michael and cristina have been amazing friends to me, and i was delighted to be able to shoot their wedding. you’ve seen them before on my blog, so at the risk of sounding much too redundant, i’ll just reiterate that i love them to death and i also love their love!! a handful of our mutual friends from all over the country and world came to the wedding and joined the rest of the guests for a glorious evening. cristina, her maid of honor jemima and i were the only ones around as she got ready, and it made for a very peaceful and intimate time. michael joined us once cristina was ready and then the four of us headed to the park to meet up with the wedding party and family for photos before the ceremony. all of it was beautiful, and relaxed, and to interject something out of place, the food at the reception was freaking AMAZING HOLYCRAP. i still salivate over the photos of it. the whole day was amazing and they even included the guests in dances specifically for everyone’s entertainment! they were brilliant hosts alongside being an impeccable couple. i’m thrilled that i know them and i’m thrilled they’re together.

on a personal side note, i also realized that i’ve been fighting my wedding style too much. their wedding made me realize that i’m very much a documentary wedding photographer over a more posed look. i had yet to understand or accept that about myself but am glad that i’ve come to realize this. that was kinda huge for me. this was my last shoot with the nikon d300 before i switched back to canon, and this is also my first shoot that i’ve ever exclusively processed in lightroom (many thanks to keaton andrew for the help on THAT one!!).

NOW LOOK AND LOVE THESE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE LIKE I DO!

PHOTOS!

a token group shot, with, well.. that same inside joke — poor michael.

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i’ve known caleb for quite a while. he’s been my brother’s roommate for years and a consistent source of entertainment – he’s a very fun dude. he also has vowed to not stop asking me to make him tuna dumplings until i do, which was a mistake to tell him about to begin with (they’re very good however). i asked if caleb and jenna would be game for an early morning shoot, so at 6:30am we broke out into the sunlight and they took me to some pretty sweet locations. congratulations on the impending marriage, and i hope someday you’re able to try some of those delectable tuna dumplings caleb! — just not from ME!

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a quick bloggage of some images of friends and the like over the past month(ish).

first: Jen Men, aka guffaw child. check out her photography, she has mad skills from new orleans. her website and flickr.
second: @Dabe, aka Dabe. check out his website, twitter, flickr. hire him to shoot your photos in portland oregon.
finally: Jay, aka Studly. he’s on a boat. and twitter.

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the bakers are pretty wonderful. for natalie’s six-month christening into the world, photos were taken and it was a jolly grand time (even for the cats!… i think).
james and becky wanted to get some good shots of natalie as well as help commemorate the home they have been in the past few years which they are now moving out of. it was such a fun place and their cats were food for my animal loving soul! … wait, i didn’t eat them, i just needed some kitty lovin’.
i’m so glad to have been able to shoot natalie’s sweet sweet smile! good luck on the move, bakers!

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carlin is a studette. why? because she’s a thespian, has lived in five million countries, graduated high school at the pyramids, and just finished her undergrad at the university of washington. carlin is a studette because she is kind and tells incredibly intriguing stories and has a world perspective i’m sure not many have had the chance to share. she is awesome, and we share dna. because she is my first cousin. only a few months separate us in age, and only a few letters separate our names (good job for giving grandma a heart attack with that one, parents). over the past four years that she has been in college has been more or less the first time we’ve really ever lived on the same continent as each other, and just in the past two months since i moved to seattle have we been in shouting distance. and by shouting distance, i still mean a couple miles. but still.

we went out on graduation morning after a fantastic mediterranean bbq the night before. she has just begun grad school and is working on elementary education, and i’m sure some drama is in there as well.

congrats carlin! i’m stoked to live near you.

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not only is this a pretentious blog posting, but it’s also horrible and here is why on both:
pretentious because a) calling myself an artist b) claiming i’m starving and c) placing myself in both of those categories simultaneously. i’m not really starving, i have food in the kitchen, it’s just that i chose not to eat said food because i think i’ve discovered i’m a hoarder. the reasoning goes that the more food i have in my kitchen at the end of the day, the more i have to eat tomorrow. so i don’t eat, knowing if i don’t consume that food then the longer in-between grocery store trips and the more dispersed are the days in which i have to rid myself of just a little more cash.
horrible because i overcooked the rice and it SUCKED. the texture looked horrendous yet the taste was okay, but then i tried to eat it for real and son-of-a-married-couple it was gross. therefore that on it’s own should have killed the ‘let’s do a blog post about this!’ idea right then and there. but no. it didn’t.

however i just went through the local venue’s calendars to see what shows were coming and inputted the ones i was interested in attending into my own calender and so now i’m totally distracted. this is a good idea though, this whole ‘how to eat semi-healthy on a tight budget’ thing. i just… whatever, let’s do it. first i’m going to go walk to the grocery and get a pint of ice cream.

OKAY. i maybe got two 2qt containers of ice cream and some natural cleaning supplies instead. and it was raining. see, umbrella, proof.

also, i just gave up. you all just read this hoping for some hints and tricks on how to eat better and i’m not going to give it to you. because DINNER SUCKED.

… sorry.

LOOK PHOTOS!

see how gross dinner was? yuck. and don’t ask me why the plate isn’t flat, i don’t have an answer. it’s the rubbermaid containers fault.

one of the points i was going to make when i was actually going to write something was that you don’t need to buy Pam or cooking spray because it’s stupid and you should just use olive oil. it makes omelets all slidey and stuff.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING BRILLIANT! okay, just random shots that i felt inclined to share.

and the family, for the win!

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the day after chase and i finished up this photo session i realize that i think i talked the entire time. i’m sorry chase, you’re just such a good listener!

check out the first session chase and i did, earlier on the blog.

and for the nerds out there, this is the first you’ve seen of the 5D.

ALSO — I’ve moved to Seattle. If you need photos, I can hook you up.

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i have a yashicamat 124 camera that takes 120 size film and was made in the 70s.
the thing about shooting film, if i may make a profound statement, is that you can’t view what you’ve shot after you’ve gone ahead and snapped the shutter via the back of the camera. you also can’t meter with a broken light meter that can’t be fixed because they don’t make lead based batteries anymore (darn). so you meter with something else, or you guess, or you just do what you want. and sometimes things don’t quite work out.

something i’m in the process of learning, is that it’s okay to make mistakes. it’s okay to take big risks. it’s good to fail, it’s good to succeed, and it isn’t good to be afraid of both. because being afraid of both lands us all in mediocrity. only what needs to get done is done when in the hands of mediocrity. the streets are swept and the houses kept, but nothing burns on either end of this metaphor. welcoming ‘average’ is why we don’t find victory. fear to fail and fear to succeed is what keeps us still and docile and shy. it is what keeps me all of those things. because i am deathly afraid of making mistakes, especially the big things. the permanent things. the people things. i am afraid of judgment and mockery and insensitivity. the culmination of this is that i am afraid and i do not understand grace. innately, i believe in it and claim it’s truth and power, but very honestly deep down, in the core of me hold no belief that it also applies to myself. and subversively, that wrecks everything. that is mediocrity. that is what allows us to be casually unaware and keep the bar low.

this is a journal entry.

i have a yashicamat camera that takes 10 shots of 120 film.
with every roll i shoot, with every print that is returned, i am framing them and placing them on my new apartment walls. each frame has value. every frame is not good, nor are some of them even interesting. some will be exposed incorrectly, some will be misaligned, some will be mistakes. but each of them is valuable. because every mistake and every success and every experiment is worthy of notice and to be learned from.

this is the first roll.

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chase and i go back to roughly the third day of sixth grade. roughly.
actually, i have no idea. my first memory of chase was that he ran fast, and then in seventh grade i think we had science class together and he still ran fast and won the middle school’s thanksgiving celebration they liked to call a ‘turkey trot’, which was really a super short run around the neighborhood who’s winner was awarded a frozen turkey. and i was secretly jealous of his trotting skills.
this is a true story.

then one day i decided to join the cross country team in high school, and chase was also on that team. we ended up as co-captains of the varsity team our senior year, and we had a little clique thing going on, and chase could still beat me in the turkey trot. and i was still secretly jealous.

on a more serious note however, i think there is a really unique thing about co-ed sports that the other sports don’t have. maybe not even track & field has this because that team is so large, but cross country holds something different and creates it’s own sort of sustainable community around itself. and within that sort of a setting, you get to see the best and worst of people. and i’ve got to say, through what i saw in those shared experiences of early morning bus rides and drama and exhausting competition and leadership, chase is an upstanding guy. he’s the real deal. he is legit. and he has an incredible heart.

chase is graduating this year from college and is headed out to grad school to work on civil and environmental engineering while pursuing research in ground water remediation, advanced oxidation processes, & aquatic chem. basically, chase is good people. chase is people i’m excited for. and chase is still really good at trotting quickly.

here are his first set of senior photos. more to come.

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so i played some and i shot some and then i played with processing some and TA DA! photos. model is drew. and that last cool cat is brian.

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