Life. Photographed.

01-28-2012

Liz + Jay Get Married
Seattle Wedding Videographer

I’m thrilled to present what I hope will be the first of many HD video productions in my future. I love, love, LOVE shooting video and plan to eventually make it a mainstay in my career. It’s a perfect marriage* of my theatre and visual arts background and weddings are so rich with LIFE, it’s just perfect.

I have to thank my friend and fellow photographer, Sarah Alston, for referring me to Liz and Jay. Not only are they beautiful, they were so fun to work with – the whole lot of them! Keep your eyes open for the way they used plaid as an homage to Liz’s father. It was such a touching tribute to him and something I’ll always remember.

Guess what? I’m taking on a few more portfolio-building gigs this year, so if you’d like to be considered for a wedding shoot, drop me a line (click on the contact link above).

Lastly: Liz and Jay, THANK you for allowing me to be a part of your special day. I hope I did justice to the beautiful event. I know you will have many happy years ahead and in some small way, this will bring you many happy memories.

*Marriage pun at no extra charge. You’re welcome.

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01-20-2012

Capturing a Sense of Place: Words and Images

I’m always thrilled to work with the Tacoma Public Library! Hope the weather holds for the photowalk tomorrow.

Capturing a Sense of Place 2: Words & Images

In 247 words or less what is your favorite place to hang out in Tacoma? Why? What’s it like? How does it make you feel? What’s unique about it? Do you have a special memory of the place that keeps you coming back? How can you best capture those thoughts and feelings in seven to 10 photographs that complement and add to the story you are telling?

Two working artists – photographer Jesse Michener (Jesse Michener Photography) and author Mary Boone (Mary Boone Writes) guide you through the nuts and bolts of creating compelling photo essays in this day-long , very hands-on workshop. You will learn the power of sparse elegance, how to draw out the emotions within the story and use that as a connecting point, and how to plan your shots with the story you want to tell. You will learn to see everything around you and techniques to identify and focus on the essential visual elements. You will learn to tell compelling stories through your work. There will be a critique session at the end of the workshop. When completed, the photo essays will be exhibited online.

Funded through a grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
Photograph: Caroline Transue

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01-20-2012

Sh*t Suburban Kids Say When it Snows

You may have seen me post this on the ol’ facebook page. What can I say, after five days of the kids at home, we’re all a little punchy. I don’t want to assume you DON’T know about the “Sh*t People Say” YouTube trend, but if you don’t, I suggest you also watch this, this and this one to get the idea.

On a happy note, I took this picture yesterday in my yard: Rose, interrupted.

I’m out of coffee and wine, so the timing for the great thaw is good.

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01-19-2012

Presidential Twins
Tacoma Twin Photographer

My girls go to our local school and their sweet music teacher spent the past nine months growing twins, a boy and a girl, before an audience of very eager pupils. Each of my kids came home with near-daily reports of the babies, “Today baby A was kicking baby B and Mrs. M had to sit down to catch her breath!” I’ve also enjoyed her weekly pregnancy updates on Facebook, which have included photos of her ever-expanding belly.

I asked to photograph the babies as a gift to Mrs. M. Not only has she taught my girls beautiful music this year, she’s taught them lessons of a different sort: love, patience and and the sight of an ever-expanding belly that rocks and rolls nearly all the time!

Welcome to the presidential twins: Reagan and Jackson! Good work, Mrs. M! They were seriously the sweetest babies!

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12-06-2011

Getting Personal: My End-of-Year-Album

I don’t normally share my personal family shots here on the blog, but I think you might like to see my annual end-of-year project in action. I have a slight fear this will bore you, so feel free to move along if it does!

Here’s something you should know about me: prior to 2003 (the year I went digital), my system for organizing images consisted of sorting photographs into the correct shoe box. Oh, the shoe boxes are the nice kind – they even have labels. I have a few traditional albums from high school college: the kind of albums I’ll need to move to digital because the backing is slowing eating away the images.

One thing I’ve done fairly well since then is create a yearly online archive (via smugmug) for my family. And, since 2007, I’ve made a series of press-printed albums called “A Year in the Life.” My kids love them and they are our own little time capsule. I like that.

I’ve never shared the images as a collection online before, but after creating this year’s album, I thought you might like to see what we’ve been up to. It’s been a good year: we had some really fun adventures!

I didn’t caption the book: mostly because if I had to commit to caption the dang pages, it might never get done. I might add captions later, though some artistic flourish or fancy pen. We’ll see. The events photographed are fairly sequential (beginning in February of 2011).

I’ve sized the album square, so I’ll print one at 10×10 (or 12×12 perhaps) and then I can do duplicate albums in a smaller size for gifts. What you see below are the facing pages, including any borders, for each set of pages. The first and last pages are single pages, of course. I’ll print through WHCC unless I find something I like better.