Engagement Photo Shoot

Hey Team,

The engagement pictures are in!!!!

Inside the Walker Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, MN

Before the engagement photo session, I honestly had no idea why people took engagement pictures.  I mean, Jonathan and I already have a ton of pictures together.  Why all the fuss?

Then we met the photographer, Poly.  She was the sweetest thing and made us feel right at ease.  Jonathan was looking particularly dapper, and we were instructed to giggle the afternoon away and smooch from time to time.  SO. MUCH. FUN.

At the Sculpture Gardens in Minneapolis, MN

She had a knack for making the mundane look incredible!

This wheat field was pretty much the same thing as seen in the Geico commercials. 10 points for getting that reference.

Despite my initial skepticism, I ended up checking our mailbox three times a day in anticipation.  haha I’m such a hypocrite.

Laughing about who knows what.

It’s things like this that remind me why we are in the trenches of wedding planning.  I love that handsom dude.

I can’t wait to work with Poly again on our wedding day!  She was wonderful!

Did you (or do you plan on) have engagement pictures?  What was your favorite moment captured on camera from your wedding?

-Mads

Save the Dates and Wedding Sanity

Jonathan is a dude who happens to have really talented friends.  One of these talented friends, Trung, offered to take a few pictures of us on the beach for our “Save the Date” cards.  How awesome is that?

I’m learning about this stuff as I go along, but apparently Save the Dates go out 6-8 months before a wedding to alert people to the fact that you will be getting married.  I would normally ignore this particular bit of wedding advice, but it’s slightly more important when a solid chunk of our guests will have to make flight and hotel arrangements.

Anyway, Trung gave us the daunting task of smooching on the beach at sunset.  Here are some of the best snaps:

This pic had a long exposure time...meaning we held this smooch for a really long time in order to get the cool water effect. I love it.

This picture was a joke and entirely our idea, but I think it captures our personalities well.

 

 

We had such a blast taking these pictures.  Thank you, Trung!

Did you send out “Save the Dates”?  What’s the worst piece of wedding advice you promptly ignored? 

Other sources for sane weddings:

East Side Bride

A Practical Wedding

OffBeat Bride

-Mads

 

 

 

 

One more reason I need a smart phone…

The AgingBooth app!

available for iPhone here.  *single tear*

MY phone, on the other hand, has this really cool feature where it turns off whenever it feels like it!  #firstworldproblems

What’s your favorite app?  Or are you living in the stone age with me…in a land where internet access on your phone is a foreign concept?

-Mads

Steve Buscemi Eyes

There is a new (or is it already old?) meme floating around the internet: Chicks with Steve Buscemi Eyes.

My friend, Tuan, has mad Photoshop skillz and decided to Steve Buscemeyes a few friends.

Here is the real Steve Buscemi, if you aren’t already familiar:

Click photo for source: Wikipedia

I’m going to share these next few images with you because I love you and because I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw them.

Jonathan looks shockingly like Smeagol.

Here’s Josie:

So creepy.

And finally, me:

What’s your favorite internet meme?

-Mads

Fun with photo cropping!

Jonathan has been graciously letting me borrow his fancy shmancy DSLR camera.  I have always loved photography, but I didn’t (and still don’t) have the slightest clue as to how to take a picture.

He has patiently described things like aperture, ISO, and shutter speed to me, while my brain melted into my skull.

Pretending that I could learn everything there is to know about photography in one day or even one year is silly billy.  Instead, I am trying to take things one step at a time.  For my first lesson, I chose cropping.

Sounds easy, right?  Toooootally.

Until I read this post from Jodi Friedman.  Scary, right?  Yes.

It’s ok, we hold hands and carry on together.

For this project I used a picture from Josie’s recent trip to the beach.  (Please ignore all of the other problems with this picture while we talk about cropping.  Because otherwise my feelings might get hurt and I might cry.  Mmk?) This is the original snap:

Apparently this shows a classic rookie mistake of centering your subject.  The “Rule of Thirds” breaks your picture down into a 3×3 grid.  Our brains love to see subjects on the intersecting lines of those grids.  Go figure.

These lines aren’t exact, but it gives you a better idea of the grid system I’m talking about:

Josie should be on one of those intersections to make the picture more aesthetically pleasing and to make the photography gods happy.

So let’s put her on the top left intersection:

Uhm…weird.  That’s weird to you too, right?  I think the main reason this is freaky to me is that I have no idea what’s going on with the water.  And what is Josie looking at over there?

Let’s try putting her in the bottom right corner in order to get more water:

Ahhh…that feels better.

The one thing I really love about this picture is Josie’s reflection.  By cropping in closer, I might be able to get a better look.

Yes.  I think that the reflection is cool, but cropping the pic this much takes away from the overall story.

Maybe if we do a vertical crop instead of horizontal?

Well, this brings back the problem of what’s going on with the water.

I think we’ll stick to the bottom right corner crop.

Do you go through a process when cropping your pictures?

Any tips for amateur croppers?

-Mads