2011 Travel Schedule | Sarah Esther Photography

For us, 2011 is off to a great start. We're almost through January in its entirety, and spring is just around the corner. January, for our business, has been one of those months for recuperating and planning, as I'm sure its also been for you. Lots will happen this year, Ruthie gets married, we'll finish Groupon, I'll finally get to meet Justin Timberlake... (hee hee)

We've been booking consistently with weddings for 2011 (and 2012!), and I am so excited for the couples we'll work with this year! Along with weddings, we've also been busy with portrait bookings.. both of these ventures taking us on some fun travel excursions!

Below is our 2011 Travel Schedule so far; where we will be shooting weddings and portraits this year! Will you or someone you know be in the same place at the same time? We're offering portrait specials for sessions booked while we're in these places! If you are interested, or you know someone who may be interested, send us an email at: sarah (@) sarahesther (.) com

February 24-28th- San Francisco, California
March 9th-18th- Paris, France
August 20-23rd- New York, NY
August 21- Albany, NY
September 23-25th- San Francisco, California
November 6-11th- San Diego, California


Here's a picture of the Bay Bridge at night from my last trip to San Fran.



Have a great day everyone!


Interested in Booking Sarah for a shoot? Contact us here: www.sarahesther.com

Best of the Week Photo Contest | Atlanta Wedding and Portrait Photography

Hi Everyone. Thank you all for voting on your favorite photo of the week. I am loving giving a $10 print credit to all my winners.

CHANGE: I am now going to start the contest on Monday and the polls will close on Sunday night. So each Monday, check my blog to vote! Excited about continuing to see which photos are your favorite.

Happy voting:)

Lily Pads

Look!

Tree Hang

Overlooking the Lake

Big Smiles

Wednesday Wish List

Woo hoo it's the middle of the week!

Time for another installment of my Wednesday Wish-List.
Please don't consider me unhappy with my current state of life... really these are just things that I wouldn't refuse if someone just-so-happened to send them to me :)... or that I wouldn't refuse to buy if I just-so-happened to be in a fit of impulse when i encounter them. That being said... on with it!

1. I can just see myself having friends over for coffee and pancakes as it continues to get warmer... and I would LOVE these Anthropologie coffee spoons. Of course, I can also see them being used when it's just me, myself, and I. 

2. The confidence and sass to walk out of the house dressed like ANY one of the folks on LookBook. I mean... really. I'd love to get away with throwing on every item I loved from my closet and look fabulous doing it. This yellow scarf and the mesh-dotted tights are amazing. ATTN PHOTOGS: Great inspiration on this site...really.

3. This mixer. Need I say more? I mean, I seriously believe that my cooking skills would increase three-fold if I had this. You get it right? Kind of in the same way as when we were younger and the right purse  would increase our cool-factor a major percentage. Same logic. 

Wednesday Wish List

Well I've encountered a lot of things lately that I'm reallllly attracted to, so today I am going to share them. Nothing fancy, just a couple of wishes.

1. The Farmer's Market Cookbook from Williams-Sonoma. 

I shop the Dekalb Market once a month for goodies, and I'd love to take this with me. 

2. This Book..

  I love France, I love food. What better than a book about love in France with recipes?

3. A real gold watch... that won't turn silver in 2 weeks.

I love gold watches, don't hate. They are an easy way to dress up jeans and a tee. I also feel sexy in them, which is worth it all over again.

What are you wishing for right now? 

Weekend Recap

Alright Monday!!!!! Maybe for some of us Monday is so hard to get into because we need a longer transition out of the weekend. I propose a new day... an 'in-between' day, just for transitioning. It will be a day of half-work and half-play... and we'll call it 'Smonday'. If you need help figuring out where the name came from, then you probably need two days to transition, and so we will give you an extra day and call it 'Muesday'.

Enough about my additions to the calendar... I had a great weekend. It was finally 60degrees for more than a day, I went to a wedding, had drinks with friends, church was great, and I took a cooking class. Hooray for weekends!

My favorite part of the weekend, besides an awesome service at Buckhead Church, was definitely the Souffle technique class that I took Sunday morning at Williams-Sonoma. Our amazing chef was so great at teaching, and I had the best Guyere and leek souffle. Omygawd it was so good. They offer classes every Sunday and sometimes during the week. I encourage everyone to give them a try. Next week is cookies and cakes!!!

Here's a photo I snapped with my phone.

Growing Older

Relationships change as we grow older. You can't stop it. They just do. At some point we stop choosing our friends based on who the 'coolest' and 'most attractive' people are, and choose them instead based on how interesting they are and how good you feel when you are around them (and if they happen to be cool, good looking, interesting, and make you feel good...well then that's a jackpot friend and you should keep them around no matter what).

Our relationships with our parents change, too. We go from viewing them as an evil-force-out-to-thwart-all-of-our-best-plans to viewing them as a meal-ticket to viewing them (hopefully) as friendly-books-of-wisdom (that provide meal tickets when you visit, of course). 

I'm excited to be in a new place with my parents...I'm in the 'friendly-book-of-wisdome' stage. I enjoy hanging out with them, and actually apply what they tell me. 

This week I want to celebrate my relationship with my mom, which has grown tremendously over the past 3 years. On thursday I am taking her to a fancy-shmancy salon to get her hair did, and we will talk and giggle... and she will tell me I shouldn't leave candles burning, and make sure that I know how much my car insurance is every 6 months. But most of all we will enjoy our relationship, and how it's changed. Because we're older.

This is my mom at Christmas, holding our pomeranian, Elvis...who is pissed off at the Santa outfit she put on him.

Girly girl

Today's post will be super girly.. so if you are feeling at all masculine, look away.

Ok maybe not super girly, but definitely de la femme.

I used to be a nail biter. That's not my proudest trait, but hey.. it's true. I'm not exactly sure what it is about nails that makes us all look at them and decide to bite them, but I feel like a large group of us suffers from this very thing. I'm not sure what turned my thinking, but one day I decided to not be a nail biter, and I haven't gone back since. It was probably that article in Glamour not to long ago about men not wanting to hold someone's chewed-up hand (mental picture anyone?)... or my discovery of an entire WALL of gorgeous nail polish at Target.  I also remember being inspired by the alway-gorgeous LC from 'The Hills', though I was never one (and never will be one, for black nail polish).

All that being said, I really enjoy painting my nails.. there is something so relaxing about it, maybe because it is almost impossible to thing about anything else while doing it, and that frees my mind for 20min. It's like a power nap for my brain. So now I'm off to doll up mes mains. Cheers, Sally Hansen!

What's coming up....

Hello! #1 Slacker right here, apologies for being out-of-touch the last couple of days. This week has materialized and then disappeared again right before my very eyes, and of course because I know everyone runs on my time schedule... I'm assuming it's been the same for you. This week has actually been quite fantastic, full of new things that I've never done before... like:

1)Shoot a boudoir session

2)Assist a boudoir session

3)Get in front of the camera for a glam-session of my own (insert Homer Simpson-like 'Doh!' right here)

4)Get an Atlanta Parking ticket (timed at 3 minutes before I actually returned to my car)

5)Actually sit down for the State of The Union address

I'm excited about knocking these things off of my To-Do list, even though I never really had a to-do list to knock them off of... But it did get me in the mood to make some more lists. I'll share one of them today, and maybe as I get better at them and eventually become a professional list-maker with my own TLC show (oh yes, oh yes) I can be your list-peration (yes, I did just make up a word mashing list and inspiration together). For now, I am going to stick to photography because that is what I love, but in the spirit of doing things that I say I am going to do, here is that list:

What's coming up!

1) Wedding Season!!!

2) My Re-branding (super excited... contests will follow it's launch, so stay tuned)

3)Watching 'The Pregnancy Pact' on Lifetime because we DVR'd it. Yep.

4)VEGAS BABY!!!! I'll be there with zillions of other Wedding Photogs. No repeat of 'The Hangover'.

5) The Grammy's. Some of the best and worst live performances ever.

6) 70-Degree weather in Atlanta. HOLY GOD I am so tired of the cold.

There is my list for things coming up that I am super excited about, I didn't promise you it would be life changing (Although the pregnancy Pact could be pretty moving...)

To celebrate my 1st boudoir experience.. here are some photos that I took of the amazing Joy Wilson during the sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday! Thanks to the Georgian Terrace in Atlanta for their gorgeous rooms. Also.. thanks to my new Canon 7D for being so awesome. All of these photos are straight out of camera (SOC) with absolutely no editing. It rocks.

Joy has a beautiful laugh

Who I want to be

'Tis the season for a new you!!! I don't know if you've noticed but there has been an influx of TV commercials about losing weight, Proactiv ads for clear skin, and little men at the mall that hand out pamphlets to us as we go into the food court. They all know that at the start of each new year about half of our population signs itself up for the 'New and Improved!' label. I'm not really one to make goals, to be honest I don't like setting myself up for disappointment...that way anything I DO accomplish officially exceeds my expectations (I know, it sounds awful).I'm not sure if you are one of those people or not, but regardless... since we are all affected by the 'new and improved' labels whether we just see them or we participate in them, I have something to share.

Sunday at church was the first sermon of the new year, and the pastor talked about setting goals, respectively. However the approach was one that I hadn't hear before. There was no talk of motivational songs, no 'safety words', and no 12-step plans. His take on goals was one that had its foundation in who we are as people, rather than what we want to be as society. It's quite a biblical foundation (go figure), as Christ preaches more about who we should want to be rather than what we should want to be (a point quite frustrating to me at times when I just want a Magic-8-Ball type of conversation with God!). The point of the message was that before we decide what we want to be, we need to decide who we want to be, because ultimately... who we are is what will last longer than what we are. People get fired, houses burn down, finances get messy... but character (good or bad) will prevail.

He recommended that we make a list, or write some paragraphs, containing who we wanted to be known as after we die (morbid, sorry).

Here's mine:

Sometimes, that's all you need...

Sometimes....

Oh sometimes....

Sometimes happens a lot for me, and the circumstances that happen sometimes, are not always the 'sometimes' that I want. are ya following me here? Good.

But today's sometimes was great. Because today was the end of a week, and the beginning of a weekend. Yep that's right, my weekend starts tomorrow :) Tomorrow my mom and I are going to get to hang out for a little while... we'll stroll the kiosks of the Yellow Daisy Festival in Stone Mountain Georgia, go see a movie, and hopefully be able to breathe for the first time since Sunday.

Friday will be a fabulous day off. and sometimes, that's all you need.

A walk in the Park

"Life ain't just a walk in the park"...

How many times have you heard that one? Growing up with two very realistic parents, I had that drilled into my head, and they didn't leave the other bases untouched either... life is also not "a free lunch" "a bowl of cherries" "fair" "an easy ride".. you get the picture. If you can add onto the mantras then a cookie for you... or maybe a box of chocolates, since that seems to be the only thing life actually is.

I've lived by these little nuggets of information most of my life, and truth be told it has proven helpful in many situations... I was never the girl with unrealistic expecations for my boyfriends, if it ended... well, "life ain't fair". Whenever something drastic happened, a death, job loss, driving in teh wrong direction for 234 mi, etc.... It was always easier to not panic if you knew that life "isn't a bowl of cherries" (although I would strongly not reccommend saying that to anyone who happens to encounter one of those situations or life may come to an abrupt halt for you :))

The other day some friends and I were enjoying the beautiful weather in Piedmont Park. The sun was shining, the air was cool, if there had been birds then I think they would have been singing... We pulled out a frisbee and had many failed attempts at hand-eye coordination, but we had fun. Then we took a walk. Yes, a walk in the park. We strolled along the faded asphalt of the bike paths, watched mothers and their children feed the ducks by a Grecian Gazebo, commented on the beauty each dog being thrown a frisbee by its master, and watched with excitement as a couple taking their engagement photos set out on the journey of marriage.

Though the world around us was far from perfect that day (it is Atlanta after all)... when we stopped to take in what was around us, stopped to stop worrying about what was next for us and for others, stopped to realize where we were in life... and you know what, at that moment life really was a walk in the park.

One of those Days...

So yesterday was a bad day. Nothing went right... woke up late, didn't get to shower (and realized later that I'd also forgotten the deoderant :/ sorry classmates!), found out that I couldn't log in to my GSU account due to the fact that I was one out of 30000 that was randomly selected for review, my car got booted for $50, and found out that I will have to pay an extra $500 for a class because of supposed late registration. It was a wine-at-3:30-in-the-afternoon day. A very. Bad. Day.

So after I got into my car, waiting on the boot-man to get there, I tried squeezing out some tears... I felt like Cameron Diaz in 'Holiday', they just wouldn't come. I squeezed for a good 5 minutes before I gave up... feeling defeated even by my own emotions! Then it hit me... I wasn't supposed to cry and sulk over my circumstances, I needed to DO something about them. And the only thing I knew to do was go to the Lord. It's an amazing feeling to know that your heart is being called by a higher power... to know that even after all of your failures and sucky attempts at success and reckoning someone still believes in you, and wants to know you. I didn't even want to know me yesterday.

So I took a breath after my squeezes (which left me breathless), and pulled out the word expecting nothing but believing everything... that no matter what I was reading it would in some way be relevant to my situation, it would be a word of love and a song of encouragement from the one who knew me best.

It did.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

This GOD knows what he is doing. He made my bad day better. No it wasn't "everythings-fixed-as-if-this-day-didnt-happen-and-I-got-a-new-car-too kind of better, but it was better because though the day was still sucky, I had a certain peace that it wouldn't last, and I would...and COULD... survive.

The day ended up being a good day. It was just one of those days....

Britney and Bryce are Engaged!

So I had the super-fun privilege of taking Britney and Bryce's engagement photos last week (you may remember that I blogged about them right after!)... I am in love with this couple. They are just too freakin' cute! Here are a few sneak-peak teasers from their session... I'll be ready with the rest sometime next week. There are a lot of photos, and hey.. a girl's gotta eat..and sleep... so check back soon for the rest! For now, enjoy!

be sure to check out www.sarahestherphotography.com for recent sessions too!

Business is nice...

Well today I am off to lunch with the wonderful Joy Wilson to catch up and hand over some of the photos that I took of her last week. Every time I hand over some product I automatically want to say "nice doin' business wit ya" in my best Chicago-gangster style... does that come to anyone else's mind? Ok maybe just me...

after the lunch with Joy I am off to shoot some love! Yay!!! I was asked to photograph Britney and Bryce for their engagement photos, and they have already booked me for their wedding in November! The shoot is at Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia... lots of wide open fields (imagine some 'Sound of music' theme playing here) and just trees... perfect backdrops. But Of course... I can't ever leave nature to be it's own backdrop (sorry Mother Nature, nothing personal) so I have packed up a few tag-a-long items to incorporate into the pictures.

Hope everyone is having a fanrastic day... I'm dressed up today, felt like showering... hahah

I will leave you with one of the pictures of Joy:

Found a Beautiful Blog Here: mary Frances Photography

Hope Everyone is having a fantastic day!