Here's one for you - what do you get when you take a pregnant woman who rarely sleeps and she tries to say "That's pretty!" and "That's beautiful!" at the same time? No fair cheating Melissa, Jordan + Rich, but the first person who answers correctly in the comments wins the honor of knowing the most mortifying thing I've ever said on a shoot! (Okay, so we're not sponsored - it's kind of a crappy prize... unless you like to mock me, of course! :)

But aside from my extreme talent in embarrassing myself (Rich also tossed out a pretty epic one that I won't say on the blog... not because I don't enjoy embarrassing my lovely husbad, but because it was so something that should never have been admitted, I'd be embarrassed for him if you all knew the extreme measures to which he tried to rid himself of his acne as a teenager), our shoot with Melissa + Jordan was so rad. Anyone who has ever shot with us knows I have a really bad habit of intending on going somewhere to shoot and getting distracted by fifteen other things I want to shoot on the way, so poor Jordan was desperately trying to get me over to this super rad wall right from the start of our shoot, and we finally arrived there about an hour in. :) So, I'll start off this post with my favorite of Rich's from there...

I wanna say Jordan said something to the effect of, "If I don't get some shot by this wall, I'm throwing you in." "In" referring to Lake Ontario, of course. So, yeah - the "lichen it" wall - good call, bro. I got a series of shots I'm really, really proud of from there. Of course, only one made the post - but the boss lady is hard to crack, man. I only got four photos in on this blog post. On the other hand, I didn't have to do any of the work involved in selecting them or prepping them - so I guess I still sort of win.

This shot killed me when I first saw it just a couple minutes ago - freakin love it, hon.

Thanks - it was my favorite of mine, too. :) But I can't believe you're complaining about how many of your photos are in this post!! Seriously, Rich handed me his card and said, "good luck selecting this blog post!" Because we both had so many favorites on this one - the light was just siiiiiick through the entirety of the shoot, and come on - is that had not the most adorable thing you've ever seen?

On the shoot I believe I was sporting my giant Mickey Mouse hoodie,(hey, when you're the size of a house, you'll take what's warm and fits), a rainbow stripped hat, red plaid boots and purple gloves, which could be why Melissa and Jordan were laughing so much in these photos. I'm so fashionable! :)

But the light was stunning, M+J just killed their photos AND we got to shoot in an epic spot, so when it came time to whittle down our finished images for the ones we selected for this post, it was hard. Besides - I couldn't very well have a post where 7 of the 15 images were from the lichen wall, now could I? With all the other rad stuff? Seriously, selecting for the blog is tough! You can do it next time. :P

No - you'd fire me if I did and it would throw our system all out-of-whack. As a side note, from the shoot, if you're running a business where you're with your spouse 24/7 and you share equal responsibilities for executing your job, you have GOT to split things evenly and figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. It was hard at first for each of us to let go of certain responsibilities regarding the business, but when we did things went a lot more smoothly. And the more you know your role, the more you can relax, forget about the cameras, and do this stuff:

I wouldn't fire you! Even though I do rock a World's Best Boss mug, I don't believe I've ever fired you. I have quit the business a couple times though :) Coolest thing about working for yourself/with your spouse - you totally can quit your job in all the ways you've always dreamed of, but have never actually gone through with, because you can just rehire yourself five minutes later :) Also, instead of horrifically offending someone, your spouse just usually laughs at you :)

Seriously, you two - you guys were stunning!

Most definitely - and here's MORE WALL. I can't wait to find some walls on your wedding day, J, now that I know it's kindof your thing. I kid. Sortof.

We'll probably find a few interesting walls.

Ha - that's the truth :) So, here we were, having a super rocking awesome shoot - we'd just hit golden hour which is my FAVORITE time to shoot, and then Rich made me feel like pooh. It was right around this point when a guy bearing arms asked me if I wanted to see a musket demonstration, and I said no. Well, Rich was like, you ruined that guy's day - his whole job is to randomly fire that thing for people, and then I totally felt bad about turning down the musket demonstration for the rest of the day. So, sorry musket guy, wherever you are. I promise next time I'm there, I'll say yes and watch you shoot your gun :)

First shot of the day, and that's Jordan's I'm-standing-in-a-foot-of-snow-why-didn't-I-wear-boots smile :)

Hah - I know that smile well. This is, without a doubt, my favorite thing I've shot in a while.

Yeah - that is super pretty :)

I just remembered something I was planning on mentioning. So yesterday, in the studio, I picked up a folder of old stuff I hadn't moved for a few years and a cd marked "our photos" fell out on the floor. We have our wedding and portrait photography work backed up in triplicate, but our most personal photos are on a random CD, right? Figures.

Anyway, I slid the disc into my laptop and WOW. It was a bunch of point-n-shoot stuff from our wedding and honeymoon. We didn't get the opportunity to purchase our wedding photos from our photographer (just six years ago, that was normal), so all we have outside of our album with 20 photos is the snapshots friends took. Even the crappiest, blurriest shot on whatever 1.3 megapixel POS made me smile the biggest smile I've had in while. Seeing what we were like just six years ago was amazing to me. I couldn't wait to show Murphy. I'm a nostalgic romantic for sure, and not everyone is built like me - but I love that I have those photos and, hell, I might even print a couple.

I hope, six or seven years from now, the stuff we're doing with couples now can have the same impact on them when they pull out their DVD or look at prints hanging on the wall. I think photographs of the people you love the most are incredibly important. We all change. Sometimes dramatically. As we get married and start lives together and maybe have kids, it changes before you even know it or can manage to process it at a million miles per hour. When you look back at a certain outfit or a certain haircut in a certain photograph maybe your wife had years before - man, it brings some really amazing feelings rushing back.