We wanted to write to wish everyone a happy and safe New Year! Thanks so much to everyone we worked with in 2010, it was such a great year and we met so many incredible people along the way. We have been booking weddings for 2011 and wow it is going to be another good year. Throughout the winter we’ll be working on changes to our studio (and some studio shoots), updates and changes to our business for the new year (WAY faster turn around times on editing and shipping, training our new assistant, online booking/payment system and more) and working on continuing education so we can continue to take our work to another level. We have more wedding blogs from 2010 on the way as well and will be posting more about upcoming magazines that our work is featured in. As always, thank you for continuing to support us (and being so patient with us when we get busy) and our work… we are so grateful to be able to work with all of you and shoot your portraits, weddings, moments, etc for you.

best-
jess & lyle

We were recently interviewed for Love and Lobster, a great blog featuring Coastal Maine Weddings, vendor tours and wedding inspiration. Check it out and thanks to the staff of Love and Lobster for asking us to be a part of the blog!

So sorry I skipped a few weeks of our blog series. We have been insanely busy with weddings and other shoots AND the weather here has been amazing, so we’ve been enjoying that. Last year we had the craziest summer of our lives and I didn’t realize until it was getting cold last fall that I hadn’t been to the beach once for myself (so non-shoot I mean)… When you own your own business it’s hard to separate life/business sometimes, but we are determined to do a better job of that this summer. So maybe next Friday’s blog will be non-portrait work with all shots of what Maine looks like at the moment! Until then, here is this week’s edition, from an engagement shoot (more coming), wedding, fashion shoot in New York and a creative child model. We are also starting to book senior sessions for the summer and fall PLEASE contact us because we will be booked up and have limited time to shoot them!

So sorry we skipped a week of our series last week (I’ve gotten emails about it, I love that people like this idea and are following our blog! Thank you!) but we were shooting a beautiful wedding in Lovettsville, VA which you will see on the blog soon (hopefully tonight). Today’s 5 photos all come from a portfolio session that I shot with G this week for her agency. She is a young actress/singer and has tons of talent and SO cute!  :) Here are a few shots we did for her portfolio, which was mostly smiley/happy shots (while trying to hide her new braces), but these are some that are a little different than that I loved. Stay tuned, two more great blogs coming this weekend!

We have just returned from a trip to NYC where I (Jess) shot a music video for an indie singer/songwriter (which you’ll see as soon as it’s edited) and we shot two fashion shoots together which you will see here soon too. We also did a portrait session for an old friend’s new business which we’ll be blogging later today. Now we are back in Maine and I really will be blogging more often, including a few new blog series I’m going to attempt to start and we still have shoots from 2009 that I’d like to show.

Wedding season for us kicks off in just a few short weeks in Washington, DC! We are so excited to get back into the swing of things and 2010 weddings may give 2009 (which was such a great year) some serious competition. Before that we have some engagement shoots lined up too. I have been drooling over some of the venues we’ll be shooting at this year (historic mansions! farms!! castles!!!)… We do still have some dates open for 2010 so if you are newly engaged or maybe waited a bit to book a photographer please e-mail us to check on your date and get our rate info. We also do engagement sessions or after sessions (also known as Trash the Dress) independently of weddings if you’re looking for that.

Last year I ran across this article online in Seattle Magazine which is a great piece on why hiring a professional is better than using a friend or someone just starting out shooting (with photos to illustrate their points). While the popularity of DSLRs continues to grow and new businesses and photographers are popping up all over the place, wedding photography is not something that is easy to just start doing. Weddings are fast-moving with constantly changing conditions (light, weather) and photographers who are not experienced with anticipating moments will often miss them. Just a few things to think about.