Grace and Ted’s Wedding!

Grace and Ted finally tied the knot! It was SUCH a beautiful wedding. Grace had to wake up at the crack of dawn, but she kept her cool-ness throughout the day.  As one of her bridesmaids, I was able to stay close to Grace and felt truly blessed that I could be a part of her special day!I wish I was good with words to describe what an awesome day it was, but since I am a bit challenged, I will post some pics that I took from the wedding

Three little words

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, in this case, we only need three:  “save the date“.  I received my friend Sally’s save the date magnet in the mail just a few days ago, and it turned out really well!

The magnet’s high gloss surface really shows off the bright color of her sweater.  And to top it off, she even went the extra mile to design a custom stamp featuring her and her fiance’s initials as well as matching, bright teal border. I can’t wait to put this magnet on my fridge and show it off!

Leesburg, Va

Grace and I decided head up to Leesburg to take some pictures and maybe shop. Although we never made it to the outlet mall, we had a blast taking pictures of each other. I realized it is so difficult to be on the other side of the camera!! It was so awkward and we didn’t know where to look. I think towards the end, we both felt a little bit more comfortable.

Grace says I accidentally erased one of her dimples. lol oopsy. I think she looks good!

I wanted to try this pose and finally got a chance to try it with gracers. I saw portraits where the photographer was shooting from the top and wanted to try it. Since I didn’t know exactly how it worked, I first told grace to ’squat’ and she looked at me like I was crazy. After some trial and error, we finally got it right.

Please check my flickr site for more of gracer’s fabulous pictures.;)

Musical Coffee

Yes, that’s right, musical coffee.  It was a cozy night for coffee, games, good friends, and the unveiling of Sona Kay’s first CD!  Sona Kay happens to be my future sister in law, and a talented one to boot. 

As you can see, a packed house supported our fellow friend and Wahoo as she sang a few songs.  If you look closely, you can see Gracers too.

To check out some of Sona’s great vocals, check out http://sonakaymusic.com/.  For more GREAT photos, click here.

Lots of events to celebrate

A few weekends ago, Craile and I were scheduled for a photo shoot which sadly got cancelled due to snow. Happily, my camera did not sit idle as it accompanied me to my friend Angela’s birthday celebration. While techinically not an official portrait session for Girls with Big Cameras, it was still a great opportunity to practise.

First on the agenda: dinner at Woo Lae Oak. For this occasion, I borrowed Gracer’s prime lens which obviously does wonders! I was lucky enough to get to sit right next to the birthday girl herself.

This next shot was by far my favorite of the evening, what a perfect moment, both Angela and Howard look so at ease and happy. Maybe they were happy to see the cake!

Oh, and what else was there to celebrate? Their engagement of course ^_^.

For more from Angela’s birthday, click here.

Volunteer photography

In 2005, I was bitten by the volunteer photography bug.  My manager, who has always been extremely active in supporting local charities, roped a few of us at work into helping her stuff the mini-flashlights for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night event in Reston.  Several of us put our fingers and patience to work as we each carted home pounds of batteries, rolls of masking tape, and LOTS of boxes of little red flashlights.  Shortly afterwards, the call went out for additional volunteers, namely for event photography.  Being the most easily accessible photographer at the time, I volunteered to assemble a team for the event.  Four brave souls later, a tradition was started.The tradition was revived in 2007 with a few new faces including Grace and Claire. Not only has the event been a fantastic method of community outreach to raise awareness of the diseases, it has also been a stress-free method of introducing novice photographers to the finer points of event photography such as managing widespread geography, environments that change with time, and the sheer variety of subjects to shoot.To see more from 2005, click here, to see more from 2007, click here.  

Giving Thanks

Sandwiched between Halloween and the busy shopping season that is Christmas, Thanksgiving is a fleeting moment to break bread with family and good friends who are close enough to be considered as family. 

Us girls would like to take time to pause and reflect on the many things that we have been lucky enough to experience this year.  In addition to having the opportunity to share this wonderful holiday with those close to us, we’d like to thank our fabulous readers.  Your warm enthusiasm is helping us to transform an addictive hobby into something more. 

L2 is thankful for:

-Having survived the year of thirty,
-The kind ears and warm support of her dearest friends, and
-The opportunity for new beginnings.

Craile is appreciative of:

-Wonderful family and friends,
-Having found the most amazing hobby, and
-Being able to purchase 65356325412 things that she ”needs”.

Gracers is grateful for:

- Getting engaged to my favorite person in the world and my best friend,
- The support and opportunities for me to move toward more creative ventures, and
- Hilarious/smart/loyal/board-game-loving friends.

From all of us at Girls with Big Cameras, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.

MMM, nothing makes the house smell better than a pie baking in the oven.  Who doesn’t love a fresh homemade pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving?

The power of weddingbee

Who knew we could get “business” so fast?

I posted on weddingbee’s classifieds board yesterday before leaving work about a free engagement/family portrait session since Craile was getting all anxious about setting up our next photoshoot. Within 20 minutes, we got our first response! This is when I went back to the post and put the “3 couples/families” limit since we’re all full-time professionals and I didn’t want to overwhelm ourselves.

This morning when I came into work, there were 5 more! Who knew that people actually read the classified portion of weddingbee? I also went to our Google Analytics page and our pageview went skyrocketed!

With that said… the three of us need to get together and make a couple decisions:

1) Do we take everyone? or just 3 couples?

2) Are we ready to do weddings? (one girl asked about the potential in her E-mail)

3) Do we do outdoor sessions when it’s blazing cold outside in the winter? Or do we wait till the spring?

Thanks for reading! And keep posted….

This was Craile at our photo safari workshop in DC, doesn’t she look professional?

Next I tag L2 for a post on the Light the Night event we all volunteered at…

Grace, I NEED….

“Grace, I need [insert whatever electronic device you can possibly think of.]”

“No, Craile, you don’t NEED it you WANT it.”

“Oh, yea.”

This is a typical conversation that I have with Gracers (almost everyday.) I always need something and Grace tells me that I probably don’t. After graduating from college, I’ve always been eager to find something that would interest me. I quickly realized my job wasn’t going to do that for me, so I turned to many different things (including buying a lot of things that I don’t NEED) but nothing could keep me interested long enough. Then(!), what started as a somewhat impulse purchase became a big part of my life. My big, fat camera. Since I started taking pictures, learning about photography, my life got very exciting. I mean, photography can be very frustrating but at the same time VERY rewarding. I haven’t been excited about anything for so long that I feel like this is something I really need to do. (Plus, its sooo much fun!)

So, now I can say, “Grace, we NEED to do this!!” (ha! im such a dork. lol)