Town and Country Fun

Needless to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway, this was a blast to see in this month's issue of Town and Country.  Doesn't it make you want to get married in Switzerland?  I mean, I can come shoot it, just sayin'....

And what about the weddings?

Ohhhh the weddings... my friends, it has been one busy, wonderful year with many, many weddings to share.  I loved them all. I have so many favorite images, such lovely couples, it's daunting to consider selecting from them, but I will, I will!  The editorial shoots are just so much easier to blog because the image selection has been done for me.

2012 has introduced me to the most fabulous brides, grooms and families, as have the past years.  For all the time-sucking evils of Facebook I am thankful that I get to keep in touch with many of them and see where their journey takes them, and even watch some of their families grow.  Amy and Jack's precious twins, Lindsay and John's adorable son, the Trivette's growing crew... I love it, love it, love it.  I'm now waiting for two new baby announcements this month.  Squee!  New families!

This year's wedding journey started on a pretty January day in Charlotte, NC, then moseyed on through Charlottesville, Richmond,  Henderson, NC, then up through Warrenton, VA.  Came back through central Virginia, across the Atlantic to a timeless magical town in a tiny 1400's hillside church in Switzerland, back to a beautiful farm in Virginia then down to the sunny fun Bahamas.  Richmond and Charlottesville round out the rest of this fantastic year then... 2013. Can you believe it?

2013 brings more wonderful weddings and travel which at the moment include Kiawah Island, SC, Washington, DC, Easthampton, NY, Montclair, NJ, Rehoboth Beach, DE, Warrenton, NC, to name a few, and one state I have yet to ever visit, Wisconsin.  Lake Geneva here we come!  And of course some Charlottesville and Richmond in the good old VA.  Love that place.  I can't wait to see what else develops.

Stay with me, the photos are indeed coming.  These couples and their celebrations are too amazing not to share.

(above, my bridefriend Davita as we ran to catch the fading light in the vineyard in Cressier, NE, Switzerland. I've been practicing running and shooting simultaneously... ha)

A Gem

This summer, on the hottest and possibly most humid day of the year, I headed up to the Shenandoah Valley to photograph Elizabeth Locke's estate for Garden&Gun, one of my favorite magazines ever. Needless to say, it was divine and even her chickens were quite photogenic.  The house had been featured in Architectural Digest so my focus (ha) was on the gardens and the gardener extraordinaire.  Elizabeth and her husband John had the gardens and home looking perfect (which I suspect they always do) and graciously extended an invitation to stay overnight in their guest cottage (yes, please!).  We enjoyed dinner on the veranda, where I enjoyed hearing their stories and all about how Elizabeth started her jewelry business over delicious foods from her garden. Perfection.

Photographers typically prefer to shoot exteriors and landscapes in the morning or evening light, so I try to schedule these so that we can shoot, sleep, then shoot again in the pretty morning light.  Everything looks completely different when the sun is coming from the opposite side, so it's nice to be able to see the options and shoot things the way they look best. One of the greatest payoffs was coming up to the house at 5:45 am or so and catching the sun rise over the greenhouse.  The pinks and yellows were so dramatic, I knew we had our shot! 

Elizabeth herself was a treat.  A very cool lady, even in the torturous heat, who managed to look like a million bucks while my hair was pasted to the left side of my face and I continually wiped the um, humidity from the camera screen.  I loved her green sneakers which matched her stunning peridot necklace! And being the perfect hostess, she sent me home with two large bags of delicious vegetables, and flowers from her cutting garden.

Elizabeth, thank you for a lovely shoot and I do hope our paths cross again (in a cooler climate perhaps) soon! 

PARADE

So fun!

I had the best time shooting this wonderful piece in the August 19 issue of PARADE magazine (you know the one, tucked in your Sunday paper, lands in about 32.2 million homes - which did happen to cross my mind once or twice while shooting, no pressure or anything).  Claudia, the Photo Editor, and I trekked into the hills of Lenoir, NC (via airplane and rental car, not on foot so much) to meet up with some of the nicest people you could ever want to know.  I even got to go way up in the bucket of a fire truck to get an aerial shot courtesy of the wonderful local Fire Department, which wasn't used of course since the really tough ones never are, ha.  I learned a lot about gardening, the kindness of this community, and the power of a great idea.  And this little girl on the cover?  We haven't heard the last of her.  She is destined for some great things.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Laird & Ross in Brides Magazine

  This month, Brides magazine was relaunched in a cool, updated format. Yes, the same Brides that's been around so long I can remember lugging it around like a dog-eared wedding Bible long, long ago when I got married... which may or may not have been around when the internet was invented. I can't imagine a more perfect way to inaugurate the new look than with Laird and Ross' absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous wedding in Sea Island, Georgia.

Sea Island is a little gem of a place near St. Simon's Island on the southern coast of Georgia that I've been so fortunate to visit over the years with friends, and to shoot weddings on as well. Think massive trees, palms, Spanish moss, golf and bicycles. The Cloister is the main resort on the island that is breath-taking, in an oooh and ahhhing kind of way, and will spoil you rotten.  It is an idyllic place full of history and charm, and the G8 Summit was even held there in 2004.  


Laird is one of those girls who was born stylish, and it came through in every detail.  Her Carolina Herrera dress was perfection on her, and the girls in their black gowns looked so elegant.  Laird had help from the talented team at Kristin Newman Designs as it was quite a feat to pull off such a full and wonderful weekend of events, and her sweet family couldn't have been more accommodating and lovely. You can see more images and read their wedding story here. 


Laird and Ross, I wish you the best and thank you for letting me take part in your big day.  And for risking the rain with me for some portraits between those crazy Southern storm fronts, I think we did quite well! 

Home for Garden&Gun

One fine day, my Photo Editor at the ever-awesome Garden&Gun magazine called and said they were fiiiinally ready to do a city profile about Richmond, Virginia.  YAY!  I had been creating a list in my head forever, waiting patiently for this fantastic opportunity to show off my town.  Of course I know this place so well after living here for 16 years, what a breeze this would be to shoot, right?  I practically had the article written for them!  Uhhhh-huh. Then I got the shot list as long as my arm and I hadn't even heard of some of them.  Tricksters!  What was this BBQ place I had never heard of?  This pub? This bookstore?  The adventure had begun.

Like a Type-A scavenger huntress I google-mapped all the locations on the shot list (what you see in the final article is a mere portion, as the images I took could have filled a coffee-table book).  I broke the locations down into navigable chunks, designated shoot days for each with the owners (thanks to Margaret's help), coordinated them with the appropriate good light for each, packed up my stuff and hit the road.  While I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces and places, what I found were even more delicious dishes, more of the kindest people you could want to know, and really cool new-to-me places and spaces. I fell even more in love with this city I now call home. 

My friend and author Dean King wrote the wonderful introduction and the list of locations came from the writer Donovan Webster with a few ideas sprinkled in from Dean and me.  While it would have been much simpler if they had just asked my opinion (I mean, just ask my husband, I know EVERYthing), we all would have missed out on a lot these great spots!  Apparently I don't get out as much as I thought I did, but that would soon be remedied.

Some highlights of my shoot (and yes, it is a job folks, but it's a really fun one) included visiting some favorites of mine, Comfort, Lemaire, and Midtown Acacia restaurants.  Comfort sent me home with a large bag of food (shoot it, eat it is my policy), and yes that banana pudding is DIVINE.  I loved catching Flogging Molly at The National with my husband and shooting from a safe distance (have you seen a drunken Irish mosh pit? their fans are wonderfully nuts), and taking my kids to Belle Isle (you can see them running away from me on the bridge below... kids... kids... come back!!).  Shockoe Slip and Bottom are areas I just don't get to enough, and next time Rosie Connolly's Pub is a must visit.  It feels like a small pub on some side street in England, and they made me try a dark ale (I do suffer for my art) that was delicious and the owner could actually pour a perfect four leaf clover print into the foam.  The good luck was all mine.

Another fun shoot with Garden & Gun. Check!  More to come...