I don’t usually spend alot of time on here showing you around my own life but I want to let you in on today.

On this very same day in 2009, I married Allison Singleton (now Meyer) and this last year has been wonderful for me/us. We laugh when people ask us about marriage because I think we are both pretty bad at it, (which I hear is typical.) But today was a day to remeber and celebrate some of the good stuff. I want to walk you through some of the highlights of today and of this last year!

First today:

1. I didn’t have a wedding this saturday. I have had 3 saturdays all summer that have been partially open and today we had nothing!!!
So we got up at 10:00 AM!!!!

2. Most days start this way but we went to Zanzibar next. Best skim iced latte’s in town.

3. We then went to the Farmer’s Market and walked around for a bit to work up an appetite!

4. We enjoyed an amazing lunch at Centro

5. We went home and hung out for a few hours. I got some things at the store like Spiderman Fruit Snacks which have become a favorite of ours. I would highly recommend them over all other fruit snacks. We also spent some time preparing for our couple’s massage at 4:00pm

6. At 3:45pm we arrived at The Spa at West Glen. Allison and I have never been to a spa really. We have never had a couple’s massage. It was a new experience. We were ushered in and shown the “relaxation area” to “get acclimated to the spa.” I changed faster and made it to the relaxation area before Allison. When she came out we couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t think we have laughed that hard in a while.

7. We ran home to clean up a bit before going back out to The Cheesecake Factory.

8. We then went to The Switch which we both enjoyed. We snuck in Coffee #2 for the day.

9. Came home, got out our cake from the wedding which was 1 year old. Also, earlier in the day we had chilled a bottle of wine we bought when we were in Ravello, Italy.

That has pretty much wrapped up our day.

We did exchange gifts (which I am not sure you are supposed to do on anniversaries? Are you?) Allison has been wanting this awesome painting of Italy (I think) and I got it for her in July and gave it to her then, oops. I am bad at keeping secrets.

Allison got me two amazing books. One on the history of cameras. (Did you know Canon came into being because Leica was too expensive and some dude just took one apart and made a canon?) The other book is the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to Birds. A TOTALLY AWESOME bird book! I love birds and this book is all you need to know to identify any bird in North America. Thanks babe!!!

Okay. So here are some of my highlights from this last year. (That I have pictures of)

1. Italy -

(view from our hotel)

(drinking $6 frozen lemonade)

(sunset out our hotel room)

2. Camping / Trout fishing at Bloody Run

(breakfast of champions)

3. Snow day – it snowed so bad both our works cancelled!!!!

4. Holidays / Baking

5. Food night. A bunch of my friends came over and we cooked all day!! (are you starting to see a trend?)

(Homemade pasta with my pasta maker from Allison!!!)

(The best vanilla bean creme brulle I have ever had!!!)

6. Our Garden

(Which turned into THIS!!!! )

It has been a fun year! We would love to have better pictures of everything but these are what we have.

I have a beautiful wife and best friend! Allison, thanks for having me!  Here’s to many more years together!!!!

Thanks for reading!

-Justin

I am starting to use my website more and finding that there are some things I need to do better at. I have my list, but I want to ask you, what would you like to see?

I have been working on putting together a few things that seem to come up frequently and I am compiling a list of updates.

1. Planning your wedding day (my suggested schedule)
2. FAQ for Families, Engagements, Weddings, and Seniors
3. Maybe photo tips
4. Maybe “Featured Wedding”
5. Designing your photo album with us

What do you think? What am I missing? What do you want to see? While I am asking questions, does the site work for you alright? I have tried to stay away from using too much flash on the site, but do I loose the effect?

Let me know!

-Justin

Kayla Jo Barth contacted me a long time ago to be her wedding photographer. It was well in advance compared to what I was used to. In the mean time before her wedding I had the privaledge of taking her sister Karlee’s senior pictures. (you can see them here)

The Barth family is great! They have been a blast to work with. I know that everyone describes themselves as “fun-loving” but the Barth family REALLY is fun-loving.

When Kayla’s wedding finally arrived, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had never met Adam until his wedding day and let me just say, I think Adam and Kayla are PERFECT for each other!
I haven’t laughed as much as a photographer as I did with them. You will see that in the pictures.

Maybe the most unusual part of the day was the very concise wedding ceremony. My guess is that the entire ceremony was under 5 minutes including the time it took the party to walk up and down the aisle.
I don’t mean to say that in a bad way at all, they knew exactly what they wanted and the ceremony took care of all of it!

Apparently Ryan and Michelle don’t think they are super “spontanious” but I found them to be exactly that. We met for an engagement shoot the other night and were racing to get as much done before the sun went down. We ended up at my work on the backdrop. I asked them to let me play a little with photoshop. This is what I came up with.

I don’t think of myself as a “boss” but I do have 5 other people that shoot with me.

My favorite is my wife, Allison. Taylor Hiatt and Rachel Stork have shot alot with me this year. Dan McGuire and Carrie Krupke took a wedding for me while Allison and I were out of town for different wedding of some friends of ours.
Carrie has been shooting with me the longest and continues to do a great job. Dan and I seem to see things similarly. So I knew Dan and Carrie would be great, but since I wasn’t there at all, this was a fun project to go through because I really had no idea what was coming. I looked through the pictures and got to see the whole story of the day unfold.

Dan and I shot Adam and Jen’s engagement pictures in Ames last fall (you can see them here) and I loved the connection that was evident between the couple. You can tell that they really enjoy each other. I think one of the funniest parts of their whole wedding was that it had to be moved because the Simon Estes Amphitheater was flooded. When I talked to Jen a few days before the wedding, she seemed calm, cool and collected and judging from the pictures, the turned lemons into lemonade and made light of the situation by wearing floaties overlooking the amphitheater. Congrats!

Here are some of my favorite pics!

Just got home from Iowa City. I got to take pictures for an old friend and a new one. I have known Matt for about a decade and Kristen works with one of my best friends in the world. We had a great time talking throughout the pictures. It was good to connect with Matt again some and get to know Kristen a bit. Also, every time I go to Iowa City, I like it a bit more than the last time.

Here are some of my favorites from tonight.

Sam and Amanda asked me to take some pictures of their new daughter Kennedy. She is a beautiful girl! It was great to catch up some with Sam. See the whole gallery here.

It was a hot one!

A few weeks ago, I got to spend some time in Ames, Iowa with Eric and Seanna and shoot their wedding with Rachael Stork. I was born and raised in Ames so it has a soft spot in my heart. A few of the highlights for me were:
1. Getting to run around the ISU campus
2. Running into a good buddy of mine from college who was at the wedding (and a long time family friend of Eric’s)
3. Hearing a great live band
4. Making a handful of wonderful new friends

Here are a few pictures as a teaser, full album coming soon.

This weekend, I was able to make it to small town Iowa to photograph my new friends Dan and Crystal’s wedding. I don’t think we talked about it much at the time of their engagement photos, but Dan and I have found out that we share a love for Iowa trout fishing. I tried to let their wedding day be about the wedding but I kept thinking of trout fishing questions to ask Dan or the other groomsmen. Their wedding was a beautiful outdoor wedding. The weather was perfect and we got it all in before the rainy holiday. Here are a few pictures.