One Love Photo

Topography of Love

in a beautiful vibrant blur

misty and aman married at summit rock in central park, new york.

many more to come but these caught my eye immediately.
 
   

Topography

after we flew across the country we

got in bed, laid our bodies

delicately together, like maps laid

face to face, east to west, my

san franciso against your new york, your

fire island against my sonoma, my

new orleans deep in your texas, your idaho

bright on my great lakes, my kansas

burning against your kansas, your kansas

burning against my kansas, your eastern

standard time pressing into my

pacific time, my mountain time

beating against your central time, your

sun rising swiftly from the right my

sun rising swiftly from the left your

moon rising slowly from the left my

moon rising slowly from the right until

all four bodies of the sky

burn above us, sealing us together,

all our cities twin cities,

all our  states united, one

nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

-sharon olds

Whitney & Dan

many more beauties to come from this august wedding, we can't wait to share more. whitney and dan were a complete dream to work with....

we have been on the go for the past three weeks. this last weekend was the summit of our wedding mountain. we shot two weddings in new york. it was beautiful, exciting and a little bit exhausting. on our way out on day two, we did a little fist bump as we zoomed down the elevator. we walked out onto the bustling street with cameras hanging every which way. smiling while dragging our feet. knowing that it's all down hill from here.

we are in boston this week, waiting to shoot a wedding at a summer camp on saturday. can't wait for this one, our timeline starts off with canoe races. oh boy!

Art and Love

 jennifer and david - golden gardens, seattle

 

 

 

 

 

 

jennifer and david's wedding touched us deeply. it was thoughtful, genuine, creative and perfectly spontaneous. i want to replay their ceremony again and again and savor the songs that were sung, the poems that friends read and the vows they shared. it passed in a wonderful blur. i remember a promise for lots of love making and artful mess making. made me wish we had included such things in our vows. i need the manuscript to this ceremony so i can delight in the details which i can not hear only see in our photographs. luckily jennifer just happens to be a poet and  bookmaker and made a lovely handmade book of their wedding vows. am thinking i need to have tea with these two and their love book. this is only a tiny little photo sliver of this wedding pie....many, many more to come.

Today

sweet and breezy capitola.
 

Yesterday, a bohemian farmer's market with drum circle and sunset waves in santa cruz.

 

 

Twinkle

congratulations sarah and tim!

check out our flickr strream for more pretty photographs......

Guantanamera or One Jon Almeda

whenever i hear this song especially on the street in mexico by a mariachi band i get so excited! because the words blur for me and i hear "one jon almeda' as the chorus instead of the cuban inspired "guantanamera". i swear it really does sounds like "one jon almeda" in this wyclef version. i usually feel the need to loudly sing along with my own personal lyrical twist. smiling and thinking about my very special, ingenius, funny, creative, helpful, generous, sweet, extremely talented and super cute man.          my one jon almeda. 

first days back from vacation are rough. first days back with a snot nose, plugged ears and depressing rain outside are the worst. been moving slow today not ready to re-enter reality. dropped all my film off at the lab. am quite eager to see what i captured down south. to take my mind off my cold and the drizzle i enjoyed looking through all of jon's colorful mexico photos. most of these images were shot with his newest homemade lens. haven't named this one yet but it's a custom tilt/shift using one of my favorite lenses from my old enlarger. it's really quite perfectly soft and dreamy. it's just what we have been looking for. leave it to that clever one jon almeda........                                        we had such fun wandering the streets together cameras in hand. jon with his weird accordion lens wrapped in soft electrical tape and me with my square vintage box. trying to fight off feelings of self-consciousness and concealing our cameras however we could. me trying to hide mine in my much too small brown leather purse. trying not to look so obvious. hating the idea of being the nerdy over excited tourist. wishing we could be invisible and or fluent in spanish. but once something caught our eye, we forget all that. patiently waiting, taking turns, eager to see the rectangle or square that each other composed. each of us creating our own tiny theater inside the viewfinder. carefully deciding who or what our main character would be at that moment. some zoomed by us in a instant, others stopped us in our tracks and some created the perfect detour. these are jon's photographs from our last week together on the beautiful yet rather modest isla mujeres. enjoy, they are lovely!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now we wait for the film.

A touch of cinnamon - jamie & tim

  this wedding celebration was at the very cool sodo park by herban feast in seattle (the gritty part).

For the love of Bokeh

a relatively new word for me. bokeh is a word i should have known sooner. am glad to have it now. since i now know i have always admired good bokeh. i just never had a word to describe it.

Bokeh:
a Japanese term for the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photographic image.

scroll down to see more from this beautiful seattle wedding .......

Something New

a little paint, layers of paper and ephemera, a lot of beeswax and a perfectly imperfect photograph that inspired it all.

above image shot with another homemade lens created by that clever jon. i named this one dirty harry.

Dirty Harry - jamie & dustin

 

South African Love Poem - mitra & reinhard

it was pure bliss. after worry and the unknown. the visa was approved. the citizenship on track. he left south africa. without hesitation and with little time to plan they were married. with papers signed and vows promised, they no longer worry about borders between them.

 .

In Love

.....................................

i am

none them they others

for i am

.....................................

i know

feel when i feel

yours

.....................................

i love

hearts hugging

mine yours mine

.....................................

we live

each for each.

.....................................

-Sipho Sepamala

 Poem from: In the Country of the Heart: Love Poems from South Africa.

Laguna Wedding - heather & barry

have just returned from california. settling back into the fall chill after having a "return to summer" extended weekend. heather and barry were married in laguna beach on friday afternoon. two artists in love who trusted us completely. can't ask for more than that.

last year these two traveled to ireland together. all along barry had a master plan involving one secret ring. he knew the exact spot when the ring would come out of his pocket. a beautiful green lookout point. the question was popped. the answer was yes. ireland will never be the same for these two!

heather had brought along a plastic diana camera to freeze her own visions of ireland. she was hoping for lots of blur, soft muted tones and timeless images. while looking through her album from their trip this weekend, it was clear to me that her vision had been captured perfectly. there is one distant blurry landscape shot that keeps popping up in my mind, i might have to request a copy of my own.

wanting a similar look for her wedding photos, she began a search for the perfect photographer. she wanted someone who shoots film and uses toy cameras, and who experiments with different processes. she was searching for another artist. the stars must have been aligned, because somehow she stumbled upon my website. even more perfect was the fact that shortly after, we were able to meet in person. when heather first contacted me, i was headed down to los angeles with jon for a pottery show. at our meeting we all clicked and it felt like a perfect match. as the big orange sun went down on their wedding day, we giggled and made beautiful photographs together! jon felt confident using his big papa lens. he knew the style that these two wanted was similar to the "through the viewfinder" look created with his lens. looking over the funky photographs i thought they deserved a post all on their own.