Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Becky+Jake

Becky and Jake originally weren’t going to do an engagement session, but I am super glad they changed their minds. :) They are a ton of fun and one of those couples that love and appreciate photography (Jake does some photo work himself!). They were all game and didn’t give me any weird looks when I requested strange things of them, and Jake, in turn, requested a few shots in the Kudzu jungle of Raleigh. Becky works at NC State doing sciencey stuff, and Jake works at IBM doing computer stuff (clearly I am not in a computer or science related field)! They’re going to be married at CAM next year, and their wedding pictures there will be stellar. You’re allowed to shoot inside CAM, which is pretty cool seeing as how we couldn’t shoot inside Artspace for our wedding. But since they’re allowed to take pictures inside there, we did a lot of their engagement photos around CAM in the warehouse district where it’s pretty industrial and funky. We were all set to do photos outside with our 30% chance of rain, which then became “30% chance of rain; rain stopping at 3pm”, which then became “70% chance of rain the entire evening” which translated to “it rained the entire time and was super dark and overcast.” It didn’t pour though, so we toughed it out! And to accompany us through the remainder of the session was Hobbit… whose breed is “crusty old Labrador” according to Becky, and who is adorable but totally not interested in me. “Hey Hobbit”s and “Pssst, Hobbit”s just made him look further away. He wore his little bandanna with pride and was the cutest crusty old Lab I’ve ever seen. :)

Raleigh Family Photographer: Gabby+Mike+Evan+Olive+Max

So I don’t advertise that I do family portraits because I concentrate mainly on weddings and those are 99% of my time. I’ve typically narrowed it down to only photographing friends’ families, or friends of friends, or families of friends, etc.  But I received this e-mail in my inbox a few months ago, and the wording was so funny that I agreed to take this woman and her so-called “crazy bunch” on. Upon further stalking of my blog, Gabby (the mom), discovered that my friend Alaskan Kate (who was my bridesmaid and featured a few times in my blog as a photography subject) is her son’s preschool teacher. We both thought that was strange and a small world, but it got even weirder when I said, “Oh yeah! I just volunteered for Kate’s bookfair to raise money for their preschool tonight! I made the buttons!” And it turned out that they were there and we had already met each other and Evan (their son) made a button and the button maker malfunctioned and her husband Mike gave me a rating of C- button making!!! SMALL WORLD.

Anyway – Gabby’s been keeping me entertained for weeks now sending me funny Twitter messages and I’ve been busy stalking their family pictures on Facebook. Now their family pictures are here! Gabby is mom, Mike is dad, Evan is the handsome 3 year-old, Olive is the adorable 15 month-old, and Max is the senior dog. All of them are equally adorable. You’ll see. It’s kind of hard to choose. Special thanks goes out to Chacha and her son – the Fekete family’s trusty neighbors who wrangled children, dogs, shoes, jelly beans, socks, bags, and were able to make everyone smile.

 

 

Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Rebekah+Braden

Two high-school sweetheart couples in a row here on the blog. :) Although, Rebekah+Braden have known each other since they were very little and their mothers were long friends. She wrote in an e-mail to me, “I’m pretty sure I fell in love in the 7th grade!” Rebekah is currently a senior at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Not NC’s Fayetteville) getting her degree in speech therapy. I’m always really interested in what people do for a living and realized with surprise that Rebekah is my first speech therapist! This was kind of exciting because my sister is a speech therapist, so we talked about that stuff for a while. :) Braden is here at Campbell University pursuing his masters in Education so that he can coach football… both high school and college. He played for 3 years at SMU in Dallas and still plays at Campbell. They are both super cute and sweet and we had a great time with them! I told Rebekah to wear boots because we’d be trapezing through some tall grass, but while we didn’t run into any poisonous plants, there were plenty of signs telling us to avoid the snakes. :(

I do believe this was Geoff’s last engagement session for the year that he’ll shoot with me as his regular full-time job prevents him from shooting once the sun sets earlier and earlier, but I appreciate him coming with me to this session and all the others throughout the year! He’s obviously still coming to weddings, but I can handle the engagements on my own. ;) Thank you for attending as many engagements as you could in 2011, Geoff!

Congratulations, Rebekah and Braden! We hope your Texas wedding is wonderful! :D