You all may remember Cara from her earlier bridal session which we posted about a few weeks ago.  Her wedding took place on June 20th on the west side of the state.  Her ceremony was in Dowagiac, MI (a place I can now both spell and pronounce) and her reception was  in St. Joseph, MI.  We love visiting the west side of the state – the coastline is so beautiful there!  Forgive me for being a little short on words in this post – there’s just SO many photos to post! 

The ceremony took place at the beautiful Sacred Heart of Mary, a registered Michigan Historic Site.  It was the perfect storybook church and just down the street from where Cara’s parents live.  The grounds surrounding the church were lush and gorgeous and filled with mature, moss-covered trees.

Here’s the handsome groom, Nick.  Cara & Nick met in the most awesome and unbelievable way.  I am going to save the story for the end of this post though, so you have to keep reading!

And here’s Cara, looking all kinds of gorgeous, working it in front of the church.  I seriously could have taken pictures under that tree all day, it was so beautiful.

Married! 

How cute are they?!?! 

After the ceremony, we followed the bridal party to the beach to get some photos by the iconic St. Joseph Lighthouse.

After the beach, it was time to get the party on over at  The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center, in downtown St. Joseph.

These two knew how to party, let me tell you!  The reception was a blast! We saw some gravity defying dancing….and at one point Nick’s brother took a running leap and belly-flopped onto to the floor.  I bet that felt good the next day! 

I loved this whole little sequence with Nick’s brother.  We love to take pictures of people taking pictures!

See this couple here?  This is Donna & Paul – who’s wedding we’ll be photographing this fall.  ON A YACHT! 

Okay, so I promised an epic “how they met” story, right?  In college, Cara and her girlfriends went on a road trip to Chicago.  At the same time, Nick and his friends decided to also go on a road trip to Chicago.  You know how you always pass the same cars over and over again on a long trip?  Well, they kept passing each other – and checking each other out.  Finally, one of them decided to start a conversation, via Post-it Notes held up to the window.  They got each other’s numbers, and met up in Chi-town.  Only to discover they  both attended Western Michigan University, and had loads of other things in common.  So from one simple 3 inch square piece of yellow paper, a connection was made and a marriage was born.  Pretty cool, huh?

Finally, I wanted to close this post with this lovely shot of Nick & Cara looking out over Lake Michigan.  Thanks so much to both of you.  Your families were warm and wonderful and we had an excellent time documenting your wedding.    We wish you both much happiness in Tennessee.

We’d also like to thank Christie from Outstanding Weddings & Events, who was the event coordinator and  helped keep things running smoothly.

Okay, so you all know the drill!  Help Nick & Cara win a free 8×10 or 11×14 by leaving a comment.  Everyone who enters also has a chance to win a $10 giftcard.  To see the fine print, go here.

Want to be a winner yourself? All you have to do is enter by commenting on the blog post for any of our weddings between now and October 31st, 2009. If the wedding reaches at least 30 commments, A drawing will be held 30 days after each wedding is posted. ON TOP OF ALL THAT: you will help the happily married couple win free prints. Full details and rules can be found HERE.

Paul and Nikole reached a record of 55 Comments!! winning them an 11 x 14 print of their choice. Nikole chose the sepia print on the right:

Thanks so much for playing!! And don’t forget to check out Zak’s work as well.

We’ve been waiting since early May to show off these images – we weren’t allowed to post them until after Cara’s wedding, so her dress would remain a surprise! 

Full on disclosure time:  This was our first bridal session!  Whoo!  This was SO MUCH FUN.  I wish all our brides did this, it’s a great way to get some smokin’ photos of you in your dress before OR after the Big Day.  It allows us a chance to flex our creative muscles and get some shots that a typical wedding schedule would not permit.   If you schedule your bridal session before your wedding, it’s also a great opportunity to do a dry run of your hair and make-up in preparation for your wedding.  If you decide to do a more casual “day after” session, you can let your  hair down and go for a more relaxed look.  Either way, you walk away with a series of images that will be a great addition to your wedding day photos.

We started off our session at Detroit’s iconic Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers – since Nick, Cara’s husband, is a big Tigers fan.

From there, we went across the street to the Fox Theatre – which is always a popular location for downtown bridals.

Cara’s dress is exquisite, the beading and detailing is gorgeous.  And I had to grab a quick shot of the beautiful antique bracelet she found – her “something old” for the wedding.

We hopped in the car soon after this and headed to the Riverwalk to fulfill one of Cara’s requests – photos by the water.  Done!

The black & white image on the left is actually the one Cara selected for her canvas, which was displayed at her wedding reception.  It turned out magnificent!  The image on the right is one of my favorites from the session and we now have a big print of it on display at our studio! 

We ended the session at the fabulous Greektown Casino, which has the coolest lobby – it is SO much fun to shoot there.  We will be back there this week for Heather’s wedding!

There are more yummy pictures of Cara and her wedding to come – so stay tuned!

Also – shout out to all our current brides or anyone thinking about working with us – we LOVE bridal sessions.  Let us know if you ‘d like to set one up!

Last year we really focused on our gear, and we plan to make some major upgrades this year as well, but we also signing up for every workshop we can find.  This Sunday we will be getting things started by attending JB Sallee’s I Photoshop People seminar in Detroit.   And the very next day, we’ll be driving across the state to Grand Rapids to attend the Professional Photographers of Western Michigan‘s all day workshop with Cliff Mautner.  Cliff is a wedding photography legend and was voted one of the ten best wedding photographers in the world by American Photo magazine.

I don’t anticipate us getting much sleep between Sunday and Monday, but I’m sure it will be worth it!

Now I can’t just end a blog post without pictures, so I’m continuing my theme of scavaging for photos showing things that are growing.

I inherited the most amazing wisteria trees when I bought this house.  When they are in bloom, they are amazing, and the scent carries through the whole yard.  As much as I love them though, my wisteria trees would swallow my house whole if I let them.  In fact if anyone wants any seedlings, you just let me know, because I will be pulling baby plants out of every nook and cranny in a few months.  I’m not kidding….one popped up through a crack and was growing in my garage last year – which has no windows.  And it was 6ft tall before I finally got over my amusement and wacked it down.

These are the seed pods from the tree.  They are really soft and velvety.  We get like 9 million of them.  We brought a couple in the house last year just because we thought they were cool looking.  Months later, they scared the crap out of us when they started popping and flying all over the place.  They dry out and crack, and then the seeds fly out – sometimes with a good deal of force.  Great for freaking out your pets.

Why am I showing you a picture of dirty strawberries?  BECAUSE I GREW THEM!  Next time let’s hope I remember to pick them before the squirrels eat them.  Okay, I think that’s enough summer nostalgia for one day.  Hope everyone has a great weekend! 

These were taken with my point-and-shoot digital camera – so don’t hate on ‘em! 

I have no idea what that last thing is, other than awesome.

Tonight we are going to meet with one of our August wedding couples and we’ll be shooting their engagement session downtown.  Whooo!  Our spring wedding engagement season has started!

1. Sit down.
2. Take a picture of yourself right now. don’t primp, just snap one!
3. Upload it.
4. Tag 3 people to do the same.
That’s all!

In an effort to play along ( I hate pics of myself, mind you), we post these fine gems taken with the only camera we didn’t have to go digging for, My Macbook webcam. (OK we cheated, took 4, but it was all in a row with no primping).

So, We hereby Tag the following: Sarah Brown Downtown at Sarah Brown Photography. Gail Werner of, well…Gail Werner Photography, and Kelly LaBruyere of True Expressions Photography.

I’ve been holding off on posting about this until the one I ordered as a surprise gift was delivered to a client.  But I think it’s safe now. 

We are now offering storyboards!   These are available in 10 x 10 and larger sizes and you have your choice of a styrene-mounted print or a stand-out or canvas wrapped print.  The styrene-mounted option is shown in these photos.

Wait, I think some definitions are in order:

Styrene Mount: Each print is lightly textured, adding depth and dimension, and then it is permanently mounted on to a sturdy plastic-like material.  This results in a print that’s practically indestructible.  I wouldn’t run it over with your car or use it as a fetch toy, but you can absolutely display it on an easel, just like shown above.  Framing is not necessary, though you can go that route too if you want to keep it old school.

Stand-Out: Like it sounds, the print is mounted on a much thicker piece of material, so it pops out from the wall.  I’ll post pictures to the blog soon.

Canvas Wrap: The most dramatic of options, the image is actually printed on canvas and stretched over a frame, just like a painting.    While you can frame this if you wish, the trendy thing right now is to hang it on the wall as is.  Classy, modern, and cool.

I love these for weddings because you can capture all the little details from the event and show them off.

Just in case you are totally getting sick of my blue walls, here’s a different view:

Want one?  Give us a call!  

Email was down for almost 16 hours today (Feb 10th, 2009) due to a GMail hiccup. After many Support requests, emails are just now slowly trickling in. (11:58 PM).

If you did not hear from us, you can call us at the studio line at: 313.915.2302 or wait, and we will get to you, we promise.

In the mean time, we had a great weekend off to do some photography for ourselves and for fun. Here’s one from Belle Isle in Detroit of the crazy 2 story Ice Sculpture. See more at our Flickr pages here:

Andy’s Flickr and Lynn’s Flickr

In other news, we still have some prime spring dates available. Contact us for details.

Once all that really sunk in, it hit me how absolutely awesome this ride has been so far.   I am so grateful and excited about our prospects for this coming year, and if things continue to grow at this pace, look out 2010!

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of client meetings, bookings, and brainstorming for this coming year.   We’ve met some great, interesting, and down-to-earth couples and are honored to have been selected as their wedding photographers – and not just because all the brides we’ve met with are smokin’.  None of this would have been possible without the trust our earliest clients put in us, and for that I am very thankful.  Seriously, you have all been AMAZING and it’s been a privilege to work with you.

We got the chance to learn about some great venues this year, and met some wonderful people.  We are looking forward to making friends with a LOT more people this year, including, but not limited to, some of these awesome Michigan wedding coordinators we’ve been networking with online:

• Ana at Two Foot Creative
• Amanda at Bliss Weddings
• Lindsey at Emma Lynn Designs
• Christie at Outstanding Weddings & Events

Yeah, that’s right ladies, I’m calling you out!  And my goal is to work with you on at least one event this coming year.     Also, while I’m giving shoutouts, I’d also like to recommend the Wed Michigan Blog.  Lindsey, the creator of the blog, is a Michigan-native temporarily living in Boston.  She posts about creative wedding ideas, local vendors, and practical advice on budgeting and enjoying your wedding day.  If you’re a Michigan bride, you should be following this blog!

Before I wrap up, here’s a couple things currently going on with West Park Photography that I wanted to share:

• We are working on our new childrens & lifestyle photography site.  We’d love to add some more childrens work to our portfolio.  If you are in the Metro-Detroit area and are interested in having unique, unscripted portraiture of your family done, shoot us an email.  We will be giving away a FREE 1-hour session to the first three people in Grosse Pointe that make an appointment.  We figure this is a good way to help us make some local contacts.
• In the next couple weeks, I will be designing and ordering our new sample albums and guestbooks for 2009.  If you have already booked with us and want us to contact you when the new samples are available, let us know.  We’d love to show them to you.
• Also, I just want to put the word out that we have started getting some inquiries about offering Boudoir Sessions.  This is something we’ve been interested in offering, but not something we’ve really advertised, so we were plesantly surprised when people started asking about them.  If you have any interest in setting something up, send us an email and let us know.  If we have enough inquiries, we may set aside a day to rent a beautiful location and offer a series of private mini-sessions.
• While our June calendar is starting to fill up, we still have some great dates available for this spring and July.  If you’ve been procrastinating on booking a photographer, we might be able to help you!
• We get a lot of questions about how far we will travel.  Generally speaking, everything is negotiable.  We have a wedding booked in St. Joseph on the west side of the state this year, and others  up north.  We are also willing to travel to surrounding states and SW Ontario.  And while we aren’t actively seeking destination events right now, we definitely would consider them.  I am familiar with the SW Florida Gulf Coast area after living there for almost 2 years.  Any event taking place on the gulf coast between Sarasota  and Naples would be very do-able for us.  It’s 19 degrees here.  It will not take much prompting to get us on a plane!     I realize the chances of us getting a Florida wedding from this blog post is slim, but hey, I’m throwing it out there!

Okay, that’s it for now.  Coming up next will be Erin & Ian’s beautiful wedding at River Birch Lodge in Hartland, MI. I’ll leave you with this photo I took a couple weeks ago.  Why are the best sunsets on days it’s FREEZING?