{Portland,OR} – January 24, 2012 – WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding Marketplace, is excited to announce Fritz Photography has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2012 for Photography!

The esteemed annual awards program recognizes the top local wedding vendors from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism within the wedding industry. While many industry awards are selected by the organization, Fritz Photography was selected based on its stellar reviews from past newlywed clients.

Fritz Photography is recognized as part of the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire local vendor community, comprised of over 200,000 wedding professionals throughout the United States and Canada. The Bride’s Choice Award recognizes  the best local wedding vendors across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, based on their overall professional achievements throughout the past year.

“WeddingWire is thrilled to honor the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire. “Since the launch of the Bride’s Choice Awards™ program four years ago, thousands of outstanding wedding professionals have been recognized by the bridal community for their supreme service and dedication to the wedding industry. It is with great pleasure that we congratulate Fritz Photography for their continued professionalism and commitment to enriching the wedding planning experience for engaged couples.”

We are happy to announce that Fritz Photography is one of the very best Photographers within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Project Wedding, Brides.com, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Weddingbee. We would like to thank our past clients for taking the time to review our business on WeddingWire. Thanks to their positive feedback we were able  to receive the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ for 2012!

Doesn’t that lady have one of the best smiles in the entire world?  That’s my wife.

Some of my favorite work involves photographing children in orphanages.  These kids have had rougher lives by age 4 than most of us have in a lifetime.  So having a day or a week to play with, talk with, encourage, and photograph them is a blessing.  I love to make them laugh.

These photos are taken at Love In Action, a home for orphaned, abused, and homeless children in Chapala, Mexico.  My good friend Summer Phillips (below) lives and works there, and it’s been an absolute pleasure to support her this week.  She works so very hard for these kids in an orphanage that is regularly understaffed and underfunded.  But she loves it, and she makes a difference.  A big difference.

I’d encourage you to support Love in Action.  You can visit them on the web at www.loveinactioncenter.org.

Some of my favorite photographs of myself involve me being strangled by kids.  I have photos like this from all over the world, and they make me smile every time I see them:

Visit Love in Action’s website (soon to be revamped with my photographs, and a new site design), and support them with a donation: www.loveinactioncenter.org.

We love creating model portfolios and model test shoots, in Portland, Oregon, and around the world.  (See some of our work with model portfolios on the Florida beaches.)  We photograph for modeling agencies and private models; models we’ve photographed at the start of their careers are now working models in New York, Los Angeles, as well as Portland.  Contact us today to schedule your modeling photography session!

On a simply perfect summer day these beautiful friends came together with their nearest and dearest to celebrate and share their love at Lakeside Gardens in Portland.    The bride was stunning in pin curls and orange roses while the groom did his best blue steel (he says he doesn’t smile much…but I came to find out that’s kind of a fib…).  When he’s happy he smiles a ton.  And he was very happy.

It was a honor and a joy to share your wedding day with you… blessings and happiness in your new life together!

~Gretchen

We love to tell love stories.

www.fritzphoto.com

I had a great time photographing Hayden Richardson’s senior photos in the October sunshine this past week, in Northeast Portland.  Hayden’s a lot of fun to work with and talk with, and has an interest in photography, among other things.  And man, did we luck out with the perfect fall weather for a senior portrait photo shoot!

I love photographing senior portraits.  See more of my Portland senior portrait photography on the website!

Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, Oregon, www.blueskygallery.org) has selected photographer Fritz Liedtke’s series of rare photogravures, Astra Velum, for a solo show in November.

November 3-27, 2011

Opening Reception: First Thursday, November 3, 6-9pm.

Public Artist Talk: November 9, 12pm.

Astra velum is Latin for “veil of stars.” Liedtke has aptly chosen
this phrase as the title of his striking and intimate portrait series
of freckled women and girls. Each piece is a hand-printed photogravure,
a historic printing process which offers a depth and luminescence
in the resulting image unmatched by any other photographic print-making
method.

“While many people view freckles as an aberration or blemish,
I find them enchanting, unique, even exotic.  More than once,
while photographing for this series, a model thanked me for making
something beautiful out of what they often viewed as a flaw. . . .

“I’m also drawn to the tactile nature of a photogravure.
The papers used are often handmade, with a texture meant to be felt
with your fingertips.  The ink embedded in the paper also gives
texture to the image itself.  For these reasons, handmade
photogravures seemed the perfect medium for a series which, at its
essence, explores the beauty of surface textures: human skin and its
freckles and scars, like a thin veil of stars.”

Fritz Liedtke has been photographing since he was a child. At 13, with
his father and their turquoise Datsun B210, he chronicled their
travels across the United States with his Kodak 110 Instamatic; they
covered 35 states in 31 days, washing suburban cars along the way to
pay for their travels. Today, Liedtke is a professional photographer, author,
and educator, and enjoys traveling the world, camera in hand.

Blue Sky Gallery shows less than 2% of the photography it considers, and is pleased to have selected Liedtke’s rare photogravures for a solo show.

View more of Liedtke’s work at www.fritzliedtke.com.

As part of my series Astra Velum, I recently created a new image of the lovely Emily Shade, who volunteered to let me photograph her freckles.  I was so impressed with Emily that I invited her back, to model for a shoot featuring the vintage clothing of Red Fox Vintage.

With the hair and makeup styling help of AJ’s Hair Design and Makeup, we created several looks for Emily that we loved, including these tough-girl shots with some vintage Everlast boxing gloves.

I really enjoy photographing anything vintage, and it was great to work with such a fine crew for this photo shoot.  Thanks to each of you for making these beautiful images happen!

One of the things I love about photography is the amount of variety there is in the type of work I get to do and the stories I get to tell.  Even within the world of wedding photography, there is a fair amount of variety, and this past weekend was no exception.

Andrey and AnnMarie invited me to be part of their Russian Orthodox wedding weekend.  Their celebrations lasted for several days, with all manner of beautiful ceremonies, parties, clothing, and friends and family.  One of my favorite parts of Russian Orthodox weddings–as a photographer–is that they schedule in half a day just for portraits!   I love the fact that we’re given time to create some wonderful portraits of the bride and groom and their wedding party and family, without the rush of being fit in between a ceremony and a reception.  Instead, they schedule the portraits on an entirely different day than the ceremony, at a beautiful site.  Brilliant!

So, we spent the afternoon at Portland’s Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, creating some spectacular portraits of them, including 2 different wedding dresses for AnnMarie.   Working at a leisurely pace, here’s a taste of what we created:

And then there’s the rest of the party, which lasts for several days.  It involves lots of laughter, beautiful clothing, amazing food (I was given some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had), endless drinks, and plenty of goofing around.  But it also includes a very rich bond of friendship, and a sense of family and community that is often lacking in our world today.  Andrey and AnnMarie are blessed to be surrounded by such a community in their new life together.
We love telling wedding stories like this.  Congratulations, AnnMarie and Andrey!

We came back to this corner of the hotel for some portraits of Kim in the dress, then took some portraits of her with her lovely bridesmaids in the foyer.  After this we headed for The Forestry Center, and the day’s wedding festivities.

Is this not one of the coolest wedding portraits you’ve ever seen, of a bride and her bridesmaids?  While I shot from below, I had Robbie shoot these images from a balcony above.  Awesome.

I love this composition; whose legs are those, anyhow?

The train outside of the Forestry Center makes for a great, rustic backdrop for portraits at sunset.  Especially with a beautiful couple in the scene!

Kim works in a dental office, so we had some fun joking around about all the stuff that was caught in her teeth….

At FritzPhoto, we love telling wedding stories through our award-winning photography. (We’ll be entering some of these images into the ISPWP Wedding Photography Competition for sure.)  Visit our wedding photography website, and see for yourself why we love photographing weddings….

The current (September) issue of Black and White Magazine features an article by Susan Burnstine on my series Astra Velum.

I appreciated Susan’s insight into my work, when she says:

“In viewing all of Liedtke’s work, including his early portraits of children and his powerful colour series about women struggling with anorexia and bulimia, _Skeleton in the Closet,_ what appears unique about his images is that he seems to be inspired by finding beauty and humanity in individuals who exhibit physical, psychological or social traits considered flawed or against the norm.”

In referring to the series Astra Velum, Susan has some very kind words:

“Portland based photographer Fritz Liedtke’s stunning photogravure portfolio Astra Vellum is a remarkable achievement.”

It’s a great article, and it’s paired with a review of the lovely work of my friend Lauren Henkin as well. Pick up a copy for yourself at your local bookstore.