A Winter Wedding and Easter Sunday

It has been a while since I posted wedding shots, but I haven't been doing many weddings lately...this is the slow season. But it is about to pick up. Here are some shots of Doug Sackin and Jessica Adelman's wedding from January. They got married at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC. As usual, I covered the guys getting ready while Matt Mendelsohn took shots of the girls.

Here is Jessica's father giving her away:

Here are some shots of the party afterwards...it's fairly obvious that everyone had a great time!



See if you can spot Matt M. in the picture below...



We spent Easter with my family, and Kim set up an Easter egg hunt for Allison. To be honest I didn't think she hid the eggs very well...I mean I could have found them way faster then Allison did...but then again she isn't even 2 years old...

After finding all the eggs, she read a book to Grandpa Symons:

And after dinner she went exploring on the back deck while the boys smoked cigars:



I am helping Matt M. with a wedding this Saturday so there will be more pictures coming soon.

Swimming with the fish

Well...not exactly swimming with the fish but we did swim with a dolphin while on our honeymoon in Cozumel.  Here are a few pics from the disposable waterproof camera we bought right before getting in the water.

Karin catching a ride:

Photoshop practice

This is a pretty random post...these pictures are from over a year ago, but I have been looking through some old pictures trying to find a few to get enlarged to hang around the house. While doing this I have been playing around with Photoshop trying to get better at converting pictures to black and white and also working on actions, multiple layers using masking etc...so here are a few that I did last night. The first two are from a trip Karin and I took to Saranac Lake in 2006:

This one is from my trip to Africa when I was in Zanzibar:

The Honeymoon

Karin and I went to Mexico for our honeymoon. We started out in Playa del Carmen, then went to Chichen Itza and finished up in Cozumel. We stayed at the Las Palapas Hotel in Playa, right on the beach (http://www.hotellaspalapas.com/) in our own little hut:

This is what we saw every morning when we opened our door:

Relaxing on the beach before the sun went down with a Dos Equis:

We were close enough to the main street of Playa to be able to walk to the restaurants (which there are plenty of) for lunch and dinner. Here is a shot of a church at night that is right on the main street:

Karin enjoying a book on the front patio of our hut:

After that we headed to Chichen Itza for two nights to explore the Mayan ruins. The bus ride took 4 hours but it was worth it:

We stayed at the Mayaland Hotel, one of only 3 hotels within walking distance to the ruins. We could actually see some of the sites from the hotel lobby. One of the nights they put on a light show at the main site, it was kind of goofy, but after it was done everything went dark and you could see the temple in the bright moonlight, it was amazing:

After two full days of Chichen Itza we were ready to get back to the beach, so after another 4 hour bus trip, we raced to the ferry and headed to Cozumel. It was the perfect place to end the trip...all inclusive Wyndham. We went snorkeling, swam with the dolphins and relaxed.

Here is the view from our room...there was a pool right outside with a swim up bar and slides:

Karin enjoying a pre-dinner drink:

This is a shot of Playa from the ferry on our way back from Cozumel...we will definitely go back:

Catching Up

Now that things have settled down I am getting a chance to go through some of the weddings from last year that I didn't have time to post images from. A few months ago, when the weather was still warm and there were leaves on the trees, I helped Matt Mendelsohn with Sarah Greenberger and Matthew Engel wedding at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda. Here are a few shots from the day. Matt and his dad comparing suits while getting ready:

The signing of the Ketubah (the Jewish prenuptial agreement, considered an integral part of a traditional Jewish marriage):

Here is Sarah coming down the steps for the ceremony, we really lucked out with the light...30 minutes earlier and the ceremony would have had really harsh sunlight.

Of course I found some kids to take some shots of:

At the reception they set out a polaroid camera for guests to take pictures of themselves and put in their guest book, I thought it was a really cool idea:

And last but not least, one of my favorite parts of Jewish weddings...the Horah:

Three Sheets

My new favorite show. If you haven't seen it yet, check out the show Three Sheets on MOJO (www.mojohd.com/mojoseries/threesheets), its great. "Embark on this international drinking tour with comedian Zane Lamprey who takes you around the world to master the local drinking customs." Basically he goes from bar to bar throughout the day (usually they shoot it in one day...sometimes two) and by the end he is usually pretty hammered...good stuff.

Christmas Break

Karin and I went up to Brockport to see her family over Christmas break. It was pretty cold up there and we actually got some snow, which was nice since we haven't had snow on Christmas in the DC area for a while. Here is a shot of downtown Brockport from Java Junction where Marc and I stopped off for some coffee and to warm up.

Here is Lisa and Tula on Christmas eve in between wrapping gifts.

And a goofy picture of Karin and I.

We flew back to Virginia on Christmas morning to spend the day with my family, and in between throwing the football, opening presents, eating and drinking a I took a few pictures of my niece Allison. I only got a few of her dressed up before she got into more comfortable clothes:

For some reason she decided to see what one of her socks tasted like...evidently she liked it, because she walked around with it in her mouth for a lot of the day.

Checking out the gifts (I think she liked the wrapping paper as much as the actual gifts)

Happy Holidays

I don't have any of my own shots to post...things have been too busy and I have far too many pictures to go through from my own wedding, honeymoon and previous weddings I have done. The wedding went great and we were fortunate to have my friend Matt Mendelsohn as our photographer, here is a shot that he took of Karin:

Once things settle down I will have plenty of pictures to post.