21 September 2009

me ole man - gainesville, fl portrait photographer

so.... more photos to come, but here is a sneak peek of some shots I got of me dad when we were visiting two weekends ago!

We got a little excited about this here window light. you can see the light changes over the taking of the portraits. My dad was a great sport as he allowed me to take a bunch of fun photos of him. I think he had a little fun helping me out, even if I did have to bribe him with crunchy bars (english candy bars!) to get him to do it!

13 June 2009

June Update

So as usual our personal blog gets neglected as we update facebook and the photography site. But it's high time for this to be updated too, so here goes:

1) We're settled into our new living space now. Good location, neighbors, noise, and bug levels. The dogs like the backyard, which is super important. It's about the same distance to both of our offices, so the bike ride is still doable. Jemma is not happy that it's not full of color like the last place, but there's enough art and photography on the walls that it's ok. for now. But I'm sure she'll talk me into painting if we stay here any longer. It's just her way. Must. Have. Colors. Everywhere.

2) The trusty Volvo died, so we had to get a new car. We shopped some used cars, but the depreciation on them didn't match with the lost value of things like reduced warranty etc, so we ended up buying our first new car! It's a VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI, and we love it! It's been raining here, so no official pictures yet, but a photo shoot is forthcoming of course! Room for the dogs, racks for the bikes, 6spd manual, 30/41MPG make it a very good fit for us right now. And it is a pretty good ride for schlepping around the state for this photography thing we've got going on....

3) Which leads me to the photography business. It's been going really well. Totally redone website, tweaking the branding, honing our skills; all progressing ahead at a break-neck pace. We've booked more weddings in the first 6 months of year than I figured we'd do all of the year. Plus maternity/graduation/couple portrait sessions have been really fun too. We went to a photography workshop earlier in the year in Oregon, which rocked and taught us some things we'd been missing. We also recently got to assist/second shoot with a great Tallahassee wedding photographer, which was really encouraging and fun! Like I said before, gainesville wedding photographer site gets updated more often than this, so please check it out!

4) Now that the weather is a bit warmer we've been both riding bikes more. Commuting by bike to work together is really fun and a cool way to spend time together. Nothing brings you together like dodging cars while the drivers text away on their trip to work. Luckily we pay attention, plan for the worst, and hope for the best. But it's fun. I recently rode in an Alley Cat race, which is basically a bike scavenger hunt. I got 14th out of 60ish people, which is better than I expected to do, as I was shooting for winning the costume contest. Riding 20+ miles in a full UPS uniform, polyester pants and all, to win with the theme of the 1997 Kevin Costner Movie, "The Postman". Though I was devastated when I got 2nd place to a girl who had nothing postal on at all, it was a fun day. :sigh:

5) We are really excited to have off some time around the holidays this year for the first time since we've been married. We're looking forward to spending time with family and friends! Details forthcoming...

6) We're both on Twitter, updated at least daily. If you're on, look us up so we can follow you!

I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting, but it's getting late, so this will have to do for now.

20 March 2009

I just had to share a pic of the cute DP's at a wedding we just shot. head on over to the photo blog to see some more of our latest work!



love, jemma

01 March 2009

ATL - KC & Mike

We were so excited to do a family trip this weekend in Atlanta to go and see Ben Folds (awesome!) and we decided to try to use the awesome ATL backdrop for some engagement pics for mike & KC. Unfortunately it pretty much rained the entire time David and I were there, so we didn't actually end up getting to go out and do many pics. We ended up doing almost the entire shoot at the end of the hallway of Clay & Elizabeth's student apartment which had awesome natural light which we supplemented with a little bit of flash. The rest was done in the parking garage attached to their dorm. This shoot was very fun because it challenged me to focus entirely on my subjects to create the image and make it good. Here are a few of my faves. :-)















tribute to mom!!







12 January 2009

Moving... again (puh)

Now that we've pretty much settled on the place, I figure I should go ahead and post that we are moving. How do we feel about that? Well, it's half "this sucks" and half "well, I guess we can save money, so that's good."

Estimating our Gainesville residency expectancy at about one year, we have chosen a lower priced home for our next place. The bonus is that though it is smaller and certainly less awesome than our current place, we aren't going to have to miss out on everything we gained. We will still have a yard, a laundry room, a paved driveway, central heat & air, and will have a good location (only a mile or so from this place). We will miss our garage, dishwasher, extra bedroom, extra living room, grassy yard, screened back porch, fun paint colors, and really nice neighbors.

We'll be moving at the end of the month. In the meantime, David is ordering a new engine for the pink car and Stink is coming up for a couple weekends to help put it in. Our goal is to have it up and running before we move so that no towing is involved.

My job is going to be trying to figure out what stuff we should ditch and what stuff we should keep. It's hard to say what you really neeeeed... we have gathered so much stuff and it isn't stuff you don't really need, but it might be stuff we don't really need right now. I'm so not looking forward to that!

Meanwhile, we are both still working full time, we have a few people thinking about hiring us for weddings, and we're trying to ride our bikes to work a fair amount of the time. Also, David's sister just got engaged and is expecting to get married May 2010. This is great motivation for me to ride my bike more to try to get in shape! I am trying to be helpful without being annoying to Kasey, though it is hard to tell from so far away and email communication. Oh well, sisters are meant to annoy each other, right?

;-)

Oh yeah, GO GATORS!!!