Photo Friday! 365 Photo Project

Happy Friday! Here is the update on my weekly photo project:

2.20.10

When we went to the mall on Saturday, there was a real tulip display in the center. It made spring feel so close!

2.21.10

On Sunday, the guys headed down to the Chicago Auto Show while my mom and I headed to IKEA. We had no idea we spent 5 hours in the store until the guys called us saying they were done! Here are our goodies riding home from the store.

2.22.10

One of my many Target trips, just waiting to be unpacked and cooked for dinner!

2.23.10

Edie LOVES popcorn. You can just say the word "popcorn" and she'll get excited. Here she is waiting for her piece!

2.24.10

Way in the distance are the cranes slowing building the new parts of the Epic campus.

2.25.10

This building is near Greenway Station.

2.26.10

Here is our new wall display (with frames from IKEA!). It was hard to go through my thousands of photos and pick a few, but I always love getting them printed!

Beautiful Winter Sunset

Although I am beginning to tire of winter, I will never get tired of the beautiful winter sunsets. The colors contrasting against the white snow are some of my favorite things to photograph. This past Wednesday the clouds broke in the afternoon and we were presented with a brillant sunset. I luckily had my camera on me, and stopped to take a few photos off of the Ice Age Trail near Verona.

I did share one of these in my photo of the day, but had such a hard time choosing that I thought I'd share a few more. Enjoy! Please feel free to use as your desktop wallpaper!

High heels do not make good photo-in-the-snow taking shoes - oh well! I was laughing at myself trying to trudge through the shin deep snowbanks in them!

A little bit later on, I took this one at home, as the sun set further and turned even more beautiful colors!

Photo Friday on Saturday!

Ok, so I admit I'm not the best on posting on Fridays! But at least I did better than last week, and got this blog post up on Saturday instead of Sunday. Below you will find my photos of the day from this past week. Since the Valentine's holiday has past, I have dropped my "things that I love" theme, although I could probably twist the captions to reflect so.

But I will spare you the agony.

I'm nice like that ;)

Without further ado, the photos!

2.13.10

This is the lobby of my church, Blackhawk. I took this during our monthly photo group meeting. It is a rare sight to see the atrium so empty, I'm used to the hustle and bustle of Sundays!

2.14.10

For Valentine's Day, my hubby and I took a little trip to the Wollersheim Winery. If you want to learn more, scroll down and read my post!

2.15.10

Playing with capturing the snow.

2.16.10

Working on a couple crossword puzzles while watching the Olympics

2.17.10

There was a beautiful sunset tonight in Madison - here is the view from the Ice Age Trail off of Hwy PD.

2.18.10

Learning to take my camera with me out and about to avoid boring pics around my house... but hey, the wine rack is full!

2.19.10

Smoke stacks on the east side, was diggin' the retro look on this one.

Have a good weekend everyone!

That is One Big Photo!

This weekend I had a chance to drive up to the Baraboo/Wisconsin Dells area to check out a billboard I recently designed and photographed for our Bunbury Baraboo Agents. It is so excited to see my work that large! Plus it was a good excuse to head up to the outlet mall ;)

If you're headed south on Hwy 12 from Wisconsin Dells to Baraboo, keep your eyes open for it!

Blackhawk Photo Affinity Group

Once a month a group of photographers from my church get together, get learned, and get out and shoot. This Saturday was the second time I was able to join, and had a ton of fun. I always love getting to talk "shop" with other photographers, we can be quite geeky sometimes!

Here are a few of my favorites from the day, the focus was separating or not separating the subject from the background, so we got some lovely pictures of each other!

I like this one, even despite the dirty windows!

Brian being a goofball!

Blackhawk is such a beautiful building!

BTW - my new 5D MarkII is just STUNNING! I am loving shooting with it!

Wollersheim Winery

One of our favorite things to do is to visit wineries and of course, taste all of the wines! For Valentine's Day we headed up to Wollersheim Winery near Prairie du Sac, just a short jog away from Madison. It was our first time there, and we were surprised at how beautiful the grounds were even in the winter. We can't wait to go back in the summer, and it looks like we will be thanks to the "Case Club". Yes, we bought a whole case of wine, but it's so hard to choose! They have some really good incentives for wine enthusiasts, so if you fall in that category (as we do!) then you should really head up there and check it out. Here are a few pictures I grabbed before we headed in and tasted the wines.

I have really long legs :)

Where are your favorite wineries to visit?

To My Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day Brian! Know that without you I would have never had the courage to dream big to follow
my love for photography to where it has grown today. Your continued support, love, patience, and time spent
playing video games while I edit for countless hours are not overlooked. Thank you for being there for me,
thank you for listening to my 1 billion business ideas and being my constant sounding board. I couldn't do it
without you.

To my best friend, and Valentine - I love you!

Photos taken by Chris Gates

Photo Friday - er I mean Sunday!

So life got a little bit away from me this week, and with all the distraction and excitement of the Olympics, I forgot to update the blog world on my 365 project - so without further delay, here are the photos!

2.6.10

After an engagement shoot at the UW Arboretum, one of my favorite Madison shooting locations, Brian and I spent some extra time and took a few more pictures. What is always surprising to me is how different this location looks in every season!

2.7.10

Since my theme for February is things that I love, it would not be complete with out these three people. They are our lifegroup leaders and their son, and they are such great mentors and friends in our lives. This was taken at our Super Bowl Party, where I made everyone take a pic in my "photo booth". Thanks for humoring me guys!

2.8.10

A cup of my favorite peppermint tea.

2.9.10

I don't particularly "love" shoveling, but I do love the camaraderie it brings to our neighborhood. We always end up talking to and meeting more and more of our neighbors every time we are out.

2.10.10

I got a new camera on this day, and so I took a few of my very first DSLR. I was reflecting back at how awesome I thought that camera was, just two years ago, before I knew anything about manual mode, lenses, ISO, aperture, or even how to run a business. Getting a new professional level camera has really made me realize how far I've come!

2.11.10

Being a morning person, I particularly like sunrises, and I loved the way the sun was catching on all the snowbanks.

2.12.10

I LOVE popcorn. Like go to a movie just for the popcorn kind of love. Here is a huge batch of kettle corn I made for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

Google Docs for Wedding Planning

I just saw this come across my blog reader, and I am so excited for all of you planning a wedding out there! Google docs has made customized documents for wedding planning!

I use Google Documents all of the time for my day job, and for storing all of my photography information. The great thing is that the documents are online - so you can access them from anywhere. Plus, Google's form options would make collecting those addresses from friends and family a sinch! (you create the form, people visit and fill it out, and then it *automatically* fills out a spreadsheet for you - how awesome!)

As an added bonus Style Me Pretty, one of my favorite wedding inspiration blogs, has written tips and tricks from some of the best in the industry.

So what are you waiting for, check it out!

Chris & Vanessa are Engaged!

Chris and Vanessa are good friends of ours, and they are getting married in October. When they asked me to take a few engagement photos of them, I was glad to! So, we headed off to the UW Arboretum this past Saturday and braved the cold. These two were such troopers, they have their jacket off in all of these! Woo weee!

Chris is also a photographer, and has joined me at a few of my 2009 weddings, so you might recognize him!

Bri's shot

I think this one is my favorite....

We actually had some sun to work with! Yay!

Vanessa, you are beautiful! :)

We found a tree with some green on it! Woo hoo!

Thanks guys for braving the cold temps! Brian and I had a lot of fun :)

And here are a few "behind the scenes" pics... notice I am nowhere as near as brave as these two and was fully bundled up!

We were picking on Brian here for his love of the fisheye lens, and how he takes pictures with it constantly without looking (so I took this one without looking!)

Brian making sure there was no ice where Chris was going to "dip" Vanessa