Kelly and Justin: Wedding Photographs

Rain, rain… stay awhile?  I know that there probably aren’t many brides that dream of having rain on their wedding day, but it can make for some unique images!  Eventually the rain let up enough for us to take some outdoor photos later on…  and the bright glaring sun stayed nicely tucked behind clouds keeping things all nice and comfy.  Turned out to be quite a beautiful day…

The Carlson Rotunda is a great place for a reception, we had the photostation there as well and also made use of the beautiful grounds whenever we could.

A few posts back I told you about the amazing wedding favor idea Kelly had – and as you’ll see with the last image – we put the frame to good use.  😉

Wedding Dress from Minneapolis MinnesotaWedding Photographs from St. Paul MinnesotaBride and Father from Minnetonka MinnesotaWedding Photographs from Minnetonka MinnesotaWedding Photographs from Minneapolis MinnesotaWedding Photographs from Minneapolis MinnesotaBride and Groom Rain Photographs in Minneapolis MinnesotaBride and Groom Rain Photographs in Minneapolis MinnesotaBride and Groom Rain Photographs in Minneapolis MinnesotaWedding Photographs in Limo in Minneapolis MinnesotaWedding Photographs in Limo in Minneapolis MinnesotaWedding Photographs from Minnetonka MinnesotaWedding Photographs from Minnetonka MinnesotaCarlson Center Wedding Photographs in Minnetonka MinnesotaCarlson Center Wedding Photographs in Minnetonka MinnesotaCarlson Center Wedding Photographs in Minnetonka MinnesotaWedding Photographs from St. Paul Minnesota.

Seth: Future Firefighter

Colleen has been friends with Seth’s dad Sam for 12 years and can still remember when Sam started dating his now wife, Karen.  Sam and Karen are made for each other and the nicest people you will ever meet, so it’s no wonder that baby Seth was so cooperative during his photo shoot!  Sam is a firefighter and wanted to incorporate that into the photos which made for some seriously unique images.  Karen is a teacher and also a wedding veil-maker extraordinaire!  She is the person behind my “Awesome custom veil maker” link that has been in the right-hand column of this blog since its inception.  She made two amazing and perfect veils for Colleen for our wedding and we were so happy to be able to offer these special photos of her new little guy.  We took these when Seth was one week old – and now this time will be immortalized forever.  Congrats to the new Strassburg family!

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Kelly And Justin : Wedding Photostation

Kelly and Justin (whose engagement photographs accompanied my  most recent birthday post) booked the photostation for their wedding.   A while later she came to me with an idea:  What if they gave everyone frames as their wedding favors and we used the photostation on-site printing to ‘fill’ the frames for all the guests – giving them a great memento from the wedding.     Brilliant!!

So we did just that this past Saturday at their wedding at the Carlson Center Rotunda in Minnetonka.

We added chalkboards to the mix so guests could ‘leave a message’ and I also enlisted an additional assistant to help with the added volume.  I don’t hesitate to say that it was the greatest thing in the history of all human achievement.  🙂

Photo station image from Minnetonka MinnesotaNot a Photo booth imagePhotograph from Photostation in Minnetonka MinnesotaWedding Photograph from PhotostationPhotostation Photograph.

Nikki and Ben : Minneapolis Engagement Photographs

Nikki and Ben both live and work in downtown Minneapolis – so naturally it makes sense that they’d plan to get married downtown as well.  From that flows a downtown engagement session…  all very logical.  But then when they said we could go on the roof of a cool building in the middle of the city?  That’s a logical step I hadn’t expected…. an awesome logical step.  Nikki tells me we might get some post-wedding shots up there in her dress sometime — can’t wait!

In addition to the cool connection they had to the locations, they were also super fun to work with – I’ve gotten a lot of ‘blue steel’ faces in my day, but rarely do I truly feel the power of a full on double-Magnum.  Pow… that’ll stop more than a ninja star.

Here are a few teaser shots from their session…

Minnesota Engagement PhotographsMinneapolis Rooftop Skyline Engagement Photographs.

Julia Jean: 7 Months

It makes me smile to see my former wedding clients in a new role since being a bride and groom… Susan and Nate are now a Mommy and Daddy!  Little Julia is doing the same thing that all babies tend to do – grow up too fast.  They contacted me to take some mid-year photos of Julia to capture her toothless grin and ever-changing expressions.  When Nate first found out he was going to have a little girl he commented that he hoped she would get his looks so as to “keep away the boys”.  I like to point out to Nate that although Julia did get his looks, they sure did translate into female remarkably well 🙂

As you can see, she is super cute and she even busted out her new found spit-bubble-blowing ability for me.  Congrats again Susan and Nate!

Minneapolis, Minnesota Newborn Photographs.

Polar Plunge

Yes, it was cold.

Every year Colleen and I have a dozen-or-so of our friends up to northern Minnesota for a winter ‘cabin’ party. It generally involves doing fun stuff like shoveling off the lake and playing hockey… and almost always includes stupid stuff, like cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in. 🙂

Colleen may look like she is smiling, but that’s pain… I’m pretty sure.

(Okay, this photo is 3 months old… better late than never, right?).

Metal Wedding Albums … say what?!?

Okay, the whole album isn’t metal, but the cover is printed on metal, then bonded to a polycarbonate backer… then the whole thing gets a protective UV coating to make it last centuries. It’s pretty slick… take a look:

And of course, is still made with the top-notch quality that I talked about in my blog post about what the physical wedding albums are like a while back. Check out the thick substantive pages, tightly molded and pressed spine, and the look of a full 24×9 spread (they went with a 12×9 album and oriented it horizontally — it certainly made the full spreads dramatic). I was also really happy with the choice Susan and Troon made for the choice of leather – it worked especially well with the tan suit Troon wore (before he jumped into the kilt, of course).

Prior to this, I’d never actually gotten a full metal cover, so I was a bit excited — I’m glad they decided to give it a go, it really gave it a stylish look that worked wonderfully with the tones in the cover image they selected. I personally feel that ‘crazy different’ tends to not be quite a timeless as something with a more subtle approach. This fits in perfectly with my ethos that your wedding photographs should be modern, yet not gimmicky – they must still retain a level of timelessness. The metal cover is unique – but isn’t ‘out there’ or something you’ll shake your head about in 20 years. It offers an almost subconscious, “that’s different” feel. I might have to add this to my sample set… 😉
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Chum reap suor

Sorry for the nearly 2 month unannounced blog hibernation… but we were traveling through SE Asia and had unexpectedly minimal computer access. I had a few blog posts all set up for posting, but couldn’t mange to get them ‘out the door’, as it were. I just never expected internet in the big cities of China to be harder to acquire than in the relatively rural areas of Cambodia and Thailand (We got WiFi – and an advanced degree in ‘sweating-like-crazy’ – everywhere in Thailand and Cambodia). Captain Bizzaro in effect. I’ll be doing individual posts on the places we went later… For now, suffice it to say: It was an amazing adventure… and it’s also great to be back in Minnesota.


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