arizona wedding photography ~ brenda eden photography

{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!

{Sunflowers & Sparklers}

Eek! I am so excited to share these! For a long time, for years and years actually probably, I have wanted to create portraits of people amidst sunflowers. When I was taking photo classes in college, I took some photos of some of my friends out in front of wild sunflowers that grew alongside the road next to a farm and I have always wanted to do that again. (I should see if I can find those photos and post them - they were in black and white film.)

I loved how these kids were so at home with nature. Tall grass, june bugs, bird poop, climbing up on the little hill where some of the sunflowers are growing, a sudden rain and dust storm - nothing fazed them. And when I looked back at the photos, I was really struck by the sweetness of the siblings toward each other. These kids just really love each other and it was so cool to see that I had caught little looks between them here and there. Scroll down and see what I mean - I'm especially thinking of the middle son looking at his older sister and the older sister with her hand on her youngest brother's head for a moment while they are all playing with the last sparkler, before we called it a night and went inside and had pizza! Oh and I especially love the look of the two boys as their mom is handing out the sparklers. See her hand in the top part of the frame and then see their expressions? That is exactly what I was hoping for when I started thinking about doing this kind of portrait shoot. I wanted to capture summer, the essence of summer and the joy and excitement that I think you can only feel when you are that age. Oh! My! Goodness! Sparklers!

These kids were total troopers. It was hot, of course, I mean it's July and it's Arizona, but they put up with the heat and we got some relief from a dust storm that started blowing in just as we were starting to shoot. It was a mild dust storm (compared to the massive dust storm we got two nights later) but it turned the sky a yellowish color and so if you scroll down a bit, you will see what I mean. When I was editing these photos, I tried to un-yellow them. I always shoot photos in camera raw and so I can change the color temperature, and I tried for a while before I remembered, hey! the sky really was very yellow due to the yellow dust the storm was blowing in. And luckily that dust storm also brought a little rain, and so if you notice the images where the two older kids are dancing? Well, it had just started to rain. Which made us all do a happy dance since it's been ages since we saw rain.

For this shoot, I finally got to use my Ralph Lauren paint that I got on clearance at Home Depot. I painted an old door with the bright blue metallic paint and faced it against a north wall (which makes for pretty light) and got to photograph the sister. (I have gold and silver and purple paint that I want to use on future shoots, and so it was cool to see that I really like the results with this paint.)

This shoot was so much fun! I definitely want to do more like this, with even more sparklers and more sunflowers. Thanks H. family for being so awesome! :)

Sunflowers and the longest day of the year!

Happy happy happy longest day of the year to you and yours! Happy first day of Summer!

Here are the photos of the sunflowers I was talking about in the post below this. Back in January I had told my mom it would be cool to plant a ton of sunflowers to use as a background for photos. I planted one of the seed packages but the I got busy and never got around to planting the rest of them. My mom saw how busy I was and took over planting them for me. She was getting concerned that they were never going to bloom and it did seem like it was taking longer than it should. The seed package made it sound like they would be blooming in early May and when they didn’t, I kind of figured it just wasn’t going to happen. But finally they did start blooming in the last few weeks, first the mammoth flowers that are buttercup yellow, super tall, with faces the size of a dinner plate and look exactly as you expect sunflowers to look. And then in the last week or so, the unusual ones have started blooming. These ones are a delight because I have never seen sunflowers like them before. See, Mom? They are blooming awesomely and I really hope you get to see them soon! :)

{Portraits in Sunflowers}

I'm planting these sunflower seeds in anticipation of photographing portrait sessions amongst them.

In 75 - 90 days after planting, the sunflowers will be in bloom and I can just picture the dreamiest maternity sessions, baby photos, engagement sessions, high school senior shoots and much more amongst them for the spring and summer. Every week or so I am going to try to plant another packet or two (or three or four), so that I will have flowers way into the fall too.

And besides sunflowers, I want to plant other tall flowers. Do you know of any that grow well here in the Arizona desert? Right now all I can think of besides sunflowers are hollyhocks. And I will definitely plant some of those too!

Crystal and Jerry {Mesa Temple engagement session}

Engagement session time for my cousin Crystal and her fiancé Jerry!

We met up at the Temple in Mesa, Arizona where they are getting married next month for engagement photos of the two of them. The Temple grounds was such a beautiful location for engagement photos.  There are gorgeous flowers and plants there that I have never seen growing anywhere else. Before Crystal and Jerry got there I walked around taking in all the beauty of the flowers. Our grandmother (my grandmother/Crystal's great-grandmother) would have found the flowers as enchanting as I did. There were even flowers and cat tails near the reflecting pool there were almost black in color. Pretty amazing looking! I would love to go back there to do more engagement sessions. And I would love to do bridal sessions there! It was very hot that evening, but Crystal and Jerry rocked it and made it look easy! Just as were leaving, the clouds started rolling in and not long after we left there was a summer monsoon. It was a very lovely summer evening for all of us and I can't wait for their late summer wedding!

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{backyard sunflowers}

A dust storm (or haboob, if you prefer) rolled in & around 7:40 it had turned the sky a magical dusty yellow color. I went outiside to take pictures of my sunflowers. The giant sunflowers have gotten so tall, 12 to 13 feet at least, but now their sunflower crowns are getting pretty droopy.

 

{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.