I Break for Turkey.

Hey everyone! I’m here to announce a brief blogging hiatus as I take my Thanksgiving vacation. :) I’ll still be shooting, responding to e-mails, and stalking people on Facebook, but I won’t be editing, placing orders, or blogging until my triumphant return on November 28th. Thank you for your patience during this time. Also, since it is that thankful time of year, I’d like to tell my clients past and present that Geoff and myself are always thankful for you. :) You make our world go round! Now go enjoy some quality time with the family, eat all the turkey you possibly can, and eat a lot of things containing gluten for me. ;) I’m going to go be a big pain in my family’s butt as I make them eat gluten-free pumpkin pie, turkey with stuffing on the side, and furiously scrubbing down the kitchen to avoid cross-gluten-contamination. :P Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! See you in a few! xoxo.

Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Becky+Jake

Becky and Jake originally weren’t going to do an engagement session, but I am super glad they changed their minds. :) They are a ton of fun and one of those couples that love and appreciate photography (Jake does some photo work himself!). They were all game and didn’t give me any weird looks when I requested strange things of them, and Jake, in turn, requested a few shots in the Kudzu jungle of Raleigh. Becky works at NC State doing sciencey stuff, and Jake works at IBM doing computer stuff (clearly I am not in a computer or science related field)! They’re going to be married at CAM next year, and their wedding pictures there will be stellar. You’re allowed to shoot inside CAM, which is pretty cool seeing as how we couldn’t shoot inside Artspace for our wedding. But since they’re allowed to take pictures inside there, we did a lot of their engagement photos around CAM in the warehouse district where it’s pretty industrial and funky. We were all set to do photos outside with our 30% chance of rain, which then became “30% chance of rain; rain stopping at 3pm”, which then became “70% chance of rain the entire evening” which translated to “it rained the entire time and was super dark and overcast.” It didn’t pour though, so we toughed it out! And to accompany us through the remainder of the session was Hobbit… whose breed is “crusty old Labrador” according to Becky, and who is adorable but totally not interested in me. “Hey Hobbit”s and “Pssst, Hobbit”s just made him look further away. He wore his little bandanna with pride and was the cutest crusty old Lab I’ve ever seen. :)

Raleigh Family Photographer: Gabby+Mike+Evan+Olive+Max

So I don’t advertise that I do family portraits because I concentrate mainly on weddings and those are 99% of my time. I’ve typically narrowed it down to only photographing friends’ families, or friends of friends, or families of friends, etc.  But I received this e-mail in my inbox a few months ago, and the wording was so funny that I agreed to take this woman and her so-called “crazy bunch” on. Upon further stalking of my blog, Gabby (the mom), discovered that my friend Alaskan Kate (who was my bridesmaid and featured a few times in my blog as a photography subject) is her son’s preschool teacher. We both thought that was strange and a small world, but it got even weirder when I said, “Oh yeah! I just volunteered for Kate’s bookfair to raise money for their preschool tonight! I made the buttons!” And it turned out that they were there and we had already met each other and Evan (their son) made a button and the button maker malfunctioned and her husband Mike gave me a rating of C- button making!!! SMALL WORLD.

Anyway – Gabby’s been keeping me entertained for weeks now sending me funny Twitter messages and I’ve been busy stalking their family pictures on Facebook. Now their family pictures are here! Gabby is mom, Mike is dad, Evan is the handsome 3 year-old, Olive is the adorable 15 month-old, and Max is the senior dog. All of them are equally adorable. You’ll see. It’s kind of hard to choose. Special thanks goes out to Chacha and her son – the Fekete family’s trusty neighbors who wrangled children, dogs, shoes, jelly beans, socks, bags, and were able to make everyone smile.