Sammie has a very loving and supportive family… both her mom and dad came over to Bear Lake with her for this shoot and we set out to find SOME sand, haha… this year at Bear Lake that is a real challenge!  A lovely girl, nice hot evening!

This was the first shot I took, in reality it was just a light check, I knew it wasn’t focused, etc etc.  When I pulled up all the images and then I kept looking and looking at this throw away image that was not “technically correct” and found it really really cool and interesting…. When I couldn’t stop looking at it, I wondered if others would feel the same!

Tami is gorgeous and easy going and great to work with.  Remarkably she showed up to our bridals on time!  I told her I think that was a first for bridals… getting into the dress and hair and the whole shpeal always ends up being a bigger time suck than girls think.  I just finished shooting her wedding this last weekend, so we’ll see that later on down the road, but it’s official for this bride now, she’s a MRS!  Congrats Lady!

Okay, here is the extended version of the previously teased bridal session.  Katie came with her sister-in-law and we just had a fun girls’ outing.  Katie is a fun and beautiful model, and the session just turned out so lovely.  The leaves turned out to be this very pleasant surprise and I was totally in love with the colors.

Have about three projects in the wings waiting to be finished and posted, and hello, one of them is this session!  Awesome, no?!  This bride’s big day is coming this Saturday, she’s gunna knock them out!

The rest of this bridals session will come in awhile, but really not to toot my own horn because it’s mostly a beautiful girl, but yes, they’re all this beautiful.

It must have been a very hot summer.  Every time I look back on these shoots and think of what I want to say I think… ‘that was a hot day!’  Much like the last wedding, this was ALSO a very hot day.  So sweaty, so hot it was hard to stand in the sun.  For Whitney even just having black shoes made her feet burn.  However, we as always soldiered on and I think we got some lovely pictures.  Some of these even, ironically, have a ‘cool’ feeling to them.  Whitney is super lovely, and I’m excited for her wedding, which at this point is not very far away.  Just a week Whit, get excited! 

Danelle actually got married awhile back.  While we were taking her real bridal pictures I  mentioned how cool it would be to get a bride IN the water, after the wedding of course.  Well we all know brides can be somewhat attached to their dresses, but Danelle thought on it and decided that she was actually interested in something like that.  She said she’d rather have cool pictures than a dress in a box somewhere.  So we did it!!!  I thought it was really fun and different, and all the people walking by who were totally shocked at what we were doing were priceless!  Also, we froze our butts off.  Me just my feet and legs… Danelle, well, she more literally froze her butt off.  What a fun model though.  When you tell her to go for something, she really will.  Thanks Danelle, I’ll get you the prints real, real soon!

It’s my opinion that bridals and portraits are the hardest things to pose for.  Being all alone without your fiance, or family, etc to share the spotlight with you is a bit intimidating.  I find people to be the most hesitant and nervous at this type of shoot.  They often worry it’s not going well or they’re not doing a good job, when in fact it’s fine.  Heather was a bit worried.  She kept saying, ‘I’m not doing very well’.  I kept assuring her she was doing GREAT, and I am tooting my own horn in several ways here, but I think the photos below prove that I was right.  She’s beautiful and she did do great!

At the end of this next week this exceptionally beautiful young lady will be getting married.  So cute, and so in love, I can’t wait to see them on their wedding day.  Good luck kids!  See you soon, when you will be man and wife.  Wowsa.

I hate how difficult it is to find decent venues inside to shoot.  Either it’s ‘not allowed’ or it’s only allowed if you have an event booked in their facility, etc.  For Maggie the challenge was to go inside, because she didn’t want to take chances on poor weather… which at the end of November, are pretty darn high!  So this is what we came up with:

I met Jenny for the first time the day of the bridals.  She lives down South, so therefore we’d only talked on the phone.  Jenny is a photographer herself and it’s always a compliment when someone who enjoys photography, enjoys YOUR photography.  I also kind of enjoy knowledgeable opinions on occasion like, ‘I really don’t like soft focus effects’.  Helps me know a little more how to tailor the prints!  I actually got the editing done on these awhile back as we rushed them to get some prints for her wedding just a few days later, however, I still wanted to put them up and hadn’t yet.

We took all these pictures on a golf course, and Jenny, myself, and her mom and sister-in-law are all still just greatful we didn’t get hit with a golf ball, although or friendly attendant from the golf course kept making us feel like perhaps that was an imminent thing! Ha!  He was a funny old man and he drove Jenny around the golf course as her personal escort and the rest of us drove behind.  It was a new experience for me!  I decided I do like driving from location to location in golf carts, I don’t like feeling like I’m going to be hit.  Guess it’s a trade off!