portland wedding photographer
If I am being honest, I don’t necessarily hate that my old website crashed. My new web host and website are both so much easier to deal with now. I also love that it gives me an excuse to re-blog some of my favorite sessions, like this one! This was a really fun shoot with some experimentation that paid off.
What does four hours of wedding coverage look like? Well, here you go! If you are doing everything (getting ready, first look, ceremony, reception) at the same location and you schedule your order of events (toasts, dinner, etc.) in a particular way, you can get quite a bit out of just four hours of photography.
Hao and Rachel tied the knot at East Fork Country Estate in Damascus, Oregon. They had planned on getting married in 2020, but like many couples, they had to delay their wedding, due to COVID-19 restrictions. I’m sure the wait was really hard, but I have to imagine that it was worth it, for such a beautiful celebration. For an outdoor wedding in April, we definitely lucked out with the weather!
Hao and his groomsmen wore handsome Navy suits, while the bridesmaids wore pink dresses, and Rachel rocked a fitted silk and lace dress, with an adorable white jacket when it got cold. There were rustic-chic little touches throughout, including baby’s breath, lanterns, vintage china, and wooden signs. In fact, the ones at the end of the aisle, on easels? Yeah, I knocked those over right before the wedding. That kind of entertainment is one of the perks of hiring me.
Their day was filled with SO much laughter, some first dances, funny toasts, adorable moments, and even a rainbow at the end of the night (kudos to the DJ for being quick on his feet and playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow as soon as we saw it)!
Like many couples planning to get married in 2020 Samantha & Jonathon made some drastic changes to their wedding, due to the pandemic. Instead of a large affair at Willamette Mission Park, they opted for an intimate elopement at home. Well, at the home of Samantha’s parents. Although this is technically a backyard wedding, it was an unusually stunning backyard…and by backyard, I mean the river, as their back patio sat right over it and provided the most beautiful backdrop for the ceremony.
We completely lucked out with weather on this September wedding day. We had MASSIVE wildfires here last year and it was smoky for MONTHS, including every single day leading up to their wedding. Then, low and behold, we woke up to clear skies the morning of! WHAT?!
In attendance were the bride and groom’s parents, siblings, and grandparents. The bride’s sister served as the flower girl, while the groom’s sister was the officiant. Both women did an excellent job in their roles.
Details included touches of blue throughout, including the bouquet, Samantha’s ring, and even their socks! Because the date 3/14 is significant to the couple, they had pie for their wedding dessert, pi decorations, and they were pronounced married at exactly 3:14pm.
After their first look, the couple said “I do” in a short, but sweet ceremony. In addition to some portraits at and around the residence, we also took a quick drive over to Willamette Mission Park. There is a specific park bench that is very meaningful to the couple, so we made sure to get some photos on that bench. They also had their first dance in their special spot (sans music, but also sans audience!), which was incredibly sweet.
We didn’t have very much fall color here in the Salem-Keizer area (too early, plus all the smoke), but I managed to find a teensy little bit and I milked it for all it was worth because I looooove fall!
As you may or may not know, I purchased a 1969 Aloha camping trailer in the summer of 2019. My husband and I spent a little over a year tearing it apart (down to the studs) and then rebuilding it. Instead of a camping trailer (which we already had), we decided to turn it into a functional business space. Initially, my goal was to turn it into a photo booth and/or mobile photo studio, which it worked well for, but in the end I decided to sell it. I had just purchased my VW bus and needed the room, plus I already have a studio and don’t really have time to run a photo booth.
Wanda recently went off to her new home with Wild NW Goods, where she is living her best life as a mobile clothing boutique! My husband and I had so much fun with the project that we plan on doing it again in the near future (I’m hoping for an even smaller trailer!).
Anyway, before I sold the old girl, I manged to set up a few photo shoots with her, including this one with Cylee & Drew. We shot this on the beautiful property of an airbnb that I rented in Scio, OR, as the sun was setting on the most beautiful October day.
I shared this shoot a few years ago, but as you may or may not know, my website crashed last year and I lost all of my old blog posts. :( I’ve been trying to repost old ones every once in a while, in the hopes of eventually having most of them blogged someday.
Anyway, this styled elopement shoot was SO much fun. Real couple, Lauren & Mindee Jo, were kind enough to model for me. They were engaged at the time of the session and were married shortly after this. We were jokingly calling it their test run. There was no shortage of love (or chemistry!) between these two and they even brought along their real life friends (also a real couple) as their “witnesses” for the shoot. My friend and long time client, Tiffany, stood in as our faux officiant.
The short lace dress was one that I scored at Ross Dres for Less and it was less than $10. Mindee Jo already had the perfect boots in her closet, so she wore those. Lauren wore an outfit she already had, paired with a cute bowtie that I purchased online for about $10. The flowers were provided by Morning Glories Floral https://www.facebook.com/morninggloriesfloral/) and I used For the Love of Pete Event Rentals for the majority of the props seen in the photos.
The cabin we used was one of the guest houses at Viola Farm at Bear Creek (http://www.violafarm.com), which is a wedding venue in Canby, Oregon. I rented it through airbnb, but I couldn’t find the listing to include with this post (not sure if it’s still available through airbnb). We shot at sunset and the area is just gorgeous and the light came through the trees in the dreamiest way.
Before anyone jumps my shit, these photos were taken MONTHS ago! I am NOT doing any portrait sessions right now, due to the current stay-at-home orders. As much as it pains me to say it… I am not an essential worker and portraits are not a necessity. ;) I just thought these photos seemed fitting, seeing as Rachel is modeling solo.
Anyway, this was a quick little session that we did back in December at the Gray Lab, to test out the . I looooved her lavender hair color and thought this short, pleated dress fit her playful look and personality perfectly. At the time, I was going for sort of a “New Year’s Elopement” look, but I’m now calling it the “socially distanced bride.” ;)
This was such a fun shoot, with Nicole, who happens to be a former student of mine. I’ve wanted to photographer her since I met her because, hello, look at her! I waited, though, until she was no longer in my class to ask if she’d like to model for me. I found this quirky little wedding gown in an antique store in the tiny little town of Canyonville, Oregon.
Although I’d taken a photography class (not Nicole’s class, by the way) to The Gray Lab on a field trip, I’d never personally shot in the space. As soon as I got home from said field trip, I booked myself a couple of hours as this really neat natural light studio in downtown Salem, Oregon. It is only a block from my own studio, which made transporting things easy. Although it is a natural light studio, like mine, the lighting is very different.
I knew that I had to place Nicole on that leather seat because it matched her hair. The Kombucha bottle was intentional as well, for the same reason.
This was just a candid shot of Riane, on her wedding day, but something about it just has this awesome, vintage vibe. She’s naturally elegant and I think her posture and all of the little details just remind of of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on her wedding day.
