{brenda eden photography}

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am a wedding and event photographer and I will be posting my photography work here, as well as stuff that I find interesting!

If you want photographs taken, I would love to talk to you and find out more. I love to photograph weddings, engagement sessions, quinceañeras and family & individual portraits. My sister Becky is a photographer too and she teams up with me to shoot. View our website HERE to see more of our work.

We live in the metro Phoenix area and are available to travel to events anywhere in Arizona.

It's my resolution for 2009 to post frequently on this blog, so come back to see more! :)

~Brenda

480.326.8385 | beden.photography@gmail.com | click here for website: Brenda Eden Photography

 

     

{Sneak peek for Loraine + Tim}

Just a couple here for Loraine and Tim! I can't wait for you guys to see more soon. :)

 

{1920's music on a Sunday afternoon}

I love Sundays. I wish they would last forever. Especially summer Sundays. It's so hot to be outside right now, but later on I want to go swimming---I am anticipating that wonderful salt watery smell that the pool I go to has. (Instead of chlorine, they use salt.)

I'm editing photos for Loraine and Tim right now, who had their wedding on July 2nd at the Boojum Tree Hidden Gardens Boojum Tree Hidden Gardens. It was beautiful!

And while I am editing I am listening to music from the 1920's that I came across on the blog Bits of Beauty .  I'm a little obsessed with the idea of the 1920's right now. I keep reading about silent film stars like Olive Thomas. I keep re-reading The Great Gatsby. I keep looking up 1920's fashions on the internet.

Go here to listen to the 1920's music that Ms. Jenn put together:

1920's Jazz-Swing-Dance-Perfect-4th-of-July-Holiday-Music

And since I like having posts with pictures, here is one of my grandmother that I came across. She was in her 20's in the 1920's, although I guess her life wasn't anything like my Great Gatsby ideas of the 1920's. She lived in Texas and had five little children by 1929. I'm guessing this photo is actually from the 1930's.

  

{In summertime, yellow is my favorite color}

Here in Arizona, the valley, where I live, Summer has been ridiculously beautiful and mild and sweet. At least the first three weeks of June were more clement than I can ever remember. The cover of the Arizona Republic said it was the mildest June since 1913.

June 21st, the real first day of Summer, it seemed like it started getting warmer and I know today and last night were pretty suffocating, but tonight there was a dust storm around my house and the air has cooled off a bit. I'm hoping that we get an amazing Monsoon. Ten mile high clouds rising over the Superstitions and rain on the desert with that amazing rain-in-the desert-smell---creosote and ozone. For the cooler air it brings and for the amazing light + skies that rain + clouds make for photographs.

I went and took about a thousand sunflower photos early one (chilly) morning in early June. Here are a couple.

 

Yo D a d d y !

 

We went to Tortilla Flats. It had been raining like crazy the days before and the river was flooded, so went to see all the water.

 

Christmas morning!

 

Birthday at Grannie's house. This photo frightened me as a kid---I thought my dad was catching fire!

 

Noah and his brothers. He's the one with hipster bolo tie. They were so skinny!

 

Daddy, always and I mean always, had a garden. So now I always try to have one too.

 

This one cracks me up. Who knows what I was so upset about?

 

He WON this Cadillac in 1963. He didn't buy it, he won it!!!!

 

We used to always go for drives to little Arizona towns (like Miami in this photo) and I would take photos with my 35 mm Canon film camera or my awesome little Nikon point and shoot.

 

This photo got scanned in with a lot of white space. But I'm posting it anyways.

 

So did this one. We went to a little ghost town called Eden in southern Arizona so many years ago.

 

What a cutie!

 

In Washington DC with my mom, my grandma, aunt, her daughter and a senator from my aunt's state of Arkansas.

 

I love this one.

 

We had just been to the Hearst Castle the day before this photo was taken and we were staying in some little town by the ocean---maybe called San Simeon--I don't remember---and we were just waiting outside the  motel room on the bench under the trees.

I was so blessed to have him as my dad. I deeply, deeply, deeply miss him.

I went for a walk in the woods

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{Kelly + Bill underneath the trees}

Kelly and Bill underneath the trees, just as it was getting dark, not long after this the sun completely set, so I was getting dreamy-end-of-the-day light, which I love. I love how they are looking at each other in that second one---ahhh!

I was taking these photos of them, while Becky and their beautiful curly-haired baby boy were in the grass running around, playing and getting more photos of just him.

More photos of Kelly + Bill to come! 

((Side note story: Years and years ago we went to Hume Lake with Kelly and a bunch of other people from our college group. Bill might have been there (I'm not sure, sorry Bill!)  One story I remember from that trip is that Becky and Kelly and some other girls got up in the middle of the night and TP'ed the building the guys were sleeping in and later on Becky would talk about how much fun Kelly was. Do you remember that Kelly?! It was kinda a long time ago!))

Did you see the moon tonight?

 

Moonrise, fairy grass, new peaches on the tree. 

I was so surprised to see the moon tonight. Does that happen to you? The evening that it is full or almost full, the first time I see it in the sky, my eyes pop out, my head swings back to stare up at it, I know I am making it sound a bit cartoonish, but I am always surprised to see it, kinda like....like it's an alien in the sky, a UFO or something, like oh my goodness what is that up there? Oh yes, the moon. Why, Hello Moon!

{Happy Birthday Becky!}

LOVE {Jesssica + Stan's Engagement session sneak peek}

Just a few here from Jessica and Stan's Engagement---way more to come! We met in Scottsdale at the LOVE sculpture and had so much to talk about immediately because Jessica's brother had just gotten married that weekend! Jessica, I can totally picture you with that feather pen you were talking about, it sounds like your brother's wedding was a blast and it was so cool getting to see Stan's photos of it.

We've got a lot of LOVE photos, but I'm posting this one right now because of the bird flying over. (Start noticing the bird theme in the photos to come!)

 

Jessica's colors for her wedding? Red. Which made me want to get some red backgrounds for her and Stan. The walls on this elevator were really red!

 

 

I love her eyes. I love her hair. (I love the dreamy way my camera and lens can make pictures.)

 

Becky was taking photos and I was stepping back to look at my images and adjust settings, while all these birds started flying through.

 

Jessica makes hair adornments (is that what they are called?) and I really really really want to buy some from her. I'll find out the link to her store and you can get some made too! I love this one that she is wearing---with two tiny little Love Birds.

 

Oooh, I still have so many to post, but here is one I love. Sparkly night lights over the Salt River Bridge, an airplane on its way to Sky Harbor, an extremely beautiful couple (inside and out!) in love....we had such a wonderful day and evening with you Jessica and Stan! :)

  

October....

...is going to spectacularly awesome! I never really thought I would get to see U2 again---somehow I managed to get floor general admission seats---I could hardly believe it! I love being in the crowd and Thuy is flying out to see the show too, so it will be twice as fun :) I love this video with Mila Jovavich in it (the second video), I want to take/borrow/steal/appropiate some of the ideas I see here for photos.... (Photos coming soon! We really have been busy with shoots and meeting people and shopping for a computer that will make photo-processing a LOT LOT LOT quicker. I have so much to be thankful for, I can barely even say. Ahh, I would stay on the computer all night watching u2 youtube videos if i could---but i'm off to sleep. Sweet dreams, Internetz!)

Invisible Children

a little bit of this//a little bit of that

Okay here comes the most quickly written blog post! Please don't mind the typos. :)

Becky is second shooting a wedding with Andrea Whittle  tonight and she just twittered that the best part was when the dog ran out across the party. Can't wait to see her pics. But in the meantime I am going to go and try to rent Twilight. I have never seen it and she keeps saying I should rent it so maybe I can rent it before she gets home, hence a super-quick post about a little of my last week or two, since I have been ignoring this blog lately.

I went to a class at the SnapFactory . After the class, everyone went to Mill Avenue in Tempe and the teacher Mark Wallace helped us try out some of the stuff we had learned about our flashes for our cameras. As we were walking along Mill, I shot this pic of a guy going by on a motorcycle. I like the ghostly look of it!

     

Three Cups Of Tea This book is so good. One of the reasons that it is so good is tha the author, David Oliver Relin is an incredible writer. Another reason is that is so incredibly inspiring. It's about Greg Mortenson who was a mountain climber, but now builds schools for the kids in the places where he used to climb, in mountainous regions of Pakistan and all over the country. He is so devoted to bringing schools to kids that don't have schools and it's so inspiring to think of how he has really changed so many lives for the better. Oh yeah, he doesn't just build schools, but medical clinics, bridges, adult education centers and the infrastructure for getting people clean water. Reading about Mortenson makes me feel like eventually I can do something to really help people.

Elvis Perkins I was listening to this guy on the radio. I had never heard of him before but from the first few notes of his music I knew I wanted to hear more. I'm trying to link to this song on youtube While You Were Sleeping, but I can't make it embed. Not sure what I am doing wrong, it usually works! His father was the guy from Psycho the movie and his mother was in one of planes brought down on Sept 11th. Some of the lyrics (this song is really long):

while you were sleeping
the babies grew
the stars shined and the shadows moved
time flew, the phone rang
there was a silence when the kitchen sang
its songs competed like kids for space

Bat Mitzvah : I read this cutest article about the upcoming Bat Mitzvahs of Evelyn, Ann, Eva, Mintsy, Millie, Fay, Belva and Molly. They were girls during the Great Depression and are now in their 90's. They never got to have their own. Love this, from the article:

After Sunday’s ceremony, each woman is to receive a certificate with words from Psalm 92: “They shall be fruitful even in old age; vigorous and fresh they shall be to proclaim that the Lord is Just. He is my strength.”

Lula magazine This magazine is SO pretty and so girly and it barely has ANY ads at all. It's from England and it's mostly just fairy-tale-like fashion, plus a few articles and it's super thick, more like a book than a magazine. I can already tell I am being very inspired by it when it comes to photography.

 

{Camille}

July {in Sedona}

 

 

I thought July was so striking and gorgeous, I really wish I had got to photograph her for longer. She is one of the many people I met at the Photographer meet-up in Sedona last month. Here is a link to her business where she sells swaroski crystals. Check it out, they are beautiful.

{tangerine icecream}

This article that I read a couple months ago was so cute, about a 4 year old boy named Dexter who likes to cook, but is allergic to eggs, so his dad has to come up with alternative recipes since so many things have eggs in them. So this recipe for tangerine icecream is actually for tangerine sherbet. It sounds so good and I want to stay up and make it.

1/2 teaspoon gelatin

2 1/4 pounds tangerines

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup heavy cream, chilled.

1. Freeze the canister of an ice-cream maker overnight

( rest of the recipe here. )

Lately I really want to make sweet stuff. Like tangerine icecream and butterscotch cookies and limeade. And ride my bike around my neighborhood all night smelling the orange blossoms. I love this time of year.

**Photography returning soon. I'm taking longer in post processing because I have been figuring out all sorts of new stuff in photoshop! yay for photoshop!

*light and chemistry*

Last week for my birthday, some friends met up with me and we went to Northlight Gallery at Ariz. State University to see a show called Artistic Process: evolving photographic techniques.

This is how the website describes it:

Artistic Process: evolving photographic techniques Feb. 23 - April 11 Tickets: Free

Artistic Process: evolving photographic techniques Explores image-making by contemporary artists and 19th century photographers utilizing a broad spectrum of techniques from the daguerreotype to digital. Through these images we see photography evolve into an expressive form of art-making from a science of recording information.

 Mark Osteman

There were photos made from all sorts of mysterious chemical processes that people dreamed up in the 1800s to capture images. Seeing all the images really made me want to take alternative photo processes again like I did when I went to ASU. As I was leaving I saw these flyers for alternative processes photography classes at the Tilt Gallery in Phoenix, which might be really cool to take sometime.

 

 

[mammoth men]

Totally having fun reading the Mammoth Men . It's 12 guy photographers who the only thing they ever seem to do is have BIG TIME FUN. They are in Park City, Utah right now. Check out the blog, it's so goofy and fun. :)

Timothy likes to garden

Timothy likes to garden. He's reviewing all the seed packets. Cell phone pic by Becky.

{Angela + Jono}

More photos of Angela + Jono from our trip/meet-up in Sedona last month with a bunch of photographers. One of my many plans for tomorrow is to start mailing off CDs of the Sedona photos to the gorgeous brides and grooms. Definitely the plan.

 

I love Angela's hair. I love this photo below, although it was actually taken before they were ready. To me it looks like Jono is talking on his cell phone, but he isn't. Very soon after this though, he pulled out his cell phone and started taking pictures of his beautiful new wife. I thought that was sooo cute.

  

  

  

              

 

All of these were processed with two Totally Rad Actions--- Super Fun Happy and Boutwell Magic Glasses, both at about 50%. Those are two actions you can get download for free if you go to the TRA site. I now actually have TRA actions, but for a long time I only had the free ones, and I find that I still love to use those two in particular.

dear, dear (dear, dear)

i.

Dear Bono,

Thank you so much for making such pretty new songs. They came at just the right time. I was aching for something new, something to use as a soundtrack to remember this time in my life. I have to admit I have listened to Moment of Surrender over and over and haven't gotten around to the other songs that much, but that's how I roll, haha, I mean that's how I get into music, one song at a time, over and over. Although I do like the Boots song too. I hear the line All our children are screaming and I just picture all your kids and your bandmates' kids all at the fair and well I like that song too. So when are you touring? Please come to Phoenix for at least two nights, but not until I have time to save up $ for front row seats! Delightfully yours, B. E.

ii.

Dear Spring,

Oh gorgeous Spring, you smell intoxicating. I ride my shiny purple girl bike around the neighborhood and can barely stand how lovely the night air is. The smell of orange blossoms just does something to me. I beg of you though, please don't give way to Summer too soon. These high 80 degrees days are worrying to say the least! Usually I think we don't smell the orange blossoms til Easter-time. In April. I simply must get out and enjoy you while I can. Endlessly yours, B.

iii.

Dearest little Photo Blog,

Regularly scheduled pictures will be returning soon. I blame technical difficulties and an ickey sticky spell of the cold and flu as of late, for my ignoring you so much. Just wait for this weekend! Love ya, B.

iv.

Dear Sleep!

Have I ever told you how much I love you and how I never can get enough of you??!! Ha! See ya soon. <3, me 

Happy Birthday to me!

Pictures from my first and second birthdays at my Tia Berta's house. I love these. I love how styley my mom looks. Love the lavendar dress she is wearing in the second photo. Love how I am entranced my balloons in the first and so shy in the second. In my college photo classes I remember talking about about how there are always at least two people when it comes to any photo. There is the person taking the photo and you the viewer. So even when you are viewing Ansel Adam's photos of mountains with no people, there's you and there's Ansel. And even if you don't love mountains, Ansel Adams love mountains so much, that by viewing his work, you love them to in that moment of viewing. Okay, that last part about loving mountains,now I am pretty sure I am paraphrasing something I heard Jesh De Rox say when I went to a workshop of his. So I am wondering who the unseen person is in these photos. I am hoping it's my dad. I will have to ask my mom if it was my dad. Anyways, Happy Birthday to me! February 24th, I arrived a month early I've been told.

Maggi . Jay .

  

   

  

   

Loving Maggi's and Jay's shoes!

                   

 

 

 

   

  

   

Maggi and Jay --- we had a ton of fun with them and there are actually more pictures to come, more of Maggi plus lots more of Jay. :)

Angela + Jono {blue skies ~ red rocks}

Angela + Jono were one of the bride and groom couples we got to meet and photograph at the photographer get-together in Sedona, organized by Kadie Pangburn , a Tucson photographer . These were taken in Crescent Moon Park, such a beautiful place. The light was stunning and the weather was gorgeous.

{paris opera}

I thought this article about opera music recordings from Paris in the early 20th century was so interesting, but lately anything slightly romantic or pretty or mysterious that has to do with our most recently completed century fascinates me. I'm not completely sure why. Maybe because of going to antique shops right after Christmas? Maybe because of the Vintage photo shoot we did last month? Maybe because every reference to our current economy slips in something about the Great Depression? Maybe because I have been reading Graham Greene and Rose Wilder Lane?

Anyways, if you click on the article to read it, make sure to also listen to the 3 recordings!

From a Vault in Paris, Sounds of Opera 1907

PARIS — On Dec. 24, 1907, a group of bewhiskered men gathered in the bowels of the Paris Opera to begin a project that by definition they could never see to fruition. First, 24 carefully wrapped wax records were placed inside two lead and iron containers. These were then sealed and locked in a small storage room with instructions that they should remain undisturbed for 100 years. 

 image from the article

 

 

{garden}

This weekend I really want to plant seeds and get a garden going. I keep buying seeds but haven't done anything with them yet. I've really got to this weekend, before it's too late, before it starts getting too hot. I ordered some seeds from Native Seeds and I hope they come soon. One reason for buying the Native Seeds? They specialize in seeds that grow in the Southwest.

I'm pretty convinced that everything they sell at Home Depot and other stores like that just isn't suited to our more arid climate. Most of it anyways. So when I was deciding what to get from Native Seeds, I was looking for words like "Low Desert" and "drought-tolerant" and "Originally collected from Hotevilla, Arizona." Okay, I wasn't looking for those last particular words but that is how the site described Hopi Pumpkins. I looked up Hotevilla and it looks like it's in pretty arid Arizona country. (It's in Navajo County, the northeast part of the state.) So I bought Hopi Pumpkin seeds, along with some other seeds for pinto beans, corn, some kind of pretty melons I have never heard of, some kind of black beans I have never heard of and okra. My dad used to always grow okra and when it was super hot and when nothing else was growing, he was still getting okra.

A few weeks ago I got a bunch of Sunflower seeds and those have got to go in the ground this weekend. I purposefully bought the kind that says they grow to 5-6 feet and not the kind that says they grow to 12 feet, because those kind that say they grow to 12 feet? They really do grow to 12 feet but how in the world can you stake them? I don't have 12 foot tall stakes and I hate to see them fall over when they are so gorgeous and tall....

Last week at Whole Foods I bought these watermelon seeds and some seeds for butternut squash. I was SO SO excited about the idea of planting butternut squash because do you know how much those things cost in the supermarket? A LOT! Like 8 bucks per squash sometimes. Later on I realized there was another reason I was so excited about growing butternut squash. It's because you are growing DESSERT. In the dirt you are growing your very own dessert. I always cook butternut squash with lots of brown sugar and butter and nothing else tastes as good (with the possible exception of cafe mochas from Lux.)

And these watermelon seeds? Well I am just excited about their name. Moon and Stars. Moon and Stars. How pretty is that? Originally, I read, they were called Sun, Moon and Stars. Seeds were sold commercially starting in 1926, but then they went off the market for decades and were thought to be extinct. But in 1981 a man in Macon, Missouri named Merle Van Doren contacted the Seed Savers Exchange to share seeds with them from the Moon and Stars that he was growing.

 

 

{camille}

Susie + Micah

 

 

 

 

 

   

My New Year's resolution of posting everyday? Hasn't been happening, but I am starting new today and going to try to get back to it! We've got a ton of stuff to show...so here are a few of this gorgeous couple that we took in Sedona. The Sedona shoot was so much fun. More about that soon as well as more info on who put it together, etc. later this week....

{camille}

I bet it is!

 {someday i want to try it!}

via LOLCats/Icanhazcheezburger

{under the old cottonwood tree}

 

Maggi and Jay are seniors in high school. I think they said they have known each other since third grade.

   

I don't know if you can tell but the leaves in this ditch are mixed with water that started to roll down the ditch shortly after we had been sitting there....it was kind of impressive to watch how the water could barely get through the leaves, there were so many of them.

 

 

 

Check back to see these images that Becky took resized to be larger. And for more images of Maggi and Jay by both Becky and me. :)

jay . maggi . {high school seniors}

   

 

 

 (check back later to see these images larger, I have to resize them still :)

Crescent Moon Bride

 

 We went to Crescent Moon State Park with a bunch of photographers and brides and photographed all day. So much fun! Here is Diane, who is so beautiful and was SO much fun to work with.

artistic intervention

My friend told me about this, how people in a neighborhood in Pittsburgh collaborated with the creators of Google's Street View to make much more interesting street views than you usually see on Google's mapping site.

Quoting from HERE

Street With A View introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more... 

Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.

An incredible cast of real-life characters contributed their time, energy and talents to creating pseudo-street life on Sampsonia Way. Please check out the scene breakdown, the participant page and the video documentation to learn more about the artists, groups and participants that made Street With A View possible.

 

{lauren}

 

~paige~