Keijo commented at the rehearsal “you’ve been there for all our firsts!”. It has been a privilege to be there to take pictures when Joe proposed to her and now taking pictures at their wedding. Joe and Keijo are a great couple who love to laugh and have hearts for ministry. The ceremony was held in Orlando, FL at the headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ. There is a lovely gazebo there which made a wonderful spot for this wedding.  Some of the photos were taken by my assistant, Abby, who did a great job.

Colonial Florist provided the beautiful flowers. The first image is the bridesmaids’ bouquet, the next is one of the corsages for the mothers and the final image is of the boutonnieres.

Keijo’s and the bridesmaids’ necklaces and bracelets were made by their friend Faith.  The beads are  from Africa.

Here is Keijo’s wedding dress

Did I mention that Joe and Keijo are a lot of fun? When I was taking pictures of the guys getting ready, or at least hanging out planning on getting ready, Joe asked if I would deliver a photo message to Keijo. Here is a part of the message

The lovely bride

Here are some more pictures from the day

I love the way the light streamed down in this one!

“I now pronounce you man and wife”.  Can you tell she’s excited?

Joe and Keijo with Allison, their wonderful wedding coordinator

Congratulations on your marriage, Joe and Keijo!  May God richly bless your union and may your marriage glorify Him.

To view more of the pictures from the wedding, you can visit their gallery at http://apictureoflife.com/photocart access code a1edc295 (or you can simply navigate to the gallery named Bollinger Wedding)

I had the privilege of taking pictures while Joe proposed to Keijo on Christmas Eve, and now was able to hang out with them for a few hours to take engagement pictures for them. Joe and Keijo are missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ and are in the process of getting ready to move to Guinea Bissau. We started out at Cup ‘O Soul Cafe. This is a great coffee house in downtown Orlando where the two have dated on more than one occasion.  (Incidently, I’m so glad we did the pictures there so I could find out about this great place.  The folks there are so nice, the atmosphere is very comfortable.  I highly recommend it!)  Afterwards we headed over to Leu Gardens to take some more pictures. I’ll post those pictures in another post to keep this one a little shorter. . .

We had so much fun a laughed a lot, as you’ll see in these pictures.  Joe certainly has a serious, passionate side, but he also is very playful and loves to laugh.  And from what I saw of Keijo, so is like that as well.  I love this couple and am looking forward to photographing their wedding in April.

I noticed this poster for a play called "I DO!" right away when we got there . How fun is that having this poster there for our engagement session!

In addition to their love for each other, Joe and Keijo love the Bible, journaling and coffee. It was fun getting this picture that incorporates all of these things and her beautiful ring!

The beautiful Keijo

Some more fun shots from the morning. . .

If you would like to see more pictures from our session, and cheat and see the ones from Leu Gardens as well, you can see them by going here

Brent and Christina are such a great couple.  They are both missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ and have traveled overseas extensively.  Brent is the Director of IT (and my bosses boss) for The JESUS Film Project and Christina is just now moving into a new role with HR, also with The JESUS Film Project.  I had such a fun time taking their engagement pictures and look forward to photographing their wedding in May. 

Here are some of my favorite shots from our time together.

I saw this gate and wanted to get some shots of them in front of it.  Within just minutes of them standing in front of it, an entire herd of cows came over to see what we were up to.  I love this one of the cow looking at them.

Notice the cows in the background

Brent has several handguns and he and Christina have gone out shooting together.  So they decided it would be fun to get some pictures with the guns.  Brent is very careful, and while he was checking the guns to make sure they were empty he was telling Christina that she needed to both visually and physically ensure that the gun was empty and had Christina recite the rules of handgun safety.  Here are some shots of the two of them with the guns.

Wouldn’t this have made a fun “Save the date” card?

One picture that Christina wanted very badly was one of Brent sneaking up on her.  I love the look of anticipation on her face in this one.

Brent and Christina, thank you for letting me hang out with you for a fun afternoon.  I am looking forward to your wedding very much!

I am so excited for my friend Joe and his beautiful fiancee. I had the privilege of being there taking pictures when Joe proposed to Keijo on Christmas Eve.

The original plan was that Joe was going to take her to dinner and then bring her to a coffee shop that they like in downtown Orlando, but he found out they were closed over the holidays. When he stopped by to discover that, he ended up noticing that The Veranda Bed & Breakfast had a nice little patio in front. He stopped in and got permission to use their tables that evening and together we figured out how to make this work.

I ended up picking up some cake and candles and Martinelli’s and brought the necessary dishes for serving it all. Joe’s sole job was to get Keijo there after dinner and get her to say “yes”.

I loved talking to Joe right before he left for dinner. He commented “my heart is thumping like it is going to burst out of my chest”.

Though I am a romantic and absolutely love to read books with proposals and see movies with them, I can’t tell you what was said between the two that evening. I wouldn’t have dreamed of intruding on their privacy.

Two funny things happened, at least according to me. The first is that though I was able to find a place to hide while taking the pictures, every so often I could hear Keijo say “who is that?”. I don’t know how Joe responded, but I just pretended that I wasn’t there. The other funny incident was from the fact that in my careful planning on bringing wine glasses, plates, forks and even nice cloth napkins, I didn’t bring a bottle opener for the Martinelli’s. I could see Joe struggle to open it, and then put it back down for a little bit, and then pick it up again to give it another try. He finally gave up after several tries and brought the bottle across the street to a 7-11 store to ask them to open it!

Here are some of the shots for that evening. I’m so thankful for my 50mm 1.4 lens and that my camera did so well at 1600 ISO!

The table waiting for the lovebirds to arrive:

While I was waiting for Joe and Keijo, the lady working at The Veranda Bed & Breakfast came out to see if there was anything we needed. These folks are so sweet and very helpful.

I was able to hide behind this sign just about the entire time

And now here are Joe and Keijo

I love this one with the fuzzy leaves giving such a soft glow

Joe struggling with the bottle

And finally I was able to come out of hiding and be the first to congratulate them!

Joe and Keijo, I am so happy for you. I can’t wait to do your engagement session and wedding!

I’ve had the privilege of taking the family pictures for David and Karen for three years now which means I’ve been able to watch the boys grow up. In fact, when we started together, the youngest wasn’t even born yet. This fun family is full of energy and playfulness.

David is an expert in sound, mixing and editing and such. Karen is a realtor with Keller Williams.

I love hanging out with this family!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day.

Their oldest boy is also a bit of a ham around the camera and really enjoys coming up with poses. “Does this look good?”

He now has his younger brother doing it too.

What photo session would be complete without a campfire scene?

The youngest still isn’t quite sure about the camera, though he is so photogenic.

And their daughter is a joy to know. She loves to work with children and also volunteers quite regularly for The JESUS Film Project

Click here to see more photos from the session.

Wanda is one of my best friends, and I had the privilege of taking some pictures of her for her to use for a magnet for those who support her ministry. She is on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, specifically working with The JESUS Film Project as the lady in charge of tours. Wanda is a lot of fun and has a knack for making folks feel like friends from the moment she meets them.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day.

This one is my favorite, and is the one she ended up picking for her magnet. It somehow caputres her personality in a way the others don’t.

Linnea lives in Ohio, and has been dreaming of having her senior pictures taken at the beach. In fact, she is really an Ohio beach girl at heart, if there is such a thing. Thanks to a family vacation, she was able to have her dream come true.

One thing that made this especially fun to do Linnea’s pictures is the fact that her father’s name is Leif (pronounced “life”). So A Picture of Life got to take Picture’s of Leif’s Daughter. Okay, maybe it’s not that funny.

Linnea’s parents told me that Linnea means “full of life” and I must say that she was very aptly named.

We had the perfect weather at Cocoa Beach the day after Thanksgiving and spent most of our time at Jetty Park. The temperatures were ideal and there were very few people out.

You might be able to guess this from her photos, Linnea loves to act. We had a lot of fun, and she was a natural as a model. She is also quite a people person.

Here are a few highlights from our time at Jetty Park

This was my favorite from Jetty Park. While we were actually on the jetty, there were quite a few people around. One of the guys who was fishing there was teasing Linnea, but she was very good natured about it and didn’t get flustered at all.

After we left the park, we went over to Ron Jon’s Surf Shop. Linnea has actually spent quite a bit of time at the beach and she does surf. I was glad the employees let us take a few pictures there.

Linnea, you were so much fun to work with! Next time we should go to Hawaii for your photos!

To see more photos from our session, you can visit the website at www.apictureoflife.com

Scott invited me to go on a surprise adventure for Thanksgiving. And given his tendency to not want to go out much, I was more than happy to accept. Little did I know when he asked, that it would mean me being blindfolded as we drove there!

Now, I generally have a good sense of direction, and the fact that the warm sun was shining in the car certainly helped me in my trying to guess what way we were going. Scott made the mistake of asking me if I knew where we were, and apparently I was pretty much spot on in the beginning of our trip. (Well, he did say that I was about a block off, but that’s not bad for a blindfolded person!) I finally was thrown off when I was expecting a turn off to the right, but we continued to go straight for quite some time. Then we began to loop around and go through an area that obviously had roads over our road, and we changed elevations several times and I got very confused and couldn’t figure out where we were. I finally confessed my total “lostness” to Scott and commented that with all the traveling north and then south and then north and then south, that for all I knew we would end up at Moss Park, which is just a few miles from our house.

After driving for almost an hour, we finally arrived at our destination and I could finally take the blindfold off. And lo and behold, while we weren’t at Moss Park, we were at Split Oak Forest, a nature preserve that has a series of nature trails that can actually be accessed via Moss Park or by driving just a few miles south from our house (instead of north). Scott told me later that he was blown away by my navigational skills. He also told me that he got a little desperate because I was so right about where we were and so he resorted to driving through the airport several times (which explained the curves and elevation changes!)

The ironic thing about how well I knew where we were when I was blindfolded is that if it was up to me while we were there, we would have gotten lost and probably would have wandered around for days. (The trails are jsut a few miles long apiece, and form a series of loops, almost like a snowman. And, yes, I do have a great imagination! http://www.floridaconservation.org/recreation/split_oak/split_oak_map1.pdf)

And, yes, we did have turkey while we were out, thanks to Trader Joe’s turkey jerkey! (And when we got home, we had an omelette for dinner with turkey bacon as well)

It was a perfect day for a walk with temperatures in the low 70s and very little humidity. The skies were a beautiful blue and all was peaceful. Here are a few of the things we saw that I deemed photo-worthy.

My beloved

I love the rough textures of the pine trees!

There is probably a more serious scientific name for this stuff, but Scott and I both called it popcorn moss. It was on the ground under the pines.

These pretty yellow wildflowers were prevelant along the trails as well. I love the way the background came out

Who knew that there are cactus in Florida? These little guys are actually all over the place here

Florida Fall colors

Thank you, Scott, for coming up with such a fun excursion for us. And for helping us get home in one piece as well!

Kary and Maria are missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ and serve with The JESUS Film Project. Kary is the Director of the Postproduction department. I am so thankful to be able to know Kary and think very highly of him.

Their family was fun to photograph. I especially enjoyed watching them as they worked together in posing. I would simply say something like “do you want to do some fun photos now?” and they would immediately come up with a new pose without me having to suggest a thing.

Here are some of my favorites from the day.

For more information about their ministry visit them here