Matt & Emily | Summer of Love WINNERS

Time for some honesty, because let's be honest, who couldn't use a little more honesty in their lives? Here goes... All too often I think I forget the whole reason I'm doing this photography gig. I find myself caught up in the rat race (photography has become more than a little competitive...), wanting to get better and better and somehow prove myself to those who are further ahead than me. I want to be impressive to them. And so I miss the point. But... My clients bring me back to Earth. They melt my heart, they show me that there is absolute beauty in being human. And that there is no competition in that beauty- we all share it, we all embody it. I love to get a beautiful couple in front of my lens, to capture their true love and to come home and be touched to tears because of how perfectly imperfect they are and how awesome that is. Am I making any sense? Probably not... but the fact is I am grateful. I'm grateful for my extremely human clients who trust me and who are just as in love with their "perfect imperfections" as I am. And that is why I'm doing this. And I don't care who likes it, who approves of it, or how well-known my work is. At least I'd like to think that's how I feel about it, but let's not forget I am human...

Remember when Matt & Emily won the Summer of Love contest? They are in love a little bit. And I love them for it... because it was way fun doing their session!

Time for you to see their pretty faces in the longest blog post ever...

I saved the last one for last because I knew there would be some questions on it. :) So I have an old Argus Seventy-Five that I rigged for Through the Viewfinder (TtV) shooting. You can google it- but basically I built a tube around the view finder and shot through the tube with my camera. I got a couple really cool shots that I liked- this camera is pretty dirty and so I got a lot of neat texture and the borders looked just as grungy as I wanted them. So in Photoshop I just picked my favorite shots and made a little "storyboard" out of them. Sweet!

Soundtrack for today: Jenny Owen Youngs - Here is a Heart... listened to it about 30 times while editing Matt & Emily's session! :)