Here is a full sneak peek from my wedding last Saturday.  Blake and Bryce were married at Laketown Conference Center in Saugatuck.  It was quite warm, but a beautiful time was had by all.  I love outdoor weddings (when the weather cooperates) and love the pics I’m able to take outdoors.  These pics are some of my personal favorites ever and I hope you enjoy!

Venue:  Laketown Conference Center, Saugatuck

DJ:  Moments In Time Disc Jockeys, Joe Lober

I love wedding details!  They are a favorite part of my day at every wedding.  Saturday’s wedding had an apple green color scheme, with green, black and white as the main colors of the day.  Following are some of the detail shots from the wedding.  These colors were perfect for a hot July outdoor wedding.  All I can say is the attention to detail was stunning!  Enjoy.

I have been so very busy the past week!  I had two weddings last weekend and have been hard at work editing pictures the past two days.  Needless to say, I have been a bad blogger.  I completely ran out of time this morning to post anything.  So today’s post will be a sneak peek of the wedding I photographed on Friday.  While the day started with some rain (they say rain is good luck on the wedding day), it did clear up enough to allow us to hit a local park in Holland for beautiful outdoor pics.  Enjoy!

Cake:  Cake Occasions, Hudsonville

Floral Design:  True Vine Creations, Jenison

Catering:  Above & Beyond Catering, Holland

When I got married almost 15 years ago, I received a 12×12 white wedding scrapbook and some tools to work on it.  And so began my love affair with scrapbooking.  I have about 5 books pre-children.  Then, I have about 16 books for my oldest son (who is only 9, what can I say, I tend to take a lot of pics) and the poor twins only have 4 books each.  This year I started to forgo doing a book for each child and am doing family books from here on out.  I figure they can fight over them some day down the road (or should I say their wives will fight over them).  I’m hoping to decrease the fighting by doing all my scrapbooking on my computer, digitally.  I started digital about 4 years ago.  And it was the best decision!  No more unpacking all my supplies all over the kitchen table and then having to clean up.  Everything is on my computer.  I work on my pages at least once a week, more in the winter.  I am only five months behind, which for me is fabulous!  Email me with questions or leave a comment, I love to talk to others about this!  I also teach a Digital Scrapbooking for Beginners class every winter.  Let me know if you’re interested!  Here are a few samples of pages I’ve worked on recently.  Enjoy!

I love to check out other photographer’s wedding blogs.  It’s inspiring and keeps my ideas fresh.  Oddly, I do not see many pictures of the couples with their families.  So in honor of the two beautiful weddings I was able to photograph this weekend and all the sets of wonderful parents I was able to work with, here are a few family pics taken at my last few weddings.  Family pictures are not usually the most creative shots of the day, but I think they are some of the most important.  Especially being a mother myself, every time I take a pic of a groom and his mother, I immediately put myself in her shoes and start thinking about the day that my boys will eventually get married.  Happy tears, sniffle, sniffle, refocus…ok.  Enjoy!

As a wedding photographer, I get to attend numerous weddings every year.  My wedding “season” in Michigan normally runs from May until the end of October.  And I tend to have a lot of outdoor weddings during the summer months.  My wedding today is actually indoors, but we will be doing all the photos outside.  I give my brides and grooms a lot of credit planning an outdoor wedding in Michigan.  I don’t care what month of the year it is, you have the potential for rain, snow or blazing heat.  Out of all the outdoor weddings I have shot over the years, none of them have been rained out.  But I have had a few with high temps and lots of humidity.  In honor of the wedding I am doing today (temps are supposed to reach the mid 90s with some humidity thrown in), I am pulling out a few shots from previous years weddings that were held outdoors.  Enjoy!

I love my camera.  It’s like another child to me.  I talk to it, sing to it, take it everywhere with me and spend a lot of money on it.  Just like a member of the family.  My current pro camera has no flash.  It has a hot shoe mount, but no flash that pops up.  And I love this.  It forces me to think before pressing the shutter button and taking the picture.  And believe me, it has taken me a long time to be able to do this almost second nature, without looking at the dials, to do it subconsciously, manually.  And let me just say that I am in no way a camera genius, I definitely have a ton to learn about manual shooting and flash.  I’m just hoping everything I write today makes sense, it’s early and I’m still drinking my first cup of coffee as I write.

Last week at the cottage, the boys were sitting on the couch so nicely all together.  And let me tell you, that very rarely happens.  When it does, I like to grab my camera and try to get a shot.  Usually I’ll grab my little point-n-shoot (which I have to tell you I hate) because it is close to hand at home and my big pro camera is usually out of reach.  But last week at the cottage I only brought my pro gear.  As I sat in the chair opposite them, I looked at the light.  Being inside, I automatically change my ISO setting up from 100.  If I’m outdoors, I normally always have my ISO at 100.  To put it in layman’s terms, ISO determines how much noise shows up in your pic.  The lower the ISO number, say 100, the less noise there will be in your shots.  Think back to film days, when I shot film there was a great film made that had a really high ISO.  Somewhere around 2400, I can’t remember the exact number now.  But it would give you a very grainy, almost antique look.  But the higher the number, the slower the shot happens, letting in more light.  You will also get more blur if you don’t have a tripod or if you are moving too much.  Because of this, I like to keep the ISO at 100 if at all possible.  But sometimes I need to change that.  Most receptions I photograph are indoors in a dark reception hall.  I can tell you I normally shoot my receptions at an ISO of 400 or 800.  I’ve even done a few at 1600.  Not all cameras have an ISO feature that goes that high, and you have to watch the graininess of your shots when shooting at high ISOs.  Anyway, sitting in the chair opposite the boys I dialed the ISO up to 400.

I also almost always shoot with a wide open aperture.  My go-to lens is my 85mm fixed focus lens that can be dialed down to an F 1.8 aperture.  I would love to upgrade to the 85mm 1.4, even the 50mm 1.2, but let’s stay in reality here.  The lower the aperture number, the more light being let in.  This took me a long time to understand, it always seemed backward to me.  But 1.8 lets in more light than 5.6.  It also narrows down the focus considerably.  You just have to hold steady and make sure that everything you want in focus is on the same focal plane.  The boys were all sitting next to each other on the same level and therefore, all stayed in focus.  So I kept the aperture at 1.8.  This will also give you a creamy, out-of-focus background.  Camera guru’s call this bokeh.  The lower your aperture setting, the more bokeh you will get.  Another rule of thumb for aperture that I use, if i have one child in the shot, I know I can keep the aperture at 1.8.  If I have a couple, I like to dial it up to 2.2.  If I have a family of five, I’ll move it up to 5.6.  I try to keep the number of people corresponding to the F-stop number.  Not an exact science, but it helps me.

Next, I looked through the view-finder and focused on the boys.  I use my in-camera light metering system.  For my camera, this is great.  I trust the results and they seem to be right on.  I almost always shoot hand-held, very rarely using a tripod.  When hand holding my camera, I never want to be under 1/60 for my shutter speed.  If I can stay around 1/125, I’m happy.  When I’m out in the sun, that number could be all the way up to 1/8000.  The light coming in the slider door to the left of the boys was beautiful and allowed me to set my shutter speed at 1/80.  This was fine, as I was sitting in a chair and could balance the camera on my knees.  (I should have taken a picture of me doing this, I looked like a total professional…yeah.)

Now, the reason I love these shots is because of the lighting here.  There was only one light source, the big slider doors to the left of me.  The light seems to skim across their faces and is very creamy in color.  The tan skin and the brown couch help with that too.  This style is a departure for me, as I normally like a lot of light and get nervous about shadows or dark areas.  I love the depth of these shots and even though they are just candids, I love them.  Wow, that was a long post.  These shots are all straight-out-of-camera with no editing.  All taken at F1.8, 1/80, ISO 400.  Hopefully you made it this far and will enjoy these shots as much as I do.

In celebration of the wedding I am photographing today, I thought it would be fun to talk about wedding detail photography.  When I got married (wow, 15 years ago this year) detail photography was not very popular.  You might have a shot of the cake, but not much else.  With wedding photography today, detail shots are very important to brides and grooms.  I set aside specific time at every wedding to shoot details.  These include the dress, shoes, veil, rings, bouquet/flowers, table settings, favors and anything else that catches my eye.  I actually love this part of the day as it allows me to be creative and I can relax while doing it.  You don’t have to worry about someone blinking while shooting the shoes.  Also, for anyone that wants to submit their wedding to any sort of publication to try to have it published, editors always want to see a lot of detail shots showcasing your wedding day style and theme.  Enjoy a few shots I’ve collected over the years!

When I was thinking about starting this blog, I was trying to come up with one direction to move in.  Then I realized I wanted to move in A LOT of directions, just like my daily life.  So while I might blog about food one day, I might blog about my photography business or my favorite books the next.  Today I thought we could take a look at outdoor children’s photography.  Here are some tips and tricks for getting some good pics of your little ones.

1.  Take them outside.  As we all know, outdoor natural lighting is the best.  And if you can get an overcast day instead of a bright sunny one, you’ll be really happy with the nice, soft light.  My niece is 2 years old and not one to sit in front of a backdrop (at least not willingly).  I found this great outfit at the local farmer’s market, bought it, got home and dressed her in it.  I fluffed her hair and then said “Let’s go outside and play.”

2.  Key word here: PLAY.  Take them out and let them run around.  The trick is to follow them around with your camera in hand.  Some of my best shots from this photo shoot were the spontaneous ones.

3.  Interact with them.  Right now, my twins are 4 and are also not as into getting their photo taken as I am of taking them.  Being 4, they are starting to think certain words are quite funny.  Just say the word “fart” and they crack up. (What can I say, I have 3 boys).   Another big trick we are using right now is saying “Now don’t smile, no giggling allowed…no, no, I said no laughing.”  My 4 year olds fall for this every time.

4.  Sometimes the “grumpy” shots are the cutest ones.  No photo shoot is complete for me without a few crabby faces or grumpy eyes.  And don’t be afraid to get right in their face, sometimes filling the whole frame with just face is fun.  (But let me warn you, great grandma will not like this one, it won’t be traditional enough for her.  Mine always complains, “But his head is cut off, I just don’t like these so close up.)

5.  Have fun!  Because we all know they grow up fast and we’ll look back at these photo shoots and wonder where the time went.  At least that’s what everyone says to me, I say a prayer every day thanking God that my twins are another day older and we’re one day closer to school.  But I still have fun taking pics of my boys.

I love hot, spicy food!  The hotter the better.  My mom used to make this green pepper jam when I was younger, but I am not a huge fan of green peppers.  But I love hot peppers.  I finally asked her to find the recipe and decided to make a batch of freezer jam.  My sister gave me a bag of frozen hot red peppers and hot green peppers.  These were from her garden last fall.  Lucky for me, she did the dirty work last year and prechopped the peppers.  Unlucky for me, she did not remove the seeds before freezing.  And in my experience, the seeds are what give the peppers their heat.  The peppers I used were hotter than jalapeno peppers, but you could use jalapeno peppers or even plain green bell peppers.  I made two batches of jam, one with the hot red peppers and red bell peppers.  The other batch with the hot green peppers and green bell peppers.  I also made jelly and jam in each batch, jelly without the fruit and jam with the fruit.  To serve this, I drop an 8 oz slab of cream cheese on a plate and spoon about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of the jam on top of the cream cheese.  Serve with crackers.  This is a great last minute gift that can be stored in the freezer until needed.  It’s great at Christmas time, because of the red and green colors.  And if you are in a fix for a quick snack to pass, just grab and go!  Enjoy!

Hot Pepper Jam

2 1/2 c. finely chopped peppers (bell, hot, jalapeno, etc)

1 1/2 c. white vinegar

2 drops green food coloring (or red if doing red peppers)

7 1/2 c. sugar

1 envelope pkg Certo (6 oz)

mix peppers, sugar, vinegar and food coloring in large pan and boil for 6 minutes.  add certo and boil another 3 minutes.  remove from heat and stir for another 4 minutes.  fill freezer containers and cover.  let sit on counter for 24 hours.  move to freezer and enjoy!

recipe from mom

boiling the mix

removing fruit for jelly

poured into containers and ready for the freezer