Buffalo Wedding Photography by Nickel City Studios

Archive: November 2010 | View all recent posts

November 4, 2010 - Engagements

chelsea + jay

So, this is ridiculous, but we totally got to do another morning shoot this week! I was so excited to shoot Chelsea + Jay - we're dangerously close to losing our leaves, especially after those crazy winds last week, but there was surprisingly more leaf-age going on than I'd anticipated. While we were shooting, leaves just kept falling down around Chelsea + Jay, and it was just a crazy awesome fall morning.

Except, of course, that as we left the house to head over, we walked across the crunchy, frosty grass. It was cold - to the point we had to take a mid-shoot car warm up break, but even so Chelsea + Jay killed this shoot.

I spent about 20 minutes at the beginning of our shoot trying to get a shot with them with some leaves falling down around them, and it wasn't happening, so finally I gave up. When the light started doing this all kinds of delicious amazingness, I asked them to go hang out here - and this was the second frame I shot. So, I got my falling leaves :)

I'm sure c + j are relieved, too. Me kicking a tree trunk while hiding behind said tree trunk was EXACTLY how they probably envisioned their e-shoot going down.

Okay - I'm going to try and keep this straight, but I may need help in the comment section. Chelsea knew Natalie (two posts below) way back when they worked together - Natalie knows Fred of "Alyssa + Fred" four posts ago, frequent-commenter and 2011 bride, Gretchen grew up with Laura from two posts ago.

Basically - this town is ridiculous. If we got ten of our couples together - 8 of them would be friends - and at least 4 of them would be related.

That's just this town - crazy :) And yes, part of the 20 minutes, after I got frustrated that I wasn't getting the leaves that were falling (picture leaves falling, so we go hang out under the tree they're falling from, then they stop, so we move, then I get one, but it's directly in front of Chelsea's face... I got frustrated but didn't want to not get it, so I may have had Rich run in, kick a tree, and run out. :)

It's funny - when we were shooting, Chelsea was nervous about a serious face - and I get it - when we have had our photos done, I hated how I looked with a serious face. I look really stern, and Chelsea was like, me too! So, I was going through the shoot expecting her serious face to come off more stern, but dude, you're full of it - you look STUNNING with your serious face!

The sunrise was incredible. The circulation in my hands is a huge mess, but it's very, very worth it for this kind of shoot.

Gorgeous :)

Thanks - I really dug that one :)

Yeah, after we got home we started googling heated gloves... we need something for this year. All I know is if you ask me to change your lenses again this year, I'm going to lose it. Seriously, we had one shoot last year that was so cold, Rich couldn't touch the metal on the lens and kept coming over to me asking to change his - it was really pathetic :)

Hey - pathetic because you got frostbite once and your hands are now eff'd in the cold is endearing, right?

This is too ridiculously adorable - not a set up, Jay just randomly was being the best boy ever and carrying Chelsea around. I'm not entirely sure why MY boy doesn't carry me around all the time... I am way too awesome for walking.

I've been looking into a rickshaw for when we go to the co-op.

See???? You guys did GREAT!

This was a really good one, guys. There a bunch of photos that I friggin loved that didn't get selected. One in particular I already bet I'm going to be fighting for to go into our end-of-the-year posts. We will do end-of-the-year posts with our favorites, but not until the end of December. We've got a few more shoots here and there and we're kindof fried right now.

So, folks, that's it for us in November. We might post some personal stuff - work on some projects, etc, but we're pretty much shutting down the studio for the rest of the month and sending off gear for cleaning, and generally game planning for 2011. Oh, and RELAXING for a little bit before the holidays.

Thanks again, everybody, for what an incredible wedding season it was.

See ya soon!

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November 4, 2010 - Portraits

keri + josh + leni + leo

I don't really have any regrets about our brand of wedding photography and how we do our thing, other than with our crazy summer wedding schedule we don't get to photograph nearly enough families. Taking photographs of kids is awesome and wild and there's just no telling what's going to happen - which is something we thrive on.

Speaking of kid randomness, Alyssa is sitting here with me in Murphy's room as we knock out a couple blog posts and he just announced, "Now I'm going to check your heart rate," and I just said, "Hon, you might want to turn around - he just picked up a shield and he's wielding a golf club in the other hand." Apparently, Alyssa's heart rate was, precisely measured, "One percent point eleven," as measures by a plastic golf club and a shield. Then he picked up a toy shovel to check if his mother was bleeding. Zero percent bleeding was reported. Probably kindof like going to the doctor in Uruguay, actually, just without the Hep-C.

See - that kind of stuff if what you life becomes about. It's theater of the absurd and it's awesome and loving and hard and easy and there's just nothing like it.

I love photographing families, particularly now that ours is growing and I feel kindof like an actual, no-shit adult for the first time in my life.

So anyway - and this is why Alyssa has got to stop me when I want to start a blog post, I ramble for way too long - we got to shoot with Keri and Josh and their amazing kiddos, Leni and Leo a couple days ago and it was just everything.

They were hoping to get together for a few shots for their Christmas cards, and right as we started shooting, Rich said, "man, I love shooting them - I feel like we can do whatever we want." And that might sound silly - like, we're wielding the cameras - we SHOULD be doing whatever we want, but we walk a fine line between wanting to push the things we do creatively and making sure we still produce lots of photos like we have on the blog - you know, why you guys come to us in the first place. :) But when we get together with our friends to snap some shots, we can push those norms - so it's always really fun to shoot them - oh, and they're also one of the most stylish and awesome families of sweet and gorgeous kids ever. So, there's always that, too.

Yeah, and we've also gotten to grow with this rad fam - I should dig up some of the first frames we got to shoot of Leni from Keri and Josh's wedding back in the day. She was TINY - and just a month younger than Murph. We felt pretty special they chose us to shoot their wedding when we were very much the new kids in town, and I still feel pretty special every time they choose us for their family portraits.

Maybe my favorite photo from a family shoot ever.

Yeah - I totally dig. It's funny - we were really looking forward to shooting these guys, and on our way out, we totally got a flat tire and spent 30 minutes on the side of the road (I won't even begin to say how long of it was us trying to figure out how to get the wrench off the jack), but it was really cold, and we were shooting in the evening (and they'd been running around at the farm while we were swearing on the side of the road), so I thought that we'd get maybe 20 minutes of shooting in before the kids lost it. And I can't even begin to explain how rad these kids are - they lasted until we lost the light. They are maybe the two most well behaved kids I've ever met.

So, Josh put Leni up in this window, and it's crazy - Leo was pointing and leaning toward her. Even as little as he still is, he wants to do literally everything Leni does. It's the cutest thing ever. There was no way we were walking away without him getting to sit in window too :)

Oh yeah - the instant we got home I put my truck's floor jack in the back of the Saturn. The jack stands they put in modern cars are a complete fricking joke and it was like a mensa brain puzzle trying to get the damned handle to extend. Of course, after getting the tire patched the next morning, I immediately got rear-ended at Gates Circle and I think the alignment I had done less than a week and a half ago is out again. Good times. It's been kindof a dumb week. The dog had a broken tooth that had to be extracted, the tire thing, the chimney basically collapsed, the kitchen sink backed up. It's a damned good thing we're taking some serious time off after some final work this weekend. I'm going to need to it just to fix broken crap.

Anyway - all my bitching aside, you're 100 percent right. It's tough to be parents - it's even tougher to be good parents. To be amazing parents who have incredible, charming and well-behaved kids? You guys kick serious ass.

and you make uber cute ones, too...

I don't know how all second kids aren't stunt men - seriously, when Murph was this age, there's no way he would've thought to climb a fence, let alone tried it - that sibling influence has got to cause more heart attacks in parents...

I love that in the very, very corner of this photo you can see Leo pointing to the construction truck (forgive my ignorance, the one with the giant shovel on the front) just out of the frame. I guess it was kind of cruel of us to stop there to take this shot when there was an epically awesome truck to go see :)

He was as excited about the fence as anything.

And he had a lion hat. Question: why is this so damned cute on a little kiddo, but if I tried to wear a beat-ass lion hat I'd probably get a D-cell in the grape? I kindof want a lion hat to go with my winter beard.