Things have been busy since last time we talked.  :-)  Well of course a lot has happened.  I only neglected this blog for 3 months.  I've worked a few lovely weddings, decided to take the photo business in a new direction (weddings are exhausting!), took a trip to Florida with Ryan and my brother, and other stuff.. 

Picture time?  Yay!

We had the most beautiful wildflower season this year!  This picture was taken on a hike w/ my girlfriends from Chicago who were in town for my oldest friend's (Jen) wedding reception (those pics were in my last post a bajillion years ago).  Anyway, that's a Mexican gold poppy, and it was near impossible to take a bad picture that day.  

So yeah, I've decided that I just love doing photography as a side job... but weddings are exhausting.  Even though we're paid for 7 hours on the day of the wedding, there's the day we go to preview the site, then we always show up early, then it's 8 hours or so of doing squats and running around with little break, then it's at least a week of spending all my free time doing post-processing so everything's perfect.  And then we rarely hear back from the wedding couple with feedback (with the exception of the lovely bride who's wedding we did on June 7th, more on that later).  But family portraits and engagement sessions... well I just love that.  I get to spend a half hour or hour with people who are just with me for the photo session, who are excited to do silly things and it's just fun.  Here's a few of my families from the last few months:

And just this month I did a great wedding.  The couple was lovely and gracious and hard to take a bad picture of.  Even if it was hot and really windy!  Everyone was a good sport about it, and we hurried through the pics as quick as we could.  But seriously, how great is this:  

And look!  Photoshop magic!  I loved this picture, but it just wasn't quite right.  I blurred out the background, and look!  I made a truck disappear!

OK, ok.  I've overwhelmed you.  I've got pics of big fish and lots of ocean fun from Florida.  But I really should pace myself.  Don't want to exhaust myself in my first post back!  

Don't forget free smoothies today!

A