Danielle on Display

Happy Wednesday everyone! Danielle and I have talked before about how much we love shooting stuff for ourselves with our iPhones and how addicted we are to the app Instagram. Recently Danielle answered the call for submissions to for the Phone -O- Graphy Exhibit, a display of local cellphone camera art during the First Friday in the District art walk in downtown Knoxville. And she was excited to find out some of her photos were selected for the exhibition! So last Friday we traveled to Gay St. to see some of her work on display.

The photos were printed and then transferred to blocks of plywood before they were hung. I don't know how many there were total, but I'd guess at least a couple hundred. It was a fun little game of "Find Danielle's Photos!" (By the way, these were shot with my phone so I could Instagram them.)

Some of the photos she submitted. The top left image won an honorable mention.

And a few more.

It was cool seeing her iPhone photos in real life! Like a lot of images since the digital revolution, most of our iPhone snaps spend their whole lives on our phone or on the computer. And it's easy to forget the joy of seeing and holding a photo in your hand. I'm proud of you Danielle!!

If you want to see more of her Instagram photos, check out her feed. (Mine is here if you want to see it).

Merry Christmas from the Hopes!

Merry Christmas everyone! I'll keep it brief, because there's still 4,784 things I need to get done before family comes over tonight. But we wanted to wish each and every one of you a happy holiday and hopefully make you laugh a little...





We wanted to go for something funny this year on our Christmas cards. The sad thing is, the front image (in cheesy Christmas attire that we had made at a nameless box studio), isn't too far off from our daily life. ;)

And, of course, it just wouldn't be a Christmas blog post without sharing one of Danielle's favorite traditions:

So from our crazy family to yours, we truly hope you all are blessed this Christmas season! Thank you for being our friends and for supporting our business this year!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT (or morning or day or whatever)!!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I just wanted to throw a quick blog up to show off our little cuties and some images from our studio. Wait, what? You don't know about our studio? If you don't then you must not follow us on our Facebook Fan Page (for shame! What's stopping you?). But don't feel bad, we haven't announced it on the blog yet. We're still waiting on two little things before we're 100% open. Don't get me wrong, we're 99.5% open right now and we're already doing meetings, holding projection sessions, and we've done a few portraits there.

Danielle, Brittany and I had the idea to do a day of Halloween costume mini-sessions at the studio, but unfortunately the idea came a little too late for us to organize it properly. Rocktober is kicking our butts this year with a record number of portrait sessions and a ton of weddings so squeezing in a last mini-session marathon just didn't seem like a grand idea. But we did go ahead and do a few photos of Maddie and Millie in their costumes to A) see if it would work and B) get some promo pics in case we do it next year.


Millie chose an elephant costume this year (yep, we let her decide). I think she just wanted to show off how she makes an elephant sound with her hand/trunk.




Such. A. Stinkin'. Cutie!!


Maddie wanted to be something scary this year. The problem is they don't make too many "scary" costumes for 5 year-olds. But we did find this vampire princess costume and she fell in love with it. She's sure is spooky!


Danielle is a big TrueBlood/Twilight fan so she *had* to do this one.


Millie isn't too sure about the costume though.


But she warmed up to her (not sure if she's dropping a deuce in the second photo or what).


Mwuar!!


Right before I broke the set down, Millie grabbed these little devil horns and struck this super cute pose. I have to say, this photo sums Millie like none other I've ever taken. Sweet and cute as a button, but there's a little devil hiding in her. She can be mean as a snake when she wants to be.

Have fun trick or treating everyone!! I plan on being in a sugar coma for the next few days! What? It's a daddy's job to "check" all the candy for safety before he let's the kids gorge. ;)

And we'll post some photos of the studio and announce our open house soon. Stay tuned!

Maryville Portrait Photography - Maddie Turns Five!

Okay, I have to admit that this is probably one of my favorite posts that I have done in awhile (I'm totally biased though)! I'm sure that you have seen those "in-store" studio portraits of a little kid sitting on a number that is to represent what age the child is, right? Well, to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of that, but I did want to do something with Maddie to represent her turning 5! Brittany came up with a great idea. She wanted us to take Maddie around downtown Maryville and look for the number 5 or 5 items and take her photo next to them. This was quite the challenge in Maryville because we had a tough time finding 5's, but we also took along 5 of her favorite barbies and some chalk to play with and I really think this turned out great! I'm really excited to see the album that we plan to make out of it :)


A big shout out to our great friend Tara Kneiser of Dixie Pixel for this awesome t-shirt she bought Maddie for her birthday! Love it!




Such a pretty girl.


Yep, that's my girl...like father like daughter. :)


Can you guess who wrote this?






This was Brittany's favorite and she gave me strict orders not to crop it or straighten it!


I love her laugh.




She is such a little model! She loves to pose.











I love this one...she just looks so sweet and content.


Then I said something that made her burst out laughing.


And a session with a preschooler wouldn't be complete without a little meltdown!


This is probably my favorite. She wasn't sad here, a little tired, but not sad, just patiently waiting on us to get ready for the next set of pics.


5 expressions from Maddie!









I hope you enjoyed those as much as I do! I can't believe she is already five! These past five years have just flown by so quickly. I'm so proud of the beautiful, sweet, smart and funny little girl that she has grown into!

Let me know if you want a session like this for your little one.

Thanks!

A milestone in the Hope house...

Oh, she's growing up too fast!!!




-Sad Dad

Ten Years!!

Please pardon the interruption from our regular posts featuring our fantastic clients. Today is a very special day for Danielle and myself and I wanted to share a little something with you all.

Ten years ago she wore an amazing wedding gown and looked more beautiful than I have ever seen her.

Ten years ago we cemented our lives together in a small, but beautiful ceremony in front of our friends and family.

Ten years ago we sang to each other, said "I do!", and skipped (literally) down the aisle.

Ten years ago, I married my best friend. :)


If you know us, you know that our sucky wedding photos were the main catalyst for us getting into the wedding business. These may not be the best pictures, but they're what we have.

We've come a long way in ten years. We've built a successful business, built a house, and built a wonderful little family.


Our girls. Cute little boogers, huh?

There have been incredible highs and gut-wrenching lows. Amazing journeys and daily struggles. And I am so blessed that Danielle has been by my side for every minute of it. As I've said before…


We're just a couple dorks in love.

Happy Tenth Anniversary Danielle! I love you more and more every day!! Thank you for saying "yes!"

-Wes
[SHMILY][143]

The Digital Wedding Forum Convention in Nashville

Greetings everyone! As promised, today I wanted to share a little about our trip to Nashville last week. One of the coolest things about being a photographer is the constant opportunities to further our education. We are members of a group called the Digital Wedding Forum (if you're a wedding or portrait photographer, check it out) and this year they held their annual convention in Nashville. That's a no-brainer, huh? We HAD to go. We had been to one other DWFC in Tampa two years ago and had a blast (as evidenced by THREE blog posts back then... here, here, and here).

We had a great time this year and made a ton of new friends as well as partied with some old ones. Of course, we came back all stoked and ready for our next wedding. Too bad we have to wait about two more months! Anybody getting married next week and need a fired up pair of photographers? :)

Here are just a few of the many photos we took on the trip...

We'll start off with something way cool. We were contacted by the company that makes our sweet canvases, Simply Canvas, a couple months before the convention. They said they wanted to show off some of our work in Nashville so they asked me to send them one or two files. I was so excited that I sent six!

And this is what they chose. We were ecstatic (as you can tell)! Thanks Simply Canvas!


This has nothing to do with the convention. We walked around the outside of the hotel and I saw this and liked it. :)


Our buddy Jason Davis tagged along again this year. Well, he drove, so I guess *we* tagged along with him.


It wouldn't be a trip for us if we didn't find time to play, I mean, experiment.


Jason tried to play hide and seek.


Apparently Knoxville photographers are pretty antisocial. The night of the big party, we all kind of hung by ourselves and had our own get-together. There's our pal Tara and hubby, Brian from Dixie Pixel, Jason, Matt Browne (far right), and Bill Waldorf.


So the album company, Finao, that we added to our lineup last year, held a contest for the King and Queen of the DWF Convention. And two really great photographers took home the title: David Getson, right, and Petra Hall smooch it up for the crowd (Petra posted some more photos of the event on her blog).


Feeling inspired to play so more after one of the seminars, Danielle, Jason, and I took to the creepy stairs at the hotel.


And we made some pretty cool images!


Jason getting all sniperish. Yep, I'm making up words.


We did a few of each other in front of this old ratty light and then I asked Jason to shoot Danielle and I. I think it's one of my more favorite images of the two of us together (well, there aren't that many).


After it was all over, we had dinner with some of our new friends before driving home. Erin and Justin Moulden, are a cool couple from Arkansas that we hit it off with right away and Ben Ramos, who is probably one of only a handful of guys at the convention that saw eye-to-eye with me. Literally (sorry, there aren't too many of us gentle giants out there in the world, so when we meet, there's an instant connection).

There are sooo many others that we met and partied with... it would take me a week to list them all. But Danielle and I do want to take a second to say an extra special thanks to John and Dalisa Cooper, who are the amazing duo behind altF. They took a few minutes out of their hectic schedules to sit with us and help us wrap our brains around some business issues we were having and they really opened some windows for us. They didn't have to do this; they didn't know us, but they exemplify one of the greatest things about our business. And that's the giving attitude and the willingness to help others that a lot of great photographers have. So THANK YOU AGAIN, Dalisa and John!! And if some of you haven't had the chance to be blown away by their work yet, head straight to the link above and prepare to have your world rocked!

In other big news for us, we finally took a few minutes to set up a fan page over on everyone's favorite daily distraction, Facebook! Check us out:

Our Facebook Fan Page.
If you haven't joined in yet, what the deuce are you waiting for? :) I am completely blown away by the fact that we have over 500 fans already and I just set the thing up less than a week ago! What's going down on the fan page? We'll keep in touch daily with updates and links and promotions and photos and general revelry. It should be fun!

AND (won't this guy shut up already!) if you're engaged or know someone who is engaged and you don't have a photographer yet... check back tomorrow afternoon for a HUGE announcement!! This is going to be bigger than BIG, trust me!

-Wes

Coming tomorrow: We announce something so epic it will make you slap your momma. Well, not really slap her, but it is something EXTRAORDINARY!