Adrianne, Ricky and Dexter

Back in my days of planning a wedding I joined a website called OffbeatBride.com. It is a wonderful community made up of unique, creative, accepting and outrageous women (and a few men). I still visit the website frequently and eventually came to know Adrianne. Adrianne is a native North Carolinian, born and raised in Carrboro and recent transplant to Durham. She and Ricky met in a great old fashioned romance involving cars, shoes and sarcasm.

Chrissy and I had the esteemed pleasure of getting to know the two of them, and their wiggly, furry, adorable pup, Dexter. On June 3rd, the 5 of us took a stroll through the Duke Gardens. Before our session, Adrianne had warned me that her and Ricky were not "picture people". Well, I beg to differ. 

We had a great time goofing off and exploring the gardens while still capturing their love for each other. 

Adrianne and Ricky are due to make an honest dog out of Dexter, I mean, they're due to marry in September of next year at an awesome venue in Durham. Considering how fantastic they looked for their engagement shots, we can only imagine how beautiful their wedding will be. 

Adrianne, Ricky and Dexter, thank you for allowing us to photograph your fantastic family. You are all so great and we hope to serve your photography needs again! 

Liz DiNatale

www.oakcityphotographync.com

Photo Friday: My World

Hello blog and facebook note readers. I hope you're having a super-fantastical Friday. So far, so good for me. Besides skipping my workout this morning, (which could be argued as a positive) this Friday has been treating me right. I procrastinated taking a photo for this week's challenge until the very last minute. I couldn't think of a way to show my day to day world without it being so boring you'd all stop reading my posts.

Between exercising the pups morning, noon and night and loving on them in the times between exercising them...then feeding them and cleaning up after them, I'd say that my world is dominated by my dogs and our commitment to them. 

I'm betting that about now most of you are rolling your eyes at the screen. "Dogs...they're only dogs". Yeah, they're canines but they're so much more. I swear, a Border Collie can put sentences together. I don't have to give my dogs a one line command, I just talk to them and they know what I want. I just have to look at them crossly and they know they've done wrong. They know patterns better than I do. But with all this smarty-pants-ness, they require a bit more than the typical pup. If they don't get some sort of exercise *daily* they will drive us nuts...and then they'll become destructive. But you know what? It's all worth it. There's nothing like a Border Collie. You can look them in the eyes and see the wheels turning. 

Stepping off my soapbox now. Back to the task at hand. This is how I could best capture my world at 8am this morning.

I'm in my neighborhood (that's my street). I'm exercising my ball-obsessed dogs (I have a funny story about how ball obsessed they are that I'll share at the end of this blog) and I'm dressed for work...yep that about sums it up. 

Hopefully the next challenge will be a little more interesting. 

Ok, now for that funny story. A couple weekends ago a former coworker of mine had a bunch of us over to his house in Raleigh for "College Night". Which consisted of beer and foods you'd typically find in a college dorm or party. We even had a tasting contest where we had to identify each beer by their "unique" taste. I say "unique" because the same mild taste of beered down water. I came in second. I was pretty proud of myself considering I didn't drink crappy beer in college. My baby beer was Newcastle....anywho, I digress. 

My ex-coworker also invited everyone's' dogs to play with wild abandon in his back yard, so we brought our 3. Sometime when our dogs first learned to fetch (6 months to a year old) they realized that interaction with other dogs is sssoooo lame (imagine a valley girl type voice when you read that) and prefer to ignore their presence and play fetch. They'll do this until you put up all toys that can be fetched. This inherently means they'll keep searching for toys that can be fetched before they give up. Gunnar found each and every ball that was ever lost, hidden, buried, discarded and mourned. I believe the grand total was 13 balls. I really wish I had a picture of it; we had all 13 lined up on the railing. They went from looking not so bad-ish to completely stripped of any fibers and looking about 20 yrs old. We are pretty sure he found every ball there was to find because eventually he tried to snatch the balls we had already placed out of his reach. Aaahhh obsession.....

I hope you all enjoyed this post. Don't bother going to the Photo Friday website to vote for my picture, I didn't post it in time to submit it. Everyone have a wonderful weekend, I'm heading to Carolina Beach to visit an old friend, the Fat Pelican. 

Thanks for reading!

-Liz DiNatale
www.oakcityphotographync.com

Photo Friday: Minimalist

Happy Friday everyone!

I hope everyone has fared well through the storms and are looking forward to a nice weekend.

I was having a hard time picturing something that would work for this Photo Friday. I even went so far as to check what other people had submitted but unfortunately that only helped my showing me what I didn't think was an appropriate way to show minimalist.

Inevitably, I ended up flipping through my recent photos to see if there was anything that spoke to me. To my luck, there was. This was a photo I took back in January. We were on a walk in Umstead park with the dogs.

The more I look at this photo, the more I feel right about it. Interpret it as you like. The way I see it, is a man alone with his companions in nature. Without the busy, complicated infrastructure we create around us. This picture feels like a long deep exhale.

So, that's my interpretation. What do you picture when you think, minimalist?

I hope everyone has a nice weekend planned; this might be the last weekend without the threat of mosquitoes! I killed my first one yesterday. It's always down hill from the first mosquito killing.

Thanks for reading!

-Liz DiNatale

Celebrating James & Emily

Last weekend I participated in my brother and his fiancee's wedding shower in Greenville, NC. They held the event at a nice sports bar-type venue called CPW's. 

It was a fun event with the usual quirky games and present opening. And of course, the awesome prizes. 

Seriously awesome:

We played a game with clothespins on a string around our neck. You were given one clothespin when you arrived and lost your clothes pin if you were caught saying "James" or "Wedding". I lost my clothespin after about 30 seconds. I managed to steal a few other clothespins but would always end up losing them. Yep, I failed. 

 

On a better note, I met my brother's future mother-in-law. And now I know where Emily gets her sweetness.

After the gifts were opened and the party was drawing to a close, we gathered for a few serious group shots....completely serious. 

I love that I could simply say "Ok, now everyone try to lick Emily" and no one questioned me or even paused. Excellent job, ladies. Now for the serious photo. These are Emily's ladies, or at least most of them. They are all wonderful girls; I really enjoyed getting to know them. 

I also took the time at the shower to get to know a couple of James's guys. I'll be standing up there with them after all and I had no idea who most of them were. I think we'll all get along famously. The real test will be in Asheville in about two weeks. If we survive that we'll be golden. 

Gratuitous group shot:

I giggle every time I see this photo. I love everyone's expression, including those that aren't actually trying to be funny. 

Good times. If the wedding shower was this much fun, I'm very much looking forward to the wedding. I'm looking forward to stealing Emily away for some bridal portraits soon. Hopefully I'll be able to share a teaser from that session in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.  

Happy Easter Everyone!

-Liz DiNatale
www.oakcityphotographync.com

Photo Friday: Riding

I appreciate those who bother to check on these updates. I'm SO sorry I've been lazy about posting weekly. 

Thank you for sticking with me. 

The challenge for this week's Photo Friday was "Riding". I had so many awesome ideas in mind for this photo. I wanted to incorporate cycling but not in the typical way. I decided to show riding without actually showing any riding. What are the essentials for a good bike ride, besides the actual bike? The things that are essential to me are my bike shoes, my bike gloves, my helmet and water. One could argue that you could do without one or two of these things but to have a good, safe ride, you should have all of them. 

Then the question was, which style of riding do I show? Mountain or road? I decided to go with mountain. All the necessities are the same, the shoes are just knobbier. I chose mountain biking because it is my preferred type of cycling. 

Yeah, yeah, I got into cycling via road biking (and the MS150 to be exact) but my loverly then b/f (now husband) pushed and prodded and nagged and gingerly suggested I try mountain biking. Eventually I made a deal with him. He had to ease me into it by taking me on the Umstead bridle trails at least 3 times before going with me on the Crabtree Lake trails *by our selves* for my first time on "single track". I think I got two rides in Umstead in before he dragged me to a group ride at Beaver Dam near Oxford. Let me tell you, Beaver Dam ≠ Crabtree Lake. At that time, Beaver Dam was around 10-12 miles long, Crabtree was maybe 5. Beaver Dam has this section called "The Drop Zone", Crabtree....has an optional tricks section. I was doomed.

Luckily that not-so-ideal first try at single track didn't make me swear off mountain biking. After several repeat outings and eventually a new bike (holy crap my Santacruz Blur is my hero) I was good and hooked.

Road biking is fun and all and you can go way faster on a road bike (and typically way farther). But there's just something to playing in the woods that I've always enjoyed.

I think I've yammered on enough. Below is my submission to Photo Friday (though I actually missed the submission deadline).

Now I want to go ride my bike. 

This weekend I'll be attending my brothers wedding shower. I hope to sneak a few photos of the ridiculously happy couple and then maybe I'll share them with you all. 

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

-Liz DiNatale

www.oakcityphotographync.com

Photo Friday: Mother Nature

I apologize for my absence, the last few challenges haven't really been intriguing. I'll read them on Friday, and forget about them until the following Friday in which case it is too late to submit anything.

However, I was excited about this Photo Friday challenge. I love nature photography. It's definitely my favorite next to portrait photography. This week has been pretty dreary though, with no good days for photo opportunities. Plus with the crappy weather I just felt like *bleh* all week long. I'm so glad the sun has finally decided to show its face again!

The photo I'm using for this Friday's photo challenge is one I took while my husband and I were away on our honeymoon in Breckenridge, Colorado. I know I've talked about it before on here so I'll not go into much detail. This photo was taken on our way back from from the summit of Quandary Peak.

Those cool puffs of white are mountain goats! We came across a herd of them trying to cross from the lake side of the mountain to the...non lake side. I thought this was an appropriate photo for the challenge Mother Nature since it is actually a picture of a mother goat and her kid! Besides birds, random rodents and peoples dogs these were the only animals on the mountain. Shortly after taking this photo, they started walking towards us. We felt it was time to go then. 

Coming up for SOR, the weather is turning warm! I'm looking forward to some early summer photo shoots.

Thanks for reading!

-Liz DiNatale
www.oakcityphotographync.com

Marianne and Adam plus a B(ee)

I am happy to announce that our circle of friends has been expanded by 1. Our friends Adam and Marianne have welcomed their, much awaited, son. But before we get to the baby photos, allow me to share a teaser set from their maternity photo shoot.

Chrissy and I were working double duty for Marianne and Adam's photo shoot. On one side, we were photographers and on the other we were agents on a super secret mission to get them out of the house so it could be decorated for their baby shower. Well, maybe it wasn't super secret, but it's fun to pretend.

We all piled into the expecting parents' very pretty Ford F150 and drove to Lake Crabtree park on the border of Cary and Morrisville. This park has a lot to offer. Not only do they have walking, hiking and mountain bike trails but they also have a boat rental location, a small sandy beach, beach volleyball nets and a really cool tower lookout. It was a very windy but beautiful day that Saturday. Marianne and Adam were great subjects and the little B(ee) did great too! 

Enough of my yammering, onto to the photos! You will have to bear with me, I couldn't pick just one.

 

(This is a complete side note, but I love Marianne's nails. Serious manicure envy here.)

Apparently Dad and B(ee) were having an intriguing conversation on the stairs of the lookout. 

Crabtree Lake park has a really pretty pergola that's completely grown over. If I had a pergola, that is how I would want it to look. It made the best natural shade, ever. 

Marianne and Adam started to get a little nervous about the B(ee) showing up, so we decided to stop for some light reading.

(Another side note, Adam's book's title is The Dudes' Guide to Pregnancy)

Gratuitous semi-silhouette. In all seriousness, I love silhouette maternity photos. I feel like the drama of the photo technique is a fitting way to capture the emotion of carrying your baby. Of course this is all speculation on my part, since I have not actually been pregnant. Mothers reading my blog, would you agree?

Marianne and Adam are well on their way to being great parents.

Believe it or not, there are still more photos from this photo shoot online that I didn't share here. I've got to leave something a mystery so you'll visit our site. Chrissy and I had a great time working with Adam and Marianne. They were great sports when dealing with all the wind and the glaring sun. The entire time Marianne had a wonderful smile, even when we weren't photographing her. I can only imagine it was because she was so happy to be so close to meeting her son.

And on that note, I'll leave you with one final photo. The "After" photo as I like to put it. Readers, allow me to introduce, Max (aka Bee). 

He is apparently not a fan of the camera. We'll have to work on this. 

Thank you for reading. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to do a post for Photo Friday this weekend as well! Have a great weekend, enjoy the wonderful weather.

-Liz DiNatale

www.oakcityphotographync.com