Gina & Cody - Downtown St Paul Engagement

Cody and Gina are getting married this April, and for their engagement session we chose downtown St. Paul for 3 reasons. 1) the urban feel 2) the cityscape from across the river 3) Rice Park and the Christmas lights.
We started just before sunset to get both daylight and night shots. I haven't done an evening engagement session yet so I had a little creative fun here. Fortunately the weather stayed a little warmer than forecast so it didn't get to uncomfortable however, it did knock a little life out of my batteries.

John and Shannon - Winter Wedding.

John and Shannon were married last weekend at the Nazareth Chapel (on the Northwestern campus in Roseville), with the reception at the Profile Event Center in Minneapolis. They were a wonderful couple, so easy to work with. Shannon dreamed of a wedding here since she was a child, and she couldn't have picked a more perfect chapel... it is an amazing venue.
After the ceremony we made a quick stop at the Local in Minneapolis, and then off to the Profile Event center for the reception.



On her way to see John for the first time....












The Nazareth Chapel is simply stunning...



A quick stop over at the "Local" downtown to hit the Kissing Room.



Their signature drink was a "Mintini", so I chose to incorporate it into the ring shot. (Special thanks the the bartender for working with me on this one).

The Paulus Family... All of them.

Remember that snow storm a few weeks back? The one that dumped about 18 inches of snow? That happened to be the exact same day the Paulus' scheduled their family portrait session... back in September. What are the odds? Since some of them were from out of town (Florida), it had to continue as planned.
I love doing these "generational" photo's. It's always nice seeing a big family come together and piecing together their family tree. Sometimes it's quite amazing to see how many grand kids come into the picture.

Personal Time - The Zoo

One of the HUGE perks of my "job" is that I get to spend the weekdays with my kid-lets, "daddy daycare" so to speak. This year, we got a zoo pass... and we made some good use of it. There were a lot of visits to the zoo this past year, especially when the butterfly exhibit was open.
Here is a look back at some of my favorites.



I love the translucent wings on this one.











90% of the time this guy was sleeping, but today we got an up close and personal look at each other.