Why So Serious?...

The best wedding albums are well rounded. They include: bridal beauty, best man "bromance," quiet romantic moments, family time and most importantly fun with friends. In the effort to complete the required shot list, its easy to miss the fun shots. 

But, sometimes my favorite shots from a wedding are the goofy, spontaneous ones.  The ones that let you know the couple is really having a good time on their wedding day instead of just making the rounds, visiting with guests and getting through each part of the day on schedule.  

Theses photos are some of my favorite "less than serious" shots from some weddings I shot this year.

Family Time

Spent a couple days on Torch Lake with one of my best friends, Ben and his family a couple months back.  His WHOLE family.  Every year they choose a different place for their family reunion and this year their spot happened to be just a 45 minute drive from home for me, so I made the trip out to be the honorary third LeBlanc brother.
It was a great weekend filled with food, drink, fun and family.  And, as with all the other times I've spent with them, they made me feel like part of theirs.
Got to be part of the themed dinners, the trips to local micro-brewery and even the family-first announcement of a new baby girl on the way.  Pretty special.  And to top it all off they let me bring my camera and have it trained on them all weekend.  Made plenty of memories and took plenty of photos.  Next year's reunion is already in the works, and whattaya know...they might just be doing it by me again next year.  Can't wait.

  

Wedding Season is Wrapping Up...

With October fast approaching and the temperature starting to drop we're coming to the end of another great wedding season.  But, fall is also a great time to get hitched! 

Northern Michigan has some of the best fall colors of anywhere in the world and there are so many outdoor venues to take advantage of those colors for your big day.  A couple years ago I shot a wedding for a friend and coworker of mine at Shanty Creek Resort the first week of October.  They had an outdoor ceremony, which in Northern Michigan, in October, is quite a gamble. 
 

Well, they drew a royal flush.  It was a gorgeous 70º day with the brightest orange leaves I've seen around here as a backdrop for their ceremony. 

The wedding was a blast.  Family and friends were all fantastic and had a great time.  And even with me behind the lens you couldn't take a bad picture outside that day!  Congrats to Brad and Erin (and their new little girl).  One of the coolest couples I've had the privilege of shooting. 

They're Oldies But Goodies...

I was digging through old photographs at my mom's house the other day and came across some photos of my grandparents I hadn't seen before. My Grandpa will be 90 this year and still makes the 35 mile drive every Monday to his Optimist Club meeting. He was flying P-51 Mustang fighter planes in China durnig WWII when he was 20 years old. I was sleeping through college classes when I was 20. He's been a fighter pilot, flight instructor, drummer, shown horses, ran his own advertising agency and, more recently, even beaten cancer.






My Grandma was a Gray Lady hospital volunteer.(The term "Gray Ladies" refers to American Red Cross volunteers who for many years provided friendly, personal services of a non-medical nature to sick, injured, and disabled patients in American hospitals, other health-care facilities, and private homes. Their work ranged from writing letters, reading, tutoring, and shopping for patients to serving as guides to visitors and as hostesses in hospital recreation rooms and at information desks. Gray Ladies also provided hospitality services in Red Cross Blood Centers and joined forces with other Red Cross workers in caring for disaster victims.) She just turned 88 in January.   She was diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago and now the doctors can't find any cancer in her body or explain why it's gone.  She's a medical miracle!


They are a couple of pretty cool people.


Now, this has kind of veered off track from the subject of photography, so let's try and bring it back around to that. It's hard to find photos like these old film prints today. Even with Photoshop it's tough to recreate the look and feel of going back in time these old photos convey. Somehow the lighting, the colors, and especially the people are just...different. I can't really say these pictures remind me, personally of "the good old days" because I'm only 28 and my my first real camera was a Canon Rebel 2000.

I used that camera for a high school photography class where I was a teaching assistant because the class didn't quite fit into my schedule, but I really wanted to take it. So I went part time and did all the assignments for no grade. It actually turned out to be a pretty sweet deal. From there, I want to college and my parents got me my first digital camera and it even shot video! (which was a big deal in 2001...I think.) It was a Fujifilm FinePix 4800Zoom. While it may not have necessarily helped my photographic career all that much it definitely was great for recording my friends and I doing stuff we probably shouldn't have in our dorm and around campus at Michigan State. Not sure what happened to that camera now that I think about it....


This is getting a little long-winded, so time to wrap it up. I guess the point of all this is photographs are the single best way to archive memories of everything important (and not so important) in your life. I have old cameras and old people ;-) in my life that all have a lot of great stories associated with them and all give me inspiration and drive to go out and shoot more pictures and create more memories for down the road. Go take a picture of someone in your life today and hang on to it Put it away, keep it through all your moves in life and pull it out in 20 years. See what you remember about it then.