As a documentary photographer, not only do I have the fabulous job of, amongst other things, photographing weddings, but occasionally I also have the *luxury* of being a 2nd shooter for some other incredibly talented, local wedding photographers Brian Lee, Bob Libby, and Heaven McArthur of Green Chair Studio.  Second shooting goes a little like this… Them: Hey Andrea, would you like to come shoot a wedding with me next month?  I need you to spend the day taking pictures of the groom while I’m with the bride, get detail shots while I’m shooting formals, and otherwise take general rockstar candids throughout the night.  And don’t worry about the edits, I’ll handle them.  Me: Why yes, I would love to help you!

But more important than the fact I get to skip out of post-production, I truly enjoy the opportunity to work with such stellar photographers.

A few weeks back, Bob asked me to join him at Portland’s own World Trade Center for the wedding of Michelle + Neil.  Despite MONTHS of rain, the evening was glorious, the bride was glowing, she and the groom were moved to tears on more than one occasion, and the dancing was downright fantastic.

Thanks so much to Bob for allowing me to be a part of the celebration and share a few of candids from their joyous beginning.

I had the most absolute honor of being invited out to Ben’s family farm for a ‘practice’ lamb roast in preparation for their September wedding, which lucky lucky me, I’ll be photographing. Though from the looks + most delicious taste of things, I’d say they have it all under control.  Ben is the brother of a very dear friend, Katherine, a slow food chef extraordinaire and owner of Cook With What You Have… and after Sunday, it became apparent that love of good food very clearly runs in this family.

It’s not often (or ever really) you get to rehearse photographing a wedding, so the opportunity to meet this amazing, beautiful, insanely industrious couple, and their fabulous friends, partake of their mad cooking skills, oh AND take a few photos along the way, was not one I was going to pass up.

I love Oregon.  I love my job.  I can’t wait for September.

Most of my business *happily comes from word of mouth, so one fabulous client usually begets another.   Case in point, Livia and her Don.  I’m photographing their wedding in August and very much look forward to attending my first ever Polterabend, a German wedding tradition that involves a lot of broken porcelain.  In the meantime, we spent some time together getting cozy with the camera.   In the backyard of their beautifully renovated home, the previous owners bequeathed (when was the last time you used that word??) to them the most fantastic rustic sign above the outdoor studio, “Paradise Theater”.  And if you’ll allow me to get schmoopy, it couldn’t be a more fitting sentiment for them.