As promised, here is the link to the page where you can skim through the massive amount of wedding pictures that our photographer blessed us with. If you decide to take on the close to 600 pictures you must be bored, and at work, so we are happy we could help you pass some time, lol! Anyhow, enjoy!
Okay, so if you know me you know how much I LOVE photography! My favorite evening activity is surfing the web and bookmarking random photography blogs. I love seeing others' work and getting ideas from them. I have wondered whether this is going to make me "less creative" in my own work, but I think it is just a part of the learning process. The fact that there is always something new to learn in the world of photography is probably most of it's appeal for me.
Anyway, I am still jobless over a month after the wedding and pretty bored, as you can imagine. Aside from an occasional visit with my friend Holly and her newborn Lucas (i have pictures of him to post soon), and walks with Max, it's been pretty dull during the day. J.R. and I actually drove around Cranberry TWP yesterday and I wrote down the names of several businesses. I am online today checking them for open positions (yes I am looking at education jobs mostly, but also outside of education). On top of the job search, I am excited to finally take a small online editing course. In one of my searches one night, I found a photographer, Jessica Sprague, who actually offers all kinds of editing and scrapbooking courses online for the aspiring amateur photographer/scrapbooker. I am learning all about correcting skin tone, removing color casts, aspect ratio and editing in raw (which I love!). So I thought I would take a break from the job search and show one or two of the pictures I have edited with my new skills. Let me know what you think!
File directly off the camera:
File edited in RAW with color enhancement techniques learned in course:
File directly off camera using the manual black and white conversion in elements:
File edited in RAW using black and white conversion techniques from course:
I can't wait to apply these to more interesting subjects! The black and white conversion is especially beautiful with human subjects. Okay, well back to the job search now. Thanks for letting me share my excitement:)!
So it has been a VERY long time since I have posted. I am sure my five followers will understand though because we have been very busy....getting married!!!:) I have so many updates and I have kind of felt overwhelmed at the thought of catching up, so I finally decided I would just start with the most important update, our wedding. The day was beautiful, exactly as we had hoped for. We were determined to have an outdoor wedding, it's just us, so I found an old home in Tennessee with beautiful trees surrounding the property and we had our ceremony on one side of the house and our reception on the other. The weather cooperated in the sense that the rain held off, but it was EXTREMELY hot! Again, I am sorry to anyone who attended for scheduling such a hot evening, lol. However, it was so neat to have everyone we love in the same place, and we tried to really take everything in and enjoy it. I have to tell on J.R. for anyone reading who did not attend our wedding. I think possibly the most memorable moment of the evening was him becoming so emotional during our vows! I have never seen him like that in front of so many people, and it was just extremely special to me to see how deeply he felt the significance of what we were doing! Our officiant, Kerra (minister for my grandmother's church), surprised us both with her amazing sermon! She had met with us a few times prior to that day and we had talked to her about our first date. For anyone who doesn't know, we were introduced to each other by our friends Jayson and Selina in Tennessee. The night we met, all four of us went to a Bill Cosby comedy show on the Middle Tennessee State University campus. Anyhow, Kerra opened our ceremony with a quote about marriage from Bill Cosby. We both looked at each other and felt huge smiles come over our faces. For someone who barely knew us, she truly made the ceremony special.
The reception was extra special to me because since I was a little girl, I had always envisioned having my dad's band play at my wedding. They played "My Girl" for the father/daughter dance, and it was as perfect as I had imagined. I have grown up going to their "gigs", so it was really nice to introduce all of J.R.'s family (now my family too) and friends to a part of my upbringing and influences. Unfortunately, the sound system needed to be adjusted during J.R. and my first dance as husband and wife, but luckily the best man (thank you Jayson!) had them play it again, and we had a beautiful "second" first dance as well. Thanks to my awesome friend MaryAnn for the video!
We were so thankful to everyone involved in making our day special. We had so many people travel so far to be with us and we felt very loved. Thank you to all of our family for your help with our day... J.R.'s mom Susan, his Aunt Susan, his grandma Rhea, my Aunt Susan, my grandma Martha, my stepmom Jackie and especially my Dad who gave us a beautiful day!
I am still uploading all of our wedding pictures to Shutterfly (and making photobooks for some of you), but when I do I will post the link so everyone who wants to sift through the almost 650 pictures is welcome to, lol! For the time being I will add a few of our favorites. Stay tuned for catch up posts in the near future!
