Monthly Archives: December 2009

Engagement Pictures, Part III

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*All photos by Matt Miller

By the time we got to the High, the sun was down. I parked on a side street, and then we walked around to the back-side of the High. All of the security guards were looking at us like we were bonkers. First, Matt had us stand waaay far up on the stairs while he laid on the ground at the bottom to take our pikchurs. We played around on the stairs for awhile,  and then JP tried to give me about 44 heart attacks by sliding down the rails. Much to the security guards’ confusion, we went and started taking pictures in a little alcove. We laid on the ground, and that’s how Matt got those bananas face shots of us. Oh, and before that I decided to nom on JP’s nose. True story. JP nommed on mine too, but it was significantly less awesome.

Next we stood inside those concrete dividers, and the light was all awesome and vignette-y. Matt told us that we’d be mainly silhouettes, so we should just change poses after every camera click. Yes, I did do the frame-your-face-voguing. I think it’s amusing to look at those shots and compare what each of us was doing. We didn’t have a clue what the other was doing, well, until JP cheated and looked over. My thing was to act like a total ham-turkey-Tyra-woulda-been-proud girl, and JP jumped and climbed like a monkey.

NOW we come to the Alice in Wonderland part. Or, well, I think it’s Alice in Wonderland-y. Whatever it is, I think it’s awesome, amazing, and needs its own word because I think it’s that cool. We got into the TINY concrete boxes. It’s hard to tell, but the ceilings of the boxes are slanted, and where we were oriented in the boxes, my back was essentially pressed against the ceiling. I think they really do look like the part in Alice where she gets all gigundaboob and takes over the rabbit’s house. Or when she cries herself the lake. Fitting both of us into one of those boxes was also pretty tricky. The very last shot Matt took in the Alice boxes was the one with the bike. I heard him coming, but didn’t really catch a look until he drove buy. Homeslice was on a ghetto-rigged bike-with-a-boombox, rocking out to Creedance Clearwater and drove right through the shot. I think it looks pretty freakin’ sweet, if you ask me.

So concludes the engagement picture roundup. I adore them all, and I wish that we could have a photoshoot every weekend now. (This coming from the terrified-hyperventilate-I=don’t-know-what-to-do kid? Yep). I really enjoyed doing all of the bright-color-styling, too, even if it ain’t e’erybody’s cup of tea. We had a total blast, and I’m not too cool to admit that I’m EXTRA excited now about the wedding, because we get to plan and do more fun and ridiculously awesome stuff.

Did seeing your engagement photos make anybody else extra excited for wedding-land? Did it make it all even more real? Also, now that you’ve seen them all, or at least the favorites, what are y’alls’ favorites? Out of the whole mess!

Engagement Pictures, Part II

In this installment, explainings will be after the pictures! I now present…

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*All photos by Matt Miller

After we were finished playing in the field, Matt asked us where we’d like to go next. We’d previously discussed with Matt the going to Little Five to run around, so I sort-of cautiously suggested that we head to Little Five, but there might be a cool place on the way for us to shoot. I explained that there was this random papered-up graffiti on an underpass on Memorial, and it had “Pray for ATL” written on it. Matt immediately knew what I was talking about, said he’d always wanted to shoot there but always forgot. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, internally patted myself on the back, and thought I got a few cool points with the fates.

That is until we got there. I’d forgotten how narrow the median underneath the graffiti was. I’d forgotten how fast the cars whooshed by. Matt trotted over to the middle like it was no big deal, and I stood on the edge of the sidewalk like a deer in headlights for what felt like 20 minutes. It was probably only about 2 minutes, but my frozen-ness made it seem like forever. I decided to suck it up, and ran across the street with JP.

He then had us lay down underneath the hands. By this point, my adrenaline had kicked in, so it wasn’t really a bother. I felt pretty bad-ass laying in a median with 40,oo0 ants, lots of sticker-bramble-tumbly-things, and of course, a discarded hubcap. It didn’t faze me that I was flashing about half of Atlanta, though I was very, very glad I wore tights. It was actually pretty amusing, and after seeing the pictures, I am SO glad we shot there. We are too cool for school, non?

Next up was Freedom Park, a little bit down the ways from “Pray for ATL.” This part got extra exciting for me, because this is when the CRANES came out. Oh, my delightful cranes. The COLOR that the cranes brought. Ugh, the furious-day-and-a-half of folding was totally worth it. Matt had me put on my TB heels, which I was excited and nervous about– excited for shoe shots, nervous for being 6’7″ rather than 6’3″. (I got over that little mental ish pretty quickly).  He set up the cranes around us, we yanked up JP’s pants so that his blue socks could show for the shoe shots.

After we partied with the cranes standing up, we got on the ground, and Matt rained the teeny blue cranes on us. That was super awesome, even though I’m sure we ruined about 400 shots by one of us closing our eyes. We then got up, and did a few cranes-kissing and us-kissing shots, and then headed off to our next destination: The High Museum!

I love these shots (as well as ALL of our shots), because of the intense COLOR and awesome factor. I’m glad I didn’t come off as a crazy loon by folding all of those cranes. I’d like to think that they were a pretty B.A. prop.

What awesome props did y’all use in your engagement shoots? (Or plan to use, for that matter!) Did you have any nervous-shoot locations (i.e. the underpass) that ended up being totally awesome?

Engagement Pictures, Part I

Rather than lumping all of our engagement pictures into one post, I’ve decided to split them up. This is mainly because, well, I want to, and I have too many favorites to put all in one post. I love way too many. Plus I gotta ‘splain ‘em all.

So, first we begin with…

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This leg of the engagement-shoot journey took place in a a big ol’ abandoned weed field. We should get major street cred because it was marked “NO TRESSPASSING.” After not obeying the sign, we started to play in the weeds, and then hunkered down and pretended to be in the wild. (Or at least that was my thought, I’m not sure how JP approached it).

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Obviously, my ADHD self spotted something in the wild that caught my attention, so while JP looked at the camera, I looked at shiny things… or something like that.
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At this point, Matt suggested that I try to push JP over. Clearly, by my devilish grin and JP’s incredulous face, this was going to go swimmingly.
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I reared back…
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And hulk-smash-shoved the ever-living-crap out of him. On the rare occasion that I actually do follow directions, I REALLY follow directions.
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Man down.
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JP got up, I brushed him off, and then we started doing the engagement-shoot-kissy-time. I’m grinning like a cheeseball and kissing JP at the same time. Takes talent, that does.
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After that, we jumped around a little bit. That was pretty freaking fun, which is evident by looking at our faces.
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*All photos by Matt Miller

And so concludes our romp in the weeds!

I’m really glad that Matt had us go here first. Running around and playing in a field was a good way to relax us both. Plus, it was a truck-ton of fun. (Say that ten times fast).

How did your photographer get you to relax in the beginning of your shoot? By talking, or letting you guys play around like monkies? Anybody else do something embarrassing like, oh, hulk-smash your fiance to the ground?

The disc has landed, I repeat, the disc has landed.

After checking the mail this evening, I screamed. Squeal-screamed, to be more correct. Matt Miller, the photographer full of win, sent our disc of engagement pictures. I made sure to document the opening process, because it was packaged beautifully, there was a sweet card, and plus, JP is in Hotlanta. I am impatient. This way, he could open them with me!

First, the opening process!

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Ok, here we go! Engagement pictures after the jump!

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My proposal story involves a blowtorch.

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So by now you all know how we met, how I seduced him with my potato-masher-fan skillz, and how we decided on my ballin’ engagement ring. Now I’m gonna tell y’all about the proposal. Pull up a chair, grab a drink, and get your excited pants on, because this one’s long. And awesome.

I knew it was coming… at some point. It was December, and we had the ring. It was in the closet, staring at me every day in its pretty blue Tiffany’s bag. “Hey, Lauren! Look at me! I’m all wrapped up and you can’t see me yet!” My ring was a tease.

I had a few ideas of dates in mind, I won’t lie. Most pre-engaged girls have a mental list of dates that it “might happen.” I sure as hell did. Since we picked it up in mid- December, I figured the most likely dates would be either Christmas, New Year’s Eve, our technical one-year anniversary (January 14), my birthday (January 25), or Valentine’s Day. I didn’t want to get my hopes up for any specific date, because I didn’t want to ruin any of those holidays by having myself convinced that “THIS IS IT GUYS” and then it not happening. I tried to go with the flow. Key word is “tried.”

A few days before Christmas, we packed up to go down to my parents’ house for the first half of Christmas. We had about eleventeen billion trips to make to the car, and I always made sure I was the last one out every time. Why? So I could sneak my little head into the broom closet to see if the little blue box was still there. It was. Every time. We set off, and I was a little quiet and a little sad. Oh, well I know it’s not Christmas. I bucked up, and got excited about wrapping all of the Christmas presents and celebrating with family.

That’s when stuff started getting weird. My father was extra chipper, and almost as soon as we walked into the door, he blurted, “JP and I are driving to Alabama to get great fireworks! It’s going to be exciting. Lauren, you should just stay here, ’cause I know you have a lot of stuff to do. And we’ll do this so we can get the good ones and not have to stop on the way down to the beach. Oh, look at this cool blowtorch I got!” He then proceeded to demonstrate the blowtorch’s coolness to us right in the middle of the kitchen.

I couldn’t even focus on the craziness that was a blowtorch-in-the-kitchen, because my mind started going 1,000 miles an hour. Getting fireworks two days before Christmas? We weren’t going to the beach until the 29th. Why did they need to go now? Why all the secrecy? Why were they driving 2 hours out of the way just for fireworks when we could get them on the way down? My spidey-senses were on high alert. I started prodding my mother. “They’re in cahoots about something.”

“No, they’re probably just being guys.”

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We’re such rockstars.

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Or at least that’s how I feel right now!

This morning I was elbow-deep in solvent and ink when I heard my blackberry a-buzzin’. Nothing unusual about that, so I kept on doin’ my printmaking thing. After I de-gloved and cleaned off, I went to go check my phone, and lo and behold, there was an email from Matt Miller. Our engagement shots were up on his blog. I (slightly frantically) packed my stuff up and drove like a demon home to check them. Was I going to look like an oaf? Did my lack of posy-cheese-smile and my massive amounts of being a spaz ruin the shots?

No, no, and no. These photos are perfect, and I love them nineteen ways to Sunday. The locations are great, the colors are fantastic, and, well, we look like we belong in Rolling-Damned-Stone. Matt did a super amazing-fabulous-fantastic-rockin’-bananas-bat-nut job. They are more than I could have ever dreamed of!

Ok, I’ll stop yapping for a bit… Onto the photos!

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Holy awesome, Batman. It’s nice to have something that really represents us, because we’re not “stand there and cheese” kind of folks. If you all haven’t gathered already, we like things off the beaten path, and these are fo’ sho’ out in awesome-land.

Matt Miller, you are so full of win. Everybody, head over to Matt’s blog, give him some mad props, and also read the sweet and awesome stuff he wrote about us!

Who else was totally blown away by their engagement shoot? Did you go the traditional route or the non-traditional route? Which one of ours is your favorite? :p