The D Family Card

The D Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The H Family Card

The H Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

Abstract Art: Part 2

See I didn't forget, just been too busy to shoot anything personal. Maybe we'll do more of these over the slow months - when are those again?

Rules:
You must guess exactly what this is.
I will not be giving any hints or comments until someone guesses correctly.
Guesses must be submitted by commenting on the blog.

What you can win:
Option 1: Mini Session
There is a little bit of small print. The session must be in Brookings area, will only last up to an hour, and must be done between Jan 10, 2007 and March 1, 2007 upon my availability and not on weekends. I will send you a gift certificate, so if your not in this area, but know someone who is you can send it to them. What a great gift!

Option 2: Signed Print
Of this image minimum 8x10, signed and mounted.

The B Family Card

This is the B Family printed on metallic paper 5x8.
CA

The M Family Card

The M Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The TL Family Card

The TL Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

Happy Holidays 2006!

I hope you are all enjoyed your holidays. After Micah and Jaclyn's wedding on Sat I came home and did the download and back-up (which I photographed to share with you later) and finally got to bed about 2am on the 24th. Ayden woke me up later that morning- he was ready to go to grandma and papa's house. We managed to make it there in plenty of time for the meal. I was draggin' and didn't think I'd make it. We ate a wonderful dinner full of seafood. Ayden liked the scallops best. Then we opened a few gifts and took a couple of images. There is one of all the greatgrandkids from Roger - just one of Grandma Ellis' children.

That evening we headed to Lake Madison for our own little family time. Just Andy, Kaleb, Ayden and I. We played games, watched Pirates of the Caribbean, rode motorcycles and played on the ice. And on the night of the 25th we went out and lit fireworks on the ice - left over from the 4th of July. It was a great time with no phones, cable or computers.
CA

Kaleb and Ayden playing a bit of hockey.

Ayden on the ice.

Kaleb on the ice.

Andy on the ice.

Sunset on the 25th.

Fireworks on the ice on the 25th.

Great Grandma and the kids.

Micah + Jaclyn 12.23.06

What a way to end the season! That's right this was my last wedding of the year 28 by myself and one as a second shooter for Heather.

Jaclyn and Micah were amazing. They are two of the most beautiful people I know. Inside and out. Their love for each other was abundent and obvious the whole day. Not only that but the love and support of their family and friends was wonderful also. It truely was an amazing wedding.

The ceremony was held at the already beautiful and wondrfully decorated First Lutheran Church in Sioux Falls and just as before Pastor John Christopherson was wonderful. Many comments were made about his message to the couple. This image is during the ceremony- now this is the reason why I think it's important that the church allow the photographer to get up on the altar where they can have a clear view of the couple.

If they would not have allowed me on the altar the whole series of these would only be the back of their head. This image is Jaci and Micah exiting after the ceremony, you can see the joy on their faces and the beautiful church behind them.

I don't normally show formals (because I want you to hire me for the other stuff), but I really like that we did these formals a bit different. In the aisle with the pews. I think it's a much more interesting image than at the altar. Look at the BM dress aren't they lovely too.

The reception was held at CJ Callaways and the appetizer meal was wonderful. The stuffed mushrooms were by far my favorite. The hit of the night had to be Micah and his rendition of Frank Sinatra's "The Way You Look Tonight" accompanied by the Dakota Jazz Collective. But of course the whole evening was wonderful.

Congratulations you two thank you for choosing us to be part of your special day!
CA

411:
Church: First Lutheran Church
Reception: CJ Callaways
Entertainment: Dakota Jazz Collective
Florist: Joyce Naber
Photographer: AC Ellis Photography

The S Family Card

The S Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The S Family Card

This is the S Family printed on metallic paper 5x8.
CA

The B Family Card

This is the B Family printed on metallic paper 5x8. I love the simplicity of it.
CA

Chris + Leigh : The Slideshow

And here is another show. This image below is of the super cool roses Leigh picked out. They were such a deep red with this soft velvety look to them. Anyway there were the aisle decorations turned gifts sitting in a box ready to be distributed and lookin all cool. I have it in color too, but I like this one.

Chris and Leighs slideshow.
CA

Amber + Spencer : The Slideshow

I'm almost- not yet there, but getting very very close, to being caught up and so I'm posting some of the slideshows that I previously didn't get up. I think the getting ready images from Spencer and Ambers wedding are my favorite all year. And here is one of them.

Here is their slideshow, please enjoy.

Leah + John : The Slideshow

My gosh this wedding was hard to edit. Why, becuase there were so many darn images and it was so hard to narrow down. You see I traveled out to Rapid City for the wedding and since I had nothing better to do than sit in my hotel room I stuck around and took more images. So Leah and John got a little bit extra coverage, but it was worth it.

This is one of my favorite exiting images. There is so much going on, the last toss of the helicopters, John looking on as Leah smiles to her parents and of course all the guests, the sun beaming in from the left behind the couple. I just love it.

Enjoy the slideshow.
CA

Blog Update

Have you been noticing any changes?

Well the blog has gotten a little overhaul. Not a big one, just some small things. Like the labels/categories. So if you don't make it here all the time, but your wondering hmmm does CA has any specials going on, simply click the "studio happenings" label on the right and it will narrow down to only those posts. I love this feature!

And bigger images. Well it is about the images right? Right. So now they are going to be bigger. I already think it makes a difference.

So yeah that's it for now, off to edit a bit more. Just thought I'd point those out. And as always in the off-season I try hard to implement all the ideas that I get during the rest of the year, so please stay tuned after the new year. And please let me know what you think when you see these changes or have an idea, request anything. I love to hear from you all. And I'm going to be lonely and bored (yeah right) now that I only have one more wedding this weekend and then a break until March.

Ok, so maybe I'm off to bed I just realized the time. Night.
CA

Yummy soup at Hagman's.

Amber and Spencer's Card

Amber and Spencer's card printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

Laura + Chris 12.19.06

They didn't pick the shortest day of the year, but they got very close. Laura and Neil came up for their engagement session with a whole about 20 minutes of light. But that's ok, cause we had fun getting creative. I had a great time you two and am looking forward to the wedding.
CA

The Greenleaf Cards

The Greenleaf facility printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The P Family Card

The P Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The F Family Card

The F Family printed 5x8 on matte paper.
CA

The J Family Card

This is the J Family printed on metallic paper 5x8.
CA

The P Family Cards

This is the P Family printed on metallic and Matte paper 5x8 and 4x8.
CA

Cards... The B Family

Are you ready for the showing of the cards? Well get ready one a day until they are all shown.

This is the B Family printed on matte paper 5x8.
CA

Intimates for Valentine

It's time to start thinking about your valentines. With products like books you need to plan ahead so if your thinking you would like to do an intimate session you may want to schedule your appointment now. I'm not taking anymore session in 2006, but am currently booking sessions for 2007. Call or e-mail if you would like anymore details.

Here are a couple from a recent session.

South Dakota Boudoir Photographer

Betsy + Mike 12.08.06

Last Friday Erin and I went to Lennox to photograph the wedding of Betsy and Mike. Whoever said you can't have weddings in SD in Dec was wrong (I still have one more wedding this year too). It was a beautiful day and wedding. They were married at the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church. They did a lot of little things that made it their own one of them was the candle lighting. At the end of the ceremony they each took the pillar candles that the parents had lite, then they had early used for their unity candle and relite them from the unity candle. Then they walked down the aisle lighting the small candles (passed out earlier) of each end person, so the whole room was only lit only by candle light. It was very nice. I took this first image with just available light on the tripod, but in the second image someone else was using their p&S and their flash lit up the bride and groom a bit more.

The reception was held at CJ Callaways and I stayed long enough to eat the yummy food, get images of the guests and photograph all the speeches. Betsy wins as the most giving bride I've seen. She presented Mike with a gift of tickets- plane tickets to leave 2 days after the wedding to go to a football game in Florida. He was awe struck and should be. Talk about cool.

It was a great day, thank you for choosing us to be part of it!
CA

Winter and Ice

Well I've been so engrossed in the computer that I just realized I haven't blogged in over a week. I bet some of you think I dropped off the face of the earth. I'm almost caught up, not yet we still have orders to send out and some weddings to edit, but we're almost there.

Anyway amongst the chaos last Tuesday I took a quick break and watched Ayden take his first ride on the ice. Andy prepped their bikes by putting screws in the tires so they don't skid. I come from Cali and the water doesn't freeze there, so while I find it totally cool. It still scares the crap out of me to walk, fish, drive and ride motorcycles on it. Everyone assures me that 6" of ice will hold a pick up truck and I shouldn't worry but I still do. So I hid behind the camera. Here are the boys on the ice. Ayden loved it and Andy was so proud.
CA

Texas Bride

While in TX we also had the privledge of photographing in groups of 3-4 with a real bride. It was different to photograph in groups, we all saw something different, had a slightly different style and had to find was to work together. Jen Bebb who is in the post from earlier was in my group and I found we worked very well together. You should see this one image she got, it was amazing!

Actually there were 11 groups and they all created some amazing work, it was very humbling to see what they all could produce in a couple of hours with a bride. And these brides were so willing to do anything we asked and get those dresses as dirty as we asked. While doing this shooting exercise we had a shot list to work from, certain things we needed to get it was a good exercise. Here are a few from it.
CA

Rylan 12.2.06

After my plane flew me in at a very late hour I was so happy to be greated by my little boy smiling and waving and my handsome hubby, gosh I missed them. We stayed with some friends friday night so we didn't have to drive back to Brookings and I got a few images of thier little girl Rylan in the morning. Here's the little cutie.
CA

Miss Me?

I haven't been blogging for two main reasons... I've been working hard to get things ordered, created, printed and all that for the holidays and I had to go and learn last week. In my absence the girls got so much done. It was nice to know that the office could run in my absence. Many of you should have received orders and many more will be recieving them soon. I of course came home to a pile of more orders and some weddings to work on. I will be in the office working all next week so if you need anything e-mail or call. I will be going down the list.

Anyway I was in Texas this last week at a workshop. It was called the anti-workshop and it was put on by two of the most amazing husband and wife teams, The Coopers and The Boutwells. I learned a lot, made a bunch of new friends and am ready to work my butt off to implement new techinques and business practices after the new year (have to get through the holiday rush first).

We had some shooting exercises and one of them with with another wonderful husband wife photog team the Bebbs of Tying the Knot in Vancouver. Here are some images from the Bebbs.
CA