We dusted off our point-and-shoot camera for an evening with Jason and Kelly. The next day we realized there were a ton of random pictures chronicling the past 10 month. So here is a cliff notes version of the time in between weddings.

 If you’ve been to our house you know we have a dog. She either barked at you from a room down the hall (if you were here for a consultation) or she barked at you in person and probably jumped on you. She’s never made an appearance on the blog and that needs to change! She’s really my baby but Aaron let’s her live here. Part cuteness, part crazy — she can be quite a handful. Oh and she’s completely spoiled — lots of beds and toys. Occasionally she manages to tear one of her toys apart. This was an artful example we came upon one day. We named it “ode to a dead giraffe”  :)

Sometimes we find toys that are more entertaining for us than her. After a trip to Dave and Buster’s with my parents, we used our tickets to buy some fun plush toys. The monkey with velcro feet doubled as a nice accessory…  If you can’t tell from the expression, she’s not happy with us. 

Eventually she came to like her new “clothes”. Here she is getting some love from my mom. 

 Happy Halloween! — Yeah I know it’s late. I spent my Halloween with my Little Sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters. The organization always throws a great Halloween bash complete with pumpkin decorating contest. After an unfortunate incident last year when our attempt at a Bratz pumpkin looked more like a hooker or a blow up doll — I decided to play it safe with a mummy pumpkin. I heart crafts!

 Yeah I didn’t dress up. I just couldn’t think of anything to go with Jamela’s doctor outfit. I was so NOT going to wear a paper hospital gown. Here we’re posing with some friends — Kelly and her little Elisha. Elisha is trying to look cool — I promise she’s not pissed. And Kelly hasn’t actually been drinking …

 On to Thanksgiving — after much stress over my first turkey I managed to pull off a great meal for the whole fam. Here’s a random shot of Aaron’s Grandma E.

  So we work a lot — you might already know that. Occasionally we take a vacation and last year we treated ourselves to an 11-day Caribbean cruise. We had a great time and posted some better pictures you can see here. The point and shoot turned up one gem – a champagne fountain from one of the formal nights. The idea is that women line up and take turns pouring champagne down the glasses.

 And now a belated birthday party post. Several friends joined us at the ONLY restaurant we like in Blue Springs — a delicious Chinese restaurant that cooks your food to order. We had a great time and apparently took some pictures!

 Tim is Aaron’s longtime best friend. Amy is Tim’s (then pregnant) wife whom Aaron had a good time snapping random pictures of. Seriously we had a flip book. This was Aaron’s choice — so Amy don’t blame me! I particularly love Tim’s expression — he thinks it’s hilarious when Aaron messes with Amy.

 Rust and Claire — one of the cutest, most endearing couples you will meet. We don’t get to see them much so were really happy that they could join us.

 OK now we’re back up to July. That was a long trip! Kelly and Jason (you may remember their awesome e-session and wedding pics) are clients turned friends and we couldn’t be happier! We met in Westport for some July 3rd hanging out. After dinner at McCoys we headed to Ernie Biggs Piano Bar.

A camera war between Jason and Aaron.

 We don’t actually know this girl, but it’s a good picture of the stage.

For the last three days I was lucky enough to get to fly out to San Diego and experience the super amazing Nate & Jacklyn Kasier of The Image is Found and their infamous Shootshops. All I can say is wow! These guys are awesome and really know what they’re doing.

Basically we got to hook up with 14 other great photographers from all around the country and spend a day at Nate & Jacklyn’s own studio. As I’m sure you know wedding photography tends to get a little repetitive and stuffy for a lot of people. These guys just know how to shake it up! For them it’s all about doing what they love and making honest, fun images of great couples (sound familiar… I hope so). They simply show everyone the way it’s done.

It was a fabulous experience and I can’t wait to start applying some of what I learned to what we already do. Watch out cause things-are-a-changin around HPD and we’re out to keep blowin you away.

Michael from Michael Andrew Photography was blazing away with pictures the whole time and made this slideshow of the whole experience. Be sure to check it out and see how much fun we had. I’m in there sometimes but you know me… I hide from the camera.

Shootshop Slideshow 

This has been a long time coming but it is finally time for you all to meet Ashley and Jeremy Parsons. Amazing friends, wonderful parents, and fellow photographers.

Heather and I have had the extreme privilege of getting to know these guys over the last few months and are truly honored to have become friends with such wonderful people. This business can be pretty cut throat and it’s such a release to spend time with people that understand that.

This weekend we had the opportunity to go out and have some shooting fun with both couples (yes, pictures of us exist out there too). They were amazingly easy to photograph and we’re just happy that we could give them some great images of themselves. Ashley was stunning in that amazing dress and Jeremy simply glows around her.

In honor of Ashley this is also my first post of textured images. It is a technique that I’ve been struggling on whether to embrace and she has slowly convinced me how wonderful it can be. Watch out! Now that I’ve opened that can of worms I’m sure there will be plenty more to come, it just fits our style

Thank you guys for being such wonderful friends. Keep up the wonderful work, the sky is the limit!

Well it’s a new year and Heather & I are so thankful for all of the wonderful couples we got to work with over the last year. It was a year that has shown a lot of growth for us and we have all of you to thank for it.

As the busy season slowly ended we sat down to reflect on all of the images we’ve captured this year and decided that we wanted to both share our thoughts and show off some of your beautiful events. Heather and I have each gone through and chosen our personal favorite 3 images from 10 categories (Engagement, Getting Ready/Pre-ceremony, Ceremony, Details, Reception, The Couple, Bride Only, Groom Only, Wedding Party, and ending with our overall favorites). We’ll spread the posts over the course of January so be sure to check back often. This may seem like quite a bit but considering all of the events we’ve done and the tens of thousands of images captured it made for some very tough choices. That’s also the reason we each chose our own favorites, and simply because we couldn’t agree very often.

So please, enjoy. Check back to see if your event makes our favorite list and to see some other wonderful couples. Feel free to leave your comments, we always love to hear from you!

Well at long last I have finally gotten some vacation pictures looking pretty. For those of you who don’t know Heather & I took a much need vacation at the end of November. We did an 11day Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Princess Cruise Lines’ Emerald Princess that sailed out of Fort Lauderdale and stopped at Antigua, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas, and The Bahamas.

I tried not to take too many pictures as this was a vacation away from photography but of course I still took quite a few. I’ll try to throw in a little explanation on some of them but if you want to hear more detail just give us a call! Enjoy.

Our ship, the Emerald Princess docked at St. Lucia.
The docks at Antigua, shot from our balcony. Lots of rainbows that morning.

Our first excursion was zip lining, and it was tons of fun! I can’t believe Heather agreed to do it!

We took a pretty long tour on St. Lucia that took us all over the island. The next 9 pictures were taken at their poorest fishing village. This was a little scary because our tour just dumped us in the middle of the village but I got some of my favorite pictures of the cruise here.

I just love this shot. He really wanted to pose when he saw me taking pictures. It cost me $2 but I think it’s worth it.

I would swear this dog was posing for me.

I just wanted to post this so you could see what the scene above actually looked like.

After the village we went up around the Pitons and visited this natural hot springs.

Then on to a drive up volcano. Very cool because you could see the bubbling water and steam. Stunk like sulfur though.

When we hit St. Kitts we realized that we hadn’t actually been to a beach yet. So we got up early and went to shore in search. The tourist desk recommended we go to Frigate Bay, much to our surprise this was the ugliest beach we had ever seen. At least the water was pretty and I got a couple of nice pictures (not of the beach though).

After the beach we took a private 4wd tour of St. Kitts. This was our favorite tour because it was very private and we stayed off the road for most of it. Our guide even stopped and gave us a picnic with local food and rum. This particular shot was at an old sugar cane plantation.

This was at a different plantation but this building wasn’t lived in because they thought it was haunted.

We just thought all these caterpillars were cool.

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Looking up in an abandoned windmill.

It wouldn’t be a vacation with out Heather showing off the bikini. Taken in The Bahamas.

I know we haven’t posted in a while and I promise we didn’t fall off the face of the planet. For those of you who didn’t know Heather and I took a much needed 2 week vacation. It’s been a great year but we really needed to get away.

Anyway, we’re back now so keep an eye out for lots of fun pictures and a report of everything we got to do.