I met Jessica and Jeremy on a cold, grey morning at Cottesloe Beach.  They wanted to have photos taken there when there was not that many people around and the wintery weather kept onlookers away, that’s for sure!

Jessica and Jeremy are getting married in November so hopefully these shots will provide a contrast to blue skies and sunny, warm weather on their wedding day!

I love how Jessica looks in these two images.  Especially the image on the right, it is such a confident look!

Jeremy surprised Jessica with a impromptu dip on the beach at the end of the session.  Such a great image to finish off a post!

Looking forward to your wedding day Jessica & Jeremy

After the wedding in Akrata, we travelled back to Athens to spend a couple of days there before heading to Santorini.

We stayed in Plaka, the oldest district in Athens that sits underneath the Acropolis.  Our hotel room had an amazing view of the acropolis and we spent the two days wondering the streets around Plaka, visiting taverns for yummy food and cold beer with frosted glasses (they really know how to serve beer on a 40 degree day) and of course we went to the Acropolis.  Unfortunately we decided to visit the new Acropolis museum on our last day and sure enough, although the guide book said it would open at 12pm, it was closed for the day.  That was a disappointment as we had heard some amazing things about the museum.  Oh well, it just means we will have to go back to Athens again, which I am quite happy to do!

Our view from the balcony at night

The Acropolis - it is just amazing!

The streets of Plaka were beautiful, so I tried my hand at some street photography.

Isn’t this dog just the cutest?  Sitting on the window, waiting for his owners to come home I think

As a wedding photographer, I cannot resist snapping a couple in love…

While I am waiting for a album to upload, I might start uploading some images from our trip to Greece and Italy in June, finally!  This trip was a little different as I took my laptop along with me and tried to download and edit a few photos as I went because I always come home with 1000s of images to edit and I never get to them.  I still have 1000s of unviewed images from Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and China just sitting on discs and hard drives.  This is where I think film was better, limited photos taken (as I was always a bit skint travelling), take them to my lab and presto, photos from my trip in my hot little hand.  Although I never quite managed to get them into an album and now they sit in a trunk in my living room…

So Akrata was the little town where Kirsty & George’s wedding was held.  We arrived on Thursday (after a marathon long haul trip from Perth via KL & London) a little shaken by driving on the motorway from Athens to Akrata.  On Friday we visited Olympia and Saturday was the wedding.  So not much time to enjoy this peaceful place but I had a little bit of jetlag so was up early on Saturday to walk around before everyone else was up and things got a little more hectic.

The mountain in the background is nicknamed the sleeping lady, can you see her?

Told you I was up early!  This is the sunrise on Friday morning.

Olympia.  It still amazes me to see remains of buildings from a couple of thousand years ago (or more, history never a strong point, geography, now I am way better at that)

Sometimes, weeds can be pretty…

The museum there was pretty incredible.  Strangely I gravitated towards the sculpture of the naked man…

How’s the detail in the shoe?  It is just awe inspiring…

Saturday morning, 6am on Akrata beach.

Someone else was up early, or left their bike there the night before.  A more likely tale since the street was partying till the wee hours the night before.

Next installment, Athens… maybe next weekend?

I met Kat & Tim at Claremont Showgrounds for a abandoned fairground themed e-session.  Kat & Tim are getting married in early October and their ceremony location is near an old themepark so they have requested this spot as one of their locations for the bridal portraits.  Kat likes abandoned theme parks (I googled this and apparently there are a lot of people who love taking photos of abandoned theme parks out there - there are whole forums on the topic) so while the showground is closed down (apart from the woodwork show that was on and was surprisingly popular) we headed there to get some shots.

This was one of my first ‘themed’ e-sessions so I got a little excited with ordering helium balloons (that Dale & I had fun later sucking the helium out and talking funny - never gets old I tell you!) and a friend found me some fairy floss too in a party shop.  It is a little funny as Kat is sisters with Jen who was my first ‘themed’ wedding shoot, the 50’s wedding from April.

Fairy floss YUMMY!!!

Balloons!!!

I love these two shots…

Tim’s a fireman so brought along his uniform for some shots…

A whole lot more images can be seen here on my Facebook page!

Just a little look these beautiful silk and ribbon handcrafted folios available for family portrait session (or ‘just because’ portrait sessions!)  I will be launching matching albums very soon.

I was so excited to package this up and send it to Natalie & Craig after Rhys’s newborn session, but I had to stop myself from rushing off to the post office to get a few shots first!

Looking back on this e-session a couple of weeks ago, I cannot believe how sunny and warm it was on the first day of August.  Another photo session in my favourite place for an e-session, the area around High Street, Fremantle.  We did the usual, Round House and the Cliff St wall (right near the Roma restaurant where I had my first waitressing job over 10 years ago now… I have to say I wasn’t a very successful waitress to be honest.  Hot, sloppy pasta dishes and clumsy waitresses don’t mix).  But I also located a brilliant blank wall painted with white and silver stripes at a carpark which I may or may not be able to find again.  Fremantle is like that, hidden spots all over the place and every time I shoot there I find something new!

I will be heading back to shoot Mahoney & Matthew in Fremantle for their wedding in October and I cannot wait.  I also want to see Mahoney’s shoes!  I was in awe of how she walked in her stilettos through Fremantle and want to see what footwear adorn her feet on the day!  Just because I wear flats for 99% of my life doesn’t mean I don’t drool over an amazing pair of high heels

Got to love a bit of afternoon sun flare

My partner loves to surf, to kite surf and take surf photos…  He sometimes allows me to bring him along to a wedding as my second photographer (if I pay him).  I love having him at a wedding as he is a good foot taller than me so we have completely different angles at a wedding and he is great at capturing candid moments.  But on weekends like this, when I am not shooting weddings and the surf is cranking (hee hee I still feel weird using surf terms) he is off surfing and shooting.  Today, as I came home from a very successful shopping trip, he was giddy with excitement in front of his computer after a great surf and also a 30 minute photo session.  I thought I would feature one of his photos here, hopefully so that my spare walls in the new house don’t get completely covered with surf images over the next couple of months…

Rhys was three weeks when I met him and his parents.  Such a cute little guy even when he was getting grumpy with tummy time!

I love little fingers!

Rhys really excelled at tummy time.

I love the hands in this shot…

I am supposed to be on a diet in preparation for summer and the wedding season (lots of food and cake and a lot of sitting on my bum in front of my computer…) so I made chocolate brownies yesterday.  Oh well, I will go to the gym tomorrow…

Kirsty & George were married in the town of Akrata, which is found on the Peloponnese in Greece.  Akrata is George’s home town and it is a beautiful, quiet, seaside town.

Kirsty got ready at the Akrata Beach Hotel (where most of the Australian guests who travelled over to Greece were staying) and the small room was filled with the hairdresser, makeup artist and helpers, that all were somehow related to George and coming to the wedding later.  With their help, Kirsty came to find out about a couple of wedding traditions that hadn’t been mentioned.  One of them was writing the names of single women at the wedding on the bottom of her shoe, and the last name to rub off was going to be married next (what is it with traditions all trying to marry off the single women?) and another was getting a single man to put a coin in the bride’s shoe then putting it on the bride’s foot for goodluck (and if your shoes weren’t going to give you blisters before they will after walking around with a euro in there…)

The ceremony was at 5pm and was one of the liveliest weddings I have attended.  I don’t think the guests stopped chatting and commenting about the couple for the whole wedding, THEN there was the rice throwing…  I knew that there was going to be rice throwing, I assumed it was going to be at the end when they walked out.  Um no…  after the ring exchange and the placing of the crowns on their heads, they walked around the alter together and BAM everyone starts chucking rice at them and not in a sprinkling kind of way, there was a lot of force behind that rice!  Apparently when Kirsty took her hair out that night, a load of rice fell out as well.

After the ceremony, we had about 20 minutes for photos on the beach before heading to the reception venue which was in another beach town, 40 minutes away.  The reception started at 8pm, a couple of hours later than the typical Australian reception, but 2 hours earlier than a Greek wedding reception start time, so a bit of a compromise.  The reception was one big party though, even if it did start 2 hours early. There was mountains of amazing food, dancing, plate throwing and more dancing under the stars on a balmy summer night.

If you would like to see more images from this wedding, I have a photo gallery of images on my facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180903&id=166241362378&ref=mf