arizona wedding photography ~ brenda eden photography

Summer girl

Annie and Aaron's girl here at Joe's Farm Grill in Gilbert, AZ.

For fun, I was trying out different actions and filters just to see what effect I could get. This seems so summer-time to me.

roman holiday [and the start of my holiday too!]

Tonight I'm watching Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. I've never seen it before, but my friend mentioned it on her blog and so that made me really want to see it. Tonight when I was at CVS getting a cd made for Helen of her family's pictures, I found a dvd of Roman Holiday for sale, so now I'm at home watching it. I notice more and more that when I am watching television or movies, I'm constanting looking at lighting and angles to see what the director/creator did in the scene and always thinking, hmmm, how would it be if I did something like that? This movie is definitely a good movie for getting ideas from. And Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck are so cute to watch.... Well, I am going to Flagstaff tomorrow and then I will have work and then be out of town the next two weekends for work (and for fun) and so the next day I will be completely at home will be August 16th! That seems sooo long from now...I love traveling but I guess I really love home-life too. ">

Edward Weston's photography work at the Phoenix Art Museum

I recently saw that the work of Edward Weston is going to be shown at the Phoenix Art Musuem starting August 9.

He has always been one of my favorite photographers, so I definitely can't wait to go and see what will be on display at the art museum. For me, his most memorable photos are those of peppers and his girlfriend (later wife) Charis Wilson. Those are pretty popular though, so here are some ones I had never seen that I just came across while looking him up online.

Clouds over Death Valley

 

  Shell, 1931

Edward Weston loved sharp photographs and photographed with large format cameras using really small apertures to get great depth of field and sharpness. Personally I love shooting with really large apertures (1.2!), so I wonder if Weston were shooting today what he would think of that style, cuz I know I am not the only one who loves it; I see so many photographers using large apertures to get that dreamy, blurry look (that I love!)

Shade your pretty face from the sun with a parasol! Trash the dress! And then take lots and lots of pictures!

Last week, Becky and I went to a pictage users group meeting. Pictage is this company that helps photographers with marketing, selling and printing their photography and each month, they have meet-ups and photographers from all over the valley get together.

One of the people making announcements at the meeting mentioned that a photographer in Tucson is getting a group together to take Trash the Dress* pictures in Bisbee, Arizona (Bisbee happens to be one of the coolest looking places in Arizona, it used to be a copper mining town, now it looks kinda like a ghost town with old Victorian houses---it's a great place to be a tourist and where one of my friends started off her honeymoon.) Bisbee is a 3 hour drive from Phoenix, plus I will actually be in Flagstaff on the day of the shoot, so I won't be able to go but I would really like to. I think doing Trash the Dress photos would be so much fun.

The next day after the meeting I started thinking it would be so much fun to get together my own group of photographers and people willing to model for a pretend Trash the Dress shoot. I started looking online at craigslist to see if it is possible to get used wedding dresses for not too much money. I think I could get some of my cute, sweet and beautiful friends to be the models and then whoever wanted to photograph would be welcome to do so. I would send out invites to people from my photography classes and people who I have met as I have been getting more and more interested in photography.

There is this place I drive by all the time, Mother Nature's Tree Farm. I wonder if they would be willing to let photographers take pictures there. I guess it couldn't hurt to ask. It doesn't have that industrial look that I associate with Trash the Dress pictures but it is gorgeous and lush and green, not something you can always find in a desert city.

So I am slowly putting this idea together in my head: Figure out how to get inexpensive wedding dresses. Ask every last girl I know if she would want to model. Contact photographers. Figure out a place. Set a date. Early morning? (Oooh I love nice morning light) Later afternoon? Maybe more practical. What day of the week? Figure out some sort of plan about how my models will get some pictures on cd from the photographers as trade for their time. Maybe get a hair/make up stylist? Guy models too? (Okay, let's not make this too complicated!)

Well, a lot to think about, but one thing I know I will do? Have some parasols there! I have been wanting an excuse to get some parasols. They are so pretty and dreamy. This site, Lunabazaar.com has so many different kinds too. 

              

Parasols available from lunabazaar .

* Wikipedia describes Trash the Dress like this:

Trash the dress refers to photographs that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is completely out of place. It is generally shot in the style of glossy beauty and glamour photography. The term is alleged to have been coined and the idea started in America, by photographer Mark Eric, after he shot his first Trash The Dress session in New York. Some sources claim that it started in 2001 when Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beach ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted.A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment. It may also be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again.

Becky and I went over to the S. family house and took pictures of all eleven of the family members (plus two on the way). Annie wanted some pictures to give her parents and siblings before her little family moves to China.

Here's Auntie Helen getting the kids ready for their pictures.

Ali with her grandma and grandpa. (Except she doesn't call them that, but I don't know the name for grandma and grandpa in Chinese!)

 

Okay is everybody looking at the camera? Oh wait! Drewby is looking off to the side. No matter! He's still so cute!

Okay, whew, everyone is looking at the camera!

Okay, everyone, show us silly!

  

Here we have David and his lovely dog Zelda.

 We took a bunch of pictures with each sibling with their spouse and parents. Here's Neil, his beautiful wife Janet and the parents.

   

Then we got a bunch in the backyard. To get the kids' attention Becky stood right behind me and started talking about the fairies and gnomes and magical ladybugs the kids had "seen" when we took their pictures last week. The funny thing is, I think all the crazy talk got the attention of the adults too!

Okay the kids can only take so much! They are ready to jump down and play now....

For fun we had all of them link arms & walk across the yard. Zelda thought this was a simply spectacular idea and wondered why everyone doesn't do this more often! :-)

I'm so excited about the new babies that will be arriving soon for this family.

I love this picture Beck got of me photographing David and Zelda.

Zelda, could you be any more stunning, girl?!! David, you're looking good too! ;-)

We had so much fun taking their pictures. I love this family so much---this whole family has been through so much.. It was so cool to get to see them all in one place at the same time. After taking pictures, Becky and I stayed over for dinner, for the best Chinese food ever! :-)

(I notice that when I put these pictures on the website, they are kinda fragmented. I think that might have to do with the way I am saving them. Luckily my camera raw and photoshop book came in the mail today, so I am really looking forward to reading it. Maybe the book will give me an idea how to save pictures for websites, otherwise I will read around elsewhere and try new stuff to see what I can figure out. Also, I am using typepad's new beta site and they have recently made it easier to show bigger images, so maybe I need to read more about that too.) 

~Helen, Ali, Annie~

Photoshopping pictures of Annie's extended family, hoping to get them done really soon to take over to Annie, since she and her little family are moving to China tomorrow!

 

One more picture of the kids

In this one they fell down on the grass after running around and oh it was so hot even though night was coming. They were only down in the grass for a second, you can see Ali is already getting up to get back to running.

I figured out how to put vignetting around this picture using the camera raw file. I think I like the look, but I guess it has kind of a mysterious/scary look, not what I want for these dear kids. :-)

After I figured out vignetting I started thinking I could really use a Camera Raw for Dummies book and what do you know, there is just such a book and I ordered it online and I hope it comes really soon in the mail and I absolutely intend to read it cover to cover on the bus in the morning on the way to work. (But not on the bus on the way back home, when it's super-hot, cuz that will definitely make me sick!)

Okay how about just one more? (Hehe, those are the same words we kept saying to the kids. "Just one more! Look this way; just one more!")

So here is one of Andrew and his daddy. I did not have the fstop/shutter speed/ISO set on this anywhere near to what it should have been, the file was totally dark, but AWB and RAW made it something I could at least kinda work with. So, lesson enforced: shoot raw, use awb. I had been shooting a lot of just jpeg, which right now is not such a good idea. Although I took a photoshop class with Mark Klett (a photographer who makes gorgeous and compelling landscape photos), that was SO long ago and photoshop is so much better now. But it seems to have such a steep learning curve! Nevertheless, I want to get sooo good at photoshop, but first I want to get really proficient at using camera raw files.

 

~photography class with jennifer and kim~

A couple weeks ago I went to a photography class taught by Jennifer Bowen and Kimberly Jarman. Go check out their blogs, there are pictures of the class on there and I'm in some of them! The class was held in Kimberly's studio in downtown Mesa---her studio is upstairs in this old brick building--really gorgeous---with high ceilings and with her beautiful photographs on the wall---it was such an inviting space to spend an afternoon in.

    A couple pictures from the class---click to enlarge.  

I came across their blogs in the last couple months or so and I was just so amazed (and thrilled) at how much information they share on their blogs about photography and their business. When I read they were offering a class, I really wanted to go to it. And I am so glad I got to. They were so helpful and so kind to share what they know and so open to answering questions. I definitely came away with more confidence about what I already know, answers to questions I had been aching to find out the answer to and something super-magical happened that weekend that I attribute to 1) their class and 2) taking pictures of Andrew and Alison and this is it: I got unafraid of my camera.

I truly have been afraid of my camera.

Not afraid of the settings, but afraid of dropping it. And absolutely destroying it. It would cost way too much to replace it anytime soon. I have insurance on it, so I would hope that would work, but still.......

When my dad passed away last year, my mom said that my dad had arranged for us to get money---from a life insurance policy or something---honestly I am fuzzy about the details because I really didn't care about money, I just wanted my dad back. My mom took some and dealt with some debts and then gave equal parts to me and my sister. And for the longest time I didn't even transfer the money into my account. I figured I should invest it, but I didn't do anything. Then I had this idea that I got from Becky that I would save some of it and use it to buy a wedding dress someday if I get married. That way, Daddy buys my dress.

I always figured that I would have the most economical wedding but I wouldn't skimp on the dress. I could make the cake. It would be a potluck! In the woods! I'd buy the flowers from the garden center at Home Depot. No wait! They would be flowers from my own garden from seeds from Home Depot! I'd email the invitations! But the dress would be fairytale-magnificent-amazing.

Now that I have been coming across so many gorgeous wedding photographer blogs, I am not sure I could stand to not splurge on the details. I mean I really like fancy cupcakes. And customized invitations. In brown and pink. And shoes that don't really go with the dress but match the bride's colors, like something in bright yellow or hot pink. And parasols. I heart parasols. I want parasols!

But anyways, I did spend the money. On a camera, two lenses and a flash. And I am seriously so glad I did. And somehow two weeks going on three weeks ago, my camera became my dear, dear camera and while I will be absolutely beyond careful with it, I am actually finally excited and so happy about the idea of taking it out and having fun with it. That super-excited feeling that I used to have after developing a roll of black and white film and taking it into the dark room that smelled of dektol is coming back and I can't believe I had so completely forgotten how that feels.

(One other thing to tell you: that night after I went to Kim and Jennifer's class, Becky and I went shopping and she bought a camera too. She had been editing and making illustrations for a book, sometimes while sitting next to our dad in the hospital, and finally she got paid for the job, yay! and now she has a camera too.)

Becky showing Ali and Drew their pictures.

. princess alison and the secret garden . [cameras that capture fairies on magical summer evenings when you get to stay up way past your bedtime]

I thought this was so cute. The day we took Ali and Drew and their parents' pictures it was so incredibly hot that by the time it started getting towards dark all Annie and Aaron and I felt like doing was sitting in the grass and talking, but the kids were still pretty happy to run around on the grassy hills and into the corn rows. Becky was telling them stories about fairies and elves and magical lady bugs and they seemed pretty enchanted and enthralled, asking all sorts of questions.

Later Becky created these pictures in Adobe Illustrator and added them to the kids' pictures. When we went to deliver the pictures, Ali asked Becky how she was able to get the fairies in the picture and Becky started to try to painstakingly explain, well there's this computer program called Illustrator and you put the pictures in there and then you add layers......when Ali's dad Aaron came to the rescue and jumped in to say that Becky and Brenda have these magical cameras that can take pictures of fairies even if you can't see them. Whew! Thanks, Aaron for making that so much easier--- I do think our canon 5d's are pretty magical.  

 

~helen & baby on his way, alison & annie~ [sneak-peek]

This afternoon we took pictures of a big extended family we absolutely love. More pictures soon.

andrea & jessica & baby girl on her way~baby shower

Andrea making a toast to Jessica.

Sweet girl listening to the baby.

 

~annie & aaron's family pictures~

Annie and Aaron and their kids are moving to China this month, to a city by the ocean called Dalian, population 6.2 million. I definitely hope & plan to visit them some time in the next three years while they are living and working there. Oh man, I can hardly wait!

Becky and I took some pictures of them on Sunday. We all ran around for a couple hours with a short break for icecream & root beer floats and then we were back at it until it got too dark. There were some clouds (some from the fires burning in the Salt River, making the sky all white), and the wind picked up for a while, kind of a very slight Arizona-style monsoon dust storm, so we didn't completely die from the heat.

We had so much fun! Here are some of the pictures:

  

Alison, you are such a amazing, wonderful girl. I hope the most fantastic adventures await you in China.

I was calling to Drew to turn around, never knowing that Becky was getting this adorable picture of him.

 

I kept trying to get shots of Annie's brand new blinged out, upgraded wedding ring. ;-)

It was getting super-hot at this point. Poor Alison.....soon after this I gave everyone frozen wash clothes that I had in my car. Hopefully that helped a little bit.

   

Drew's grin and Ali's bright eyes---I love this picture.

  The lying down didn't last long and we are off running again.

Oh my goodness, Andrew and Ali, you guys are so cute! Can I adopt you? Or at least come to come to China and be your nanny?

Finally! Ice cream!

After the icecream, we kinda thought we were done taking pictures, but then Becky saw the sunset and we had to get back out there. Becky photoshopped all these images, and I'm so glad she worked on this one, which was dark, but she made it really nice.

 

I was watching the grown-ups while Becky was watching the kids and taking them to search for fairies and elves and magical ladybugs in the corn rows. The cool thing is they found some!

Annie + Aaron, these are your kids' dance moves! Becky said show me your dance moves and apparently they have them!