Brandon Malone Photography

This is one of our very spe­cial cou­ples. We first met Amanda while work­ing with the Bal­ti­more Blast Cheer­lead­ers. She was always very pas­sion­ate and enthu­si­as­tic about what she did, but that is the kind of per­son Amanda is. So when she con­tacted me about her wed­ding, Amanda (my wife) and I were crazy excited. Of course we also were curi­ous as to what the guy is like that won her over. In my mind, I imag­ined he was going to be a large mus­cu­lar foot­ball player. Though Justin isn’t a foot­ball player, he aparently is a for­mer pro rugby player. So note to self: don’t make him mad. Jok­ing of course.

Justin and Amanda are big about Old Town Alexan­dria, so that’s where they had in mind to shoot. In plan­ning for it, I sug­gested we go extra early in the morn­ing so as to get a sun­rise photo. The added ben­e­fit is that we made up over ninety per­cent of the pop­u­lar in the imme­di­ate area since every­one else was still sleep­ing. That or they were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the run that took over one of the streets out there.

We really did enjoy Old Town that time of the morn­ing. The street lights, shop lights, tree lights, and traf­fic lights lit up the streets. Since we were aim­ing for the sun­rise, we were not able to get any of these amaz­ing street views. So that’ll have to be a future ses­sion. It really was our first time shoot­ing a cou­ple in Old Town, but you can beat I’ll be tak­ing more pic­tures out there in the com­ing months.

Work­ing with Justin and Amanda was tons of fun. They really care about hav­ing qual­ity cre­ative pho­tos, and they’re more than will­ing to do what­ever nec­es­sary to have them. It really is a plea­sure and an honor to be in a posi­tion to go into the lives of peo­ple in order to reveal their pas­sion for each other, and their play­ful char­ac­ters that make them mesh so well together. I think one of my favorite reveal­ing moments dur­ing our shoot was when Amanda play­fully stuck her tongue out at Justin while he was look­ing away. As a pho­tog­ra­pher, you don’t get these kinds of moments until you’ve made some kind of con­nec­tion with your sub­ject, mak­ing them feel at ease, as if they’re no longer being pho­tographed, but instead hav­ing their rela­tion­ship captured.

So we get all kinds of amaz­ing pic­tures, we’ve all be up since way too early on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing, and what bet­ter way to wrap every­thing up than with a good break­fast. Thank­fully they new of a great lit­tle place to go. And, in Mal­one fash­ion, it was a fam­ily affair so we had lit­tle Zachariah with us. We left him in his car seat, but had him up high with us. Appar­ently he was hav­ing a great expe­ri­ence since he was laugh­ing exces­sively for a while before he finally passed out. At least we know every­one had a great time. I can’t wait for the actual wed­ding day. It’s going to be amazing.

It’s fun meet­ing cou­ples and see­ing how they com­pli­ment each other.   Zachary and Renee are one of the many cou­ples that found us while attend­ing another wed­ding that we pho­tographed.   So it was a plea­sure to meet them to dis­cuss their own wed­ding, as well as make plans for an engage­ment ses­sion for them.

Zachary is a care­ful guy who is open to lis­ten­ing, pro­cess­ing what is said, makes a log­i­cal deci­sion, and then holds me account­able to the let­ter.  I can relate since I’m kind of the same way in that I want to make sure I have as much info as pos­si­ble so I can have con­fi­dence that I’m mak­ing both a wise and log­i­cal deci­sion.  Then there is Renee, the bal­ance to our man Zach.  She makes him light up with her eager-to-have-fun way of liv­ing.  There’s no way he can not enjoy life as long as he has her by his side.  That’s why it was so fun doing their engage­ment pho­tos.  Sim­ply put the two into a scene with a lit­tle guid­ance, then let them take it from there and they reveal the best of their two worlds combined.

For their engage­ments, we headed over to Jef­fer­son Pat­ter­son Park where there was plenty of vari­ety to choose from in one place.  I remem­bered them men­tioned in plan­ning the ses­sion that they really wanted water in some of the pic­tures, so we started with the lit­tle beach spot there in the park.  It’s not much, but it’s plenty for what we needed.  Just a few walk­ing in the sand shots, some sit­ting in the tall grass, and so on.

The park also has the old colo­nial wood post fenc­ing where some of the posts lean across it mak­ing a large “x” shape.  I’m sure there’s a proper name, but I have no idea what it is.  I just know they make cool pho­tos some­times.  So we used the fence for a few pho­tos.  Appar­ently a spi­der had mades its home strung up between a cou­ple of those posts, which was just over where we were about to put Zachary and Renee.  Don’t worry, Zach pro­tected his woman, the spi­der lived, and every­one went home happy.  Plus we got our pic­tures too.

After this we made use of some trees, a road, and then called it a day.  We cap­tured tons of great pho­tos full of col­or­ful scenes and a happy cou­ple.  The only thing left was to design a guest book album for them for their wed­ding day.  Of course I’d be more than happy to help dec­o­rate their walls as well with some of the pho­tos if they’re interested.

When they’re wed­ding day comes next sum­mer, I know Zachary is going to be the strong and hand­some man, while Renee will be the radi­ant bride.  I’m not sure who’s going to cry though.  I guess we’ll find out when the time comes.

Here comes another fire fighter wed­ding.  I always love a fire fighter wed­ding.  There always seems to be a dif­fer­ent level of fun with them.  Mike was actu­ally be best man at another fire fighter wed­ding I did last March.  So when I showed up at his house to meet him, I was try­ing to fig­ure out why he seemed so famil­iar.  I didn’t rec­og­nize him out of a tux right away.  But I did quickly remem­ber him.  I antic­i­pate another mem­o­rable wed­ding com­ing our way.

Mike and Michelle, like many cou­ples, fall in love with so many of the things we offer.  One of which is our Guest Book Album, which means engage­ment pho­tos of course.  So we made our plans, decid­ing on the time and loca­tion.  It ended up being an extremely windy day, but only for part of the time, and we all survived.

The engage­ment ses­sion ended up being at Sot­ter­ley Plan­ta­tion in South­ern Mary­land.  I always love every chance I can get at shoot­ing at Sot­terly.  The loca­tion is beau­ti­ful with lots of vari­ety, and Linda (who I coor­di­nate with there) is a plea­sure to work with.

When we arrived, my wife and I noticed some large trees on the ground with the trunks cut into sec­tions.  Appar­ently they had close to a hun­dred trees come down with the hur­ri­cane that hit a few months back.  We actu­ally used one of the cut sec­tions, which had to be about as thick as I am tall.  Obvi­ously I deter­mined this by the fact that it was lay­ing on the ground and I was stand­ing next to it.  So I stood on top of one sec­tion, and they stood on top of another sec­tion across from me.  I fig­ured it’s not a nor­mal prop that I can use all the time at Sot­terly, so I’d bet­ter use it then.

From there, we headed over to a gar­den area that is very scenic.  It’s actu­ally one of the places they use for wed­ding cer­e­monies some­times, so it made a great spot for us as well.  That’s also where I had Mike show his mus­cles off for us.  After the gar­den, they changed into their (team) jer­seys and we headed to the back hill area where I found my tree and fence.

I love using tress with cou­ples.  It’s one of the sim­plest and most ver­sa­tile props I can have nat­u­rally.  They can sit, stand, lean, embrace, hide, and lov­ingly stare at each other.  We cap­tured some of their favorite images sit­ting by that tree.  Their other favorites were on the fence where Michelle grabbed Mike’s shirt, pulling him in close as she demanded his sub­mis­sion to her, or death may occur.  Ok, so maybe I actu­ally told her told.  I’m just look­ing out for Mike, giv­ing him the oppor­tu­nity to prove he’s the man that stole her heart.

Now we have tons of cool, fun pic­tures of Mike and Michelle, and a lay­out that’s about to be turned into a Guest Book Album for their wed­ding day.  As with almost all of our cou­ples, they are an absolute plea­sure to work with. Then they go fur­ther by mak­ing us feel like we’re now part of their fam­ily.  I know they have a fun and beau­ti­ful wed­ding ahead of them.

I still remem­ber our first meet­ing Nicci at the Panera’s Bread in Wal­dorf.  Most of our meet­ings are done in house, but this was a pub­lic meet­ing instead.  She had a few ques­tions of impor­tance, which I encour­age, and then lots of look­ing at and enjoy­ing my sam­ples.  We didn’t get to meet Keenan yet though, but I had a feel­ing we would.  I could tell she liked us and our work, and that she was inter­ested in an engage­ment ses­sion and a guest book album.

Sure enough, she noti­fied me of their deci­sion to book my ser­vices for their wed­ding day.  I was excited!  Of course I usu­ally am.  I love work­ing with peo­ple, espe­cially when they love my work.  We just had to wait a few months in order to do the engage­ments.  We wanted a fall feel, and scorch­ing sum­mer heat was not a substitute.

As we got closer to time, we set­tled on our arrange­ments for when and where and how to pre­pare.  I gen­er­ally ask a cou­ple if they have a place in mind, and then work from there.  Then I’ll rec­om­mend they bring one semi-formal out­fit, one relaxed out­fit (such as jeans and a tee-shirt), and then some­thing they think is fun and unique to them.  I also love props if they have any to bring.  For Nicci and Keenan, it was their Patri­ots jer­seys and their beloved dog Laila.  They also decided to use Gilbert Run Park as their location.

It was my first time to Gilbert Run Park.  I’ve actu­ally never heard of it prior to them men­tion­ing it.  But it’s a nice lit­tle park.  Because we had to start so late, we didn’t have much sun to work with.  If fact, I was try­ing to start as quickly as pos­si­ble so I can have the sun for some of my pho­tos before it dropped below the trees.  I think I had less than five min­utes and it was gone.  After that, it was bal­anc­ing avail­able light with my flash off cam­era.  Of course my flash was act­ing a bit funny, so I switch to just avail­able light only, which worked out just fine.

We did get some beau­ti­ful pic­tures of them with the water behind them, and the trees on the oppo­site side still light up by the sun that was then evad­ing us.  We also made use of a bridge, fol­lowed by a wet sand vol­ley­ball court.  Of course I had to have them lay in the sand.  A shoot is always more fun (at least more mem­o­rable) when you get dirty.

To date, there’s has been the fastest engage­ment ses­sion I have ever pho­tographed.  Not because we were try­ing to hurry, but because it just went quickly.  Most ses­sions aver­age about an hour to hour and a half.  Theirs was maybe forty-five min­utes.  It was start­ing to get a bit chilly, and really dark, by the time we fin­ished.  The pic­tures we took back with us really cap­tured the two of them.  At least that’s what Nicci’s mom told me when we pro­jected their pic­tures for them.

As most of our cou­ple that do an engage­ment ses­sion with us, Nicci and Keenan have pur­chased a Guest Book Album to show­case their engage­ment pic­tures with.  So we’ve designed a lay­out that they loved, and it’ll bring them tons of com­pli­ments on their wed­ding day.  Guest Book Albums are a great thing to have for your wed­ding since they are an amaz­ing means of col­lect­ing mem­o­ries from guests on the wed­ding day.  I can’t wait to put it in their hands for the first time.  And then to see it show­cased at the Run­ning Hare Vine­yard where they are get­ting mar­ried next year.

Jes­sica and Ryan are one of those South­ern Mary­land coun­try cou­ples that you just always feel at home with.  Amanda and I have actu­ally known Jes­sica and her fam­ily for a few years now since her and her fam­ily used to go to our church.  Plus Jes­sica is a styl­ist at In Style Salon and cuts Amanda’s hair once a year when she wants it short again.  We first met Ryan at one of Jessica’s sister’s wed­ding that we pho­tographed.  They were still dat­ing at the time and we didn’t really get a chance to get to know him then.

Once they became engaged, we set up our first meet­ing to talk about their wed­ding day, and our ser­vices, and we finally got a chance to meet Ryan and get to know him a bit.  The two are def­i­nitely well matched for each other.  We did the engage­ment ses­sion at Jessica’s family’s farm, where we were able to expe­ri­ence a bit of how her fam­ily has wel­comed him into their fam­ily already.  Amanda and I also got to enjoy some of Jessica’s cookin’.  Def­i­nitely a treat.

The shoot itself was tons of fun.  My favorite spot was against the red barn, where the lit­tle white kit­ten kept us com­pany.  My sec­ond favorite spot was under the wil­low tree with the red trac­tor.  I guess I’m obsess­ing with red.  I loved the beau­ti­ful farm land in South­ern Mary­land, and Amanda and I love every chance we get to spend time with Jes­sica and her fam­ily.  I know the wed­ding is going to be a good time.

Work­ing with Amy and Cody was a very lively and warm expe­ri­ence.  They are so much fun to be around, and it’s excit­ing watch­ing the two of them together.  It’s like sit­ting back and watch­ing a roman­tic com­edy, but I have a cam­era instead of pop­corn.  When coor­di­nat­ing for a loca­tion to do their engage­ment pho­tos, we ended up going for a two loca­tion shoot.  The first was at the Colo­nial Farm in Acco­keek, MD where we had a great abun­dance of options to work with.  I love going there because it’s both very his­toric and relax­ing.  We cre­ated some amaz­ing pho­tos for them there.

We then headed down the road to Fort Wash­ing­ton Park in Fort Wash­ing­ton, MD.  That place is just amaz­ing to visit.  Plus the park fee is good for three days, which is always a bonus.  Though we had lots of options there as well, I had an old fash­ion photo in mind that I’d made three years prior while at the fort.  It was my pop­u­lar tun­nel photo where the mod­els were sil­hou­et­ted by the light at the end of the tun­nel.  I wanted to exper­i­ment with using the same effect using Amy and Cody.  The final images are really cool.

My favorite thing that we used the pic­tures for is our pop­u­lar Guest Book Album.  I’ll have to put a pic­ture up of it after the wed­ding day.  It’s a beau­ti­ful album, but the page spreads a cre­ated dif­fer­ently.  The left side has the image mounted to it, while the right side has a faded parch­ment paper for guests to sign on the wed­ding day.  There are no lines, so each page is open for peo­ple to right what­ever they want to for the cou­ple to read later.  I gen­er­ally refer to it as year book style.

Once the wed­ding event is posted online, I’ll put a link in this post for vis­i­tors to use.  Thanks for read­ing my post, and be sure to pass your bless­ings and con­grats on to Amy and Cody.  They are a won­der­ful cou­ple and I can’t wait for their wed­ding day.