The wedding

No shots yet of the wedding, because the shooting will not begin until around 2 p.m. today! While I am setting here waiting for my coffee to get ready, I was thinking about what makes me want to be involved in the craziness of weddings. People running around yelling and crying and no one is making things easy and I am just there to capture this moment that will be the most special day to one boy and one girl. Imagine your at a wedding, "here comes the bride" starts to play, everyone stands and turns, and there she is, in her big beautiful white gown. That's why I do it. This particular wedding is going to be in a park, and the girls are going to come down this beautiful old stone stairs, and the whole time they are working out the arrangements for the rehearsal, all I can think about is: how beautiful is it going to look when she comes down these stairs, and what a great shot it is going to make!
Once the ceremony is over, I do enjoy taking the shots of the bride and groom, all dressed up and in love.

This is from a previous wedding, this was in my studio before the ceremony, but these ended up being some of my favorite shots.
This is the mother and daughter/flower girl and i caught this tender moment at the reception.


And of course the love
Unfortunatly I won't be able to share this wedding until the bride and groom have seen them, but I will show them in various places!
Now I should start getting ready!

Ludington

Last time I was here, I described our trip to Ludington. Here is some of the stuff we seen while we were away.

This is the Ludington lighthouse that I made look like an old photograph.
Here is a HDR version:

Ofcourse we seen way more than this light house, but something that was really cool about this light house was we actually got to go into it

We walked all the way out the break wall and there was a sign that said adults $3 and Children $1. This is the first one we have gotten to go into. Of course it's only the second light house that we have walked too.
So here is the light house up close:

When you walk through the door, there isn't much to look at. The "volunteers" have set up a table and spot for little souvenirs, they take your money which goes toward the up keep of the light house and what not, and they tell you some stories about it, and about how you yourself can be a "volunteer" and you can stay in the lighthouse for a weekend. I couldn't imagine staying in it, but I am sure it would be an experience! There really isn't much inside to see, and as you go up the space shrinks!

Here is a couple of shots that show the view from the top floor. There was four people and a dog up there, and I squeezed up there for a minute and that really took away from the elbow room! I say a second because I am terrified of heights, but I am trying to over come it, at least for photo ops!


This is what it looks like looking up! If you look closely you can see my famous dog! She is in the bag and famous because she got to go all the way up into the lighthouse. We took her out on the walk with us so she could get out for a bit and get some exercise, but when we were on the break wall there wasn't enough room to let her walk on the leash so we put her in my bag, she never complained!

This would be the third floor. This is the floor where the bell or whistle is blown. The signs there talk about how loud it is. There wasn't much inside to photograph, but this gives you a slight idea. Here is looking out the window of the third floor.
Here is the second floor, not much going on here:

The boat trip

Last Thursday, would have been the 23rd of July, we packed our boat full and waited for the morning to arrive. Rather early, we unhooked all the lines and shoved off for our very first boat trip away from our marina. We were heading for Ludington, 56 miles north of Grand Haven on a very smooth and calm Lake Michigan! This is Sarah and Harlins boat on the way to Ludington. Gives you an idea of how calm the water was.

That is the sand dunes behind them. Silver Lake Sand Dunes to be exact.
This is their boat again, and we are actually leaving Ludington and that's the light house we got to go up into, but more on that later.

While we were gone, I took over 400 photos and that's just with my big camera. For now all I have is boat photos, from the ride there and the ride back. We started to head home on Sunday, but we were facing five footers that we heard turned into eight footers (waves) so we turned into port at Pentwater. We had a lot of fun there, even though I complained a bit about the lack of luxury! It wasn't so bad and we had tons of fun in the one night we were there. The town was adorable and had tons of shopping. We left out of Pentwater at 7:30 because we wanted to beat the waves that were going to build, and the waterway would be shut down at 1:00 in Grand Haven for the Coast Guard Fest that would start last weekend!
So here is Rick and Kim on the way home! It was a very nice ride home, we were so glad we waited until Monday.


Here is Tu Dogs, Herb and Kathy, also on the way home. This was such a nice trip we can't wait to do it again. There is plenty more to talk about, as I said earlier, I took over 400 photos on this trip! More Later!

The birthday.

So Saturday, we had a pretty good day. Chuck and I went over and looked at a couple boats, we are thinking of moving up. Then when we came back and everyone was down at Herb's boat chatting so I said if you are all ready for cake, let's have cake! They were, of course, who doesn't love cake? It turned out to be the best cake I have ever bought from Wal-Mart! It was really delicious!

And it was super cute! I didn't make any plans, but we had a good turn out. These are the ones who stood still for the shot, except they all looked down? There was more people on the other side, but they dispersed when I turned around to take a photo!

Of course I didn't have 31 candles, so we just made them worth 10 + 1, which was actually aunt Sarah's idea!


Bob and Leeann got Chuck a pretty cool card, and gave him some of Bobs beer!

After all this, we ate dinner that Chuck made at home and brought with him. We were so full with cake and stuffed noodles! Aunt Sarah made a comment about walking the pier. I am still not sure how we managed to get the guys going but we did! It was the first time I had ever walked out there! I have rode by it on the boat, but never walked it. It looks really far, but it's really not so bad!

Even though it was kind of crowded, it was really peaceful.


At the end of the pier, the waves crash up against the wall and it's pretty awesome!

They are pretty strong and can drag you right in. It's pretty rough at the mouth of the river and the lake, not a place I would like to fall in! That is my son Jaden, he kept saying he was going to get wet, but he kept moving back! Saturday turned out to be a wonderful day!

Finally

Well Friday turned out to be a pretty good day. My husband Chuck finally arrived at the boat around 6:00 p.m. We went out to dinner and tried a new resturant-not good-but before he got there, Jaden and I went out and about and found some stuff to do. We went exploring again, we had to run into town to replace a propane tank and town was super busy so we took some side streets and found this adorable little coffee shop:

Chuck could not believe that it was called "fat chix"!! I tried to explain to him that it was spelled chix, but he didn't get it. Jaden said we should go there, but it was closed! We found some other cool stuff right near the marina.

Right at the entrance of our marina is a little park like area, it has a little pond and the bike path goes right through the pond or well right over:

Next to this area is a little patch of trees. There is a little path that you have to duck down into and it opens up into this:






At some point a willow tree fell over making a great place to climb, and someone spent some time in here making a sort of fort. It was so cool, the tree alone was awesome, it's still growing strong and from the outside you can't even tell the tree has fallen over! There was so many cool patterns. This would be an awesome place for photos such as senior pictures.

Here are some pictures of what the marina looks like when there is NO ONE there:


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We were so happy when people finally starting showing up! We had cake on Saturday for Chuck's birthday, but more on that and everything else later!

Day 8

It's starting to feel like we're stuck on a deserted island! My husband keeps getting later and later. Originally he was going to come on Thursday, but for some reason, I got the impression that he was just saying that! Well anyway, Thursday night he had no idea if he was going to have to work all day Friday or if he would be able to leave Friday morning! It's looking more like it's going to be Friday afternoon. Who knows-I sure don't! Tomorrow is his birthday and my son and I were so excited to get him up here with us, plus it's really lonely when no one else is here!

Last night Jaden and I tried a new restaurant because it was so windy we couldn't keep the grill going and our chicken was frozen. Mr Scribs it is called. I think it is a great place for pizza and subs, but you might want to pass on the ribs and seafood-my opinion-I am not an official food critic so don't take any of that to heart and put me in the papers!

While trying to make sure my son has a memorable week with his mommy, I have been diligently working to whittle away at the stack of photos awaiting edits so I can also remove the ones from my cameras so they can be added to a new stack awaiting edits. Some of these have been waiting so long I forgot I took them!

I call this one "love birds".

I call this one "bashful"

This one is "Three IS a crowd"

This one is called"stop pooping on my car please"
These were taken at the marina. We have a tree that has a couple branches that these birds seem to prefer over the hundreds of others. Everyday I have to wash my car because it seems to have a big bulls eye on it for the birds!

A few weekends ago, when my husband and I brought the truck and the jet ski up here, we went by the old fur tannery factory, I am not exactly sure what it was because it's been closed for about 5 years, and I haven't been here for five years. I am told though that it smelled horrible! Anyway we went by this and I added a wash and hdr, gave it a new feel


The top one is hdr and the bottom is a washed version. I think the wash version makes it look like an old photo.

Last weekend-is when most of these photos were taken, I was having camera withdraws, so I walked around the marina to find some interesting things to shoot.

People are complaining about the lily pads, but they have these flowers that I personally think makes them okay. Sometimes they form hearts and make feel a little squishy inside.


Now I can unload my cameras and have some more for tomorrow! Happy 8 day!

Day 7

That's right, it is day 7 at the boat. It is starting to get lonely up here. During the week there are very few people here at the marina. My son and I have been all over the Grand Haven doing the stuff that we normally don't do.

So it seems as the uploader isn't working again, so I will have to do this the old fashion way.

This was on the 4th, the river was so calm that night. This one has some photoshopping done, just playing around. The moon should have been out that night!

We should probably get the boat cleaned up today. We're not sure when dad will be here. Either today or tomorrow. The rest of the boaters will be here tonight or tomorrow morning.

This is a wheat field, I think they are so awesome looking. I would love to get out and stand in one for some photos. I think it would be cool to take photos of people in a wheat field too.

Not necessarily a theme but I have been taking a lot of "farm" type shots. I have heard they sell good in the stock photo markets. We will see!