Sorry things have been so eerily quiet on the blog front, we’ve had some very happy events to attend followed by a pesky flu bug.  Here’s the big news: on Sunday morning I was fortunate enough to witness the birth of our beautiful niece, Jordan Rose.  Things progressed so fast that I barely made it in time to panic about which lens to throw on.  I was the only one present in a panic though, my sister and brother in law were simply amazing as Jordan entered the serene and loving warmth of their living room.  The same room where the family gathered to receive her just a few hours later, the same room where she will eventually crawl, run around, jump on all the furniture, and most certainly break a lamp or something.  We can’t hardly wait.

In the mean time we are enjoying her smallness: she was born at 7 pounds, 6 ounces and the family is doing great.  I might be a little biased but I just think she’s so perfect.  You’ll just have to trust me when I say that the photos I took during Jordan’s birth and immediately following are the most precious I have ever taken, they couldn’t be more dear to me.  Mel Brooks will tell you that its good to be the King but I say its good to be the Photographer.

Here are photos of Jordan appropriate to share here, taken within an hour of her birth:

And one with perhaps her greatest admirer, her dog Rembrandt, taken later that day:

Believe me… there will be more pictures of Jordan and her family in the weeks to come!

Posted by Mel @ 8:36 pm, in Newborns, Personal | 1 comment | Permalink

Cailtin & Harry’s wedding was such a great way to kick off ‘09 for us.  Winter is a season often overlooked for weddings when it offers such romantic opportunities: roaring fires, candlelight, dramatic wraps, crystal, and the possibility of snow.  Caitlin and Harry chose The Mill at Fine Creek for both their ceremony and reception.

Their interfaith ceremony was particularly meaningful, it was customized to bring together both Christian and Jewish traditions to celebrate their union.  Elegant damask style linens dressed the tables, the bridesmaids wore black cocktail style dresses perfect for an evening affair, arrangements of crystal beads and pines needles referenced winter while the addition of pink flowers suggested the return of spring.  Everything comes full circle.

Caitlin met Harry on a bridge strung with lights behind the ruins before the ceremony began.  It was beautiful to photograph:

During their first dance, the couple surprised us when Elvis Presley suddenly morphed into C&C Music Factory for an awesome duo dance routine.  Caitlin and Harry busted out all the moves, I swear I saw the sprinkler, the running man and even the robot in there…

With the Superbowl right around the corner, the wedding party was pretty glued to the playoffs.   Unfortunately the group wanted the Eagles but the outcome of the game didn’t seem to put a damper on the party, maybe it just enhanced the drinking!

Here’s a slideshow with our favorites from the day and if you would like to view their online gallery, click here.  Congrats you guys and thank you so much for inviting us to be a part of it.

Posted by Mel @ 6:20 pm, in Weddings | 1 comment | Permalink

Its time to get started on the backlog of books to share!  Given the chill outside, why not cozy up to some coffee table style books?

Amy and William’s preppy spring wedding was made up of several cheery shades of pink and green.  We thought we would add a splash of carnation pink to their book cover and a handful of layouts.  Because our coffee table books are custom designed in Photoshop, we can add just about any color anywhere you like.

 I added a few little boy colors to some of the layouts in Baby Clayton’s brag book.  At a size of 5×5 and therefore perfectly sized to pop in your purse, brag books make perfect for proud grandparents, aunts and uncles.  And our discounts on duplicate books are kind to the pocketbook.

Thanks for checking these out!

Posted by Mel @ 4:52 pm, in Albums | No comments | Permalink

Disclaimers:

1) These are just tourist pictures, the cheesy ones that everyone takes on vacation, and are not meant to be viewed as professional photography.  We took only one camera, a couple of zoom lenses and no lights: we were on vacation afterall!  We’re definitely not seeking employment with National Geographic here.  

2) We’re not experts on Japan, Japanese culture or religion so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Estimate that I’ll have my facts right about 54% of the time.

3.) To see our pro work (like weddings and portraits) and skip vacation pics, feel free to browse our blog by category!

Musical people that we are, we discovered a curious thing: many Japanese cities are 4 syllable words that can easily replace the word “Hallelujah” when singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.  The following cities that we visited or passed through worked really well and we found ourselves singing their praises whenever we arrived:

Yudanaka… Shinagawa…Kamakura…Yokosuka (if you pronounced it incorrectly, its actually Yu-kos-ka) and perhaps most famous… Yokohama. 

Yokohama is a 30 minute train ride from our friends Susan and Erik’s house.  In addition to a few trips to restaurants at night, we made a day trip to look around.  Yokohama is a port city that reminds us a lot of Baltimore, Maryland.  But instead of Little Italy, Yokohama is home to Japan’s largest Chinatown.  If that sounds delicious to you, it was:

Here’s a photo of the tallest building in Japan.  While it may not be impressive by American standards, it survives an average of one earthquake per month and is therefore an engineering marvel:

Here’s more pics of us tooling around Chinatown at dusk.  In the next post we’ll visit the mountain city of Nagano…

We were used to plastic food displays but plastic hand models?

Posted by Mel @ 4:18 pm, in Personal | 1 comment | Permalink