Yah... Sorry about that lil intermission folks
It got a little bit crazy there for a second... and by second I mean 2 months
But I'm back with a little bit of time to blog! Hazzah!
For those of you that are wondering, yes this is a full and complete update of every exciting thing we've done over the past 2ish months
Yes there are 60 pictures included. But I love pictures so no judgements
First off, I did a little something that involved goofy hats and dresses
also known as GRADUATED!!!
What. The. Heck? Where did the time go?!
Not gonna lie, it was pretty bitter/sweet. It feels SO good to actually get paid to do what you did for free for the past 4 years, but I'm going to miss my photo friends terribly.
Left to Right: John, Jessica, Erica, yours truly, and Shanda
I love what a creep John is in this pic.
Side note, Shanda and I are teaming up for something awesomely huge this summer. If it works out, it's gonna be SWEET! Stay tuned.
I love Ashley and Kelly. Two of my besties! And 2 of my favorite models. Too bad my hair is retarded in this pic.
Jessica and the blonde trio! We're done!
Before we walked
Jess and I before we headed down to the Spectrum!
The Photo majors got front row seats at the big graduation ceremony! Left to right: Whitney, Erica, Mckayla, and Ashley. Man we're an attractive bunch huh?
One of the biggest highlights of graduation was my INCREDIBLE graduation present from my parents. Nikon's most amazing camera to date: The D800. Words cannot describe my love for this camera. I don't really know how I graduated without it. Look how sexy this thing is. Seriously? Seriously.
Lately, we've gotten to hang out with our adopted niece Luna. We love her lots.
What a goofy dog. That tongue kills me.
About a week after graduation, I turned 22! We headed home for a few days to hang with our families and of course, since it's me, we went to the zoo! Why yes, I am actually 6 years old. :)
I love the otters.
My little (but not so little anymore) bro Devin went to his first high school dance. He decided his signature look is all black except for his pocket square that matches his date.
He's basically James Bond these days. Not a big deal
Hayden will kill me for this one but I thought it was funny....
Jowls run in the family.
And to top it all of, our most recent picture of the last of the brothers 3!...
We got to skype with Britton on Mother's day! He seriously couldn't wipe the smile off of his face the entire time we talked to him. Doesn't he look so great?! I'm so proud of my brosef. Can't wait for Christmas to see him again!
Well, since graduation I realized I had to be a grown up and make money. But since I'm me, I decided I didn't really want a "real job" so I've been trying my hand at getting the legit photo business off the ground. To my utter shock and excitement it's been working! I've had 3 weddings this summer so far, a couple senior pictures, a few engagements, 3 family pictures, and a 1 year old session so far which might explain why the blog has been a little neglected as of late.
I've been busy updating my website (bethanyreedphotography.com Check it out!) and I've started a blog to help people keep up with my most recent photo shoots! (bethanyreedphotography.blogspot.com if anyone is interested!) I am sad/happy to say that in it's 1 month of life, it has gained over a quarter of all of the views that this blog has had (2700 views on the photo blog, about 8000 on this one) and this blog has been up and running for about 3 years! To put that into a little more of a perspective, this blog has 97 posts, the photo blog has 9.
Craziness.
All of this hard work has paid off and I'm shooting my first wedding for a complete stranger in August! Hazzah!
To all my clients that might read this blog: Thank you so much for all the support. Keep it coming!
Here's a little sample of what it looks like when I'm working...
Can I just say how lucky I am? Not only have ALL of my clients been so fun to work with, they are also incredibly beautiful and it is so fun to capture all of their special moments! If any of you that read this need some photo work done, let me know! Spots are filling up fast!
Now, onto our most exciting adventure of the summer so far! My dear friend Melissa (you might remember her from THIS post was incredibly kind to Clay and I and flew both of us out to Shreveport Louisiana so that I could be the photographer at her wedding! She not only flew both of us out there, she put us up in a hotel, paid for almost every single one of our meals, and drove us 3 1/2 hours from Dallas to Shreveport!
How awesome is she?
Here are a few pics from the trip!
Some flowers Clay and I found on our walk around Shreveport
Clay shows us how he feels about the heat and humidity...
You'd think the guy would be used to it after the Philippines?
Us at the beautiful reception! I'll be honest, I mostly posted this one to prove that Clay can smile normally
Baby's first wedding! The girl did some good work! Click this LINK if you want to see a few detail shots of the reception!
Clay didn't really realize he'd have to earn his keep at this wedding. He became the designated ukelele player/backup wedding singer during the ceremony! Everyone said he stole the show and the guests loved to comment on what a talented couple we are. :) Yah, we're pretty cool I guess
After the beautiful ceremony (keep checking the photo blog for updates on that wedding!) We drove about an hour and a half out of Shreveport so some legit, tiny little southern town to take some beautiful groomals for Melissa and Jeremy! (click HERE if you'd like to see the results of our excursion!)
I'll be honest, it was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip! Everything was so beautiful, and I took WAY too many photos. It wouldn't be the south without a plantation! Clay was terrified to have me take pictures of it. He knew for a fact a slave ghost would appear in one of the windows. Not gonna lie, when the sun started setting I was pretty ready to get the heck out of dodge after he said that. I'm not messing with bad juju.
This was the driveway up to the plantation. How pretty is that?! And of course, there I am with all my camera gear and the bouquet. :)
After the bridals, we met up with Clay's sister's boyfriend who is doing an internship in Shreveport and he showed us around the downtown area. Once again, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip! We cruised around this boardwalk area until about 12:30 at night.
The casinos all lit up!
Clay and Kade at Joe's crab shack. Believe it or not, it was Kade's first time eating crab in the shell! The food was great and it was fun getting to hang with Kade for a bit.
The trip was awesome and we were sad to head home
We had decided to access our inner-nerd to pass the time on the flights to and from Dallas and went a little old-school. Pokemon on the gameboy anyone? If you were wondering, it's just as fun when you're 22 as it was when you were 10. :)
I stole some photos off of Clay's phone so they're a little out of order.
We found this lil guy while we were out taking bridals..
Me taking pics in front of the plantation. Let me know if you see any slave ghosts... I don't really want to look too hard.
Here we are at another cool part of the trip! Melissa was nice enough to invite us to her dad's retirement ceremony. He was a colonel in the Airforce and was in charge of the base there in Shreveport! It was definitely something we had never experienced before and all the history, and pride behind it all was pretty amazing. Everything was EXTREMELY proper.
A few of the people our age, including one of the bridesmaids and the groom himself are in the airforce and lower in ranking and were very paranoid about saluting everyone. I guess it is a HUGE deal if you miss someone and there were a few 4 star generals walking around. Clay and I used a lot of "sir"s and "ma'am"s that day, but it was a pretty cool experience!
The wedding reception was beautiful and the food was AMAZING! To avoid the Louisiana heat, the got married in the morning and had a brunch themed reception. They even flew out one of their friends that works at the crepery here in Logan out! He was one of the most popular people in the room :)
The cute little place cards! Found 3 days before the wedding!
After the wedding in Louisiana wrapped up, I had another wedding the next weekend for our friends Kelsey and John! Luckily, that took me home to Idaho Falls for the weekend and this guy and I are pretty much best friends these days.
Cutest kid ever!
Clay gained awesome husband points when he MADE my birthday present... a Pallet Garden!
Rach and I had seen these on pinterest and fell in LOVE! As you guys probably know, I'm a little obsessed with growing plants and this becomes a little bit difficult living in an apartment, but the awesome thing about pallet gardens is after the roots of the plants grow in, you can tip it up against a wall! Perfect for apartments!
Here is Clay nailing fabric to the back of the pallet..
Laptop outside to reference pinterest when needed.
Clay was nice and also bought me a bonus birthday present, a tiny little herb garden you can grow in your house! I love baby plants...
Just planted! The top 2 rows in the picture are lettuce, below that is parsley and some pepper plants, then a row of marigolds (obviously) then basil and purple sage, then 2 different kinds of mint, italian oregano, and some strawberries, then purple basil, thyme, and dill!
Isn't it the best thing you've ever seen? If we had more room, I'd do one with just flowers. After it's tilted up, you can plant things on the top row as well!
Well not only am I working on my personal photo business, I've been freelance assisting for good ol Icon on the side! I really have missed it since last summer, and they are so nice to have me back every once in a while! I've also done a little freelance assisting for the church so I have been busy busy lately.
I LOVE freelancing because if you have something else going on, you can say no if they call you in. The only bad thing about it is it's feast or famine. I worked almost every day for about 2 1/2 weeks and now I've gone for about a week with no calls. Stressful, but fun!
I guess there is one more not great thing about freelancing... it is a bit unpredictable when it comes to how long you might be there. It could be a half day from 8:30 to noon... or it could be a full day from 8:30 until 5:50... or it could be a blue moon kind of day... when you work from 9:00am until 1:00 am...
Yah, that day was a little bit exciting. Yay for overtime!
Poor Clay has been a bit caught up in all of my recent photo shoots as of late, and the sweet guy almost always comes with me to assist. Here we are after a long day of shooting engagements for Rach and Korv (YAY for the best friend getting married!!!!) I think it's starting to wear him out a bit...
The photographer and her assistant. Such a sweetie. As you can tell, he's thrilled to be there :)
On a completely different note, I think we need to find a new place to live.
Remember that one time Clay found a lady passed out on our lawn?
Well, we had to call the cops a second time a little while ago
2 cop calls in 2 months is no bueno
So Clay had just gotten back from work and we were up having a late night snack (it was around 12:30pm). Since we're cheap and don't like to pay for AC our windows were open. We were just sitting around catching up on our day when all of a sudden we heard someone start SCREAMING at someone else. It was coming from next door.
I don't think I've heard the F word used in that many different ways before in my life.
We both went quiet and listened to this guy scream at this girl. She was crying pretty hard, and we got a little bit worried. I told Clay to call dispatch and started creeping out our front window to see if I could see what was going on.
all of a sudden we heard some glass break and we could hear them much better.
This is gonna sound terrible but I started to laugh pretty hard at what the guy was screaming at this girl
"You just want to hang out with me because you're too lazy to go to a HOMELESS SHELTER!!!"
Pretty soon the girl started screaming stuff back at him and all the while Clay was describing what was happening to dispatch. She told him to stay on the phone until the police got there and Clay asked that they keep our names off of the report :)
The dispatch lady asked if it was getting violent and right then I saw the guy walk out of the garage next door toward the street, then he turned around and they started pushing each other. About 2 seconds later we heard "GET ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND NOW!" and 5 cop cars swoop in.
Not gonna lie, I loved it
I'm kind of really (super) into cops and there was an episode going on right next door.
They cuffed them both and the girl was BAWLING. We heard a lot of "you need to calm down ma'm. You really need to calm down."
Then right before they carted off the guy, the cops went into the house for a second and the girl stood up and yelled "I love you Jason! You're going to jail but I LOVE YOU!"
We just about lost it. Best. Night. Ever.
We discovered the next day that the breaking glass noise was a window in the garage. We haven't seen Jason or the mysterious girl since.
But the window has been patched up though.
Another fun adventure we had was packing a couple lunches (thank you Jimmy John's) and headed up the canyon to Tony's Grove with cousin Eric and his wife Lauren!
We had expected it to be pretty warm but it was actually freezing and windy so we ate lunch in the car, then grabbed some jackets and hiked around the lake! After we got moving we actually enjoyed ourselves and enjoyed the scenery!
Look how pretty! Out looking for Squatches. Not sure if you knew, but Sasquatch roam the mountains around Logan. Animal Planet told me so.
Squatch territory
We did a little bouldering whilst squatch hunting.
Not sure if Clay actually loves me this much, or if he's trying to steal my body heat. This picture makes me smile though.
Pretty moss! Gotta love instagram filters as well.
More hiking through the wilderness, instagram style
I've been a bit obsessed with riding bikes lately. Clay is nice enough to humor me, so we've been riding around town a lot. Gotta love river walk bike rides.
On a bike ride! I love us lots.
And of course, it wouldn't be summer without snowcones! My new favorite is pomegranate/red raspberry.
In other news, my love turned 23 on the 13th! Man, he's getting old these days! I got him (and in a round about way me) a new TV since our old one keeled over. He is in LOVE! We're extreme movie bums so it was hard to be without it! He decided he wanted to head home to IF for his birthday for a few days. Nothing beats Idaho sunsets btw. This is out by Clay's parent's house. SO pretty.
We got to hang with the baby Weston some more! He loves looking at himself on the iphone screen. This is his self portrait.
Weston and I played peek-a-boo on the way to Clay's birthday lunch.
And here is the man himself on his birthday! I told him to give me his best birthday face. Apparently this is the year of the turtle.
While we were home, I got to experience a little bit of the farm life. We attempted to move these calves from one area to another. Cows are stupid. And they don't like people much. And are attempts to move them failed. My father-in-law says they'll be sorry when they get dragged out by their necks by a nylon rope. I wish I could see it. My father-in-law is a real cowboy if you didn't know. I really dig this pic of him.
After a few weeks, the baby plants aren't really babies anymore... Aren't they cute?
And the pallet garden has grown in! We tipped it up on its side and I'm a bit nervous about it. We'll see if they do as well growing sideways! Can't wait to start eating the fruits (or in this case vegetables) of our labor!
Congrats if you made it to the end of this post and the 60 pictures it contained! Going back, I can't believe we've already done so much and it's only the 3rd week in June! hopefully we can keep the trend going!
Hope all of you are enjoying your summer!
XOXO
