This year... whoa, talk about business changing. Life changing.  

Jesh de Rox's talk was inspiring, moving, self reflecting, it was the first class I attended.  It really set the tone for the entire trip for me... thinking about the powerful energy in that room, is bringing me to tears while typing this.  I sometimes say to myself or others, dude, it's wedding photography... it's not that serious, chill out. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do, it has given me confidence, opportunities that I've that nothing else in my life has offered. Ever.  My photography is helping me become the woman that I've always wanted to be.  Until listening to Jesh on Monday, I never thought that it, photography, could make that same weighty impact on my clients lives.  It's going to take some hard-work and time, but I am determined to bring what I learned from him to as many couples as I can.  If you were in that class... you know what I'm sayin'.  

I kept referencing back to his photo love philosophy when deciding which other speakers to hear, which may have both hindered and aided my sponge of a brain.  Justin and Mary's class was another one that shook me up and I am beyond stoked, totally overwhelmed to put what I learned from them into motion.

So Vegas... OK, perhaps I will visit you again.  If I can experience this every year by putting up with your smoky Casinos and overpriced margaritas ($14 @ the Wynn... really?!?!) then I'm down.  It's a deal.  

Once I can extract everything I've gained from this trip out of my stuffed brain, I'm going to rock my couples worlds... here's to 2010!  

My monster of a camera stayed home.  She needs to chill out before wedding season.  Instead, i had my iPhone and shot one roll of T-Max which will be developed in the next couple of weeks.  My random iPhone photos can be found here: http://marywyar.posterous.com Also, to make this trip even that much more enjoyable, I had two rad roomies and fellow Toledo photogs Carli and Joshua.  Special thanks to you two for being patient with me when I was a pain in the arse trying to find a not so, ummmm, working girl, outfit to walk down the strip in :) AND these fabulous shots Joshua took of me... Yeah I have red hair AND bangs. 

For the first few months of spring, I will be jet setting (i.e. travelling in coach on the cheapest flights I could find) to Vegas, NYC, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. for all things photography!  Once weddings get under way, I'll be back and forth between Ann Arbor, Cleveland, Mackniac Island,  good ole Toledo... rinse and repeat.  So excited to tell the love stories of so many rad couples this year! 2010 is going to frickin' raawwwk!!!

One of the more popular add-ons couples choose to customize their wedding photography package with, is the photo guest book.  I design the album with ample white space for guests to leave well-wishes and love for the newlyweds at the reception, and an ordinary coffee table book becomes a great memento of the time before the couple married.  Oh and it's actually a guest book that you'll want to look at again!

Here is the design, feel free to look at it larger here.  

Hope everyone has a great weekend and is constantly thinking about how beyond lucky we all are to live in this country.

Click on the first thumbnail then use the arrows on your keyboard to scroll through the images... enjoy!

Here's to 2010!!! 

One huge thing I learned this year was the importance of THE album.  I have memories of looking at my parents wedding album, opening up the plastic covered white silk album, the corners adorned with metallic photo corners... one huge print per page.  It's funny how certain things stick with you.  That memory made me want to make sure everyone of my couples had a wedding album... and that's what happened... though they all may not have them yet, they will soon. :) 

Midway through the season, I reworked my workflow.  The first thing my couples saw after their wedding wasn't a blog post or their gallery full of thumbnails, it was their album design.  I designed the biggest, baddest album without any limitations and presented their wedding to them in story form.  They saw their wedding for the first time how I visualized it while shooting.  This has been the biggest and most rewarding change to how I do my post work.  

I design the album 100% in Adobe InDesign from scratch, no templates.  InDesign makes it extremely easy for me to design a modern album in hours.  I know the spacing is perfect and it works seamlessly with Photoshop & Bridge, so I can easily make sure the photos will look great in print.  All the spreads have white backgrounds, are completely clean and modern.  I don't want the album to look dated in 5 years, and by keeping it simple, about the photos and not the design, I know it will never look trendy.  Pro DPI (an environmentally conscious pro lab) does the printing of my spreads, sends them to me to so I can approve the color and quality before I ship them off to Renaissance for the production of the album.

If you'd like to look through a couple completed albums, take a peek at the albums page here.