The fourth wedding or a four wedding weekend. Think I was getting tired? I’ll let you decide (Hint: check out the dancing pictures).

One of my favorite parts of a wedding is the happiness that is unique to wedding days. I get to experience that over & over & I love it. That’s especially true with couples like Laurel & Jack, as well as their families. Their smiles & joy are contagious & it makes for great, emotion-filled photos.

I loved shooting on Gonzaga’s beautiful campus (Go Zags!), which is where both the ceremony & reception were held.

Just a happy coincidence that the room the girls were getting ready in looked like it just hosted a “How to Choose a Mate” seminar.

Also a coincidence that the room where the guys got ready was playing a child development video on a loop.

I’m excited to bring you the wedding of Samm & Nathan which took place on a (rare this year) beautiful spring day at the amazing Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane. I think you’ll notice the sweet & overwhelming emotion of the day that I felt fortunate to see & be able to capture with my camera. I had a blast during their wonderful day, beginning to end. Congratulations, Samm & Nate.

I had the chance to meet up with Naomi & Sean at Manito Park in Spokane to take some engagement photos. Most of the time I spend the first part of a session trying to put my subjects at ease & get them ready to be in front of the camera. I think it was the other way around with these guys, but I learned pretty quickly that there are few people who are easier to be around than Naomi & Sean. I had a great time listening to them each give their own funny, & somewhat different versions of their ‘first meeting’ story. They each love to laugh & make each other laugh. Of course I laughed right along with them. It was easy to see why they’re getting married—they already act like an old married couple that have decades of inside jokes saved up.

Not only did they not stop laughing the whole time we were shooting, they were both very easy to photograph & patient while I set up some of the more creative photos.

I can’t wait to shoot their wedding at the Hayden Lake Country Club.

**For the best viewing experience, open up the first photo & use the left & right arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the photos.**

I was asked to take photos at an elementary school dance and decided that it could be a fun project if I break outside the norm of what’s expected for the genre. So I set some rules for myself.

1. Photos have to be affordable. I saw the price list of previous photographers who did this and I was astounded by the prices. I felt like these should be priced like an impulse item rather than something that needed to be worked into a family’s monthly budget.

2. Photos have to be fun. We’ve all seen the all too common and boring photos of people standing there looking blankly at the camera.

BOOOO-RING.

The dance was fun. The photos should reflect that. My answer: PROPS!

3. Photos should be printed on location. People don’t really want several 8x10s or wallets of the dance photos. So what’s the reason for filling out forms and waiting to get 1 or 2 photos? After doing tons of research and finding a portable photo printer that could print 5x7s and get great photo quality, I ordered it and figured out the best way to get it to print at the dance (the toughest & most time consuming part). More fun for everyone that way.

What I learned: Doing it the old way has to be way easier. Boring photos are easy. Getting a reaction is tough. Expensive photos mean less photos to take. That’s easier. Sending the files to a printer and dropping them off at the school a couple of weeks earlier would have been way easier.

I worked my butt off for a couple of hours. That was harder work than shooting a wedding. Was it worth it & would I do it again? Without a doubt. It was a blast!

P.S. As a little extra, I emailed digital photos to everyone who ordered a photo so they could upload it to facebook or whatever they wanted.

Here are a few of the photos:

Last night we had our Inland NW Photographers Assembly (INPA) meeting where it’s always nice to talk to people who enjoy the minutiae  of photography as much as I do. Afterward a few of us headed  in to downtown Spokane for a photo safari. We started taking pictures of the normal downtown things (hence the trash can hand warming shot). We were across the street from the bus depot and I saw some interesting people hanging out so I grabbed Shane Savage (who volunteered to be my voice activated light stand) and headed over there to make some portraits.

LIke my business card says, I shoot people. I really enjoy the interactions with people, asking strangers if I can make a portrait of them is a lot of fun for me. When the results are great, I enjoy it all the better.

I wasn’t sure what I had but when I got them on the computer I was really pleased with how they turned out. Hopefully you’ll think so too.

Big thanks to Shane, Jon, Lacey, & Tyson for the invite and a really fun evening

As usual, click the thumbnails to see the photos.

P.S. The officer was fine with us taking pictures, even of him, and didn’t try to stop us at all. He and his partner even did some joking around with us.