Justin Salem Meyer
Des Moines, Iowa Photographer

Today was perfect (except for the temperature!) But the lighting outside reminded me why I love to shoot. My lovely wife helped me out today and we took photos of our good friends Tania and Jared. It was cold outside but I kept myself warm reminding myself that we will be shooting their wedding in Mexico a few weeks!!!!

In a much needed turn of events, the weather turned bearable outdoors and we were able to take some great photos on a normally chilly day! I am starting to believe that spring may be around the corner soon.

I loved the first hint of spring and this couple was a pleasure to be around!

SO… my mom is awesome. Last night I found out that tonight we would be celebrating Trent Keegan’s birthday tonight at Bible Study. So I called my mom and told her that I would like a “Peanut Cake” (to feed about 30 people) that has no peanuts in it because Trent is deathly allergic to peanuts. So in under 24 hours, I picked up this winner!!!

AMAZING! RIGHT???

To do her justice, here are some of her other cakes in the last few years that I have gotten the pleasure of photographing.

I got the privilege of photographing and being in my good friend Nick Sideris’s wedding. He married my wife and my “roommate” Elyse. Elyse had been living with Allison and I for the last year and we are very close with Nick and Elyse. Obviously, being in a wedding causes problems when you are also trying to shoot the wedding so I relied on my friends Kate Altmaier of DSMDaily.com (Kate, you like that free plug in there?) and Austin Day to take the pictures that I couldn’t. I couldn’t have been more pleased with their work. It is always a challenge to shoot in the middle of the winter but God gave us some pretty amazing weather considering.

Nick and Elyse and I are in the same Bible study with the Downtown Church thedtc.org and most of our Bible study made the 10+ hour drive to MI and stayed in Elyse’s dad’s home. It was such a fun weekend to hang out like a high school summer camp or something.

Here are some of my favorites from the day. Though it is pretty apparent, Nick and Elyse are both very Greek and we got to experience more greek culture than my average wedding.

I have been doing a terrible job of keeping up on the blog recently.
My friends Charlie and Laurel Larson have yet again invited me into their lives to photograph their beautiful daughters.

What cute girls!

So the year begins!

Allison and I enjoyed a weekend in Wisconsin for our first wedding of the year. I love being able to take my wife to work. She is my best friend and a great photographer. We were honored to be able to shoot a wedding for a couple who has gone to Drake University here in Des Moines.

Winter weddings are scary to me because there is little chance that pictures will work out outdoors. God knew what he was doing when he made the world and the sun remains my favorite light source.
We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the location of the wedding because the space was beautiful. The country club had recently been redone and it looked great and was warm!

All in all, we had one the the best weddings and are so excited about the photos. Here is a sample of what I have worked on so far. The full gallery will be available later this week I bet.

Here is Gawker.com

I know it isn’t a huge deal, but I shot some pictures for my friends the other day and it seems that they went viral. The gawker link had 30,000+ view and the Reddit article has 192,000+ view so that is kind of cool.

See the gawker link here
See the gallery here

I try to spend most of my time on this blog talking about wedding and engagement photography but I am really excited about a project that I have been working on at my job 8/7 Central. Allspice is a new business that has come to the East Village of Des Moines. They have been a client of mine for a few months now. Alex, the owner, (@allspiceguy) has become a regular in our shop as we have been working with him. He and his wife have developed a real gem. Allspice is a “spice shop” with a olive oil and vinegar tasting bar. I have never really seen anything like their shop before. I got to do alot of the original photography that they enlarged on their walls.

Well, we have finally launched their website and I am really excited about how the website and the photos have turned out. Check them out here, allspice.