed and could only shoot digital.. It’s fantastic for weddings, but not the same for me. SOOOO, for the past few years I’ve been slowly buying pieces to finish my Hassleblad. I have to say,  I had a few horribly ruined days thanks to crazy bidders on ebay stealing the lenses I wanted.  AND THENNNN Grayson bought me my awesome film scanner for Christmas that I had wanted since I graduated (gave it to me a month early because he was so excited). I was supposed to get it for my birthday but we found an awesome deal on a Hassleblad body so I got that instead.

But in the mean time, I shoot my Holga like it’s going out of style. I love how… crappy it is. It’s like the Polaroid ({RIP} of medium format cameras. It’s completely made of plastic and has been a trusted, always on me camera of mine for many years. That grungy, used up, dirty look that I can’t get enough of.  I finally got some down time to scan all my old film that’s been sitting in a box in my closet, begging to be seen. Here are some of my favorites!

Seattle

drove by these horses on one of our summer scooter rides.

all of us at Larabe State Park, the boys were crabbing

We laughed at this one.. his head really isn’t that square in real life…?

Oh Washington….. :]

The Lynden Fair… it’s the largest fair in the Northwest.

Cooper and Michelle’s engagement…

Another summer scooter ride find.. I love houses. Did a whole documentary on them once.

Bellingham, WA

First Starbucks ever… I worked at the Bucks for 4 years so I wanted to see it, kind of anticlimactic.. but a cool band outside.

We met Tina and James for the first time at this shoot and they were awesome! We all made the trek up to Big Bear to do a mountain shoot and it was worth the drive! Well, Grayson drove, I fell asleep for part of it then chugged some coffee. First thing we noticed is that Tina and I were wearing the exact same p-coat (only mine is teal) and we both got it like 5 years ago on sale at Nordstoms.. small world! Anyway, we started shooting in the snow and found some awesome places, had a good time, froze to death when the sun went down and went on our ways! And let me just say that Tina has BEAUTIFUL skin.. it was amazing! We can’t wait to shoot their wedding!!!

We had the pleasure of shooting Courtney and Joe again for their wedding this time. We took another trip down to CA for a few shoots, one you will see next and the other got rained out so it’s to be continued! All we had was the address of a house to do all the photos at and it made us a bit nervous. Then we pulled up and all our fears were gone. We came and it was this amazing, beautiful hotel of a house! Their ceremony was in Santa Ana! So we spent the day with them and had yet another good time.

Courtney collects buttons so  Joe gave her this purple one and her mom made all her jewlery.

I wish this was my back yard!

They both had adorable custom made converse, so cute.

So 2009 was great, we got married, moved to WA, and shot some super great weddings! This was our last wedding of 2009!!! We… LOOOOOVED.. this couple. They were the sweetest people we’ve ever had the pleasure of shooting, and so freakin happy!! Needless to say, they were a breeze to shoot. Janessa and Jason got married in Oceanside, CA at Camp Pendleton because Jason is in the service. AND, they had almost the exact same brides maid dresses as we did, same color, same fabric, same dress (only ours were strapless)…What a good way to end an already awesome year! So take a look and enjoy!

Their first look was so stinkin adorable, they were both so giddy. They didn’t need any help being awesome in these photos.

I love this photo… so much…

we love mugs.. grayson has a crazy collection, he’s obsessed.