Kellie & Derek {engaged!}

We met up with Kellie & Derek last week at Centennial Lakes Park in Edina. They are getting married there this upcoming June, and we lucked out with a gorgeous day to be out doing photos. Kellie work a fabulous pink jacket which I loved! It makes the photos pop!

The day after our session I found the most awesome email in our inbox. It's emails like these that make us love what we do even more. Kellie said I could share it here on the blog, so here it is.

Just wanted to Thank you for making our engagement photo session so fun and enjoyable. You are Gene'o are talented and and amazingly compassionate about what you do and I am so happy that we will be able to look back at our wedding day through your eyes. Now having the engagement photos done, have worked with you, I am not one bit worried about that day.

I can't wait to show off our pictures!!

Emails like that make my day! Now, I'm happy to present Kellie & Derek!






This was the one photo Kellie really wanted. A shot of Derek kissing her forehead. So sweet :)






Kellie & Derek are Minnesota Wild fans, so we did a quick wardrobe change at the end of the session.



Our group shot was taken by "Ma". Derek's mom was in town so she came along on the shoot! I think she has skills behind the camera, don't you ;)

Thanks, Kellie & Derek! We are SO looking forward to your wedding in June!

Catching up....let wedding season begin!

We have our first spring wedding tomorrow and then we're pretty busy throughout the spring/summer/fall with weddings & engagement session, so in preparation I'm cleaning off the hard drives, archiving, and organizing previous work so I can start off this wedding season (somewhat) organized.

So I'm happy to present a July 2009 wedding that I wasn't able to post last summer!
Josh & Kayla were AWESOME to work with! They got married at Josh's parent's lake house near St. Cloud. Even though the wedding was last summer, I'm still going to put up just a few of my favorites because this wedding needs to be shared!

Nobody could understand why I was so excited about this barn/shed type thing, but for me it's all about the color!



A few of the wedding party as well. Of course, we had to take advantage of the nearby cornfields for some group shots.


The ceremony in front of the lake.

The gorgeous flowers were done by Tami with Studio B Floral. She did fabulous work! Even Princess, the "flower girl" got a corsage on her collar!

Enjoy this slideshow with more photos from the day!

Arbonne Headshots

The day after we got back from Las Vegas I met up with Rene & Wendy near my hometown in Wisconsin to do some head shots for them. I was super excited when I got Rene's email asking me to do them because head shots aren't something I normally do and I knew it would be fun. I have photographed Rene's family before, but because I'm sometimes a bad blogger I don't have a link to the photos.

Rene & Wendy are super successful representatives of Arbonne International. They have both done really well with the company and coincidentally, were about to leave for Las Vegas to a conference in the same hotel we were at the week before!

It was kind of a cold and dreary day when we did these photos, but we made the best of it. We did them in and around Rene's house using natural light which was fun because they give them kind of a personal touch--something different than just a boring head shot against a studio backdrop.

I put together a few montages of my favorites from our session.



Then we went over to a pole barn I spotted on my way into down that was a few miles from Rene's house, just to give a different look.


And of course we had to end the session with a few photos of them with their awesome new cars that they've earned through their work at Arbonne. Mercedes, not to shabby!


Thanks again, ladies! You're both beautiful inside and out!

Wyn is ONE!!

Some of you regular readers may notice that I've changed the look of the blog. I've been in a "less is more" kick with everything in my life lately so I decided to transfer that attitude to the design of the blog and keep it simple allowing the photos to take center stage. It'll likely change again in the future but for now I like it!

Now, on to the subject of this post!

It was almost a year ago to the day that I photographed this adorable little guy when he was just six or seven weeks old (you can see his baby photos here). He was SO much fun to photograph yesterday as he is at the fun age where he can walk but he can't really go to fast yet so I didn't have to chase him much :) Plus, he was in a great mood so I got lots of smiles and cute expressions. We met up near the Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis for this fun little photo session. Here are a few faves!

His eyes are the most amazing shade of blue!


We did a few family shots, too. I love his cute expression here.

With mom.

And with dad.

Yep, he's a happy little guy!

Even his "serious" face is cute! He was mesmerized by my camera, I think. These next few are my faves. The hat is SO SO cute!



Thanks again Julie & Brad! It was great seeing you guys again!

Las Vegas Shoot!

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, when we were in Las Vegas we participated in the Victor Sizemore mentoring session in the desert outside of Las Vegas. We spent a couple of hours outside shooting alongside other photographers from around the world. We had such a great time meeting everybody and photographing the awesome models! It was so nice to take a break from the Minnesota landscape and get to shoot something totally different.

I had lots of favorites from our session but I tried to narrow it down as best as possible. It's hard to tell from the photos but it was COLD! Us Minnesotans shouldn't have been bothered but since we weren't dressed appropriately the cold and wind really got to us. The models were troopers though and we managed to work through it :)

We first photographed Victor's daughter. She was absolutely adorable!


Then we switched stations and photographed the lovely Anna. She was a natural in front of the camera and posed like a rock star!







I was bummed we only managed to get a few shots of these two, they were hot!

Victor and his crew had a lighting set up that we played around with to get some dramatic shots at dusk.


Here is a behind the scenes shot of all of the photographers in action.

And a big group shoot of everyone involved!

Thanks to our new friend Hillary for taking this photo of Gene'o & I!


Special thanks to the following vendors for making this shoot possible:
Victor Sizemore Photography
Styling by Summer Watkins
Historical Jewels
Make Up & Hair: Jill Guin of Darling Bride
Video: Elysium Productions