If I Were Going To Shoot A Wedding...

This past Saturday, I was a second shooter at my very first wedding (as a photographer).  I was working with Josh, a photographer I met through the Garden.  He also went to Mizzou and did the Garden internship, so I think we have very similar styles.  Shooting the wedding was pretty fun.  The bride and groom were my age and just really fun/cool people.  I enjoyed putting my photo-j training to work.

I'm going to throw a lot of pictures at you now, I hope you don't get bored (you better not).  I wish I could put them in a slide show to save space, but alas, I cannot.  I do not own my own web space to upload a slideshow to and I don't want to make the pictures tiny (like my final project post was).  So bear with me, and enjoy!

Let's start with the flowers. 

Here is the box of flowers for the mothers, grandmothers, and men.

This is the bride's bouquet.

These are the bridesmaid's bouquets.

Time to put on the dress!

Are you ready?

Where'd she go?

There she is!!

Lace up the back.

Fluff up the dress.

Fix your veil.

Looks like you need some lip gloss.

Now let's check on the boys to see how they're getting along...

Eh, that's enough of them. Let's go back to the girls. 

Time to pray before the ceremony.

With some time to kill before the ceremony, I took a few goofy shots of the girls. I color accented this one just for kicks.

It's TIME!!!

You May Kiss The Bride.

And That's A Wrap.

Just so you know, I did shoot the ceremony from different angles, but I like these more traditional angles.

I love this picture. If you don't like it, please don't burst my bubble. After the ceremony, the bride and groom stood in the doorway between the church and the vestibule, so there were only two angles to shoot them from... out in the vestibule, or back in the church.  As I was walking between the two, I caught a glimpse of Katie (guess I didn't mention that's her name) through the stain glass on the door.  (Josh thought it was a good idea, too...he even snapped a few shots through the glass)

Lighting the unity candle (the reenactment)

They're so cute.

Eating the flowers??? Oh yeah, and I threw in a little color accent for fun.

Aw... I thought this picture looked best in black and white.

Busch Stadium!!!

Am I going overboard with the color accenting? I don't think so, but I'm giving them the originals in case they don't like the color accents (though I don't know why they wouldn't..)

Shall we watch the game?

And here is that shot without the color accent.

1 .. 2.. 3.. JUMP!

Gosh they're adorable.

In the Dugout

Wait, the girls are guys and the guys are girls?

Time to celebrate at the reception.

mmm...cake

This is one of the bridesmaid's bouquets.

CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN!!!

First Dance.

Father Daughter Dance

Just thought this looked cool.

Can You Guess What Dance This Is? 

(Yup, it's the YMCA)

And this song?

(Yes, All The Single Ladies)

This little old lady was awesome. 

The End.

Busch Stadium!!!

This past Saturday, I was at Busch Stadium taking pictures of a wedding party. I had limited space on my CF cards, but I couldn't resist this shot. This was my first time on the field (no I didn't get to go on the grass). I think this was taken around 5:30p.m.; the sun was setting. 

It was a great day for a wedding, cold, but sunny. I'll post the pictures of the wedding shortly. I'm about half way through toning them. I work all day tomorrow, but am off Wednesday and Thursday, so look for a post hopefully by this weekend.

Feeling Blue

Whenever I get really bored...I mean really, really bored, I take photos of myself on the Photo Booth application on my laptop.  I took this photo a while ago, but it fits my mood right now. I feel alone and a little sad. I always feel like this this time of year though. I'm sick of winter and ready for the sun to come out. Today was a bust at work, so I wanted to go out and do something creative, but couldn't think of anything to do. I can't wait till the weather gets better.  I want to go around to all of the St. Louis attractions and make a collage of my home town. Anyway, here is a self portrait of me being blue. hehe

And here is a picture of Jerry and me that I took just now. He wouldn't turn around for the picture, so I thought it'd be cool to get a shot of us looking at each other. Ah Jerry, the love of my life. What would I do without you?

Some More Special Effects

I was bored today, so I went through my old pictures and found this picture of Carlie's eyes. Carlie has very pretty eyes. I decided to change the saturation and make a collage of her eyes. I think it's kinda cool, kinda weird, and kinda creepy.

I made this collage a while ago. Today I just upped the saturation. I don't know why I've been into over-saturating pictures lately, but I like the effect. For those of you who don't, well just wait, I'll grow out of it (like I did that glowing edges effect).

The Definition Of Cool

Jerry is the best dog in the whole wide world. Ok, I might be a little biased, but he is a great dog. 

Today my mom was cleaning out the desk in the kitchen and found this pair of sunglasses. She asked if I wanted them. I tried them on; they were a little tight on me. I looked down and had a flash of brilliance --- Jerry would look adorable wearing sunglasses. He didn't exactly share my view, but being the great dog that he is, he let me put them on him just long enough for a few snapshots.

I think my favorite is the second picture. I like how he is looking over the glasses at me. He looks cool, and yet is pleading for me to take them off. In the third picture, he got tired of waiting and took of the glasses himself.

Jerry and the Snow

Jerry LOVES the snow.  

Collages

Lately I've been going through my past travel photos. I chose some of my favorites to make collages of the major cities I've visited. I then upped the saturation and to make them look surreal. I did this with the intention of putting the collages on canvases with modpodge... I did it for the Chicago one and it looks really neat. I haven't gotten around to the others yet...it'll happen one day. I was going to wait and take pics of the finished products, but it's been a while since I've posted anything and I think I like the collages better as posters than on canvases (less bubbles).

Chicago

Washington D.C.

Paris

Rome

I Love Mad Libs

A few weeks ago, I downloaded a Mad Libs application on my ipod. Since then I have been having a lot of fun with friends and family putting silly words into the stories. Over New Years, my friends and I came up with this story.

When I was working at the Garden, I made friends with the graphic design interns and really like the artwork they create. I want to learn how to make design stuff like they do, so I've been experimenting with Adobe Illustrator lately. This is a compilation of the Mad Libs story and a bunch of clip art that I altered to fit the story.

Puppy on trial

This is Knox. He belongs to a woman who works with my dad. My family watches him on the occasional weekend. Sometimes we bring up the play pen from the basement to put him in (he's not completely potty trained). When my sister brings her dog over, it can get crazy with 3 dogs in the house. I like this picture because it kind of looks like he is in jail having a smoke.

An End to 2009

One of my best friends, Carlie, moved to Chicago this past November. For New Year's, Emily, Matt, and I drove up to Chicago to celebrate the end of the year with Carlie in her tiny but comfortable apartment in Lincoln Park. After driving 4 and a half hours to Mokena, taking an hour long train ride to the city, walking around trying to find a place that sold one day CTA passes, and then taking a half hour bus ride, we were extremely tired and even more happy to meet Carlie at the entrance of her new apartment building. We decided to keep it a low-key night. I was kind of surprised we made it to midnight considering how tired we were. But we did, and even went up to the roof top deck to catch a glimpse of fireworks that were set off at Navy Pier (we could see them through a small sliver between two building). It was pretty fun. Living in the moment as I was, I neglected to bring up my camera to record the first moments of 2010. It's ok though, Carlie remembered hers. I did take a few pictures in Carlie's apartment, with my point and shoot (I didn't feel like lugging my luggage and camera bag through the city for a one day trip).

It looks like Matt is drunk in this picture, but I assure you he isn't. He's just trying to be funny, I guess. The truth is none of us got drunk that night. We had a couple drinks, but didn't feel the need to bring in the new year with hang overs.

Ah here Matt is looking normal, but Carlie looks mad at me?

Matt and Emily. Don't they make the cutest couple?

Carlie got a guitar. She started taking lessons this week. I'm hoping by the next time we visit she will have learned a song to entertain us with.

Carlie and Matt were rocking out... gotta love the high waisted sweat pants...

10:30 already? I guess we should crack open the champagne... don't know if we're going to make it to midnight...so we may as well start now

Oh no!! It spilled!!

Eh, it's ok..

My Missouri Botanical Garden Final Project

The quality isn't great because I had to upload it to Youtube first. Maybe some day I'll figure out how to get my soundslides presentation up on this blog. Anyway, Here are around 100 of my best photos that I took during my internship at the Garden. The background music was given to me by a friend at work (her friend is a composer). Enjoy.