Anniversary Get-Away...

My husband and I spent a weekend in Duluth to celebrate our 3 years of marriage. He planned everything about this weekend down to the last detail. Both days were about 85 degrees and pure sunshine. A slight breeze off Lake Superior made it absolutely fantastic. On our drive up, we stopped at Jay Cooke park for some hiking. Then we ate at Gordy's Hi-Hat in Cloquet. Later, we checked into the South Pier Inn right in Canal Park. We spent time at the beach, on our room's patio, and around town. What a great weekend and what a great husband for planning such a fun get-away. Here's to us...

The Lift Bridge rising for a sailboat to come through. And that is our hotel on the right. We were right on the water! Gorgeous.

Aww. Happy 3 years...

On another note, over the past week, I booked a bunch of photo shoots for August! Keep coming back and check them out as I post. First one should be posted by the end of next weekend!

So much stuff!

There are so many exciting things happening!

1. I've purchased a domain! Is that how you say it? The new website, http://www.briannagrayphotography.com/ is officially under construction! I'm also exploring business card ideas. Fun stuff.

2. Knowing that a bunch of equipment purchases are in my not-so-distant future, I've come up with a price plan for photo shoots. If interested, please drop me a note at briannagray123@yahoo.com for details!

3. On a personal note, this week I will celebrate 3 wonderful years of marriage with my husband, Brian. I love him more and more as the days go by. Here's a pic from our weekend in honor of my husband (doing what he does best... eating!).

*More pics to come!

They've been posted!

The wedding from last weekend has been posted on the Alison Lea Photography blog (see Paula and Ryan's wedding). I will have my images in a week or two, so I will post those then!! For now, check out the awesome images on Ali's site!! What a fun, beautiful day!

Can't Tell Time...

A good friend informed me that in my last post I say I got home at 10:45, but my blog was posted at 10:39. This is a sign that I was extremely exhausted and couldn't think straight. Oops!! I'll work on my telling time skills next time around. I'll give credit to my personal editor, Robin!

The enormous lens!!

Although I have no pictures to post (yet), I have to gush about my day! Today, I was an official assistant to a professional photographer, Ali, of Alison Lea Photography. Wow! What a day! Although I have taken pictures at a wedding before (remember Katie and Ben's post?), this was totally different! Between the three of us (Ali, her assistant, Kendra, and myself) we had 6 or 7 camera bodies, a lens for each one, and a couple other lenses we would use throughout the day. We went through 12 memory cards shooting in RAW (we're talking images in the thousands), so they will be great to edit down the road!

The day started at 9 when we met at Ali's house to talk about the day. We met up with the wedding party in downtown Mpls at the church later on and started right away. Family pictures, a ceremony, a stop at the sculpture gardens, and a reception at the Grand Hotel all went by in a flash and I walked in the door to my apartment at 10:45 tonight.

The best part of my day was watching Ali interact with the clients, getting to know them personally, and even helping the bride attach her veil. The other favorite part of my day was Ali letting me use her enormous telephoto lens!!! Okay, this thing made my arms ache it was so heavy!! It was the coolest thing I've ever used and I am starting a savings plan today so I can buy one myself!

Overall, it was a great experience! Ali is a wonderful mentor on top of being a fantastic photographer. I look forward to shooting with her in the future (if she lets me) and learning more and more along the way. All my images were taken on her memory cards, so if I never get to post any of the images here, I'll lead you to her blog where hopefully she'll have pics posted soon.

Seriously... bed time.

30 Years!

My parents are celebrating 30 wonderful years of marriage this summer. My sisters and I became the "party planning committee" for a couple months and put together a great family get-together this week. We had over 40 family members and celebrated on a gorgeous summer evening. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. We love you!

What's a party without a little Cafe Latte dessert?! YUM!

Father's Day!

A couple days ago, I took some headshots of my dad. As many of you know, he's an author/speaker guy and wanted some better pictures to put on his future books, current website and other new publicity stuff he's doing. So... he asked his daughter to do them! Cool! The mosquitoes were horrible in my parents' yard, so we managed to get through pictures fast!

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love you!

Cabin Fun!

What a great weekend getaway! Here are a couple pics from being on the lake. Having my new camera is wonderful when taking pictures of Brian waterskiing! If you can click on this first picture so it fills your screen, you can see so many of the little water beads. Hopefully a better lens is in my future so the pics are even better! My old camera will never be taking waterskiing pics ever again!

The water on the lake is so clear and clean! Gotta love northern MN.

Hey!

One more!

I forgot about this image. I thought it was so cute!

The Wasserman Wedding

A few posts back I mentioned that I would be posting some wedding pics! That weekend finally arrived! My high school friend, Katie, had an 18-month engagement to Ben. Despite many wedding planning bumps in the road (you Minnesotans all heard that news story about the bridal shop closing... yep, Katie's dress was from there, but she somehow managed to get her dress despite the shop closing unexpectedly ONE month before her wedding!), the wedding was wonderful and perfect in every way! The weather couldn't have been better and both bride and groom looked stunning!

Luckily (for my sake), there was only one photographer, so I got to play "second shooter" for the entire day! 400-500 images later, I was exhausted, but pleased! It was SO fun to follow everyone around and just snap away at all the candid opportunities. I even got to use my 4G memory card for the first time (not sure why that excites me so much...)!! The pictures seem to be in reverse order! Oops!

Best wishes to the very happy couple... vacationing in Jamaica... lucky ducks!

A couple of the groomsmen goofing around while the real photographer wasn't looking!

The photographer suddenly forgot something, handed his big camera off to Abbey, one of the bridesmaids, and then ran off for a while. So... what to do, what to do... she turned it on and started snapping! It was hilarious and the photographer will have quite a surprise when he looks at his images! :)

Ben's niece, Eden. She was sooo sweet.

Katie requested this shot, so I gave it my best attempt! Her bouquet is unusually similar to mine :)

Long story, but a funny one. If you know Katie, ask her.

Getting ready...

This event was a blast! Let's see... I've done their engagements and lots of wedding photos... so what is next? Baby?? ;) Love you guys!