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...

A Room with a View

A few months ago RHome asked if I could photograph this stunning Garden Tour home that looks out onto the mighty James River. As I've said before, I always come back to my humble abode after these home shoots and want to purge, redecorate and paint, and maybe even buy myself a couple of Picassos and Sally Manns. But I was too tired... and the store was fresh out of Picassos. Dern.

Enjoy!

Town & Country, Wyoming Style

Well (she said sheepishly), hi there. I know, I can't believe I'm blogging either and don't even look at the date of the last post. You just did, didn't you. SO embarrassing. I will do my best to keep this blog a little more current. So much to come in 2012 (Switzerland, Bahamas, Charlottesville, and even some... Richmond!) and 2011 still to share. Baby steps.

In hopes you'll start to forgive my blogging lameness, here is a special wedding I was thrilled to photograph last summer as seen in the May Issue of Town & Country (with Gretchen Mol on the cover... I still need to read that and find out where the heck she's been). It was a nice surprise to see the photos I sent to T&C for possible inclusion turn into full page coverage, but with a ridiculously scenic location and sweet couple like Anna & Brian, I guess it's not all that surprising.

Now what they don't tell you in the brief paragraph is how incredible Jackson Hole is, or how the weather and the light there is dramatic, dreamy and inspiring. How on the day of the wedding we encountered hail 30 minutes before the ceremony (this is one reason it's handy to have 14 groomsmen, to wipe off the seating super quick while guests are making their way in). And there was an owl overseeing the event. And a rainbow at sunset. I KNOW, right? Give me a break, crazybeautiful place!! Half the challenge of shooting this event was not standing there with my mouth hanging open instead of taking photographs. It's hard taking in a place like that through a 1/4 viewfinder! But don't cry for me... I managed.

I could go on, but there are not enough words to accurately describe the awesomeness (the fact that I chose the abused word 'awesome' being testament) that is Jackson Hole, and I will forever be indebted to Anna and her family for introducing me to this part of our country, which in turn gave me the privilege of sharing it with mine. To quote my son while we biked from Dornan's to Jenny Lake, as he took in the snow capped Tetons in front and plains surrounding us, "I think I found my happy place, Mom."

Indeed.

Wine, Garden & Gun

Have you gotten your October/November issue of Garden & Gun yet? Check your mailbox, or your closest Barnes & Noble quick! This one might be a sellout with an incredible pecan pie gracing the cover and a guide to the 50 best southern foods. Don't read it hungry. No, really.

In those yummy pages you will find a feature I photographed in Delaplane, VA last month. Or the month before. Hard to remember these days. But it was a beautiful summer evening and I traipsed about Rutger's underground cellar with my tripod wishing someone, ANYONE was with me to go 'oh my God this is so cool' with. It was somewhat surreal, Patricia surrounded by barrels and barrels of fine wine in what felt like James Bond's secret lair.

I drove my truck the way it was supposed to be driven (not as a suburbanite bus of sorts, hauling sweaty children from activity to activity), up mountains and back down in search of the perfect images to capture this magnificent place. The sunset was casting a wicked pink glow and I set my tripod on the roof of the car, clambered up the windshield (in hindsight possibly dangerous since I was truly alone) and just kept shooting, Blue Ridge mountains to my back. Rutger had accompanied me for a bit to get his portrait then headed out for dinner and I just embraced the solitude and watched the sun set. Click. Click.

I stayed in Winchester, searching high and low for a place to grab dinner that the local serial killers didn't frequent (yes, we know I watch too much Law&Order) and finally settled on a slice of pizza in my room while I uploaded photos and got a good night's sleep for my sunrise shoot at Linden Vineyards. Yes, we photographers are funny about the light and I will even get up crazy early for the good stuff.

I headed off to Jim's at 4:45 am or something awful like that, and was rewarded with a killer sunrise over the rows of vines and grapes. He loves what he does and seemed to enjoy being out there pruning the vines. I wonder if he thought the same about me, camera glued to my face snapping away, yapping about the gorgeous light. 'Cuz I gotta say, I really, really do love it.

Now go get a glass of fine Virginia wine, a slice of pie and your new issue! But seriously, eat something first.