Light Walk

I wanted to create a rather unique Christmas present for my mom this year, and thought I might share it here. I really love the words to the song “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Wickham and was mulling them over a little while before Christmas when this idea came to me: photograph an eye from each person in the family looking at the sky or the horizon. A closeup photograph of an eye can often reveal the subject where the eye is looking, so an eye with a visible image of the world might be a cool demonstration of the phrase in the song “…the colors of the morning are inside Your eyes…”. And, each eye would be from my mom’s children (by birth and marriage) so it would have a bit of a reflection on her heritage in the world via those eyes. My end result was a frame originally designed for baseball cards with a set of our eyes in it and a numbered “cheat sheet” to match eyes up to people in the family. Turned out, one of the cool things we did was to engage the kids and adults around the Christmas tree in a little game of Guess the Eye. That was a lot of fun and I think made the gift more special.

So, I present here a simple set of eyes for you to look at and perhaps be inspired to create something special for someone in your life.

 

Yesterday was a wonderful time for us and the larger family; we spent time thanking God for sending Jesus, blessing each other and just being together. I treasure days like that and I hope that all of you were able to enjoy some time with God, family and friends as well. Leah and and were also blessed to be a part of a 50th wedding anniversary yesterday afternoon; I’ll post some photographs and thoughts on that later. For now, here’s a “snapshot” of the day for us:

The Clan all Together on Christmas Morning

While a bride can order prints or images from her wedding day from almost any photographer, our preferred result from a wedding day is a custom crafted wedding album, designed to showcase the complete story of the day. An album has the ability to distill a series of wonderful moments in time into a framework to remember, something that family and friends can hang their favorite memories on for the rest of their lives. A box of prints, or even a few portraits hung on the wall simply don’t tell the story like an album can.

There are many approaches to the design of an album; we generally start with the best images showing the whole story in it’s timeline order. We then place related images together on one or more two-page spreads in the album (a spread is two pages that are open at the same time). Sometimes a moment in the story is so compelling that it deserves it’s own spread (for example, the first kiss, or the first dance), other parts of the day have many images that are combined to create an overall impression from that portion of the day in a single spread (for example, important guest candid moments or really funny situations.) Selecting the images to be used can actually take a fair bit of effort; there are so many photographs that could be included that simply won’t fit in most albums and so we have to choose not to use what otherwise are wonderful images. Of course, some book printing styles afford more pages than others. If we are designing a coffee table style album we can generally have more pages than if we are doing an album that has lay-flat pages.

When we’re done, we have a draft design that the bride and her family can review. If necessary, the bride can make a few changes to remove that strange party crasher that showed up uninvited, or perhaps add some focus to a best friend. Since we are dealing with digital design we can create custom family versions of the main album, perhaps with additional group photographs or a family sequence slightly different from the main album. These can all generally be done very quickly based on the main album and released to print at the same time.

Whether we create an album for a bride or not, we always make images available for the family and friends to order, and we also place some of the best images on our Facebook page so everyone can see and comment on the things that they remember about the day and the people.

An album Hannah designed earlier this year is below to show an example. Note that most albums start and end with a single page, following the general book-making practice of starting page 1 on the right hand side.

 

A beautiful wedding! A wonderful venue! A gracious and fun family! Oscar and Amy were married Saturday at the Intercontinental Stephen F Austin Hotel in the Capitol Ballroom and we were so impressed with the staff; they were very helpful and accommodating to us and to all that goes on in a wedding. Their Christmas decorations really helped give color and fullness to the ambiance. WOW Factor Design did all the flowers and they were stunning (I’m partial to red roses!).

Some awesome moments during the day and eveing:

• The Maid of Honor presented the couple with a little “Onesie” with a Star Trek emblem on the front, wishing them many wonderful children.
• The Best Man, Oscar’s brother, regaled the couple with tales of growing up and specifically how protective Oscar was in his life. It was very cool to hear this related over to Amy and how Oscar would certainly be as protective and loving as he is of his brother!
• For several of the special dances, they would sing the song to each other that the DJ was playing. I love that!
• The bridesmaids sang “Jeremiah was a bull frog” and “it’s a small world” to help Amy get dressed
• Amy’s coordinator was amazing; she had something wrong with her right ankle and yet she was hoping all over the place all day. She started out with crutches but quickly decided that she didn’t have time for that so she ditched them and moved faster. That’s dedication!
• Photography on the grand staircase was a breeze; the hotel has it decorated so it’s almost impossible to capture a bad image.

The Bride & Groom:

The Bridesmaids with Amy on the Hotel Staircase

Up Against the Wall

Just Married and Happy

Out on the Balcony

Beautiful Amy on the Staircase

Sassy Amy

Life is Good

Hotel images:

SF Austin Continental Wait Staff

The Big Christmas Tree

Mel the cool DJ:

Spinning those (real) discs

The theme for the wedding:

A Flapper Style

Other Fun:

Ok, while this is not related at all to photography, weddings, etc., it is related to family. So, I just have to pass it on. This is just about the best stuff I’ve ever tasted; I’m sure there are tons of similar recipes out there but I haven’t found em! This was given to me by a friend (hi Gary!) who got it from a friend, etc.; I have no idea where it actually comes from.

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