Nothing really new to post today except that I found an amazing shirt in my closet that I have named the Lumberjack Shirt. I took a funny photo of myself wearing it today… I hope that you love the goofy expression, uncombed hair and unshaven face

By the way, my hair is still brown, it just looks yellow because of the strange white balance… I was tempted to fix it, but I edit enough photos as it is

Friday is going to be a busy day with two meetings, going to my framer, going to the Eastman House and photographing an engagement session.

I just bought five books to read during this wedding off-season. I really think that books are one of the few areas where everyone should splurge every now and then and just buy some that are worth reading no matter how much or little they cost

1) Getting Past No

2) Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars

3) The Anatomy of Buzz

4) Primal Branding

5) The E-Myth Revisited

Have a great day!

I seriously have the greatest clients… after my last post about school I received an amazing email from Rachel (of Jonathan and Rachel, Buffalo 2007) saying something really nice. Normally I would never post the contents of an email, but I think an excerpt from the message is too great to keep private:

I also want to comment on your thoughts about college and everything. Jonathan once told me a quote that someone told him – “Find something you love to do and become great at it”. It looks to me as though you found something you love to do, and you obviously have become great at it. I can understand your feelings on missing out on the college experience, but I don’t think college is for everyone. Most people end up with jobs that they don’t enjoy after they graduate anyways. Your passion and your talent is your job – lucky you!

Thanks Rachel, I really appreciate that! It was great waking up with that message in my inbox this morning

Frank DiMeo asked me to help him out on a three day long Indian Wedding at Turning Stone Casino in late September. We are going to have a phone conference this week about the details of the wedding. I am pretty pumped about it, Indian weddings are amazing and Frank is always an inspiration to shoot with

Just so everyone knows, my email is temporarily (partially) down. I can get emails but I cannot send them, if you have sent me an email within the past 24 hours I have read it and written a reply, however, I cannot send any messages out. Hopefully the problem will be resolved soon. Call me with anything urgent

Jessica and Andrew’s wedding was sooo cool, it is hard to pick a place to start telling the story. The wedding was held in the backyard of Jessica’s mother… this was no ordinary backyard, it was huge and the flowers were stunning. They reflected the theme of the wedding and were in full bloom. The guests were seated in three different places which gave me some amazing access to the ceremony since I could stand in so many locations without blocking the view of anyone. The (many) wedding cakes were baked by several guests and were presented on a tiered table shaped like a heart. When Jessica and Andrew cut the cake and prepared to feed it to each other they switched up the sequence a little and shoved it in the faces of the best man and the maid of honor ! I am not going to tell you about the toast (since children might read this blog…) but it was the funniest thing that I have heard all year . The dance floor was black and white checker board and was one of the best looking dance floors that I’ve seen. The reception signature journal was a huge hit, I have never seen so many people write in one before!!! I forgot to grab the caterer’s card but the food was awesome. The videographer that they hired was Peritus Video Productions and they seemed to do a great job. They found a good balance between getting coverage and giving Jessica and Andrew their space. While I have not seen the video, I am going to guess that it looks perfect just based on watching what they were focused on.

The wedding was fun and I hope that you enjoy the photos!

I really love wedding photography, tonight was another example of why. It was just a good time with everyone in a comfortable (and beautiful) environment. Expect to see some photos on Monday .

I am going to Lima on Sunday to meet with wedding photographers from across the country. Neil and Liesl Cowley are hosting the afternoon get together and it should be a great time. I am excited since I always have a blast when we all meet up. The only semi-unfun thing is that Natalie is moving to Ithaca on Sunday so can’t come too .

The engagement session with Jonathan and Rachel was postponed for a few days. It was going to happen after the wedding photographers get together but since it is supposed to rain and since Jonathan and Rachel want to do the session on the beach it will be best to wait until we get some nicer weather.

So, on the way to and from tonight’s wedding I had interesting feelings when I passed by SUNY Genesseo… they were not good feelings and they were not bad feelings, they were just new feelings. It was move in day and it felt strange seeing all those people going back to college when I am not, some of them were my friends and others my high school class mates. It is just one of those things where I am excited about living life and doing amazing things but at the same time disappointed about missing out on what everyone else experiences. It has only been a matter of months since I have stopped going to school, so this is really the first time that I am having these thoughts. Overall though, I am not a normal type of person with a normal type of personality and I need to be creative and exposed to continual change… I was bored in school and I would be bored with a normal job. I am, however, super-excited about 2007 destination weddings and the great people and places that I will be exposed to. I guess that it never would have crossed my mind except for that Natalie is moving to college today and I drove past a college on my way to the wedding. Well, whatever, it was kind of just hanging in my mind all day and I thought I should share.

These are Corinne and Eric’s engagement photos from Buffalo!

I hope you loved the photos… we were all standing in a creek for some of them and I was laying in the mud for others. I was all wet and dirty for my drive from Buffalo to home in the Finger Lakes, but it was totally worth it

Have a great day!

I got to hang out with Natalie one more time before she moves back to college on Sunday. We went to the studio for a fun little photo session of each other after she got out of work

Check out the clothes that we were wearing, aren’t they amazing?! Dinosaurs, Pigtails and Batman, I don’t think it can get any better than that

I was in Buffalo for Amy and Brian’s wedding on Friday. The wedding was great and we spent a lot of time taking portraits at the Japanese Garden behind the Buffalo Art and Historical Society, which is absolutely beautiful… I highly recommend it for portraits!

I met Amy and Brian for the first time on Friday afternoon when I began to take some preparation photos at the hotel. I was pleasantly surprised by how relaxed they both were, we all got along very well from the first second that we met. Amy and Brian had decided to see each other before the wedding and in my own experience; I think that is a great idea. It gave us a lot of stress free time to take portraits at a few different locations and I think you’ll agree that the results are stunning .

I was told that Amy’s father has been taking photos throughout her whole childhood so I knew that I had to work just as hard as ever to not only impress Amy and Brian, but to satisfy Amy’s father’s discriminating eye . Considering how beautiful everyone was and how great the locations were, my job was actually quite easy!

One of my goals for the 2006 wedding season was to spend time making meaningful portraits of my clients and I think that I have done a great job with that so far. I still create powerful photos through the photojournalism process but I also take as much time as I am given to produce some very contemporary wedding portraits that I hope will be able to be passed on through the generations.

I think the sequence of Amy getting in her dress is wonderful, I love how expressive she was and I love the story that the photos tell!

Enjoy the photos from Amy and Brian’s Buffalo, NY wedding

I am preparing for a weekend of work with weddings and engagement sessions. I will not be readily available by telephone or email until Monday morning, I will be checking voicemail and email each night before bed, so if there is an urgent issue please leave me a message and I will do my best to get back to you on my down time .

Thursday’s plans all kind of fell apart, but now that I think of it I am very relieved that they did. The only thing that I have to do is get a hair cut at 9:30am instead of a hair cut, a client meeting, a photographer meeting, a second client meeting, meeting Brad and going out with Natalie… that all would have been a bit much since I am leaving on Friday morning to work.

I apologize to the few clients whose wedding albums that I am behind schedule on. Between having a busy August, having a few clients order a lot more pages in their albums than what I was expecting and going out with Natalie, I got side tracked. They will be completed very soon and I will have links emailed to you as soon as each is completed .

I had an excellent day on Monday with some friends at Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario. We met at Marybeth’s cottage and had a cookout, talked, swam and played Frisbee . Natalie met me in Canandaigua and came with me for the day, which was great. I don’t think we ran out of things to talk about for the entire ride (going both ways)… my throat is feeling a little sore today . We stopped to get some Dunkin’ Donuts at a Thruway rest stop on the way home; it was a nice late night snack.

Before starting out on the 3+ hour long drive I had lost my directions so thankfully after a few phone calls I got the trip all straightened out and made it without a problem. It is actually really easy to get to the lake house so losing the directions was no problem at all.

The lake is about 2 feet deep for over a hundred yards out from the shore at the cottage. It meant one long walk to get to water that was deep enough to swim in but it also meant that we were able to get some great photos of us all playing water Frisbee .

Frank playing Frisbee

Luke playing Frisbee

Luke throwing the Frisbee

Luke catching the Frisbee

Luke catching the Frisbee

Luke catching the Frisbee

Luke catching the Frisbee

Luke catching the Frisbee with Natalie, Marybeth, Mike and Bob looking on

Luke catching the Frisbee

Frank catching the Frisbee

Luke dives for the Frisbee in the water

Frank dives for the Frisbee in the water

Brady dives for the Frisbee in the water

Bob dives for the Frisbee in the water

Natalie dives for the Frisbee in the water

Bob Kayaks

Marybeth and Luke

Brady, Mike, Marybeth, Bob, Frank and Luke (Natalie took the photo)

The group again (Natalie took the photo)

I had an awesome time at the cottage, thanks for making it fun everyone!

I hope you enjoyed the photos

Expect a new site, new prices, new packages and new photos to come out this week . It is in the initial test phase now and has gotten some pretty positive feedback. As usual, it will be an HTML site instead of a flash site and it is going to be very simple to use.

Tomorrow is Sackets Harbor with friends. I purposefully got only a few hours of sleep today so that I can fall asleep early tonight and have a full night of sleep going into Monday, since 6-8 hours of my day will be spent in the car. The really nice thing is that Natalie is coming with me so I should not have a problem with getting tired.

I will post some amazing wedding photographs from a four year old boy in a few days. His name is Andrew and he shot at a wedding with me a few weeks ago . He has some pretty impressive pictures and it is so neat to see through the eyes of such a little kid!

I have a bad headache, I wonder if it is because of sleep deprivation? I think I am going to play basketball then maybe return phone calls.

Check out Josh Smith’s new site at CinematicBride.com, he is a 20 year old wedding cinematographer and does some amazing things with video. I think it would be unbelievable for me to photograph your wedding and for Josh to film it… you would seriously have the best memories of your wedding ever! We both travel across the world to do weddings and are some pretty cool people . Plus, think of how great it would be to tell your family and friends that you hired the best wedding cinematographer in the world, who happens to be 20 years old, and that you hired the best wedding photographer in the world, who happens to be 21 years old .

Have a great day!