As this wedding wraps up, I begin preparing for the wedding of Katrina & Jesse, friends of Raj & Jesse. Stay tuned for images from Katrina & Jesse’s engagement session, shot earlier this summer.

Oh, hello! Lovely to see you all after a long, hot summer. I’ve been off being fabulous, doing fabulous things. That is, if you count touring the West Wing of the White House fabulous. Or lake swimming in Maine. Or white water rafting on class 5 rapids and cliff diving from 20 feet up.  The cliff diving falls under “scary” and “things I NEVER need to do again” more so than “fabulous,” but whatevs! Perhaps the best thing I’ve done is celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary. This has been a summer for the record books, but I’ve been remiss in blogging and have lots to catch up on.

Let’s get started with Raj & Jessica. They married this past weekend at Normandy Farm in Blue Bell, PA. It was an emotional outdoor ceremony. Jessica wore her mother’s veil. In this first image, I used the veil as a sort of filter, shooting through it to capture Jessica’s gorgeous red lips. The reception was an awesome DANCE! DANCE! REVOLUTION! Seriously. Raj & Jessica are really really good dancers. In fact, they are such good dancers, the pronunciation of “real” should be changed to “RULL” to drive the point. Everyone was on the dance floor. It took some restraint not to bust out some sweet moves of my own.

I’ll post more tomorrow. For now, I sleep. It’s bedtime for Bonzo.

Love, Brandy

This is fridge worthy. It seems wrong, though, to secure it with my Elvis magnet. Sorry, Veronica.

Loyal readers of the blog (Hi, Kristen! I’m sooooo looking forward to your visit. Where should we go? I want to try Churchkeys. What are you going to wear?¬† What am I going to wear? Oh, sorry non-Kristen readers. I’ll stop addressing her in this parenthesis.)….where was I? Oh, yes! Loyal readers will notice that I’ve been lagging on my monthly playlist. Sorry about that. Teensy bit busy these days. So, I’ll make it up by providing the song you’re going to dance your first wedding dance to. Seriously, it’s so perfect. PERFECT!¬† It has been my musical crack first thing in the morning and last thing before bed for the last 4 months or year…I forget.

Scratch first dance of the list.

You’re welcome.

In other musical news, I saw Phoenix when they performed at DAR Constitution Hall, here in D.C. last month. AWE-SOME. The cobalt concert tee is in heavy rotation.  The tee shirt did, however, confuse a slightly crazy guy on the street who mistook the word Phoenix as some political statement on my part. I was incoherently berated for one of the following offenses:

supporting Arizona’s Immigration policy

opposing Arizona’s Immigration policy

I’m not sure which I was supposed to have done.¬† I said, “This is a concert tee shirt of a band. They’re French.” He said, “Oh,” and walked away. I think he was disappointed. French pop transcends politics, dude. Seriously.

-Brandy

This weekend I hosted my friend, Kristen, who was visiting from NYC. We did the whole “DC thing” and by that I mean we sunbathed all afternoon on my roof while drinking boxed wine. Incidentally, I give this newly discovered boxed wine 5 stars for utility and 2 stars for taste. Our vitamin D therapy led to the first sunburn of the season, so I feel like summer is officially here.

The image of Kristen above was taken across the street from the Portrait Gallery with my iPhone.¬† We visited the Portrait Gallery to check out the exhibit, Portraiture Now: Communities. I recommend seeing it while it’s showing. Photo-realist painter Jim Torok’s pieces were incredible. This kind of painting has always fascinated me. In fact, my all time favorite piece of art is a photo-realistic painting called Betty by Gerhard Richter. I would often visit Betty when she hung in the St. Louis Art Museum. To experience her in person is really breathtaking. She holds a certain power over me, inspiring the color palette for my living space.

Betty by Gerhard Richter

The exhibit got me thinking about the accessibility of photography and it’s effect on the validity of photography as an art form. Many photographers will argue that the camera phone cheapens the perceived value of the medium. Don’t even get me started on what fine art painters think of us, it’s not good. I don’t hold this belief. Personally, I’m happy to see people excited over images their cameras produce. In many people this sparks an interest in learning “real” photography, the kind that involves an understanding of shutter speed, aperture, focal lengths and ISO. For most, however, camera phones are a fun tool of expression, and what’s wrong that? As children we are given crayons to play with and we use them to record our surroundings and fanciful imagination. The camera phone is like those crayons, where as real cameras are like that of oil paints in the hands of master artists.

But what about the fact that photography has zero barrier for entry? Anyone with a credit card can purchase a higher-end prosumer camera and call themselves a photographer. Some will even turn professional, charging clients money, even before they develop their craft. There is nothing as legitimizing as a business card and a blog. Can we call what these folks produce, in the absence of expertise, art? No! Mastery of one’s craft, a deliberation, a premeditation – if you will, is a requisite of art. It should not surprise you to learn that I despise punk music for the same reason.

Despite everything, this photographer loves her iPhone. Still hates punk.

Dress: Elegance Fashion Boutique Veronica, who is a fiber artist, crafted a gorgeous silk shawl to go with her vintage gown. I loved it. Here are three more images which feature the shawl.

One of my favorite images from the whole day. I used her shawl to create a shadow pattern on her back.

Stay tuned for I’ll be posting more of Veronica & Simon’s wedding portraits.

So TECHNICALLY these are the magnolia trees in front of the Freer & Sackler Gallery and the not cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. What do I look like? A tourist?

Thank you, Easter Bunny!