Their wedding was a beautiful affair – but it always is when you have two people totally and completely in love with each other like Terran and Deva are.

I also want to give a huge shout-out to my awesome assistant Nate (I think I may have forgotten to thank him for the last several weddings….rude!) he once again did a wonderful job as my second shooter!  I especially appreciate him doing the drive over to Walla Walla – his car has a much better stereo than mine, and it’s faster, and looks cooler…..and I don’t have to be the one driving!  So…..for all of the above Nate, THANK YOU!!!

Deva getting ready and some detail shots.

Their first look and the “formals.”

The ceremony:

The reception:

(side note here – Deva’s father owns a restaurant in Walla Walla – this equaled for the MOST delicious food at a wedding…ever!   They were very generous and offered us a meal…..and I just wanted to keep eating and eating, it was SO good!!!!!!  I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!)

Happily ever after…….  

]]> http://jessicalemmonsphotography.com/blog/2010/07/weddings-and-engagements/tarren-and-deva-june-26th-2010-walla-walla-weddings/feed/ 1 http://jessicalemmonsphotography.com/blog/2010/07/promotions/my-super-cool-announcement/ http://jessicalemmonsphotography.com/blog/2010/07/promotions/my-super-cool-announcement/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:22:57 +0000 jessical http://jessicalemmonsphotography.com/blog/?p=2602 This blog post has been a long time in coming.  But before I make the announcement I want to share something.

Photography to me has been one of the most amazing learning experiences of my life.  I started out without even having a camera.   I actually used to play “photo-studio” when I was just 5 years old.   A gal that babysat me and my siblings would play it with us…..we posed each other, added props (all the knick-knacks laying around the room) and pretended to crank this camera (apparently our invisible camera had to be wound up with a huge crank?) I loved it.   My babysitter got bored with it really quickly.

When I was 12 I got my first little film camera….it didn’t even have the option of shooting in manual.  I could only light things to the best of my ability and hope it turned out.  With no clue what I was doing – I hung sheets up in my bedroom, dressed my poor little sisters up in tutus and attempted to take photos of them using only window light.    The images are less than amazing.  But I LOVED them.

When I was a teenager I can remember taking my camera with me everywhere.  I once I remember taking photos all the last week of school of our fun and craziness – sumu suit fights, bowling and bonfires.  I was very frugal and wanted to get it all on my one last roll of film.   Sadly I opened up my camera after all of this and discovered there was no film in my camera.    I cried.

About a year after that I had my son (I started young….what can I say!) and as a birthday gift that year I was given my first digital camera – it’s been a love affair since then.   However I didn’t get from “first digital camera” to “professional photographer” all at once.   That was the real journey there – I’ve had a lot of help and put a TON of effort into it.   I couldn’t be where I am today without the help of other professionals out there.   The photography community I discovered is one of the most giving communities of people out there.    I love it!

Keeping with the spirit of giving that goes with being a photographer I’ve tried my absolute best to help others out with their own photography journeys.  Unfortunately (or fortunately…depending on how you look at it) I am one busy lady!  My business always keeps me on my toes and working my tail off.   I love it, but it leaves me little time for family and friends and even less time to respond to the dozens of e-mails I get asking me questions about photography and photoshop.  SO…….this is where my big announcement comes into play!

Starting in August I’m going to be offering beginning and intermediate level photography classes!

As of right now, I’ll only be offering the first “Beginning-level” class.  I’m going to wait and see how the response is before I add more classes, but I would imagine an intermediate and some more beginning classes will soon follow!

The first class is going to be held at my studio Monday August 9th, August 16th, and August 23rd from 7:00 to 8:30 in the evening.    This is going to be a first come, first serve type of thing, and I’m only going to be able to take a small handful of students due to space limitations (my studio is only 1000 sq. feet).

In the Beginning class we will be covering the subjects:

1. Getting out of Auto (full instructions on shooting in manual, the photographic triangle, and “which settings” to use for your photos)

2. Finding the light (outdoor photography).

3. Working with available light and on camera flash (indoor lighting).

4. Interacting with your subject.

5. Composition.

All the classes will include me as your instructor with 4.5 hours total of interactive instruction, handouts of all the subjects we will be covering in detail, homework assignment for the in-between weeks, 1-2 mini-shoots (either in my studio or downtown) for practice and a mini-critique session in the last week.

It is not required, but I highly recommend that all attendees own or at least have the ability to borrow a DSLR, as most of the instruction will involve shooting in manual which is difficult to do with a point and shoot camera.   If your not sure what a DLSR is, it stands for “Digital single lens reflex”  in other words it’s a digital camera with a detachable lens or lenses – examples would be cameras like the Nikon d40, d90, d200, d300 etc, or the Canon Rebel XT, XS, 30d, 40d 5d etc.

Being that I am a “homeschool grad” I have a slightly different approach to teaching – this will not just be a “Jessica telling you how to take pictures” class, this will be us all interacting with each other, discussing, practicing, etc.  I hope to cater to all learning styles – the visual, the auditory, and the kinesthetic, by speaking, showing and doing.   My goal is that you can all not only learn something new and fun, but also create some friendships and perhaps even your own photographic community of sorts.

The intermediate class with be covering things like shooting in raw, photoshop and lightroom workflow, techniques for portrait editing, beginning-level off camera lighting, posing and more!  However I’m not going to announce all the details of that one yet – let me get through the first one first!

Want to sign up?   Cost for the class will be $55, and this includes everything listed above, plus access to me throughout the class for all of your questions!  Call me at 360-431-9265 or e-mail me at jessicalemmonsphoto@gmail.com to get signed up today!  

I had fun putting together this collage – I always love to show the out-takes, and being that she was born with her father’s sense of humor, there were plenty!

He’s a man to be jealous of ladies…..he’s cute, funny, in incredible shape, cooks, cleans, changes diapers, is far more romantic than I am, has an AMAZING singing voice, has hot tattoos, can put a baby to sleep in five minutes flat, and oh yeah….he loves God.   Does it get any sexier?   Yep…..He’s MINE!

Sadly…I have no super-recent photos of the two of us (that’s about to change though!) so these are some in-takes and out-takes from our family session nearly two years back, taken by my wonderful sister-in-law -Jenica.

Thank you for having me as your photographer guys!

I’m not going to go into TO much, because, well, that would bore you to tears and my life isn’t really that exciting, but I love it so…I must share.

My sweet little guy celebrated his 6th birthday last month at Chuck E. Cheese.  I seriously can’t believe he is six already….hold up man!  Seriously….

Here’s  a few of the snaps from my sister – that bottom right picture had me cracking up, three of the girls I’m sitting with are pregnant – yet I’m the ONLY one that actually looks pregnant and I’m not.  I could have photoshopped myself skinny I guess….but I also could do more sit-ups.  Ha….that will happen!  ;-)

My dear daughter chopped off all of her hair last week – I’m getting ready to do her 4 year old photos next week, but I thought I would share some photos of her from before that terrible day.

And then, right after Casey’s birthday I ended up making emergency flight down to California to get my husband…..long story there and I’m not going to go into it much.   This whole trip was rather unplanned (major understatement of the year!!!).    The short version of the story is that I arrived in San-Fran late Tuesday night and met my husband, I had to be home to work by Friday morning (this is after I did a significant amount of rescheduling).  We nixed both of us flying home due to budget, and then nixed renting a car and driving home for the same reasons….which left us with one option, ride Bryce’s motorcycle all the way home.   We took a little ride around San-Fran so I could see all the sights, and the packed everything we had with us (minus our wallets and the clothing on our packs) and stuck it all in a box and shipped it home, and then off we drove towards home.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to take my camera with me –  I didn’t want to check a bag at the airport and something had to be left at home.  Our point and shoot got some video and a few photos, but I’m having technical difficulties today with youtube and can’t get the video on here…..maybe another time!    We spent the next 2.5 days traveling home and arrived just an hour before my first appointment (just enough time for me to shower and change out of the clothes I had been wearing for the last 3 days…GAG!).   Our box arrived about an hour after we did (go USPS!) and we were home.    It was quite the trip – good thing I really love my husband because that bike was not made to be sat on for such a long period of time!!!
So….we arrived back safely.   I jumped right back into work and would’nt you know, another road trip came right up for us!  Fortunately for us, this one was much shorter – just Walla Walla, but we make a weekend out of it, complete with some hiking in the gorge.

The hike was lovely, and the company hilarious, I’ll refrain from sharing photos of that though – I would imagine Nate and Bryce would be less than happy if those crazy photos ended up on the net.  All in all….we had a great time!  June was a great month for us as a family – busy, yes, but we are happy and God is great.  :-)  Thanks for putting up with my randomness…. one more little set of my kids just being kids at our house and then it’s back to your regularly scheduled programming. – Jessica

I had SO much fun with them – their wedding was so gorgeous, joyful and full of happy tears throughout the whole day.

I had a blast with you two!   Thank you for having me.  :-)

The details:

The gorgeous bride:

The lovely bridesmaids:

and….handsome groom and groomsmen:

Their adorable little family:

The ceremony:

Husband and wife:

I have to say, this was probably one of my favorite parts – the maid of honor shared a somewhat embarrassing story (it was GREAT!) and Allie’s reactions to it had me cracking up!

Congrats guys!   I’m so happy for you two to start this new chapter of your lives together!!!

These first two I couldn’t help but process with a vintage twist – so precious!