Sherrin's Bridal Portrait

   Last week my sweet cousin Sherrin married the love of her life, Tim, in Charlotte, NC in a beautiful afternoon garden wedding. They had a long hard road to get to where they could walk down that aisle, but when they finally did, it was just perfect. As a wedding photographer, I've been to a lot of weddings, to say the least. And I've seen a lot of brides walking down the aisle. But I don't think I've ever seen a groom looking at his bride the way that my new cousin Tim looked at Sherrin. He was almost glowing. I'm taking a break from wedding photography this year, so I didn't shoot the wedding. One of my dearest friends, Adam Coker at Authentic Exposure, did an amazing job with his team shooting the entire wedding weekend. Check him out at www.authenticexposure.com. I did get to spend some great time together with Sherrin doing a bridal portrait as a wedding gift for them. The shoot was split into two different segments. The first, in the blue ridge mountains in Asheville, NC, and the second on Baker's Mountain at our beloved Camp Joy. I can't say how happy I am that Sherrin and Tim are finally married, and that the wedding went so wonderfully. They're going to be living in Germany, which is hard for our whole family, but we've adjusted to it and are really happy for them. We're just going to have to find a new normal, and work a lot harder at skypeing and emailing to help span the distance. It's so hard being separated from the ones we love. In my heart I want to pull everyone close and have them all in arm's reach. But I also love them enough to want them to have wings to fly. It's a hard and confusing thing this love stuff. I guess the most important part is that the love we have between us in our family is strong. And those roots run deep. So whether we're separated by miles and oceans, or if we get the rare occassion to all be under the same roof, our love for one another is unchanged. And the depth of the pain from being apart is just a reflection of the depth of love between us and the ones we miss.
   So, I wanted to share some of the bridal portraits of our beautiful Sherrin. We had a great time, as always, shooting them, and she couldn't have looked prettier. This professional break from photography has been really good for me so far, and I think it's accomplishing what I'd hoped it would. This bridal shoot was a good experiment in that it really showed me that I have missed photography and that those creative juices run deep. I felt more excited and eager to shoot than I have in a long time, and that felt pretty great. I'm sure a good part of that was that it was Sherrin I was shooting, but I know that a lot of it was just the creativity of setting up and taking the shots. On a side note, Sherrin and Tim have spent the majority of their courtship traveling back and forth between America and Germany. And because traveling has been such a big part of her life, she wanted to reflect that in some of the portraits by having her suitcase in some of the shots. I say that just to explain that it had a purpose, and wasn't some random prop. Although I think it worked out looking pretty cool. As always, I'm very open and eager for feedback and/or suggestions. I love hearing other people's, and artists', perspectives and suggestions so I can see it from a different angle than my own. You can click on the individual photos to view a slightly larger version. Thanks for checking them out.