The photographer on the wrong end of the lens / It's so rare that I actually get to be in a photo I just had to post this. One of the main reasons I became a photographer is because I think that overall I look like...well...let's just say I don't photograph well. Which again just reinforces how good a photographer Kelly is becoming. Or maybe Molly is just so cute she can overpower my un-photogenic-ness. ;-) Either way, here I am with Molly in the back yard last night.

Brandi & Eddie / July. Indiana. 4:00pm. Outside. I don't think 'hot' really describes wearing a black shirt, long pants, and about eighteen pounds of camera draped around your neck while trying to do formal portraiture outside in the sun. I just kept trying to remind myself that the guys were wearing full tuxes and just had to be worse off than me. Actually the heat itself wasn't terrible...only about 85F or so. But being July it was so humid that there was a haze hanging in the air.

But oh my gosh did we get great photographs.

I haven't the foggiest idea how Eddie is looking so cool and suave here, knowing how sweaty I was.



And as usual, I thought I nailed the killer portrait of the day when I was doing some solo stuff with Eddie before the ceremony (looks kind of like Robert De Niro, doesn't he??) ...



But then we start pulling cards around 11:30pm after getting home from the wedding, and I see this on one of Kelly's cards. Quite possibly the best flower-girl portrait I've ever seen. Okay, no 'possibly' about it, I LOVE this shot.



I'm amazed every week at how much Kelly is growing as a photographer. She consistently gets the great shots, and with this one showed me just how much a different crop can make one of our more 'stock' shots new and fresh again...



And finally, a couple other random shots from this rather sweaty, but very memorable wedding day...








PS: One last note. Brandi had the coolest idea I've ever seen at a reception. They did a traditional anniversary dance, but instead of giving the last remaining couple (the couple that had been married the longest) a flower or gift or whatever, Brandi surprised them by giving them her bouquet. How unbelievably cool. I like tradition and the bouquet-toss is neat, but this just blew it away. Everybody was tearing up. :-)

Toe Update / I know my snazzy black toe is the subject of much conversation (yeah, right), but since it is attached to my foot, it kind of sticks in the front of my mind. Anyway, update. Went to the doc this morning for an unrelated checkup, and figured I'd ask him about it. He took one look at it and said, "Yeah, that's definitely broken. We could send you for an x-ray, but either way I'm going to tell you the same thing: Ice it and it'll heal in 6-8 weeks."

Still looks pretty ugly (sorry, no picture goodness this time), but I've played (soccer) on it twice and volleyball on it once, and while it hurts like hell when I kick the ball or land from a jump, it's otherwise not a big deal. I'm wearing shoes again, and overall just kind of ignore it.

Leah & John's Engagement Photos \ Some recent engagement photos. This was actually the first time I'd met this couple, and it was fun getting to know them throughout the hour or so of the shoot. We managed to sneak in our photos between the threatening clouds, thunderclaps, and bursts of rain showers. It's challenging to shoot in conditions like this, but a lot of the time we can get a couple absolutely awesome shots if the clouds start to break a bit.

Brittany & Jeremy // Oh my goodness what a fun couple!! I don't know that we've ever photographed a couple so rooted in their faith, their community, and their family as this pair. Brit sang a song to Jeremy during the service and I think I was the only one that got photos of it...Kelly was too busy crying! (Just kidding, I know she got some shots of it, too.)

I love a good party-reception as much as the next guy, but I must say, Jeremy and Brittany's reception was a great change of pace. Very low-key, lots of family and friends hanging out and getting reacquainted, an overall focus on two families joining together. Awesome, absolutely awesome. There was no booze, it didn't run all night, but the 'events' of the afternoon were some of the most spirited and fun we've had the chance to photograph. I especially loved the bouquet toss...lots of girls having a great time!

Kel and I wish this happy couple nothing but the best in their future!! :-)

This is a rec league?!?!? \ I know I've mentioned it before, but for the uninitiated Kelly and I are gonzo soccer players. We'd play every night if we had the time (and money for league fees). As it is we only play in two leagues currently, and pick up a third league once or twice a year.

Well this past Tuesday night we were playing in our over-30 league. The league we play basically for fun and exercise. There's no trophy, there aren't even t-shirts for the league winners. So in other words, we're out there to kick a ball and get in a good sweat. Some guys, though, don't seem to understand that concept as well as we do. There's one guy who has kind of ehhh-so-so skill, but always seems to go in one step too far, and leads feet-first into every tackle. He regularly bowls over four or five people a game. I've been in goal against his team and gone through him a couple times on balls that were clearly mine. So the other night I'm subbing in on another team to get an extra game in, and playing the field instead of in goal. Ball is just hopping across midfield, and I go to clear it deep. All of a sudden there's six feet and about a hundred-eighty pounds of guy plowing into me, kicking and flailing away at the ball. And totally missing the ball, but beating the everlovin' snot out of my foot. Basically he kicked as hard as he could square into my toes. I've never...never...taken a hit hard enough to jam FOUR of my five toes. I can't even fathom what in the world he was trying to do as I was already on my follow-through finishing the kick when he clobbered me, but this is the end result...

I don't think it's broken. Nothing's really sticking out at an odd angle, and I can move it a little bit. But it's swollen to about twice the size of my other big toe and looks pretty funky! Molly calls it my 'boo-boo toe'.

iHeart my iPhone / So yeah, I succumbed to the ad pressure and snagged an iPhone. Actually I rationalized myself into it; with as much of our business being on-the-go, it makes good sense to have a fully-functioning internet portal strapped to my hip wherever I go. Plus the big screen and on-board storage make it a spectacular in-situ photo viewer.

I'll admit, I had some serious buyer's remorse, and almost packed the thing up the day after I got it. iTunes is a nightmare to sync correctly with Outlook, if for no other reason that it's got Apple's typical so-simple-it's-almost-too-simple interface. Come on, give me something to check when the thing doesn't work. Don't just pop up an error dialog and tell me it couldn't complete the operation. Give me an error number, a log file, a script line error, a debug option...something. The fact that I'd already loaded it with photos and music made me keep it another couple days, even with no contacts and calendar sync (which was another BIG reason why I'd gotten it in the first place--the ability to keep connected to my main Outlook-based calendar on the road). Finally, after much searching on the web and numerous attempts at reinstalling iTunes and repairing Outlook, I found that the problem was related to some Plaxo contact-management software I'd given a trial run on several months ago. When the software converted my calendar, it basically corrupted it to a version that Outlook could read, but nothing else could. So I created a new profile in Outlook, imported my recent emails and my old calendar information from the database, and voila, iTunes synced up on the first try.

So long story short, my iPhone experience is one of growing love. Did I freak out and think this was the second coming of the technological Jesus? Nahhh, not really. It's most definitely a first-generation device (no on-board games, no installation of new ringtones?? Come on, apple!), but it has grown on me to the point where I don't really miss my Razr anymore. Lost an address on the way to a dinner party? No sweat, open up the browser and hit up whitepages.com. <bing> Oh there's a new email from that wedding photography contact we had last week. What's that, you want to see some wedding photos. No problem, I've got our 'top-50' right here, let me run the slideshow for you.

Yeah, it's definitely growing me...

Brad & Tori Brad and Tori are a testament to the lasting power of love. They've known each other for more than fifteen years. They were apart for a long time and then love brought them back together. Wow, talk about destiny, huh?!

Photography-wise, this was an...interesting...day. ;-) We were supposed to do the majority of the portraiture before the wedding, but a couple of traffic-locked groomsmen had us sitting around before the wedding and scrambling after. As always though, I just rolled with the punches and rocked through everything on a shortened timeline. The reception was awesome--great dinner, awesome toasts, very cool location (The Indianapolis Yact Club on Geist). Here's a sampling of some of the photos...

Nick and Jenny...

What an awesome couple, and what an awesome day. We shot this wedding at the Mavris in downtown Indy. John Mavris is a treat to work with, and the venue is just gorgeous. The lighting can be a bit challenging, as there are a lot of deep, rich colors, but once we got the feel for what our cameras were doing, this turned out to be one of our best shoots in a long time.

Oh my god I need coffee. We have (had) one of those little one-cup coffee maker things, right? Well the little cup-insert thing that holds the coffee while it brews broke the other day. So I pull out our ancient 10-cup coffee pot. Open it up to dump in some freshly ground coffee, and -- oh what's this?! Whoever put the pot away last didn't bother to empty out the old grounds. Hmm, when was the last time we used that pot...Christmas when my parents were visiting, I think. Ewwwww. The innards of my coffee pot had become a rather unsightly science experiment. Take everything apart, scrub it like crazy, send the whole thing through the dishwasher overnight.

I actually had a nightmare last night that the coffeepot still wasn't clean and I couldn't have coffee this morning.

Got up this morning...absolutely dragging...all I want is a cup of coffee. Put everything together, it's nice and clean, yayyyy! Dump the last of my coffee into it, run the machine. When I go to pour a cup, some...thing is sitting in the pot. Looks like a chunk of something that I didn't get scrubbed out had floated its way through the system. Oh, the humanity!!!! Now I have no coffee...again.

<>