arizona wedding photography ~ brenda eden photography

{Ultra Wide Lens}

I love it when people use my images as their facebook profile pic.

Love - love - love it.

And now that facebook has that wide photo at the top of your page, now I want to see my photos up there too. On everyone's page.

I have a good wide lens, but now I want the BEST and widest wide lens - an ultra wide lens, and since I shoot with Canon, it would be this lens:  the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens. It's rectilinear, meaning it shows straight lines as straight, it doesn't produce a fish-eye look.

Want - want - want.

 

 

 

 

 

{Zeiss lenses at Tempe Camera}

I had to go to Tempe Camera the other day and while I was there I found out they are now renting Zeiss lenses for Canon and Nikon. I don't see Zeiss lenses listed on their rental website yet, but I was told they rent for $65 a day.  (Their Canon L lenses rent for about $45 a day - depending on the lens.)

I started reading about Zeiss lenses a couple years ago, and have been so curious about them ever since. I've always wanted to buy more Canon lenses, but after reading reviews of Zeiss lenses, I think that I would want to buy a Zeiss lens instead.

The reviews that I read can't seem to say enough good things about Zeiss's 100mm f/2 and 35mm f/2 . The reviews say that the color is amazingly saturated and that it's amazingly sharp wide open. The one thing the reviewers didn't seem to like was the vignetting when the lens was wide open. But they loved the 3-D effect and said they didn't mind that there wasn't auto-focus. (Zeiss lenses are all manual focus.)

All of these in-love reviews remind me of the reviews I have read for Canon's 135 mm f/2 lens, which I have rented and want to own. I would agree - everything about the 135mm f/2 is pretty much perfect.

So that's my super short post for today -> I want a Zeiss lens. And before that, I want to rent the 35mm f/2 from Tempe Camera.

Here is an image I found on Flickr taken with the Zeiss Distagon 35mm f/2, by this Flickr user, Xavibarca: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xavibarca/

{Super short post for my post a day in 2012}

I am in Flagstaff to see my aunt and uncle. My aunt is dealing with lung cancer.

I saw them tonight and get to see them tomorrow. They live in a cabin-like house in the woods and the pine trees there smell like butterscotch and there were a trillion stars and it was so, so, so quiet outside their house. I think I didn't know it could be that quiet. 

I have a ton of photo stuff to get through and to, and I will very soon, but right now I am going to bed and getting up in a few hours to go see my aunt and uncle.

{Helen + Kent + kids}

I met up with Helen and Kent to get photos for them and their kids.

Here's their daughter crawling.

Intense glowy winter morning light - I love it.

I was a little concerned the light would be too bright, but we went to this place where cottonwood trees grow and it was beautiful and worked out perfectly.

Their son loves numbers and was making them out of blades of grass. Here's the number seven.

And here's the number eight.

Momma's!

I try to make you laugh when I am taking pictures of you. And sometimes, if I have had a LOT of coffee, I'm pretty good at it.

Thanks Helen and Kent!

{Kent and his daughter}

{Helen + Kent's daughter}

She was crawling towards me and my camera and I had to keep moving back. Usually I have to chase babies when I take their photos, but it felt like she was chasing me. 

{The Civil Wars}

I get to see the Civil Wars tomorrow.

I first heard they were coming in concert back in August, the first day I went to work at the Valley of the Sunflowers. They were scheduled for playing here in November, but had to postpone the show. I do want to see them still, but lately all I want to listen to is rap music and more rap music.

Here they are singing Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.

And here they are singing You Are My Sunshine. I like the way they sing it - very melancholy.

 

Now if I show up and they do covers of stuff by Lil Wayne and Drake, well then I will be perfectly happy.

{Desert Ridge}

I go walking out here when I take my mom to Mayo Hospital. It's so beautiful right before the sun goes down.

{Post for the day}

It's going to be a short post.

This is it:

My current favorite photographer is Damon Winter

More soon.

{Karen and her sister}

More of Karen and her family soon. :)

{In the desert near Mayo Hospital in Phoenix}

{Downtown Phoenix book signing}

I went to the book signing for the book Downtown Phoenix, written by J Seth Anderson, Suad Mahmuljin, and Jim McPherson and took photos of Seth. 

Seth writes for the  Downtown Phoenix Journal and here on his blog Boy Meets Blog

You can buy Downtown Phoenix here. 

The book signing was at Hanny's, which is such a cool space and I love going there. If you go there, you have go upstairs to the restrooms and downstairs into the basement - both are very unique - you will see what I mean! In what other restaurant do you actually get to explore the space? I can think of some others, but not many. 

Hanny's is very cool, but also very dark, so I wasn't sure how good my images would be, since I didn't bring my flash. So when images are too dark, this is what I do: make sure to always shoot in Camera Raw, so that I can manipulate the image by turning up exposure, the fill light, and brightness, amongst other things. Then in Photoshop, I ran the action (from Totally Rad Actions) called Antique Tone twice at hundred percent and merged the two layers. I love the warm tone it created, and really think it fits what Seth is wearing (cool hat, Seth!) 

 

{The People's Pirate Ship has a facebook page}

 The People's Pirate Ship has a facebook page. Go see! And like!

 

{Sun, rain, window}

 

{A Shopping Cart Pirate Ship on the concrete and a Zeppelin* in the clouds!}

The other morning I was driving south on 3rd Street near Roosevelt Row in Phoenix when I saw this creation out of the corner of my eye.

 It was still dark and all the lights were still on in all the buildings, but the sunrise was just about to start, and there was a light wind blowing the sail of the ship. For a millionth of a second it really was a pirate ship and it really seemed like it was moving and all these images of Peter Pan and Captain Hook, the Dawn Treader, and the Pirates of the Caribbean came to mind. All the buildings with all their lights on seemed like cities on distant mountains across the ocean.

I came back a few days later to get photos of it. Their was a blimp circling overhead the whole time I was there, and so it's in most of these images.

I would love to know who made this. But I also love it being a mystery. So, if you know, I'm not exactly asking you to tell me who made it. 

Note to photographers: I do all my post-processing with Totally Rad Actions for Photoshop. Totally Rad is totally worth the cost, if you really want to be able to process photos easily and effectively.

Note to self: getting really low to the ground with my camera gets me images like this. And I really like images like this (the one below.)

I love how changing your location/angle totally changes what you can get image-wise. See the grass in the images above? That's the grass here and it looks like reeds on a shore to me. I like how you can see the green light from the traffic light and the power lines, kind of ruining the illusion, but not really.

This photo below is so similar to the one above, but it gets included for these differences: the dirigible in the top-most part of the image and the palm tree below, which kind of adds to the island/ocean feel.

*Okay, maybe just a Met Life Blimp, but in my mind it's a Steampunk dirigible.

{Valley of the Sunflowers}

{{{If you are in these photos, I will send you a copy of them, but probably not til this coming weekend. Feel free to copy/paste/keep if you like.}}}

I think I first heard of the Valley of the Sunflowers on Downtown Phoenix Journal and then tried to find VOS on facebook because I was absolutely going to be a part of it, if I could. The night before the first volunteer day, I was in my mom's hospital room, sleeping on my narrow little couch bed, and I could barely fall asleep. I! was! so! excited! that I would be going to plant sunflowers. Except, of course, on the first day we didn't plant anything. We went around cleaning up the vacant lot, sweeping the sidewalks, and painting and moving signs. It was super-summer-hot and I remember after a while it felt absolutely surreal - moving around in this extreme heat, underneath the intense Arizona sun - for a few hours. 

This image is of Kenny from the dedication of the Valley of the Sunflowers. It was windy that day and it even rained a very little bit about an hour later and then later got really dark and cloudy and rained a bunch later on that day. (Why do I remember this random stuff?)

So all September I helped on Saturdays and some Wednesday evenings at the VOS and then things got crazy in October with my mom's bone marrow transplant and I don't think I helped very much.

By November I was helping again and sometime in November I read Sean Sweat's twitter message that there was one sunflower blooming and so I went to see. And when I got there, there really was only one I could find blooming. But the others were getting ready to bloom. And there were bees and ladybugs all over the place.

In December, we had a sunflower picnic. Everyone brought the besssst food. I had asked people to bring yellow, red or green food. Yellow and green for the sunflowers. Red for the ladybugs. And that is what people did. Except Ivonne brought gingerbread. Brown food in honor of the dirt/brown lot that the sunflowers grew in. And oh it was such tasty gingerbread! Someone brought guacamole with red pomegranate seeds. So beyond good.

I suggested everyone wear yellow, green or red. And quite a few people did wear some of those colors! I don't know if you can tell from the photos, but they did. :)

Heather and Jennifer. We went to high school together.

Stacey.

 

Brendan.

Seth.

Keith.

Kenny and Sean, two of the creators of the Valley of the Sunflowers.

Mario.

Mario and Keith.

A bee walked on Mario's hands and then he gently put the bee back on one of the sunflowers. It was so dark at this point, so the photos are really noisy/grainy.

Meghanne.

Me.

Peter taking the photo I use on my facebook timeline. Thanks Peter!

See the blue building to the south of everyone taking pictures? That's the Bioscience High School. The kids who go to that school helped with the Valley of the Sunflowers during the school week. And some of them came to the Wednesday evening and Saturday morning volunteer days. And I got to talk to some of them. I would have loved to have gone to a science-focused high school as a high schooler. Wait, no, I probably would have wanted to go to an Arts high school. All the kids seemed to be pretty glad they could go to that high school.

Suzie.

I still have more photos to post of the VOS. And will post eventually!

{Cotton Candy Skies}

The kind of sky that makes carrying my super-heavy camera around all day totally worth it...

{Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights in Phoenix, Arizona}

One super-hot, late summer morning, I got to go and see Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights. That weekend the remnants of Hurricane Jimena, roaring through Baja California, were making their way up to the Valley, and so the morning started out steamy and unbearably hot, but by mid-day was cloudy and actually cool. And in between that time, there were gorgeous clouds above the castle, which, of course, make for pretty pictures.

Lately, I have been getting emails from Tovrea Castle volunteers who are trying to win a grant, so that they can do more work on the Castle. This is the text from the emails:

 Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights needs your help. The Tovrea Carraro Society is a group of volunteers that is working to open this beautiful historic landmark to the public for the first time.  The group is partnering with the City of Phoenix, but receives no government funding.  They're trying to win a grant from Intuit.  Please help make a difference in our community by voting on the attached link.  http://bit.ly/shNNSI   All you have to do is choose a screen name, put in your email address and on the bottom click on "vote".  You may also enter a comment.  Please pass this information on to your family and friends. If you would like to get involved with this project, please email [email protected].  Volunteers are needed to maintain the grounds and to give tours.  Docent training is scheduled to begin soon. Thank you.

  Here are my photos from Tovrea Castle at Carraro Heights:

The Castle is near the airport, so when you are there you see all the planes leaving from and landing at Sky Harbor.

As a kid, I thought that the Tovrea Castle might be the White House. Even though I had been to the White House for a tour with my parents when we traveled all around the country. Kid geography - your mental map and your ability to order the space around you just is not that fine-tuned.

I love this wooden relief sculpture over the fire place of a 1920's flapper girl dancing. I wish I could have it.

The lowest level of the castle is partly underground. You climb down some steps and enter into a large room with three doors at different sides of the room. 

This image below shows what the ceiling of the underground room looks like - kind of like really lux cake frosting. It made me hungry for a chocolate cake covered in white frosting.

And do you see the little nest? That's what that is, a robin's nest with three little eggs. Picture them in robin's egg blue. Here's the story that one of the relatives of the family who built the castle told us: They were created by a 12 year old boy, a son of the Carraro family. The boy was expected to help with the stuccoing of the ceiling, but would get really bored and create little nests here and there. 

On one side of the underground room was a smaller room used as a safe. The door to the safe had this poster on it.

Click here to follow Tovrea Castle on facebook.

So far only a few hundred people have voted for Tovrea Castle to get the grant they are trying to get, so if you want to help, GO VOTE!!! http://bit.ly/shNNSI 

And if you do, let me know in the comments or on my facebook! :)

Ship!

Already this post-a-day thing is difficult! I knew it would be, but I plan to keep it up. I've had this neverending cold that will never end, so no photos today, but here's a video by an author/thinker that I like: Seth Godin.

What I take away from this video is the idea that as an artist you have to ship. Meaning you have to do your work and put it out there, basically whether you are ready to or not. That's what I am trying to do with these posts-a-day. Seth Godin talks about our brains, about how our brains have evolved with these different parts and the older part of our brain is designed to scare us into not doing stupid things, it kicks in when we are about ready to ship and keeps us from shipping. Godin says, "What you do for a living is not be creative, everyone is creative. What you do for a living is ship." When time runs out, ship. When the budget runs out, ship. So I am keeping that idea in my head in relation to my work. I have to stop worrying about whether everything is completely perfect and just put it out there.

 

{Tiki + Baby + Tiger}

How these photos were taken: wide angle lens - 24mm, tiny aperture (f-11/f-16), a bright day, and manual focus and whatever ISO worked.

With manual focus, I was able to get the camera just inches, maybe just a couple inches, from the cats' faces, which gives kind of a big head/fun house look to my cats' cute little faces. With the tiny aperture and it being a bright day, I was able to still get sharpness - at least pretty sharp, despite the lack of focus from my lens.

This is fun to do to your own cats if they will put up with it, but don't try this on people! Their noses will look huge and they will hate you.

 

{Kelly}

My friend Kelly, wearing her Halloween costume. She's really good at whipping her hair back and forth.

{Allyson + family}

Allyson and her family met us for photos right before the holidays. I meet the most interesting people when I do photoshoots. Allyson is working to change legislation that affects midwives and doulas and people who want to have home births. Sometimes I get emails from her telling how things are going. Here's the facebook page that tells more.

It was so good to meet you, Allyson!

The light that day was so gorgeous! And look! Everyone looking at the camera! It's the Here Kitty, Kitty Trick and it works pretty well with dogs too.

Such pretty light! We used a reflector with the photo of Allyson's daughter.

I kept saying Whip your hair back and forth! Because that's what I always say. It works so well! You are gorgeous, Allyson!

One of my faves ever - this photo of them on the ridge at sunset. Make this into a huge canvas, Allyson!

Sunset - a - licious!

Thanks again, you guys! It was so good to meet you! :)

{Heather + Joseph's Wedding}

Heather and Joseph's wedding! 

More than any other wedding I have done, I went into this one wanting to tell the story of exactly how this day was. So here are a few photos to tell you exactly how this day was.

Some of the guests at the wedding:

 A red parasol and the brightest blue of mid-morning June skies! Love.

Thank you, little girl, for looking right into my lens. That is what makes me love this photo.

What do you notice about these 2 photos (the one above and the one below)? See how the kids are in the first row and then the kids aren't in the first row? Yeah, the kids got kicked out of the first row. Right as the wedding was starting. Heather saw the kids up there and saw that the girls didn't yet have a place to sit, so she ordered the kids to the back. Which was totally awesome! None of this wedding-perfectness for Heather!

Joseph's dad was the officiant. I liked him immediately. 

Why do I love this photo of Heather signing her marriage license? Let me tell you. It's the little detail of Heather holding her daughter's sippy cup. Bethany Garvey, my second photographer got this little detail that tells exactly how the day was and I love it. Thanks Bethany!

Girls in summer dresses.

Heather, you are the most adorable bride ever. Your giddy, giggly laughing happiness was so infectious and so fun.

Joseph, you look kind of Mad Men-ish in this. Well, maybe. I never get around to watching that show very much, but that is what your suit makes me think of.

She always had that delighted, adorable smile on her face. All day long. That's how this day was.

One of a billion takes on the American Gothic idea that every wedding photographer out there does. Including me.

What you  can't see from this photo of Heather playing the piano, but I will tell you about, is how adorably happy Heather was being. Bouncing off the walls happy. So very Heather.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this one below is Heather's favorite photo.  I have seen it at her house on her walls.

Fast forward about seven hours. Now it's at Heather and Joseph's home for the party they threw for all their friends and family and co-workers and neighbors.

I am always struck by how I never know what I will get going into a wedding. For some weddings I really try to pre-plan it in my head. For others, I just know that I can't know and I just wait to see what I will get.  Of course, you never know what you will get, but this is what we got just as the day was ending. And I love it.

Heather is a chemist. Joseph is a theatre director. 

I think of Heather as my music twin. Not that we like the same songs, although we probably do, but just that we feel the same way when our favorite songs come on. Like this. :)

Thank you Heather and Joseph for having me photograph your wedding and thank you even more for being such wonderful friends!

{I met these girls on the rooftop of a hotel in Phoenix}

 

My conversation with these girls was a tiny one. 

Just are you having fun and where are you staying and what have you been doing while you are here and do you like it here, but their responses to all my questions were so delightful, so warm, so adorable, so engaging that I just wanted to be able to hang out with them for a day, a weekend. Have you ever met someone who was just so immediately full of hospitality in their interaction with you that you vowed that everybody you came across was going to receive that same kind of hospitality from you? Because it was just so awesome? It was so good to meet these girls, even though it was only for the briefest moment in time. 

These girls are singers in a choir and this is how their website describes what they are doing:

Mwamba Children’s Choir is touring in the U.S.A and this is the MUSIC CHANGES LIVES tour targeted to raise $300,000 to help build a school for the orphans and underprivileged children in Uganda. The choir consists of 15 children, ranging from the ages of 7-13 years. Some of these children are total orphans and are full time beneficiaries of Mwamba choir supported through I AM CHILDREN’S FAMILY. The tour will start on the East Coast (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, DC ) in September 2011 and will end on West Coast (Arizona, Washington State, Oregon e.t.c) in March 2012.

{The Clarendon Hotel}

More photos from the Clarendon Hotel soon. I've heard of this place for a couple years because I've seen flyers for yoga and their pool, but I'd never been 'til this week.

I just kind of randomly ended up there twice this week, and oh this place is pretty. 

{A Valley of the Sunflowers Honey Bee}

Do you see the honey bee?

 Something that totally kind of amazed me was how the sunflowers got planted and nature just showed up. When the sunflowers were just starting to bloom, actually when there was only ONE sunflower blooming, I went to the Valley of the Sunflowers and wandered around. It had been a dirt lot before and now was covered with about-to-bloom sunflowers. And I was amazed at how there were all these bees and ladybugs in a place where there had been no bees or ladybugs at all. I guess I shouldn't be so amazed that nature would just show up, but I was. I kept marveling in my head about it: how did the bees find this place? where did the lady bugs come from? how did they all know to come here? and how far did they travel?

{Here's part of a poem I like by Emily Dickinson:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee-- 
One clover, and a bee, 
And revery. 
The revery alone will do 
If bees are few}

{Two sisters}

These two sisters and their parents came over to my house for photos back in the Spring.  

I never posted these images before, but you can see the ones I did post of the girls here.

I love film photographs printed with platinum (instead of silver), so here is my digital attempt to make this image look like it is platinum. I love the dreaminess of it.

Dance, girls, dance!

She spent a lot of time putting primroses in her hair. 

{More photos from the Valley of the Sunflowers}

Two of the creators of the Valley of the Sunflowers, Kenny and Sean. See Sean's shirt? It says Valley of the Sunflowers!

My bride and groom Heather and Joseph.

{At the Valley of the Sunflowers}

Meghanne and me at the Valley of the Sunflowers.

{The Bickford Family}

 I met up with Bonnie and David Bickford and their daughters one shimmery, golden December day to get photos for them.

I first met the Bickfords at these community dinners that I go to. David writes two blogs, one about hiking and one about restaurants along the Light Rail Line. Since I both love the Light Rail and I love food, I find his food blog delightful. It's fun to read about places that I have never heard of and also fun to read about places that I have visited and see his take on them. I need to read his hiking blog more this year, especially since I would like to go hiking more in the new year. They are both such good resources if you live in the Phoenix area.

Here is David's guide to good eating along the Light Rail Line:  PHX Rail Food 

And here is his guide to less traveled hikes in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area: PHX Trail Dude

You can follow David here on Twitter: @exit2lef

*********************************

This is how blue the sky was that day.

And this is how cute this family is.

Oooh, those sparkly eyes!

Beautiful momma, beautiful daughters:

I love getting images like this one. Eyes closed or cast down. Not sure why.

I think it's because of something like this: it takes me, the photographer, out of the equation and it becomes just an image about the two them.

I absolutely-absolutely-absolutely love how the sunshine falls and floats into this one. Did I say I LOVE it? I really, really do.

This one (below) is almost an outtake, but it cracks me up. Look at her cute little face!

This is one of my most favorite photos that I have ever taken. I love how the shimmering trees frame Bonnie and her daughter. And I just love the sweetness of the image, how her baby fits into the curve of Bonnie's neck.

Another one of my absolute favorites:

More shimmer. See her batman shirt? She was going to a Batman birthday party after the photoshoot. Actually it sounded like they had quite the weekend ahead of them, I seem to remember hearing about swimming and about Christmas parties and a show at a local theatre and even a stop thrown in to go to a picnic amidst sunflowers.

My FAVORITE image of them as a family. I think this one really tells a story for the youngest daughter about what it's like to be the little sister and the baby of this family. 

This is the type of image (the one below) that I always try to get for holiday and Christmas cards. Everyone looking at the camera and all so adorable. When I review all the photos I've taken it's a total sense of relief to realize I got one like this. 

One of my tricks to get babies to look at the camera is to start (literally) yelling Here Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty (as loud as I possibly can). I have no idea why I started this, but I did it for one baby one time and it worked better than any other trick, so I do it for all the other babies I come across and it works more often than it doesn't. So if you are a photographer, I highly recommend my trick. You just have to be prepared to say Here Kitty, Kitty realllly loud and reallllly fast in order to get their attention.

Turns out the Bickfords have cats like I do. I got the girls to tell me their cats' names and I seem to remember there was a Pineapple, a Mango and a Nutmeg, and some others but I could be getting those names wrong. The Bickfords and I have the same number of cats and no, I won't be telling you how many that is. LOL.

UPDATE: Not Pineapple; Peppercorn. All of their cats have food names. There's a cat a named Vanilla and the names do correspond with their appearance.

I use that piece of cardboard as a reflector for light, but the girls found it to be a fun toy.

Flying baby:

Girl in the woods:

Thank you Bickford family for having me create photos for you guys! It was such a pleasure and delight! :) :) :)