Well we did not shoot a wedding today, but we were an important part of one. My parents have a catering company and catered a wedding this afternoon. Mike took some shots of the wedding cake I made.

Here I am adding the sugar butterflies that decorated the layers and cake table.



Two views of the cake and table, the bride chose to have the figurine on the table not on the cake.



A close-up of a butterfly

Ever think about being married long enough to reach your golden anniversary? We recently photographed the 50th anniversary of a couple that did just that, and they are so blessed to still be going strong! What a wonderful celebration of marriage, raising children, and dealing with the every day stresses of life.

The celebration party for Hudon and Carolene was attended by over 200 family and friends in the glow of a beautiful Saturday evening at their farm. They used to have a catering business and made wedding cakes, so the food was absolutely outstanding. There was grilled pork, black-eyed peas, green beans, cole slaw, fried okra, jalapeno corn muffins, and plenty of other goodies! Some of their good friends performed gospel songs from the sheltered entertainment area down under the big oak trees. The evening ended with a wonderful slideshow of pictures collected over the years. Beginning with the couples childhood pictures, progressing through their marriage and child raising years, and continuing on through today, we enjoyed seeing the many celebrations and blessings of the years gone by.

We would like to thank Hudon and Carolene for including us in their celebration and we wish them many more years of happiness! A few pictures are posted below or click here to see our slideshow of their celebration evening.

Here in Atlanta, Catherine and I wait all year for fall to arrive. With the hot, humid sizzle of the Georgia summer finally falling away, our favorite time of the year has finally arrived!

This weekend brought the first real changes in the fall color, surely Autumn is here! With the change of weather, comes the anticipation of crisp cool nights, the smell of a campfire, and yummy gooey s'mores, candied apples, high school football games, fall festivals, and other highlights of the season. Here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks. Enjoy the season with us!

Catherine's girl scout troop took a trip to the corn maize. This is a working dairy farm that does a massive corn maize every year. The girls had a blast getting lost in the corn maize (the sign that says this way out, doesn't really get you out!) and checking out the pumpkin patch!





YES! The leaves are finally turning! This is one of my favorite parts of fall! The color only lasts a little while, but I think this year it will be one of the best for color in the last handful of years.




Football, marching band, and spending crisp cool Friday nights on cold metal bleachers! This was our high school's homecoming weekend, and they were all ready! The football team won by a landslide 49 to 13, and the marching band was not getting a break from playing the school fight song after every touchdown!




We found these yummy candied apples at a local arts festival today! They were covered with chocolate and caramel and were stuck on REAL sticks!



A couple of weeks ago, our youngest daughter and I went father-daughter girl scout camping. We had a blast camping, cooking, doing leathercraft, silkscreening by hand, and other camp activities. The preferred mode of transportation around the 1000 acre camp is by bicycle, which was just fine by my daughter. UNFORTUNATELY, there was not enough room in the truck for my bicycle, so I was hoofing it. We went many miles down the mountain trails, which my daughter just loved, but my feet didn't!

Ah, the smell of the wood burning and crackling on the fire! I can sit for hours around a warm fire, especially when the temperature is clipping the upper 30's like it was our first night there. Of course all the girls were making yummy, gooey s'mores, and we had more than our share! But trying to get a picture of a s'more is impossible, they get gobbled up before I can even get the camera to focus!

Mike and I invested in Showit Web and LOVE it. Here's my first slideshow featuring pictures from the other evening playing with the kids. Enjoy!!!
Now off to work on our website...

An Autumn Sunday evening had the neighborhood kids playing tag in the front yards... what a wonderful, carefree time they were having. So, Mike and I took the time to watch the kids through our lenses.

It was fun to just enjoy the laughter and share our love of images with another generation. Our youngest, Emma, even got a chance to take some pictures! These pictures feature our good friend and her three daughters.

Here are some of my favorites.

Wednesday night I attended the monthly meeting of the Atlanta Pictage Users Group (PUG) with about 20 other area photographers. Catherine and I are currently researching ordering, printing, and album options, so Pictage is definitely on our list as a possible solution for order fulfillment. We had some great munchies, including some delicious spice cupcakes, and generally had a blast networking with other local wedding photographers at the meeting and at dinner afterwards.

The highlight of the meeting was a presentation on the business of photography by the extremely talented and business savvy Liana Lehman of Liana Photography. Liana is an award winning photographer and instructor, and her presentation of business requirements and facts were "eye popping" to say the least! Her discussions, touching on areas of planning, budgeting, marketing, pricing, accounting, and ongoing analysis, show just how many things have to click in order to run a successful photography business. I would like to thank Liana for presenting this extremely important information to the group!

So if I wash all this down to my perspective, there is a lot of hard, time consuming, and often unnoticed work that occurs to produce a quality finished product for the customer. As a professional photographer, I want to know that I am doing all that I can to run my business in a cost effective and successful manner. As a customer, you want to know that the photographer or studio that you select to capture your life's most precious moments will still be in business down the road when you are ready to capture that next timeless moment. As consumers, we all know there are many ways to "cut corners" in today's photographic market, especially with the advent of digital technology. But will you get that special moment preserved in its most beautiful way, destined to be an heirloom for your children or your children's children? Support your chosen photographer, you will be glad you did!

Last week, we attended a gathering of local Atlanta and southeastern area photographers hosted by the awesome team of Andrew and Rachel Niesen and Mark and Erin Adams of LaCour Studios . With help from the fantastic teams of Amber and Nathan Holritz and Joy and Garrett Nudd , the evening was highlighted with great food, much fun, discussion, and networking opportunities. As explained by Andrew, their goal is not only to build community with their clients, but also to build community with the photographers in the local market. With the rapid and changing nature of photography, a closely knit community of professionals sharing ideas, successes, failures, and experiences strengthens our abilities as professional photographers to offer better products and services to our customers.

Photography by Mike and Catherine is proud to be a part of this growing community and would like to thank Andrew, Rachel, Mark, and Erin for including us in this opportunity. We met many fine photographers from our area and look forward to being contributors to continuing to build this community of outstanding professionals.