Love is in the air

 
This was one of my favorite shoots of all time. These two inspire goodness and joy in everyone they know and they're so in love it makes you smile in spite of yourself. 

It's almost wedding season!

As a kid, I always said summer was my favorite time of the year. Back then it was because school was out and there was no homework to fill my evenings. I was free to spend every day exploring my vast backyard or reading a whole book without stopping if I wanted to.Also, my birthday is in August, so that added an extra vote for summer as best season.

As I grew older, I decided that fall and spring were my favorites seasons. They are seasons of change. In the spring, everything blooms and new life emerges before our eyes. In the fall, that new life again goes dormant, leaves change color and fall from the trees. Both seasons provide mild weather, and a feeling, at least for me, that anything can happen.

While I still love those aspects about fall and spring, ask me what my favorite season is now and my answer is quite different: wedding season.

While you can have a wedding during any month of the year, people tend to plan their nuptials from about the middle of spring to the middle of fall. The likelihood of being rained out is the lowest during those months, and tons of flowers choose this time to bloom. Also, people are most likely to take time off of work and school during the summer months. But those are not the reasons why I love wedding season.

I love all the hope that's in the air, the potential for a lifetime of love. I love that people gather to celebrate a couple they believe in and support. I love that that couple has chosen to take a leap of faith and say to each other, "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, even though it won't all be cupcakes and champagne." I love listening to the toasts and hearing just how much the couple means to those closest to them. And I love, love, LOVE being the one who captures those moments.

Starting at the beginning - How I became a photographer

I've had this blog set up for a while, but I wasn't sure where to start. I've always been a writer. The writing part hasn't been blocking me, it's the "what to write about" that's kept me from starting this blog.

I've decided I should start at the beginning. Twenty years ago when my relationship with photography started. I was ten, I think, when I got my first 35 mm camera. I used to play around with my dad's, "wasting film" on things like butterflies and random trees and flowers. My dad decided it was time for me to have my own camera.

I wish I had a photo of me with a camera, but this one of a Girl Scout event at 

around age 10 is the best we're going to get. Stylin, right?

Wherever I went, that camera went too. Sleepovers, my brother's baseball and soccer games, eventually school dances and pep rallies. In high school, I wrote for my school's newspaper, always taking photos for my own articles and often for my classmates' articles as well. While I adored photography, I took a writing-focused path through high school and college journalism, preparing myself to be a newspaper reporter or write for a glossy magazine.

The day arrived when those dreams lost their luster, though. I didn't enjoy the "office politics" involved in my college newspaper, nor did I feel comfortable with the journalistic idea that privacy doesn't exist where there is a story to be told. I graduated college with a degree in Communications and took it home to my family's business where I decided to spend the summer revisiting my plans and planning my wedding.

That summer didn't go as planned. I neither got married at that time, nor did I leave the family business. That was nine years ago. I firmly believe that all things happen for a reason. I believe in following what feels right and not what simply may have seemed right enough to create a plan out of once upon a time.

But I feel like my life has taken me where I need to be.

I ended up marrying a wonderful man, who is my partner in life as well as in business. If you hire me as your wedding photographer, you also get him.

I still work for my family's business, which allows me to see my brother every day and my little red-headed nephew several times a week.

And over the course of a summer working for the vineyard where Jim and I got married and taking as many photography classes as I could, I fell in love with wedding photography. 

In case you were wondering (or worrying), I have upgraded my equipment since the 35 mm I used at age ten. Jim and I bought our first DLSR for a trip we took around the country back in 2010. In 2011, we realized we wanted to make wedding photography a business and upgraded our equipment to the professional level.

And that's how Stephanie Sutherlin Photography came to be.