Lorenz Photography: Lydia and Tom on the Farm in Acton!

Oh Lydia and Tom.  Where do I even begin? I guess with pictures…

 

 

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Lydia and Tom are the embodiment of my favorite thing about being a wedding photographer: making real, true genuine connections with people, through photography.  From the minute Lydia walked into the cafe in Concord to meet with Caleb and me, it was on.  It was so on.  Poor Caleb sat there for an hour trying to squeeze a word in here and there, which was a mostly futile effort as Lydia and I did not. stop. talking.

So when we went to their house in Acton for the engagement shoot, and Lydia warned me there would be cocktails aplenty, I knew we were in for a good time.  Adorably, Lydia and Tom are a lot like Caleb and me.  She’s outspoken and full of talkative energy and has so much to say; Tom is a little more reserved, satisfied to kick back and sort of take everything in, but not at all shy to jump in when he’s got a zinger.  These two are so in love, and I’m so gosh darned excited to not only get to work with them, but to know them.

Also, slightly off topic: Have you ever been to Idylwilde Farms? That’s where Tom works, and because Lydia and Tom are awesome and share our love of delicious food and drink, after we were done with the shoot they took us to the farm and treated us to some delicious champagne mangoes, fresh spinach and fantastic brie.

A drive out to the country, running around in an orchard and on a farm at dusk taking pictures, cocktails, cheese, a patio and new friends: That’s what I call a pretty rad day.  Thanks Tom and Lydia.

Oh, and yes, tequila and sparkling limeade will now be my new summer time drink.  Sorry gin.

Watertown Portait Photography: The Wherrys in Medford!

Remember Katie and Manny and their fantastic wedding at the Fuller Craft Museum? Well apparently I made quite the impression because Katie’s sister Deanne asked me to come by to do a family portrait session with her husband and two kids, Audry and Loren (I must say I rather like the spelling of Loren’s name).  Audrey rather reminded me of myself when I was five–running screaming, running, screaming drawing smiling running yelling. Loved it.  The dynamic between Audrey and her older, more subdued sister Loren was really lovely to watch–they were very much each other’s salt to their pepper.  Or pepper to their salt….

 

As much as I resist playing favorites with my pictures, I have to admit, this one is my personal fave of the day:

Deanne, thanks for inviting me back for some Pickett/Wherry love 🙂

Vote For me in PPA’s 2010 Cover Contest!

Okay Gang,

Between the comments both here and on Facebook, as well as emails and personal conversations, you all decided on this fantastic picture for me to submit to PPA’s 2010 Cover Contest. As I mentioned in my first post about it, even though this picture from Sena and Jovan’s wedding is one of my all time favorite images I’ve ever made, I wasn’t sure if it was right for the cover contest because I would have to crop it to a vertical, which to me, changes the whole feel of the picture.

However, I just went and checked out some of the other submissions, and there’s all kinds of horizontal pictures! I don’t know if this will lessen my chances, but I’m just going to submit it as a horizontal. So there.

So, here’s my final submission!

Still works, right? Right!

NOW GO VOTE FOR ME! HERE’S The link: PPA Cover Contest

If you vote for me I’ll give you hugs and kisses and candy and lots and lots of love. Lots of love. So much you won’t know what to do with it all. Go vote for me.

Love,
Me

Boston Baby Photography: Aiden in Somerville!

Watertown Baby Photography: Elsa in Cambridge!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of crawling around on the floor with Elsa, my friends Julie and Eric’s 1 year old girl.  As a very German Midwest girl I have a very special place in my heart for little girls with names like Elsa with white hair that only comes from Minnesota born parents…

As you may have noticed I’m experimenting a bit here with doing some dyptichs and tryptichs.  I tend to get overhwelmed with this kind of thing as there are so many options and so many pictures I constantly second guess myself and whether it looks good or I’m doing it right.  So today I decided to just get over myself and give it a shot.  Thoughts??

Photos for PPA Magazine’s 2010 Cover Contest

Okay. So.

If anyone out there is a photographer or even amateur photographer, you can all attest to the fact that one of the hardest parts of our jobs is editing.  That is, narrowing down your pictures to a cohesive body of work that represents you as a photographer, and expresses your vision.  Seriously, this is one of my big weak spots as I feel so emotionally attached to everyone of my pictures. 

I decided that I’m going to enter PPA Magazine’s 2010 photo cover contest, to which you can submit one (ONE!) image.  One? Really? C’mon. Really? I have 21,000 files in my “wedding photography” folder in my Lightroom catalog. One? Crap.

So I obviously can’t do this alone. So I’m enlisting you, dear readers, fans, clients, friends, and family.  I went through and picked out a handful of my favorite images and I’m posting them here.  I want your feed back. I want your ideas.  And if there’s a picture here you don’t see that you know of that you think I should consider entering–tell me!

These are pictures that are my favorites, but also, in my opinion, represent my vision as a photographer–fun, wild, colorful, cheerful, happy, exciting.  These are also the pictures that I think a national magazine might actually be willing to print on their magazine unlike this one and this one which, while they are both a couple of my favorite pictures I’ve ever made, I have a hard time believing PPA would print them on the cover of their mag. Anyway…this is the group I picked:

These first two from Sena and Jovan’s wedding are what I would consider my “signature” images.  These images totally represent the way I see, and the energy and excitement I bring to my wedding photography. Really, this first one is my first instinct to be my submission, except that it’s a horizontal image. It could be cropped to a vertical for a magazine cover but I think that would make it an entirely different picture completely. 

So? Have at it–write me your ideas in the comments or on my Facebook Page (where you should add yourself as a fan!).  Again, if you can think of another picture of mine that you know you like but I forgot about here–tell me which one.  Let’s hear it!

This Photographer Will Work for Food.

Subtitle for this blog post: Abby is reminded that she has the greatest job evar.

A few months back a new Italian Specialty food store/restaurant opened up around the corner from us in Watertown.  Literally, around the corner.  I had shyed away from going in because I’m clearly not cool enough, cultured enough or sophisticated enough to take up oxygen in an upscale food store like that.  Eventually my curiosity overcame my shyness and I decided to pop in and take a look around….

What I found was not a stuffy, pretentious food shop like I had imagined in my head, but a warm, inviting little store with an incredibly friendly staff who welcomed me upon entrance, inquired if I needed anything, but otherwise let me just poke around on my own.  (Side note, this is one of my favorite things about living in Watertown–friendly people! Customer service! Huzzah!)  I spied, in their prepared foods case, a dish of Tiramisu that looked like no other Tiramisu I’ve ever seen…it looked so–soft, dense–not like usual Tiramisu which retains it’s shape in a stiff little square.  The woman who helped me said that the way the owner makes it is more like a pudding.  I was skeptical because I’m not a huge fan of pudding, but I asked for a taste.

Oh. My. God. Seriously. Omigod. And I believe that was the exact phrase that I not just said, but shouted, loudly upon the spoon touching my tongue (This is why I don’t go into fancy stores…I’m obnoxious).  And as I cried out in amazement and surprise and deliciousness, the owner, Ana, happened to come out from the back room and SHOUT back at me “That’s what I like to HEAR!!” And we got to chatting….

So, do you have a website? Nope not yet. Ah, well, I’m a photographer, and I love this shop–I’d love to do some work for you if you need it? Absolutely! How about we exchange a quick photo shoot for dinner for you and your friends? Um…OKAY.

Friday I went in and spent a couple hours drooling over her food  photographing Ana in her shop preparing food, and of course, 10 or so of her dishes.  Having grown up in Nebraska I’m not terribly well versed in the ways of traditional Italian food, so I was pleasantly amazed to see all of these beautiful dishes she kept bringing out to me: stuffed cabbage leaves, chard wraps, blood orange salad…did you know that meatballs were never eaten with sauce until they came to America? I didn’t! And that’s how Ana prepares and serves her meatballs (which you will see below): instead of swimming in sauce, they are served as is, warm and with a shot of fresh lemon juice. Beautiful!

What follows is a sampling of Ana in action, her cozy store, and her beautiful food:

Drunken Pears: Pears cooked with clove and poached in red wine (we had some of these at dinner and they were incredible!)

 

stuffed tomatoes

 

Traditional Meatballs

Chicken Breast Stuffed with spinach and prosciutto (we had this with our dinner and it was fantastic!) 

Chard Wraps: Chard wrapped around walnuts, prosciutto and gorgonzola. Holy Hell.

Stuffed Cabbage leaves.  Not sure what’s in these but they looked amazing.

Fennel Salad with bacon.  This salad looked SO yummy but unfortunately fennel is one food that I just really really can’t do.  Pity–it looked delicious!

Wonderful, cozy rustic details around the shop…

Timbale

Blood oranges with red onion and olives.

So Pretty!

Homemade fresh pasta!

That’s right. Ana whipping cream by hand.  This lady does it all. 

And she makes it look so easy!

And so began, what I hope to be, a long lasting friendship between Lorenz Photography, and La Romangoli and Son….

How was dinner? Wonderful.  Simply wonderful.  Ana prepared for us a traditional Lasagna, a vegetarian Lasagna and an eggplant parm.  Everything was so fresh and clearly made with love.  It was by far the best lasagna I’ve ever had–and what’s great was, it wasn’t amazing because it was done in an unusual or fancy way.  The exact opposite–it was simple, rustic lasagna, made with fresh ingredients and perfectly made pasta.  It was simple, and done right.

If you are located in the Boston area, La Romangoli and Son is WELL worth the trip to Watertown (the 71 drops of literally in front of the shop).  If nothing else, come out here, poke around, chat with Ana and her friendly staff, and just take some of that Tiramisu with you…..

Oh. Mah. Gahd.

Vendor Spot Light: Artists for Humanity in the South End, Boston

Calling all urban brides!! Last July I had the pleasure of photographing Sena and Jovan’s colorful, spirited, BEAUTIFUL wedding at the amazing Artists for Humanity in the South End.  This venue was a dream: white walls creating lots of beautiful soft light, but covered in art! So much art!  No need to worry about bringing in outside decorations because your wedding is decorated with the original art work of all these talented young Boston teenagers. So so so cool. It was great because the day of Sena’s wedding it was oh, say, 95 degrees outside and WAY sunny, so photographing outside would have been problematic, to say the least–but this place has seemingly endless space and places for us to shoot–we found this huge open gallery space on the 4th or 5th floor (where they were already setting up the cocktail hour!), that was huge and open, and covered in art.  Perfect.  We did all the group photos up there, and then I shooed everyone away to do some pictures with just Sena and Jovan.  I had so much to work with inside it didn’t even occur to me to do more outside.  I can’t wait to work here again!

Here are some of my favorite shots that I feel highlight the venue:

Oh and I forgot to mention one of the most fun parts: that huge glass industrial door that you saw in the first few pictures opened up for the ceremony: so after a hot hot July day, the air cooled off, they opened up the door, and the party spilled out onto the terrace outside the building.  SO FUN.  I wasn’t there for this part, but Sena told me that later in the night after we had left, it started raining, and everyone was dancing in the rain…I can’t imagine a more spectacular celebration! 

To all photographers reading this: this place is a photographers DREAM to shoot in.  As I mentioned the place is mostly white with HUGE windows everywhere, creating this incredible soft ambient light for every picture.  I think I shot at about 400 or 800 ISO for most of the day and only used flash during the reception when it got dark–and even then, with all the white walls bouncing was a cinch. I love venues in which I can really take advantage of the natural light because then I just get to focus on the subject matter and the actual photographing, and not worrying about if my flashes are set up right, if they will see each other etc…I just can’t be bothered.

Anyone out there getting married here? Call me. Hire me. Please.

Bwah! Oldies but goodies…

So you know how when you try to clean out your house, you always come accross stuff you hadn’t seen or thought about for years, and your whole project gets held up because you wind up ooh-ing and aahhing over t-shirts and pictures, and random junk?

Well…turns out it’s the same thing when you’re trying to clean our your hard drive…

 

 

I did these pictures in my first year at NESoP…I believe this was for our speedlite assignment from Steve-O’s 2nd term digital class.  Since college I’ve been obsessed with film noir and I’ve had it in my head since becoming a photographer that I would do a project about fear in the style of film noir…this was my first and sadly last attempt. Not for any good reason of course–I have this weird fear about my creative endeavors: I get these ideas that I’m really excited about, but I never really do anything about them because I’m too afraid it will be dumb or the pictures will suck–perfectionistic tendencies, blah blah…it’s very annoying, if for no other reason than I’ve got all these images in my head taking up space and nagging me….I think that to really do these right, I would have to do them in at least medium format black and white, if not 4×5. 

Anyway–the pretty lady to my right on the couch there is my dear friend Jess Stambaugh, with whom I graduated in the Fine Art Black and White program in 2008.  Lovely lady…awesome photographer, killer bartender and champion whiskey drinker.

FUN!: Free portrait shoot to the person who can correctly name the movie that this picture is referencing….(And I know I’ve already told some of you–so you don’t count!)