Christon and Christine

My brother and his girlfriend were in Chicago a couple weeks ago (yay!), and we all headed out to visit Grandma where our aunt, uncle, and cousins joined us for the afternoon.

Grandma is always marveled by new technology; here's Christine demonstrating features on her iPod.




Seamus enjoying his ice cream


Violet's tasty sundae


I did a few portraits of Christon on our walk outside


A very cool wall right by my house

Ron and Lisa: around town

Ron and Lisa took me on a few tours of their neighboring towns. They were very cute!



We stopped into a fantastic cupcake shop, Main Street Cupcakes. If you're ever near Hudson, Ohio, you must stop there! We arrived near their closing time when they only had three flavors remaining; apparently we should have gone for breakfast. Here are Ron and Lisa playing around as I enjoyed my treat.




Mmmm... yum! The plates and placemats they served them on were adorable!




Cute!


A fun toy we played with at a coffee shop


Ron holding his post-cupcake snack


I loved playing with this crystal at their friend's house.

Ron and Lisa: the animals

Ron and Lisa have two very sweet pets: Prissy the cat and Lola the dog.

Lola loves to play! We had her outside running around in the snow.


Playing the jumping game with Ron




Waiting to come inside and join her friends


Peek-a-boo!




I loved how she blended in with the colors of their staircase












Playtime with Prissy!




We also went to visit one of Ron and Lisa's friends who had two very sweet kitties

Ron and Lisa: the portraits

A couple weeks ago I took a weekend jaunt out to the Cleveland area to visit my friends Ron and Lisa. They had been inviting me for well over a year and I finally was able to go! This will be a three-part post with the large number of photos. First up: my portraits! I was inspired by the light in their house and wanted to make use of it.









Ron gave me an odd look as I called him into the bathroom for this shot, but they had an awesome skylight there!


This is in their uninsulated attic, and I originally had Ron wrap his arms around Lisa just to keep her warm, but I love the results!




Power shot.


Another favorite spot to shoot: parking garages.

Christy and Brett's wedding

I had a great time with Christy and Brett and their family and friends for this spectacular Valentine's Day wedding! We lucked out with decent weather, so we were able to play outside a bunch.

Brett's twin nieces (the flower girls), were quite enthralled with Christy as she was getting into her gown.


A nice moment with all of Christy's girls helping her




One of my favorite moments of the ceremony came when the priest said "I'm sure every man here is jealous of Brett. Not just because he's marrying this beautiful woman, but because he'll never forget his anniversary for as long as he lives". I hadn't thought of that plus, choosing Valentine's Day as your wedding day.




Hooray! We're married!


A note to photographers: it's handy to have a dance background so you can show the groom how to safely dip his bride :)


Love the drama in this one


We spent a while in the middle of the street in front of the Board of Trade. I love this downtown view!






This pretty much summed up the day: everyone was so happy and full of life all day. It makes my job easy!


We ventured to the downtown train platforms for some fun times




We only rode the train for one stop, so we had about 30 seconds to cram everyone in here (there may be some passengers hiding amongst the wedding party... not everyone had time to move!)


I can't recall whose idea this was, but I love it. They asked this fellow passenger to sit on the bench with them and pretend to be annoyed. She was laughing too much to actually be annoyed, but I enjoy the shot anyway.




This was probably the best part of the whole day. We started with just a simple portrait of the wedding party at The Bean (Cloud Gate), and then they decided to invite all the onlookers to join them in a photo...


It was just incredible watching this mass of people run, scream, and laugh their way into this photo. I loved it! This moment reminded me of a brief clip in the video from wherethehellismatt.com: at 0:57 you see hordes of people running into the shot at this same spot.






Mmmm.. cake


Their first dance




And for more photo fun, watch the slideshow!