Cortny + Ross | Wedding

I am not going to lie, but Cortny + Ross’s wedding day started off VERY bad. I packed all my gear into the car, had a frosty Gatorade, and an iPod full of tunes.  I was flying down the highway when all of a sudden the flow of traffic turned into a parking lot. My car did not move for at least 10 minutes.  We finally started to get some movement…turned out the highway was shut down to one lane of traffic and another highway (that I had to get on) was shutdown.  But hey, I beat the florist there ;)

Once at the church, I found Ross and set up the first look with Cortny.  This is one of my favorite parts of the day…any stress of vendors and guests getting stuck in traffic quickly melts away. After the first look. I ran through the family portraits and got us back on schedule.  In no time, Cortny + Ross were officially married and I officially forgot how mad I was at the Kansas Department of Transportation. The reception was stupid awesome. Austin, Ross’ brother, gave probably the best toast/speech I have ever heard.  Once the DJ started the music, the dance floor stayed packed.  I hated to leave the wedding, but I was honestly exhausted from such a VERY great wedding day!

I love this photo Holly took in the church…I am a sucker for warm + cool colors together.

Dani + Tommy | Engagement

Dani and I were in contact for weeks trying to set up a date for their engagement session. Conflicts were abound as we have both been very busy.  We were able to finally set up a date, but it was when the temperature was in the 100’s. I noticed the weather was going to cool down the next week and I was reluctant to change it, but Dani + Tommy didn’t really want to be sweaty if they could avoid it. We rescheduled and I told them we were doing the shoot whether it was raining or if there was some freak snow storm. Luckily the weather was perfect and the shoot was able to commence.  Here are some of my favorites.

It’s 3AM in a Hospital

Last week my mother in law, Vinh, got a total knee replacement on her right knee. Undergoing any type of surgery is a scary thing and I was really worried about her. I was not just worried about her but worried about Holly.  Holly and Vinh are very close and if anything bad happened it would’ve been devastating to Holly. Millions of things were running through my head while she was in the surgery room but thankfully she came out fine. The first words I heard Vinh say when she finally woke up was “thank God I’m alive” and that put a big smile on my face. Holly and I basically lived at the hospital for four days. I think I got better sleep on an airplane than in the that hospital.  When I couldn’t sleep one night I decided to walk around the seemingly empty hospital and take photos.

Self portrait #1

Self portrait #2

Holly watching a scary movie on the lappie…

So close, yet so far.

Kaleidoscope & The Fountains

Holly and I took our niece to Kaleidoscope and then to the Crown Center fountains last week. I haven’t been to Kaleidoscope in well over 20 years. That place has completely changed. You’d like to blame your memory for it being different, but I have fond memories of that place. It hasn’t necessarily changed for the worst, but I really liked the old way it was set up. All in all, our niece had a great time and that is what matters in the end.  Oh yeah, she also jedi mind tricked us into taking her to McDonalds so she could playland it up. We didn’t do the marathon that we did last time though…that was about a 4 hour trip to playland ;)  Thanks to Holly for providing some of the photos from our trip that are in the video below.


Music: Alan Pownall “Colourful Day (Seams Remix)
If you can’t see the video above, please click here.

Get Wet Like a Jet Ski

A couple weeks ago I went to Oceans of Fun water park with Holly and some friends. It was a blast! I have been there probably 4 times in the past 2 years, yet this was the first time with my waterproof point and shoot camera. I did learn that I will need to buy a spare battery before I try to shoot all day (i.e. ran out of juice while still at the park). Another awesome thing that we learned was to grab a life jacket for the wave pool and the lazy river. We would always do both of those sans life jacket, but it is WAY more fun with them. Below is a short video from our trip. The screaming at the beginning of the video is me running through the spray park. For some reason the only way I could enter that super cold water was by psyching myself up and doing a war scream before running through it ;)


Music: Purplespace “Counting Stars”
If you can’t see the above video, click here.

This is the last self-portrait I will ever be able to do with these sunglasses…Keith lost them in one of the water slides shortly after :(