Sometimes, no matter what your career choice, auto pilot can take over and you forget for just a fleeting moment what truly drives you. I forget, sometimes, what I love so much about holding a camera in my hands. I forget, sometimes, that I see life as many snapshots of a moment frozen for only an instant, and then gone. I forget, sometimes, that I am truly my happiest when my camera is an extension of my person, capturing those little moments that make up a giant moment called life.

So I’ve started this new project for Fusion - 101 in 1001, everybody is doin’ it. I thought I’d join in. Basically, it’s a ginormous list of 101 things you want to do in 1001 days. The things on your list can be huge, little, meaningful, meaningless, so long as it matters to YOU.

I made this monster list last week, to be honest, I’m still making the list. I’d like to do one for Fusion and one for just me. One of the things on the list is to do more personal projects, to keep the passion alive. I need to do a few projects that make sense to only me. Projects that I can just dive into and not have to explain or defend. One of those projects is to take my camera and spend some time with each of my kids. Just sitting in the corner as a silent observer. Taking pictures of how I see them. I made myself promise that I was not allowed to photoshop these images, no removing drool, scratches, imperfect skin, or snot. So, please forgive the massive drool on Drew in this session. The project is to just take pictures of Drew being Drew. Livy being Livy. Zoey being Zoey.

There is a LOT more on my list for Fusion, and maybe i’ll post the list once it’s all the way done. Or maybe I won’t. That’s a lot of pressure. But, I get to check one thing off:

Take some pictures of Drew, no fuss, no photoshop, just Drew as I see him - as creative or boring as it may be.

I’ll include the slideshow for fun, and some snaps for those who don’t want to watch the whole show. If this totally bores you - I’m sorry. I did warn you.

and the slideshow, titled “581 Days Old - 27 Minutes With Drew”

If you truly made it through that long winded post, the pictures, the slideshow, or any combination of all that - THANK YOU!
Taking a little blogging break now to go play in the snow with the kids. IT’S SNOWING SO HARD HERE! Wahooooo! I think this is the first snow of the season.

Happy Sunday to all! We wish you a fantastic week!

We seriously could not have asked for better winter weather for this wedding. Wow, there were a lot of w’s in that last sentence. This fabulous couple got married right after Christmas and it was a fantastic night. It snowed, but just the right amount, just enough on the ground for it to be white and just enough falling from the sky to keep us from super freezing.

April and Joe are both in medical school and somehow planned this wedding from the corners of the nation while living in separate states and trying to study like mad. Fortunately they both have incredible families who pitched in and did a lot of the planning and coordinating with them.

Never have I met a bride so organized as April was, I think our whole night was planned out for us, right down to the minute. And never have I met a groom who received so many kind toasts from all of his groomsmen. There is usually at least one guy in the crowd who has some jabs. But not for Joe.

We had a wonderful night with April, Joe, and their families and friends! Thanks to all of you for such a memorable and amazing end to our 2007 wedding season!

Some pics:

Kristin and Loren were married on a fridgid Friday in December. You’d never know it was cold outside from the warmth and beautiful decor going on inside. Kristin has some serious potential for wedding coordination in her future. She did all of the decorations herself, right down to the chocolate dipped pretzels she had out on the tables. She told me she made them the night before her wedding! That’s right, the night BEFORE her wedding! Kristin and Loren were great to work with, very calm, very sweet, with great family and friends surrounding them.

Some pics to share:

What’s so crazy about this couple, is that when we booked them for their March wedding, it seemed like March 2008 was an eternity away. Now, here it is January, and the end of January at that!

We are SO excited for this wedding for so many reasons, we love Portland weddings, for one, for two - I’ve known Casey and his family forever, since we’re related, that would make sense. Casey is not only my cousin, but the brother of my best ever childhood friend, who I’m still friends with 22 years later.

Meet Casey and Laura - perhaps the cutest couple ever, and sooo nice and fun to work with. We shot their engagment session in the ever trendy Pearl district. We seriously could have spent the day doing this shoot. I think we had to squeeze this session out in a record 35 minutes. There was a Oregon State game on the agenda and not only was I losing Casey to watching the clock for the game, but Steve too!

Go Beavs! I think they won that game. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember which one it was. Shameful!

Sure, it was pouring down rain. Sure, it was dang cold. Sure, we did have to get up at 4am to make it to Portland in time for our day of shooting. But, you know what, it was one of our favorite shooting days of 2007. It was great to shoot, catch up with family, we even had time to see some of our friends while we were there. It’s days like this one that make me want to move out of the cool, crisp, low key life that central Oregon has to offer. Then we come home, and I remember why I do love it here so very much!

On with more pictures. This session was done in downtown Portland, China Town, to be more specific. Good times. Brendan is a high school senior and he just got back from a year in China this summer. This kid blows me away, not only can he fluently speak Chinese, but he can also speak Russian. Amazing! I can barely handle one language and am always intrigued by people who are bilingual. I think that is so awesome!

Where have we been? What have we been doing? Nothing exciting. Mostly working. We have managed to squeeze in some fun family time over the holidays, but nothing fantastic or news worthy. We’ve had a lot of portrait work going on and quite a few late season weddings, we actually had two weddings within a week of Christmas. That was nuts! We’ll post some from those later this month. First we have to catch up from November on. I won’t bore you with all of our sessions, just tid bits from our favorites.

We’ll start with Portland - we made a trip up there not too long ago to capture a variety of things - a baby, a family, a high school senior, and an engagement session. So, it’s been busy and busy is good!

Here are a handful of Patrick. An adorable little guy who took quite a liking to Steve during our session. They had a fun time stacking blocks, playing peek-a-boo, it was great fun and it made Patrick like the camera, that’s always a plus.

More soon - and I promise - soon doesn’t mean a month from now!