Jamie & Anne's Wedding

Just got done with four days in beautiful BFE -- err, I mean Leatherwood Mountain Resort, NC, where I attended and photographed the wedding of one of mine and my husband's mutual best friends. Yep... I shot a wedding. (Everything I ever say I'll never do, I wind up doing. I should just keep my mouth shut from now on, heh.) While I could never do it professionally, it was actually very fun to shoot friends.

It rained like hell, the mud was plenty and the photographer quite inexperienced, but the bride was beautiful, the ceremony sincere, the food divine and the party fabulous. (All the parties!) I wish Jamie and Anne all the love and happiness I've found in my own marriage, which is the best I could ever wish for anyone.

Here's a mini-slideshow of some teaser photos for now.




(click here for the full-sized slideshow)

Addendum

Okay, Dave Navarro is not a loser; I was just annoyed at Lakewood Ampitheatre.

Never trust a rock star

Well it's a good thing we already had tickets, because counting on a loser-rock star to remember anything is out of the question. But because it was Twitter, the entire world knows Dave Navarro flaked out on us, at least.

That being said, my pictures stink (although to be honest I haven't downloaded or looked at them yet, but we were very far away and I know my camera) but c'est la vie. Dave's lucky he can play, or I might be extremely pissed at him. ;)

But oh, can he play...

Richie, you win, because everything we saw in the past wasn't the real Jane's. They couldn't have been any better. Just flawless. So flawless and so perfect and so the real Jane's Addiction that I'm about ready to take the loser-rock star up on his offer to comp us tickets to any other show in the Southeast (however I'd demand a phone number before I drove out of my way for that).

I'm not going to rant on about how seriously awesome Jane's Addiction were/are. I can't... my brain short-circuits when I try, because they were that good. If you know, you already know, and if you don't, then you never will. Eric Avery -- I don't know how they ever did it without you.

(On a NIN note: I used to like NIN a lot 13 years ago, and I knew all but maybe 1 song in their set. It was pretty good, Trent's voice sounded impressive after all these years, but it was hardly in the 'best show ever' category. I wasn't crazy about the way a couple of the songs were altered slightly, and the scaled-down band - meaning missing song parts - really lacked something in a couple of places for me. Maybe I'm just old now and over all that emo-ness, because NIN really struck me as kinda self-indulgent, to be honest, and that was before Jane's even played.

And after Jane's was through, NIN really looked like an opening act - again, this is coming from someone who was a fairly large NIN fan and knows PHM and DS both very well. I actually find I like their studio albums better than the band live: they just didn't live up to all the hype I've heard.)

YOW

Holy what the heck... Richie just won tickets to Jane's Addiction from Dave Navarro via Twitter. I officially have nothing bad to say about Twitter, anymore, ever.

So I go from the lawn to seats, possible great ones.. and with the relaxed camera policy?!?

No bleedin way, man. If I ever recover my breath and my rapid heartbeat, I'm going to go shoot Jane's Addiction and Nine Inch Nails tonight.

HOLY WHAT THE HECK!

From hurricanes to tornadoes

Not literally, thank goodness -- Florida hurricanes, both literal and figurative, are thankfully behind me for good. But the wind, she blows, and in honor of the (figurative) Georgia tornado that has swept/is sweeping through many a life connected with mine at the moment, I'm doing some soul-searching as well.

I am going to use the Nerd Parade's summer downtime as a personal sabbatical from the world of the dark, smoky bar (unless I am there by my own personal choice). Just as Nerd Parade has been going non-stop since January '07, so too have I chased them around since January '07. My plans for the downtime are to finally clean out the embarrassing backlog of photographs I possess (from all facets of my photography, not just NP) and decide what my future plans will be.

In essence, I have not yet decided if I will return as Nerd Parade's in-house photographer after the summer ends. Truth be told, I have not yet decided whether I will return as a band photographer at all. There are plenty of Atlanta photographers out there to fill in the tiny, tiny gap I would leave, photographers who either already do it professionally or are striving to become professionals.

To make a long story very, very short: What most of the people whom I encounter don't realize is that I do have a career, and it isn't as a photographer. I spend 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, staring into a computer screen at my job. When I go home at night, my eyes hurt. I've also got a musician husband and all that comes with that to take care of, and a daughter going into middle school next year. I manage my house, my office, and still cook dinner 5-6 nights a week. I live 30 miles outside of Atlanta. And lately, when I have a spare minute, I find myself wanting to do nothing but sleep.

I was doing a little networking when I first moved to Georgia, but with Nerd Parade's increasingly hectic schedule over the past few years, I stopped making offers. It quickly became apparent that I would be unable to take any photography gigs if they conflicted with the Nerd Parade's appointments, booked or not. On several occasions, I'd booked something for myself several months in advance, only to have to cancel at the last minute due to circumstances beyond my control. (Again, you have to understand, it's a bit different than photographing 'Random Band X' -- I'm married to the bass player in NP, and we have one car.) It's seriously frustrating.

I begin to realize that there's only room for one industry professional within a family structure, unless there are no children involved. I enjoy photography and that has not changed. I will always love it, I feel I'm pretty good at it, and I will never stop taking photographs everywhere I go, but I need to re-evaluate how my photography does or does not fit into my current life.