Suzanne and I wandered around the waterfalls at Lucia Falls in OR. She was totally cool, 8 weeks pregnant and still 100% willing to do just about anything. She climbed on rocks, hiked down to the water and then proceeded to dive right in.

One of the main questions brides ask me when I mention the trash the dress sessions is how often people actually do this? What if their daughter wants to someday wear their dress?

Well, everybody is different, of course. I don’t ever want to push something on a client who doesn’t want it! BUT, I’m in love with the trash the dress shoot. How many times do you get to wear your wedding dress again? Usually never. And how many of us wanted to wear our mother’s wedding gown? Not many of us…and for those that did, a lot of stars have to align–correct sizing, etc. And, most of the time, your dress will already be very dirty by the end of the night. Usually you need to have it cleaned before sending it off to storage–So…why not put that gown back on, embrace the dirt and get some beautiful beach portraits?

And if worse comes to worst, you can always have your dress professionally cleaned and it will take care of all that sand and dirt you bring home with you from the beach after your shoot.

I loved this shoot. Missy at Take 5 Photography had come to the city for the weekend and she and I shot this together! The couple wanted a very urban photo shoot with obvious city landmarks in the background. Things like Times Square and Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center. This is always a challenging shoot–trying to get such icons in a way that still highlights the couple can be tough! Then add on top of that the fact that it was nighttime, raining and SO CROWDED. I warned them ahead of time that other people in the images might not be avoidable and they were totally fine with it. In fact, they welcomed it. Afterall, it doesn’t look like the city if there’s no people!

These were two mini-sessions from this past weekend! If you’re interested in a cheaper option for portraits, contact me about these mini-session deals.

First, we have Raj who bought a mini-session for his girlfriend over Valentine’s Day. She lives in Switzerland, he lives in New York and he really wanted some beautiful photographs of her and also him and her together. They’re such an attractive couple–it’s impossible to take a bad photograph of them!

Also this weekend, I photographed Jorge–an emerging hip hop artist in the city. He had a cool, funky style which was fun to photograph. And even though I soooo obviously knew NOTHING about hiphop, he was still so sweet to me. The loser photographer who had no idea what hip hop sounded like!

Julia and Patrick are such a beautiful couple. We met at The Boathouse in Central Park on one of the sunniest and hottest days of this summer. Truly…all three of us were sweating and close to heatstroke. Ok, maybe not really with the latter, but still…it was hot.

Julia and Patrick are both from Louisiana originally and met after they each had moved up here to New York. Hence the reason they had such specific places in mind for their portraits. But in Julia’s hometown in LA, engagement announcements for the papers are only supposed be portraits of the bride. So we took images specifically of just Julia, who despite her CLAIMS about feeling awkward in front of the camera, was a gorgeous model.

The sad thing is, this shoot is months old. I just simply haven’t had the time to update!

In any case, Lindsay and Vince are such a gorgeous couple! Not only that, but the three of us had so much fun running around Philadelphia doing this engagement shoot. They’re playful and goofy–which I love. There were easily 100 amazing photographs to choose from, but here are a couple of my favorites.