Christina and Jonathan’s wedding was no less than perfection. The beautiful Sacred Heart Church where the priest must have told them several jokes as you watched them chuckle every time he would approach the two. Then off to the NC State Arboretum for a wedding photographer’s dream of shooting in beautiful flowers, arbors and greenery with the bridal party. And lastly a beautifully lit night looking down 48 stories into downtown from the incredible Cardinal Club. Add in a gorgeous bride, handsome groom, fun guests, kind family and flowers from the Watered Garden and you have the perfect wedding. This is one happy wedding photographer!

Congrats Christina & Jonathan!

This is just a quick peek at Sarah & Justin’s wedding.  What a beautiful and fun couple.  Wedding photography is GOOD…. LOVE!  LOVE! Enjoy!

What an adorable couple. I just love photographing brides and grooms that laugh and have fun with each other and these two were certainly no exception to that! But not only was this bride beautiful and outgoing she is also a wedding coordinator and event planner! I can’t tell you how much I loved that part of the wedding. Everything ran so smoothly and there were so many beautiful details and little touches. So if you want to get a little of this glam for your wedding you can find her at Bliss by Sam. They danced the night away and I had so much fun editing this wedding. Everything about it was beautiful INCLUDING the couple!

Thanks Sarah for trusting me with such a special day!

Congrats you two!

Diane

I have a dear friend who is also a photographer whom I have had the honor of being friends going on seven years.  Not only is she a great friend but an amazingly generous person in general. She is also generous with her time, thoughtfulness and always has an ear to lend if you need someone to talk to about things.  Her most recent endeavor is her gift of her passion for the Lord and share it with the war torn country of Rwanda.  To raise money for this mission trip she donated her time to her church to shoot family portraits of any members and donate all the proceeds to the mission trip.  I am happy to report they raised over $1300 for the trip.  I was only too happy to help shoot those wanting family photography along side her.  She set up two stations and we photographed families until there was no one left.  Here are some of the images I took that day.  I am just thrilled I could do something for her (and her church) for a change. Thank you Jennifer for being such an amazing friend!

It is great to be in Raleigh doing wedding photography. One of my joys about my job. This couple was so cute. It didn’t matter if they were dancing, gazing into each other’s eyes, hanging out with friends or sitting next to each other in the ceremony-they were always into each other. This bride and groom couldn’t have been more in love or in sync with each other. It was a true joy to photograph these two. Just beautiful! Here is a snapshot of the wedding photography of their special day! More to come later!!! Oh and the pictures are also now on the website if you would like to view them all. Just click YOUR PHOTOS and find their last names and follow the prompts from there. : )

It’s been a while since I put down a post. I have been very busy since Raleigh wedding photography season is full on now. I am even about 4 blog posts behind but I am hoping to rectify that after I finish my next wedding. I wish my job is as glamorous as it sounds to people but I probably only spend about 20% of my time actually shooting. It’s so funny because I usually have photographers that work for me that aspire to own their own businesses some day. And many of them have started their own businesses and gone on to be great successes. But inevitably I get that phone call that goes something like this “I had no idea how much you did!”   Yes, there are wedding albums to be designed, then changes to make, prints to be ordered and shipped out, lovely accounting and taxes to be filed (my most hated task).   And then burning and backing up all those shoots to protect them from evil computer viruses and hard drive crashes, then there is just plain old things to do list that varies from anything like spending an hour organizing your drives or figuring out a computer problem. It’s crazy how much work there is that goes into running your own business. I have had 5 albums to finish just this week alone. That is one of those things you can’t really plan for since you never know when your bride will submit their images. It could be 3 months to 2 years after their weddings.  And just backing up all my recent shoots took 5 hours alone -more than 1/2 day shot.  Answering emails usually takes up to 2 hours a day. Yes, 2 hours.  Giving your clients advice on how to dress, prepare for a bridal portrait or confirming all those important little details of the wedding day takes time.   Anyway, I am off to finalize a couple more albums and wrap up my last wedding so that is all the time I have to write for now.  So to sum up I MUST LOVE MY JOB to do all these other tasks and I DO.  It’s worth every minute of the hastle.  Here is a page from one of my wedding album designs this week.  Congrats again Suzanne & Jay!

TTYL! Diane

Submit ExpressReputation Management

Every once in a while I will shoot a corporate event.  Mostly I do wedding photography and baby photography and if it is commercial it is usually headshot photography.  But The Renaissance Hotel is one of the venues that I have shot weddings so when they needed someone to help out with their General Manager Award Event I was happy to oblige.  As usual they were gracious, the food was fabulous and how can you not LOVE that hotel. It’s beautiful.  They had the most awesome painter for entertainment.  You never knew what he was painting till he was completely done.  Everyone had a great time and congratulations to all the amazing award winners. I can only imagine how hard you must have worked to achieve such a great honor.