Dream list #35: personal. {dallas tx engagement and wedding photographer}

"Give me a Sunday morning that's full of grace
A simple life and I'll be okay
Here in small town USA
Oh yeah"{small town usa - justin moore}
So I think we should just get one thing straight before we go any further.I love the country.
I actually kind of adore the country, and everything that goes along with it. I love big trucks. I love Cowboys. I love hay bales. I love fields of crops. I love country music. I love barns. I love big country houses with wrap-around front porches.
That's not to say that I can't appreciate certain things about the city, or that I think it's all bad. I spend most of my life in big cities. I live in one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, (unfortunately) and travel to several of the biggest most popular cities several times a year. And I do have to admit that both Chicago and San Fran have stolen little pieces of my heart with their fabulousness. But I like for them to be there for me to visit, not to live in. As usual Anne sums it up best:
"I think I would probably come to the conclusion that I'd like it for a while... but in the end, I'd still prefer the sound of the wind in the firs across the brook more than the tinkling of crystal."
I love the fresh air that you can't find in big cities. I love the big starry skies at night, the wide open fields, and the thick forests full of tall trees. I love horses and big belt buckles and I loooove Cowboy boots.
I've been waiting and saving for a pair of my own for several years now. Dream list #35. I wanted a pair of legit, for real, Cowboy boots. And as of two days ago I'm now the proud owner of beautiful Ariat boots. I've hardly taken them off for the past 48 hours. And they definitely deserve a blog post of their own. ;)
I just had to include this first series of pictures for your enjoyment. Oh the joys of being a photographer, and trying to explain to your little sister how to take pictures.Please don't ask what I was doing, because really...this is how all the pro's look when they are teaching ;)










I just really like looking down at my feet and seeing them there ;)


I cleaned/oiled them this morning...and I felt so legit that I wanted to saddle up and go round up a few cows or something when I was done. ;)





And unlike Taylor Swift...my dream is not to someday "be livin in a big ol city" but hopefully someday I'll be living in the wide open country. With my Cowboy and horses of course. ;)
Much Love.Jessica Shae

Katie-yo {dallas, tx engagement and wedding photographer}

Looking back over this year there are so many things I can be grateful for. I honestly can't believe all the doors that have opened, all the traveling I've done, and everything I've been able to cram into one little year. There have also been hard and not so enjoyable parts of this year. It hasn't all been cupcakes and laughter, but I can honestly say I am so grateful for it all. But the thing that I'm grateful for that I want to tell you about today, are the relationships. I've gotten to meet some of the dearest people this year, alot of the time while shooting weddings. And when I think about some of the people that are amongst my closest friends right now that 6 months or a year ago I didn't even know, I'm so so grateful for the way God orchestrates even the seemingly small things, like friendships.

One such friend is Mrs. Katie Opris, or as I like to call her, Katie-yo ;)

I shot this darling girls Bee-yoo-tee-ful Arkansas wedding in July, anyone who's been reading my blog for any amount of time probably remembers her because of her gorgeous wedding and amaaaaazing after shoot with the blue car ;) I loved her before I had even met her. From her emails, phone calls, and txts I could tell she was a girl after my own heart and then as soon as I laid eyes on this little 5 ft piece of adorable-ness the day before her wedding I was all "can we just go ahead and seal the deal now that we will be bff's until our dying day???"

I could go on and on and on about how dear this girl is. She loves the Lord so so much. She's funny. And witty. She loves her husband and is excitedly preparing to move to Romania (where he grew up) with him this coming as missionaries. She loves old books like me, especially Anne of Green Gables, and is definitely a "kindred spirit". She is an amazing photographer herself AND an amazing musician/singer. No lie, this girl is everything happy, wonderful, and amazing rolled up into one.

Aaaaaand...dun-du-dunnnn...

She's expecting a little Opris girlio this May!

Katie's family lives a little over an hour away from me, so when she came in town for the holidays I begggggeeeddd for a little scrap of her time and she was kind enough to give it! We ended up spending a whole afternoon together (whoops;) eating chipotle, laughing and catching up on life (face-to-face talk is so so much better than txting or FB) and we also made a little time to take some pictures of her adorable little baby bump.

And what do you do when you're out to lunch and you decided you want to do an impromptu photoshoot? You look out the window and say, "Oh, there's some pretty grass across the highway!"

And quickly run across 6 lanes of fast moving traffic to get to it, so that you can take amazing pictures like the one below.









Ohhhh Katie-yo. I love you.And that's that.




















And what kind of lame-o photographers would we be if we went away from the day without a picture of the two of us together???
Thank you railroad tracks for holding my camera for the picture :)




Much Love.Jessica Shae

Portraits 2010: contest {dallas, tx portrait and wedding photographer}

It's December!

Christmastime!

Holiday Cheer, Christmas music, parties, and most importantly celebrating the King of Kings coming to earth in the form of a little baby. I still look forward to this time of year almost as much as I did when I was 7 counting down the days to each exciting holiday event, and especially counting down the days until the BIG DAY (it's only 23 days away, in case you were wondering ;).

I'm also excited about this month because I've decided I'm not booking anymore clients until next year, so no more portrait sessions until next year, and other than second shooting a couple of times, I wont really be doing much shooting this month, other than for personal projects! I've needed this break for quiiiite sometime, and I'm looking forward to working on alot of the projects that get pushed aside when I'm just trying to keep up with editing, etc. I'll also be mixing things up here on the blog this month, doing a lot of fun stuff, starting today!!

I've wanted to do this for a while, and since we're now coming to the end of the year, I think this is a great time to do it. This past year has been crazy, fun, amazing, hard, stretching, wonderful, stressful, and in a lot of ways so much better than I could have dreamed it would be. I've booked/shot more weddings than I thought I would in my first year of shooting weddings, my business has grown so much faster than I dared to hope it would, and I've gotten to travel WAY more than expected. And I know that the biggest thank you for all of that needs to go to God, who does above all that I could ever ask or think time and time again for me. He opens doors and pushes me out into new things that scare me to death, but that I know I need to be pursuing ;) I'm grateful for His guidance, and provision that He's given time and time again this year, I am where I am because of His grace!

But the second big thank you has to go to you, my family, blog readers, clients, and friends. You've written me sweet emails and blog comments, referred your friends to me, booked me to shoot your wedding when I hadn't even shot one wedding yet, and I can't thank you enough for all of that! But, this is my little attempt to say a HUGE thank you to all of you. I'm going to be holding a contest on my facebook page for all of you, my faithful clients!

And here's how it's all going to work ;)

I've gone through and picked out my favorite pictures from portrait sessions, engagement/couple sessions, and weddings I've shot in the last year. I'm going to post them in three different facebook albums/blog posts over the next couple of days, and then let all of YOU vote on which ones you like the best. And the client with the most votes on their picture by December, *12th will win a professional quality 10x13 print of their photo. And THEN, the 3 winners of the 3 different categories (portraits, engagement/couple, weddings) will be entered to win a free gallery wrap canvas of their photo.

Phew, I hope that all made sense ;)

So without further ado, I'm going to start it all off with some of my favorite portraits from the past year, have fun looking through them, and then don't forget to go vote for them on my facebook page! Any votes I get here in the comments won't be counted.

The Manney Family

The Mills Family

The Self Family

The Chaney Family

They Farney Family

The Crain Family

Rachel Leigh: senior

Tim & Jacquelyn: maternity

Daniel & Kaela: maternity

Ashley Hall: senior

Nellie Ayon

The Piper Family

The Morris Kids

Hope Helms: headshots

The Green Family

Ready to vote!? You can click here to head on over to the facebook page and click "like" if you haven't already, and then decide which one is your favorite picture in this album and vote for it! And remember, it only counts as a vote if you comment on the picture you like, and say "vote"! "liking" the picture doesn't count as a vote ;) Can't wait to share all of my favorite couple/engagement pictures with y'all tomorrow!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Much Love.

Jessica Shae

*Because votes are coming in so quickly, and because I don't want to drag it out I've shortened the contest, so now all votes have to be in by December 12th! :)

Elvis & Katie: After Shoot {conway, arkansas - wedding photographer]

Remember that adorable couple/wedding that I blogged last week? (If you haven't seen it yet, PLEASE go look, their wedding day was just so amazing!) Well the fun's not over people I have more amazing pictures of them to share!

After seeing the car that they planned on leaving in - I fell in love and quickly planned an after shoot with with Katie, so that we could spend plenty of time getting some beautiful pictures of them with the car.

So after they left their wedding reception I followed them to their new little house where they were going to change and get ready to leave for their honeymoon. We just pulled the car up in front of their adorable new little house 0' dreams and started shooting. The lighting was perfect, the couple was gorgeous, and since all the stressful wedding day activities were over we were able to just take our time and have some fun ;)

Can you believe the lighting and colors here? I was giddy with happiness while taking these.

And of course it didn't hurt that I had two gorgeous completely-in-love people to work with ;)

ummm...hello fabulous vintage-ness.

Katie Katie - how do you do it?!

This girl was such a trooper. I know she was exhausted from the long day, and it was sooo hot and muggy out right now, and can you believe that in spite of all that I was getting pictures like this?!?

They both just had this "We're Married!" glow about them all afternoon. . .

. . . & I love watching them, just so content to be with each other.

Remember how I said it was so so hot? Well it was. And super muggy to boot. So just as we're finishing up taking pictures we hear the happy sound of an ice-cream trucks music as it made its way down the street. Katie laughingly said how good ice-cream sounded right then, and before you know it her uncle was out in the street waving him down!

It was the greatest thing ever. Elvis and Katie, just married, still in their wedding clothes standing on the side of the road picking out ice-cream from an ice-cream truck. Cars were honking and people were shouting well wishes from their cars as they drove past - it was just the cutest happiest thing.

The perrrfect way to end their already incredible and unique wedding day in my opinion.

ha.

Katie, whenever I need a smile I just look at this picture. You are so stinking cute!

And I love the fact that you got a sponge bob ice-cream - so so cool.

Anyone else find the little sign on the side of the van to the right of Elvis and Katie somewhat ironic?! ;) Love it.

Elvis and Katie you two are fabulous! Thanks for being so utterly adorable, love you guys!

Much Love.

Jessica Shae