I am having fun out in Las Vegas with Mary Schwarz and Caryn Azure! We’re here for a national photography conference (WPPI), so we’ve been attending classes, talking about our businesses, and doing a little shooting as well! Here are a few photos from yesterday morning when we headed into the canyons and ran into some very friendly burros.

They would pose nicely for us! Until Caryn’s clicking boots spooked them that is… ;)

Singing donkey? No… just a yawning one.

The beautiful Mary!

Caryn, workin’ it.

More fun photos to come when I get home!

See ya when I get back!!

Their voices are heavenly, the song is thoughtful, and the LIGHT! That subtle, beautiful light just makes me want to pick up my camera!

Tell us: what’s something that inspires you?

p.s. if you like these two, they are offering a live album as a free download on their myspace page here!

Today I want to show you an example of our parent albums. Parent albums are 8×8 inch leather-bound albums with beautiful hinged digital pages.

You can choose the color of the binding (all of which can be seen here). And, there are 20 sides of photos in your album.

Here are a few photos of our studio sample from Caitlin and Rolf’s beautiful Phipps Conservatory/William Penn Omni wedding last year!

And as I said before, we have samples of all these color options in our office downtown. So, come feel and smell the leathery goodness! :)

It’s because of this that yesterday I sent out a call for couples to put on their wedding clothes and head outside in the freezing snow for some beautiful white photos. And, I had two WONDERFUL couples take me up on the offer: Betsey & Matt and Leeann & Brad.

I just got back from the shoots and downloaded the pictures, and I wanted to post two “teaser” photos. I am so excited to show the rest soon – thanks so much all 4 of you for being so amazing and coming out in the snow and cold!

If anyone else would like to take snowy photos in your wedding dress, I will extend this offer to two more couples. Contact me if you are interested.

Since I am headed to Las Vegas this week, I’ll post one of my favorite music videos ever: Human by the Killers.

What I love about this: backlighting, feathers, dance, sunglasses, landscape, tiger, bird, vest, big hair, great framing, bowtie, backlighting, backlighting, backlighting!! Do you see it all?

And in response to this, let us know: what inspires you?

I am really excited to show you something I have been thinking about and working on for a long time now: our new line of save-the-date cards!

We offer an engagement session with every level of wedding coverage, and one use for these engagement photos besides our beautiful guest sign-in album is our save-the-date cards.

Previously, clients who ordered save-the-date cards would work with me to design the card from scratch. I would create 2 or 3 design choices, they would choose the one they liked most, and then about 10 revisions later, we’d finally have the finished product! :)

Well, in order to simplify this process AND to give each client more design choices, I made a custom line of cards that can be completely customized in color, photo, and text.

Here are the details:

1. Each card is 5×7 inches and is printed on both the front and the back.

2. Each card may be customized to match the colors of your wedding

3. You may choose the engagement photo(s) to be used on your card

4. Cards are ordered in sets of 25 and come with either white or natural envelopes (specified below)

5. The basic design and font used on your card will remain the same (that is unless you send me brownies and tell me you’ll love me forever).

Here are the 8 designs that are available for save-the-date cards.

I am also designing a custom line of thank-you cards. Those will be folded cards with room for a note inside, and I will be posting these sometime over the next few weeks!

This session was such a pleasure for me. Not only was Claire sweet and pleasant the whole time. Okay, okay… almost the whole time. We did have a few small fits! :) But also, her sweet mama made all sorts of delicious cookies and cake bars for us to take home. I mean, amazing!

Here are a few favorites from their session. Thanks again, guys. Enjoy!

I want to show you a few photos of our guest sign-in albums for wedding receptions. These albums have become really popular since we started offering an engagement shoot with every level of wedding coverage, and it is one of my personal favorite wedding add-ons!

The sign-in album is 10×10 inches with thick, hinged pages like our 12×12 wedding albums (and, they would look awesome sitting together on your coffee table!). It includes your favorite engagement photos and also offers room for guest signatures on every page. The color options are modern and fun, and the album color can also coordinate with your wedding album color and/or wedding reception colors. And on a personal note, I always love to see guests enjoying your engagement photos at the wedding reception!

Here are a few photos from our studio sample of Adriel and Neal’s engagement session. We have many more of these books coming in the next few months from last year’s engagement shoots. So, I will post more photos as they come in.

There are lots of color choices for this album (which you can see here). And, we have samples of every cover material in our office. So, feel free to come feel and smell the amazing choices anytime! :)

Here are some favorites from our nation’s capitol!

The white house.

the Lincoln Memorial in the distance:

Lincoln Memorial:

The WW2 Memorial:

snow, snow everwhere: